Ninel Kulagina

Ninel Kulagina (1926–1990), also known as Nina Kulagina, was a celebrated Soviet psychic and a decorated World War II hero, having served as a front-line soldier and tank radio operator for the Red Army. She gained international attention for her purported psychokinetic abilities, particularly her capacity to move matter with her mind¹.

Kulagina's abilities reportedly manifested in childhood, with objects spontaneously moving when she became angry. Starting in the mid-1960s, her psychokinetic feats became the subject of state-run television programs in the Soviet Union, such as Science Films produced by Leningrad Studios. She was filmed moving objects sealed inside a glass aquarium, including metal salt shakers, matchsticks, and cigar canisters¹.

In the United States, skeptics often dismissed her demonstrations as fraud. However, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Department of Defense were not as dismissive, especially after a classified film from March 10, 1970, at the Ukhtomskii Military Institute in Leningrad, showed Kulagina allegedly stopping a frog's heart with her mind. This film caused significant alarm within the American defense community¹.

The experiment, overseen by Soviet military doctor Genady Sergeyev, involved Kulagina concentrating for about twenty minutes to stop a surgically removed frog's heart, which was still beating in Ringer's solution. Her physiological responses, including a heart rate of 240 and elevated blood pressure, were monitored. According to declassified documents, the heart activity ceased after approximately 7 minutes in the first experiment and 22 minutes in a second. She was also reportedly able to "reactivate" the heart¹.

Another experiment involved Kulagina attempting to increase the heart rate of a skeptical physician, which reportedly reached dangerous levels within minutes. While some U.S. analysts suspected a Soviet disinformation campaign, others, particularly from the Medical Intelligence Office of the U.S. Army, considered the military applications of such abilities to be extremely important¹.

Kulagina's alleged abilities contributed to the Pentagon's decision to launch a joint intelligence assessment of the "Soviet psychoenergetic threat," a term coined to encompass Soviet research into anomalous mental phenomena and electromagnetic weapons programs¹. Her work, along with that of H. S. Tsien in China, highlighted the perceived need for the U.S. to invest in its own psychic research programs.

A DIA briefing on Soviet psychoenergetics given to the Air Force in 1987 quoted Yu. B. Kobzerev, "radar pioneer, member USSR Academy of Science": "I am persuaded that the phenomena demonstrated by N. Kulagina (psychokinesis), and by L. Korabelnikova (extrasensory perception), are by no means tricks but rather the existence of the manifestation of unusual capabilities in man. My conviction is shared by many people including a group of professors and academicians," and V. A. Kotel'nikov, vice president of the Academy: "Psychokinetic abilities of N. Kulagina are real."⁹⁰⁰