---
category: Scientists & Researchers
created: 2026-09-22
died: 2005-02-11
location: Moscow, Russia
relations:
- fn: 1
  role: academician; vice president from 1969
  start: 1953
  type: member_of
  with: '[[Soviet Academy of Sciences]]'
summary: Soviet radio engineer and vice president of the USSR Academy of Sciences
  whom a 1987 DIA briefing quoted as saying Ninel Kulagina's psychokinetic abilities
  were real.
tags:
- Person
- SovietUnion
- RadioEngineering
- Psychoenergetics
- Parapsychology
updated: 2026-09-22
---

Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kotelnikov was born in Kazan, the son of the mathematician Aleksandr Petrovich Kotelnikov. He was elected a full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1953, at 45, without passing through associate membership, and became deputy director and from 1954 director of the Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics. For about twenty years from 1969 he was vice president and then first vice president of the Academy, coordinating research in communications, radio technology, radio astronomy and space research. He was an honorary member of the IEEE and received the Rein Prize in 1999 and the Bell Gold Medal in 2000. He died on February 11, 2005, in his ninety-seventh year.[^1]

### In the DIA Briefing

A [Defense Intelligence Agency](/organizations/defense-intelligence-agency/) briefing on Soviet psychoenergetics given to the [Air Force](/organizations/us-air-force/) in 1987 quoted "V. A. Kotel'nikov," vice president of the Academy: "Psychokinetic abilities of N. Kulagina are real."[^2] See [Ninel Kulagina](/people/ninel-kulagina/), [Yuri Kobzarev](/people/yuri-kobzarev/) and [Psychoenergetics](/concepts/psychoenergetics/).

[^1]: "In memory of V. A. Kotel'nikov," *Automation and Remote Control* 66, no. 4 (2005), pp. 674-675, translated from *Avtomatika i Telemekhanika,* no. 4 (2005). https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10513-005-0111-4.pdf
[^2]: Henry E. Shinol, Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff, Studies and Analyses, Headquarters USAF, to the Defense Intelligence Agency, "Soviet Parapsychology Research Briefing," June 12, 1987, and cover note of July 14, 1987, with paper briefing slides "Soviet Activities in Psychoenergetics," CIA-RDP96-00789R002600320001-8 to -004-5. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.