On December 1924 in Moscow's Lubyanka Square, Gleb Bokii, chief of the Special Section, the most guarded unit of the OGPU Soviet secret police, was sitting in his oi ce, expecting three visitors. 1

h e i rst two men he knew quite well: Konstantin Vladimirov and Feodor Leismaier-Schwarz were his former colleagues from the Petrograd (St. Petersburg) branch of the secret police. Bokii himself had begun his career in Petrograd, cradle of the Communist revolution. In fact, as one of Lenin’s oldest comrades-in-arms, he had not only helped unleash the revolution but actively participated in the Bolshevik military takeover in 1917. 2 A few months at er that, Bokii had been among the few comrades who founded the Bolshevik secret services.

Yet, the coming meeting was not merely a reunion of old friends. h e former comrades were to introduce a third man, with whom the chief of the Special Section had become indirectly familiar at er leai ng through his police i le. He was Alexander Barchenko, a dropout medical student and popular mystery writer before the revolution who considered himself a scientist and did research on the human brain, telepathy, shamanism, and collective hysteria. Bokii knew that although Barchenko did not have any degrees he liked to be called Doctor and to deliver public lectures to various audiences, including Baltic Red sailors. He also 43

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noted that the “doctor” constantly talked about the mysterious land of Shambhala and wanted to bring its spiritual wisdom and psychological techniques to Red Russia. Somehow, Bokii had become intrigued with this man.

Figure 3.1. “Red Merlin” Alexander Barchenko, head of the United Labor Brotherhood and seeker of Shambhala wisdom. Prison photo, Moscow, 1937.

h ere were a reason for this fascination, and it was not because the chief of the Special Section was himself a dropout college student and shared with Barchenko the same Ukrainian origin. Recently, dark thoughts had begun to visit Bokii. He had started thinking about the fate of the whole Communist project and his role in it. Something had gone terribly wrong. A highly intelligent man and of spring of a noble lineage whose roots went back to the time of Ivan the Terrible, Bokii had inten-tionally sacrii ced his comfortable life to i ght for the liberation of the oppressed masses of the Russian Empire and had spilled other people’s blood on the altar of the revolution. At the same time, he was appalled with what happened at er the revolution. Blood, blood, so much blood!

All enemies were already subdued, but there was no change for the better. He noticed that at er the death of Lenin, the charismatic chief of the 44

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Bolshevik revolution, the new elite, many of them his closest comrades, had immediately become caught in a mortal struggle for power, slandering and dumping each other, while others helped themselves from the state’s cof ers.

Bokii, who was not good in intrigues, had become disgusted with this behavior and had withdrawn from political life, observing silently what was going on around him. 3 Instead of the envisioned working people’s paradise where all people would feel like brothers and sisters, the revolution had turned ugly. It unleashed bestial instincts of the crowd, which in its rage attacked everything and everyone that seemed

“bourgeoisie.” How to tame this crowd and attach a human face to the Communist project, how to “breed” a better race of people who would be well rounded, intelligent, and caring about each other? It would be interesting to hear what this Barchenko, whom his friends described as a talented researcher, had to say about all this. Could his claim be true that somewhere in Inner Asia lived enlightened masters who had the master key to shaping and reshaping human minds? Like all good Bolsheviks, Bokii believed in the unlimited possibilities of science and was convinced that it could resolve all kinds of problems. And imagine the possibility for intelligence work when you could read human minds at a distance. h at is what Barchenko claimed to know.

Barchenko was equally excited about the coming introductory meeting. It was not his i rst contact with the mighty spying machine that was striving to entangle all of Russia in its surveillance web. h e i rst meeting had taken place i ve years before and at i rst had given him chills. Barchenko vividly remembered that winter day at the end of 1919. A freezing wind blew through the streets of hungry Petrograd.

People were using their furniture as i rewood to keep themselves warm inside their homes. h e great city lay paralyzed in a gray ice-cold mist.

Few dared to venture outside, especially without necessity. People were afraid of being caught in the Red Terror, the campaign of intimidation and mass executions Bolsheviks had unleashed against their opponents.

At er millions died during the Great War and the subsequent Civil War, 45

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human life did not have any worth. Streets of the city were ruled by violent mobs of soldiers, workers, and peasants. Gangs of criminals, frequently posing as revolutionaries, and revolutionaries doing criminal business on the side were eagerly “coni scating” the riches of the bourgeoisie and looking for “exploiters” to liquidate. 4

Barchenko was petrii ed by the anarchy reigning in the country. He was especially stunned by the hatred the populace demonstrated toward anyone who appeared to be a well-rounded person. For masses of peasants and the urban underclass, a person who did not wear working class, peasant, or soldier’s garb, or whose talk was too bookish or who happened to wear glasses could easily become a target to be humiliated or simply shot. 5 It seemed that Barchenko had nothing to fear. He was always poor as a church mouse, and he even observed the new

“folk” dress code, wearing the old long felt soldier coat he had brought with him from the front when coming home to recuperate from his war wounds. Still, many times, when he ran across the most l amboyant representatives of the populace, their talk and behavior made him want to shrink and to be as unobtrusive as a piece of furniture. Barchenko felt defenseless before this victorious ignorance that now ran the show.

Besides, despite his masquerade, because of his poor eyesight he had to wear glasses, which exposed him as a man of intelligence. As such, he easily could be taken by a revolutionary mob as a bourgeoisie and a potential enemy. Like well-trained dogs, these rednecks could immediately sense that he did not belong to their pack.

Barchenko had a wife and a child to feed and was struggling to survive. An of er in 1919 to lecture to the Red Baltic sailors had come as a blessing. At least, it guaranteed him an in-kind payment in the form of a loaf of black bread—money had been abolished by the new regime.

h is of er had also provided an excellent chance for him to spell out his spiritual ideas about the salvation of the bleeding world. At er the Bolshevik coup, Barchenko had thought a lot about how to convince the revolutionary masses and the Bolshevik elite, which rode the violent sentiments of the crowd, to be more humane and compassionate to 46

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each other. He had felt the lectures could be a good start. h rough the Red sailors, the foot soldiers of the Bolshevik revolution, he could eventually reach out to the top Bolshevik leaders and explain to them the value of spiritual life and ancient knowledge, without which the country would go down. h

us, during the winter of 1919–20, Barchenko had begun lecturing to the sailors in Petrograd. 6 Eventually, Barchenko and two sailors who knew how to read and write, I. Grinev and S. S. Belash, sat down together to compose a petition to Georgy Chicherin, Bolshevik Commissar for Foreign Af airs, soliciting support for the project and permission for the Red sailors to accompany the scientist on an expedition to search for Shambhala. Barchenko had been on cloud nine, happy to have such associates. 7

Unfortunately, instead of support, the petition had brought Barchenko a lot of troubles. h e l eet commanders, who found out that the odd “professor” was trying to pollute the pure revolutionary minds of the sailors with false knowledge, had quickly alerted the Bolshevik secret police. h e latter had already received detailed information about Barchenko through its informers: Red Russia was gradually turning into a state where people were strongly encouraged to keep an eye on each other. Yet, instead of being arrested, Barchenko had simply been invited to the secret police headquarters for a talk. Still, one can imagine what horrii c pictures Barchenko had probably drawn for himself thinking about the coming “talk.” In the atmosphere of the Red Terror and Civil War, he was well aware that the Bolshevik secret police oi cers did not look for evidence. h e major factor that decided a person’s fate was what class he or she belonged to. Unfortunately, as the child of a notary clerk, Barchenko did not have the politically correct background to be spared if in trouble: he was neither a worker nor a peasant.

However, his fears had been false. To his amazement, among his interrogators had been Konstantin Vladimirov, a playboy bohemian who had visited one of his lectures. Vladimirov had been all politeness. As it turned out, the playboy, an intelligent Jew, worked as a secret police oi cer in a unit that combated counterrevolution. h e other two, 47

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Estonians Eduard Otto and Alexander Ricks, had proved no less intelligent and polite. h ey had informed Barchenko about the complaint but immediately added that they did not believe all the lies spread about him and did not believe his lectures were counterrevolutionary. Moreover, the three oi cers then shocked the “doctor” by asking permission to learn more about Shambhala wisdom. Barchenko was thrilled, and eventually, all three became good friends. And Vladimirov would lead Barchenko to Bokii.

Mastering Brain Rays

Barchenko was born in the town of Elets in Orel District into the family of a court notary and received a good education, completing gram-mar school. In 1904, he entered the medical school at Kazan University.

h e next year, Barchenko transferred to Tartu University in Estonia, at that time part of the Russian Empire. h ere he met Alexander

Krivtsov, a professor of Roman jurisprudence who liked to treat his students as friends and was very interested in esoteric teachings. h ere was nothing strange about this. In the early twentieth century through the First World War, many educated people all over Europe, including Russia, were involved in the world of the occult. In Russia this period, known as the Silver Age (1880s–1918), saw the rise of interest in spiritism, h eosophy, Tibetan Buddhism, and Freemasonry. For Barchenko, the meeting with Krivtsov was a landmark, an intellectual initiation into the world of the occult and esoteric that shaped his future spiritual quest.

h e professor especially fascinated the mind of the youth with his stories about a French esoteric writer named Marquis Alexandre Saint-Yves d’Alveydre (1842–1909), who wrote about the mysterious land of Agartha that was hidden somewhere in the mountains of Inner Asia and possessed science and spiritual wisdom far superior to what was known in Europe: “h e story of Krivtsov gave me the i rst push that moved my mind toward the quest that i lled all my life. Assuming that 48

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remnants of this prehistoric science might have somehow in some form survived to the present day, I began to study ancient history and gradually immersed myself in the realm of the mysterious.” 8

Soon, hoping to make more money to provide for his wife and a small son, Barchenko moved to St. Petersburg and turned to writing i ction, plugging into the popular fascination with the occult. On the eve of World War I, he was already a successful author, producing adventure mystery stories and novels that sampled cutting-edge paranormal discoveries and Oriental magic. His two major novels, Doctor Chernii (Doctor Black, 1913) and Iz mraka (Out of Darkness, 1914), are set in Russia, India, and Tibet, and describe the mysterious adventures of Dr.

Alexander Chernii, a professor of medicine, h eosophist, junior mahatma, and member of a secret order with headquarters in the foothills of Tibet. h e plots revolve around the professor’s attempts to put secret knowledge possessed by the order to public benei t and the ef orts of his mahatma comrades to keep it secret.

In 1911, in addition to i ction writing, Barchenko toyed with contemporary popular science and even conducted a series of “scientii c” experiments. His major interests were thought transfer and energy, topics popular with the educated Western public in the early twentieth century, especially at er the discovery of X-rays, radiation, and the theory of relativity. Many scientists and spiritual seekers became involved in what one can call “positivist occultism,” a scientii c explanation for spiritual and paranormal phenomena. Scientists involved in this research argued that paranormal ef ects were possible because invisible brain rays produced sound waves, which conveyed thoughts at a distance and even moved objects.

Barchenko, familiar with this research, jumped on the bandwagon of this scientii c fad and performed his own experiments on thought transfer. His technique was very simple. Two volunteers with completely shaved heads put on aluminum helmets specially designed by the writer for this occasion. h e helmets were linked by a long piece of copper wire. Barchenko placed oval screens in front of both participants and 49

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asked them to stare at the screens. One volunteer was a receiver, while the other, the transmitter, was to think hard of a word or an image and mentally beam it to the recipient. Barchenko claimed that beaming images was no problem, whereas with words, as he admitted, there were many mistakes.

Subterranean Blues: Agartha and Synarchy Plugging himself into thought-transfer research and reading popular literature about hypnosis and magnetism, Barchenko could not get rid of the compulsive questions that had haunted him since the time he learned about d’Alveydre and his Agartha. What if all knowledge that modern science bragged so much about had already been known to the ancients and then had been wiped out by barbarian hordes? What if Agartha, the mysterious subterranean country d’Alveydre wrote about, indeed still harbored remnants of this superior knowledge? What if the French occultist was also right in suggesting that traces of the advanced ancient science could be found scattered in great religious texts such as the Bible, Koran, Kabala, Rig Veda and other great sacred books, as well as in ancient symbols, rock art, and folk legends? Barchenko took the message of the French esotericist very seriously. In his Mission of India in Europe (1886), d’Alveydre appealed to a French president, a Roman pope, and a Russian emperor, asking them to learn from the wisdom of Agartha. In a similar manner, a desire to penetrate the mysterious subterranean country and retrieve its wisdom in order to enlighten the Russian elite about the correct political and spiritual path eventually became a lifelong obsession for Barchenko.

Besides Agartha, Barchenko became drawn to Synarchy, a social theory propagated by d’Alveydre. h e French writer noted there were two types of human organization: Synarchy (the total and benevolent state) and anarchy (total lack of state, political and social chaos). D’Alveydre viewed all of history as a tug of war between these two opposing systems. Examples of anarchy were revolutions, class war, secularization, 50

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unemployment, decline of tradition, prostitution, alcoholism, poverty, slums, and other vices of modern society.

According to d’Alveydre, for the past i ve thousand years, people had been living in a state of anarchy. Yet, it had not always been like that all the time. At the dawn of history, humans lived in a synarchical social state based on tradition, security, and hierarchy. h e synarchical government was a pyramid composed of three layers. h e top leadership was a group of priests who controlled advanced science and technology.

h e second layer was the initiated ones and the third common people.