who let the country for Europe and the United States, Barchenko had to reconcile himself to the Bolsheviks.
A few years later, the original desire to hide away from the revolution gave way to the wish to reach out somehow to the Bolshevik elite, which spoke the crude language of violence well understandable to urban and village underclass people impoverished by war and upset about modernization. Barchenko began contemplating how to ennoble the Communist project by using the ancient science hidden in Inner Asia:
“h e contact with Shambhala is capable of pulling humankind out of the bloody deadlock of insanity—the violent struggle, in which people hopelessly drowned themselves.” 13 Revisiting d’Alveydre’s conservative utopia through the prism of the Bolshevik revolution, he started talking about the ancient “Great Federation of World People” built on communist principles and eventually came to advocate a Communist theocracy controlled by peaceful and spiritually charged high priests of Marxism.
Lecturing for Red Baltic sailors was Barchenko’s i rst outreach. Soon his seductive Shambhala-Agartha talks reached the ears of the Bolshevik secret police, leading to his invitation to the headquarters of the Petrograd secret police on Gorokhovaia Street in 1920 and his eventual friendship with Otto, Ricks, and Vladimirov, the security oi cers who interviewed him. Soon, a fourth oi cer named Fedor Karlovich Leismaier-Schwartz joined them. Among these four, Vladimirov and especially Leismaier-Schwartz became close to Barchenko’s family. h e
writer and his wife lovingly referred to this sot and spineless man (God knows how he became a secret police oi cer) as Little Karl.
Vladimirov (1883–1928), an outgoing type interested in the humanities and all things esoteric, constantly hung around Barchenko. In fact, Barchenko and this Russian Jew from the Estonian town of Pairnu had much in common. Vladimirov had similarly enrolled in a medical school and then dropped out. Both suf ered from delusions of grandeur and always tried to cling to the political elite. Yet, in contrast to Barchenko, who called himself a “Communist without a membership card,” Vladimirov did become a member of the Bolshevik Party as early 54
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as 1900. h e future secret police oi cer had also tried his hand at writing poetry and painting, but it had not worked out. His real passion was graphology—the penetration of people’s souls and minds through analysis of their handwriting. h is hobby, in which he excelled, made him valuable to the Bolshevik secret police. Vladimirov not only tried to read psychological proi les of individuals through their handwriting but also attempted to predict their future behavior.
His interests also included tarot, Rosicrucianism, yoga, Hermetism, and telepathy, and his reading list included such prominent esoteric authors as Vivekananda, Annie Besant, and Eliphas Levi. Although he was an intellectual playboy with wide contacts in esoteric and bohemian circles of St. Petersburg, he somehow joined the Bolshevik secret police in 1918 as an investigator in a counterrevolutionary unit. Such a strange metamorphosis could have happened for purely material reasons—he had a wife and four children to feed, and working for the secret police guaranteed good food rations. Given the shortage of educated people in all Bolshevik institutions, as a member of the party with a prerevolutionary tenure, formally he was more than qualii ed for this position.
Yet only a year later, in 1919, he was expelled from his job. h en in
September of the same year, Vladimirov was reinstalled; then a year later he was i red again.
A bookish man with a lack of self-discipline and a big mouth, yet not devoid of human compassion, Vladimirov simply did not i t such a serious and brutal organization as the Bolshevik secret police. It is known that in September of 1918 he was involved as an investigator in the case of a former lady-in-waiting of the tsarina, Anna Vyrobova, who was blamed for plotting against the revolution. h e woman remembered that at i rst Vladimirov threatened her but then began to apologize—
very uncharacteristic behavior for a Red secret police oi cer. 14
In addition to graphology, esotericism, and socializing with people of arts and letters, Vladimirov had another passion, which proved fatal. Despite his marriage, he enjoyed the company of several attractive young ladies, impressing them with his eloquent poetry, art, and occult 55
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talk. In 1919, when he was investigating an Englishman who was mis-takenly arrested as a spy and died in prison, the prisoner’s beautiful Estonian wife, Frida Lesmann, came to ask Vladimirov to intervene in her husband’s behalf. Vladimirov could not bypass such a wonderful opportunity and for several months had an af air with her. In 1926, when Soviet Russia and Britain clashed and were about to break diplomatic relations, his former colleagues somehow dug up information about this af air and turned Vladimirov into a handy scapegoat. To his amazement, he learned he was an undercover agent for the English spy Frida Lesmann. Although Vladimirov begged desperately to be spared, pointing out that he had no other interests except carnal pleasure, all was in vain. h e bohemian Bolshevik was shot as a spy anyway.
A “vegetarian” by revolutionary standards, along with his comrades Bokii, Otto, and Ricks, Vladimirov nevertheless took part in the Red Terror, a campaign unleashed by Bolsheviks to intimidate “alien” non-laboring classes and rival socialist parties into total submission. Everything started with the murder of Moses Uritsky, head of the Bolshevik secret police in Petrograd. Leonid Kanegisser, a young oi cer of Jewish origin whose family received a nobility title from the Russian tsar, was devastated when the Bolsheviks executed one of his friends. On August 30, 1918, the youth walked into the headquarters of the Bolshevik secret police and shot the “Red Moses.” Caught on the spot, the per-petrator explained that the murder was not only an act of revenge but also an attempt to cleanse the name of Abraham’s descendants of the Communist stigma. Coupled with the murder of another Red Moses, Moses Goldstein (Volodarsky), who was in charge of Bolshevik media and propaganda, and attempts on the lives of top revolutionary chiefs Vladimir Lenin and Grigory Zinoviev, Kanegisser’s action produced a brutal backlash in the form of summary arrests and executions of
“counterrevolutionaries.” h e Petrograd secret police, now headed by Gleb Bokii, Uritsky’s deputy, became a merciless tool of the Red Terror. In an act of revenge, the new head ordered the execution of several hundred enemies of the revolution.
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Mysteries of Arctic Hysteria and Glavnauka In 1920, amid cold, hunger, and anarchy, Barchenko i nally saw light at the end of the tunnel. h e world-famous psychologist Vladimir Bekhterev invited him to join his Institute of Brain Studies and Psychic Activities, or Institute of the Brain for short. Bekhterev, a scientist with a long prerevolutionary career, was one of the i rst in Russia to research hypnosis and suggestion. Among other things, Bekhterev and his colleagues were interested in psychological infection, when excitement spread from person to person and manifested itself in various mass movements, religious hysterias, collective hallucinations, and demonic possessions. 15 Although he interpreted the Bolshevik revolution as a clear case of mass hysteria, Bekhterev, being a good opportunist, found it useful to cooperate with the new regime and soon began to enjoy the Bolsheviks’ i nancial support. Soviet leaders assumed that Bekhterev and his institute could uncover useful psychological techniques that could be used in Communist propaganda and education.
Sponsored by the Bolshevik government, Bekhterev organized the Committee for the Study of Mental Suggestion. Several of his colleagues accepted the popular concept of brain rays and openly conducted para-psychological research. Tuning into the Communist utopia, which aspired to engineer new human beings free of old bourgeois prejudices, Bekhterev argued that people could change society by concentrating and directing positive thoughts to each other. Eventually, through conscious self-control and self-improvement, people would create an environment that would “breed” people of a better caliber. Later, in the 1930s, Maxim Gorky, the supreme dean of Soviet writers, elevated Bekhterev’s research to the status of ideology, putting it into the foundation of Socialist Realism. h is Soviet dogma required people who worked in arts and letters to drag common folk into a bright future by presenting positive images of an ideal futuristic Communist society, depicting life not as it was but as it should be by. h e expectation was that Socialist Realism would speed up human evolution toward a bright Communist future. 16
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At Bekhterev’s suggestion, in 1921 Barchenko went on a i eld trip to explore arctic hysteria in the Saami land near the Finnish border. Travelers, anthropologists, and psychologists who visited Siberia and the Russian north wrote about a mass craze that infected entire communities of natives, especially in winter and spring. 17 h ey described how, for no apparent reason, some natives dropped on the ground, arched their backs, and began singing, or imitating the behavior of others.
For example, not infrequently explorers observed a woman who, like a zombie, would sit on the ground moving her body back and forth for several hours while murmuring a song. Accomplished hysterics usually followed any orders and commands they received from people who happened to be nearby. If ordered, they would easily jump from a roof, breaking their feet, and they would also expose themselves in public, masturbate, or attack somebody with a knife. What a wonderful applied research i eld for a scientist in a state interested in engineering a new type of people for the Communist future!
Satisi ed with Barchenko’s i eldwork, Glavnauka, a special umbrella structure created by the Bolsheviks to promote science, endorsed and hailed his research: “Having examined the i ndings of biologist A. V.
Barchenko in the i eld of ancient Eastern natural philosophy (natuphilos-ophie), the committee recognizes their outcomes as serious and valuable, both from scientii c and political points of view.” 18 Moreover, it recommended “to immediately provide him with funds to organize a biophysical laboratory.” On top of this, Glavnauka appointed Barchenko as a permanent research fellow. Several months later, the spiritual seeker became head of a new biophysical laboratory set up in the building of the Petrograd Polytechnic Museum. Backed by Glavnauka, the happy Barchenko began thinking about an expedition to Inner Asia to retrieve the ancient wisdom of Shambhala.
Along with powerful friends came powerful enemies. One of the most inl uential ones, who eventually ruined Barchenko and squeezed him out of Glavnauka, was the famous Buddhist scholar Sergei Oldenburg (1863–1934). Although a bourgeois intellectual inherited by Soviet 58
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academia from the old regime, Oldenburg became an inl uential Bolshevik fellow traveler. From 1904 to 1929, he occupied the powerful position of Secretary of the Russian/Soviet Academy of Sciences. h is status allowed him to exercise much control over the humanities and sciences in the country.
Oldenburg, the leading academic authority on Tibetan Buddhism, was one of the i rst with whom Barchenko shared his idea of the Shambhala-Agartha expedition. Yet this contact proved not only frustrating but also harmful for his project. h e skeptical Oldenburg made fun of the entire idea. Moreover, in his talks with colleagues the scholar-bureaucrat began openly to call Barchenko a charlatan. Even at er 1925, when the secret police formally took Barchenko under its wing, Oldenburg continued to assail the “ancient scientist” as a con artist. In all fairness, it was obvious that Barchenko, who had only a superi cial knowledge of Tibetan Buddhism, was a dwarf compared to Oldenburg who, as one of the deans in this i eld, was well versed in the Buddhist tradition and the languages of the area. In 1923, attacked by his powerful opponent, Barchenko dropped out of the research community and let Glavnauka.
His salvation came from the astronomer Alexander Kondiain and his wife, Eleanor Mesmacher, participants in his arctic expedition and fellow occultists, who sheltered Barchenko and his former and new wives in their large apartment on Red Dawn Street in downtown Petrograd.
Barchenko was also pleased to i nd out that this Russianized Greek was also ready to accept him as a spiritual teacher. Besides, the new friend was blessed with a phenomenal memory and could read several Eastern languages, including Sanskrit. For Barchenko, who was determined to penetrate the hub of ancient wisdom in Inner Asia but did not know the languages of the area, Kondiain became not only a savior but also a great asset.
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United Labor Brotherhood on Red Dawn Street In 1923, at er his troubles with Oldenburg and Glavnauka, Barchenko wanted to rejuvenate himself spiritually. He was inspired by a small Buddhist/Communist commune that he set up at Kondiaian’s apartment on Red Dawn Street. Women were mastering the art of sewing, and men were practicing carpentry. In the evening, together they read and discussed spiritual and occult literature. In the 1920s in Soviet Russia, before the totalitarian dictatorship spread its tentacles, people were involved in various social experiments. Alternative communes and informal clubs, usually with a progressive and avant-garde spin, populated the cultural landscape. While monitoring them, the secret police did not yet harass these groups too much, as long as they loosely i t socialism.
Besides Kondiain and Mesmacher, Barchenko’s commune included Natalia and Olga, his old and new wives, and children from both families. Mesmacher remembered: “We lived as one family in a commune.
We shared everything and took turns doing chores. At our meetings we frequently scrutinized the behavior of one member or another in the commune, pointing to his or her mistakes.” 19
Barchenko developed guidelines for his commune, which he named United Labor Brotherhood (ULB). His friends Otto, Ricks, Leismaier-Schwartz, and Vladimirov, the former Cheka/OGPU oi cers, or “checkers” as Mesmacher jokingly dubbed them, were also part of this project.
