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Figure 4.4. Projected main building of the Institute for Experimental Medicine (VIEM). h is clandestine “new age” Stalinist research center, which was involved in engineering a new type of human being, prolonging life, and simultaneously perfecting lethal substances, was launched in 1934 but never completed because of the war.

In the 1920s, when the Bolshevik utopia i rmly entrenched itself in power, there was no shortage of quacks who besieged the Soviet government and the secret police, advertising their miraculous remedies and technologies designated to advance the country toward a bright future. It was little wonder that early Bolshevism saw a variety of grand social and cultural projects promoted by various eccentric individuals.

h e entire political and cultural climate during this decade encouraged people like Barchenko to come out of the closet. h e sudden collapse

of the Russian Empire and the drastic changes in the life of the country created an impression that everything was possible. Many of those who came to associate themselves with the new regime were ready to “storm the skies.”

Many of these adventurous characters insisted that what they were doing was hard science based on experiments. Scientii c knowledge was a sacred cow in the eyes of the Bolsheviks. h ey believed science could work miracles and linked it to the Marxist theory of progress. Like his comrades, Bokii was convinced that scientists were capable of reshaping 84

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nature, society, and the minds of people in the “right direction.” Many Bolsheviks hoped that social and physical knowledge would help them engineer a harmonious social order free from any vestiges of the old world and social dissent. A new Communist landscape appeared to them as a perfect, symmetrically designed garden populated by people liberated from outdated spiritual and cultural values. h e prospect of retrieving scientii c knowledge that, according to Barchenko, was hidden in the caves of Shambhala and could be used to advance the Communist cause might have looked appealing to the chief cryptographer.

Bokii might have originally become captivated with Barchenko’s ideas promising awesome practical results for intelligence work: thought transfer and reading people’s minds at a distance, using altered states, Oriental psychological techniques, solar energy, and so forth. Consciously or unconsciously, Barchenko plugged well into the Bolsheviks’

scientii c faith.

Bokii might gradually have become interested not only in Barchenko’s “science” but also in his “ancient science.” At er all, the Bolshevik cryptographer was already posing bigger philosophical questions by the time he met the budding Red Merlin. Eventually, Barchenko exposed his secret police patron to various esoteric theories, and Bokii silently let Barchenko enter his life. When the chief of the Special Section began pondering on the fate of the Bolshevik revolution and on what constituted absolute good and absolute evil, Barchenko already had an answer:

As the revolution was moving forward, all human values were demolished and many people were brutally exterminated. I asked myself the following questions: why and how had the oppressed toilers turned into a herd of roaring animals who on a mass scale exterminated intellectuals, the spearheads of human ideals? I also wondered what should be done to change the sharp animosity between the populace and people of thought. How can one resolve this contradiction? Recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat did not i t my worldview. Gradually, I became 85

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convinced that all bloody sacrii ces to the altar of the revolution were in vain and that the future might bring new revolutions and more blood, which would further degenerate humankind. h e key to the solution of the problems was in Shambhala-Agartha, the oasis of secret Eastern wisdom, which maintains the remnants of ancient knowledge and stands higher in its social and economic development than modern humankind. h is means that one needs to i nd a path to Shambhala and establish connections with this country. h

is task is not for everyone but only

for the people of a high moral caliber. h ese seekers should be sell ess, free of material possessions and property, and have no aspirations for personal enrichment. We also need to develop a middle ground among people of dif erent worldviews who are capable of raising themselves above temporary social rivalries in order to understand and resolve more pressing issues. 24

At some point, Barchenko might have shared with Bokii his vision of the future, which did not exactly coincide with the Soviet project focused on uncompromising class warfare. It is possible that Bokii, exposed to the Bolshevik dirty linen and plagued by frustrations, tuned his ear to the “doctor’s” prophecy and thought seriously that scientii c knowledge of Shambhala could help the Communist cause. h at Bokii totally bought Barchenko’s stories about the Himalayan country possessing some high spiritual wisdom seems unlikely. Yet it is quite probable that the chief of the Special Section came to share a scientii c belief that in Inner Asia there were spiritual practitioners of Tibetan Buddhist and Sui origin who had mastered superior psychological techniques that could ennoble and empower the Communist project. Listening to Barchenko’s talk, Bokii might have assumed that these practitioners kept their secrets well guarded. Such reasoning perfectly i t the mindset of the cryptographer, who had spent the i rst half of his life in a revolutionary underground i lled with clandestine activities. h e second

part of his life, at er the 1917 revolution, was covered with a similar aura of secrecy: electronic surveillance, codemaking and codebreaking.

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h e well-guarded clandestine world of symbols, codes, and behind-the-scenes activities eventually became an intimate part of Bokii’s character.

His oi ce door had a peephole with a one-way glass through which he routinely examined his visitors. 25 Living in a bubble of secrecy, members of an intelligence community are usually susceptible to things esoteric and mysterious, and Bokii was no exception.

At the end of 1925, he encouraged Barchenko to begin classes about Kalachakra tantra and Western occult wisdom for members of the Special Section. However, to Bokii’s frustration, six colleagues who at i rst volunteered for these meetings soon became bored: “h e students were not prepared to absorb the mysteries of ancient science.” 26 As a result, the occultist and his secret police friend moved their classes to private apartments, inviting close friends who were interested in esotericism, Tibetan medicine, and the paranormal. h ey frequently met in downtown Moscow at a large apartment occupied by Ivan Moskvin, a member of the Central Committee of the Communist (Bolshevik) Party, and Soi a Doller, Bokii’s former wife. Moskvin was one of the driving forces behind the VIEM project. Among those who frequented Barchenko’s talks about Oriental wisdom were former college mates of Bokii, the engineers Mikhail Kostrikin and Alexander Mironov, as well as Bolshevik luminaries such as Boris Stomniakov and Semen Dimanshtein.

h e former worked at the Commissariat for Foreign Af airs as one of Chicherin’s deputies, while the latter was a member of the Communist Party Central Committee responsible for nationalities policies. Even the notorious Yagoda, who, at er Dzerzhinsky’s death in 1926, became the de facto head of the OGPU secret police, dropped by out of curiosity.

Barchenko was surely thrilled with all these visitors: his dream to enlighten the Soviet elite about the wisdom of Shambhala was gradually turning into a reality. A few more steps and he might reach people at the very top of the pyramid of power.

h e content of Barchenko’s classes was a smorgasbord of Western esotericism and bits and pieces of Tibetan Buddhism he had learned from his Mongol and Tibetan contacts while staying in the Leningrad 87

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Kalachakra temple. In 1937, when arrested and pressured by Stalin’s henchmen to give them the gist of these classes, Bokii remembered: According to Barchenko, in ancient times there existed a culturally advanced society that later perished as a result of a geological catastrophe.

h is was a communist society, and it existed in a more advanced social (communist) and materially technical form than ours. h e remnants of this society, as Barchenko told us, still exist in remote mountain areas at the intersection of India, Tibet, Kashgar, and Afghanistan. h is ancient science accumulated all scientii c and technical knowledge, representing a synthesis of all branches of science. h e existence of the ancient science and the survival of that society is a secret carefully guarded by its members. Barchenko called himself a follower of this ancient society, stressing that he was initiated into it by messengers of its religio-political center. 27

Tantra for the Commissar

It was not only at the Moskvin apartment where Bokii and his comrades conjured an ideal society and perfect human minds and bodies.

In deep secrecy, the chief Bolshevik cryptographer maintained another meeting place, a fenced summer cottage (dacha) in the Kuchino area of the Moscow suburbs. Here, away from curious eyes, he could temporarily forget his troubling thoughts about the fate of the revolution and allow his imagination to run wild and free. In this retreat, Bokii and a few trusted men and women from his Special Section indulged in naturism, wining, and dining. On weekends when weather allowed, Bokii and these selected few, naked or partially naked, worked in the garden of the summer cottage, raking and gathering fruits and vegetables. h e chief cryptographer added an esoteric spin to these retreats, calling them “the cult of unity with nature” and composing a special charter for his “summer cottage commune,” as it became known in his inner circle. h e charter prescribed nude sunbathing as well as collective 88

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bathing for men and women. h e collective work in nude was usually followed by communal meals, accompanied by generous drinking and group sex. 28

It is likely that in order to justify these group-sex practices the Bolshevik cryptographer might have resorted to Kalachakra tantra rituals, which he might have learned from either Barchenko or Badmaev, the doctor of Tibetan medicine, although there is no evidence that these two were part of the nature commune. Given the general social environment of Red Russia in the 1920s, these peculiar nature retreats did not look odd. In early Bolshevik Russia, very much like in Western countries in the 1960s, free love, contempt for so-called traditional family values, and various projects of collective living ran amok. In fact, several Let -leaning theoreticians elevated sexual promiscuity to the level of the new Bolshevik morality. From time to time, pedestri-ans on the streets of Moscow and Leningrad and passengers in trams bumped the naked bodies of nudists, who viewed their public exposure as a revolutionary act.

Although the existence of this commune is corroborated by documents, its particular details are obscure. Later, in 1937, Bokii’s former colleagues from the Special Section, arrested and pressured by secret police, portrayed the dacha commune as a chain of drinking sprees and sexual orgies. Although it is hard to accept all these testimonies at face value, there might be some truth in them. According to a certain N. Kli-menkov, who took part in these retreats, the “nature people” from his Special Section not only practiced collective gardening and sex, but also played crude pranks on each other. h e favorite ones were mock church services and religious funerals. Dressed in Russian Orthodox Church garb coni scated from clergy, some of the commune’s members acted as priests, while others played the role of corpses to be buried. Once an agent named Fillipov, while drunk, nearly suf ocated when buried in the ground during one mock service. Some mornings the “nature people” would awaken to i nd their vaginas and penises smeared with paint or mustard. To maintain these regular retreats, the participants set 89

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aside 10 percent of their monthly salaries. Eventually, with the advent of Stalin’s conservatism and puritanism in the early 1930s, rumors of the dacha commune reached the ears of OGPU leadership, and a Communist Party cell reprimanded Bokii, forcing the cryptographer to shut down his clandestine experiment in alternative living.

Besides the unity-with-nature fad, these retreats might have had something to do with Bokii’s sexual life. Besides his great concern about how to perfect the Communist cause and human nature, libido was an issue that clearly disturbed the frustrated commissar, now in his forties.

In 1920 he divorced his wife, and before remarrying he went on a quest for a new partner. To be on good terms with their boss, several women from his Special Section were ready to please him. To the rest, both married and unmarried, Bokii’s advances became a big headache for a while. Several female agents and secretaries tried to dress and look as ugly as possible at work. For some time, Bokii shared a bed with the wife of Maiorov, one of Special Section’s workers, and then with the wife of another colleague named Barinov. Unable to withstand such moral pressure, both men committed suicide. One jumped under the wheels of a train, and the other shot himself. Slowly but surely, Bokii was becoming like those secret police monsters who worked around him.

h e cryptographer was clearly seeking to increase his sexual potency, and this quest also took an esoteric turn. From somewhere he acquired a morbid collection of mummii ed penises, which he kept in his apartment. 29 It is known that in several branches of the Kalachakra tantra school, mummii ed limbs (hands, arms, penises, and skulls), especially those that belonged to deceased lamas, were used for empowerment.

Most likely, Bokii received this strange collection from Badmaev, who frequented the Moskvin apartment and at one point cured Bokii. h e

cryptographer might have viewed these dried organs as a healing aid from the arsenal of Tibetan medicine.

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The Abortive Shambhala Expedition

Besides nature retreats and empowering himself with mummii ed penises, the priority on Bokii’s agenda was organizing an expedition to Inner Asia to establish contact with Shambhala. Everything seemed to have gone smoothly in this direction. h e chief cryptographer was

ready to invest enormous funds in this project. Encouraged by the enthusiasm of his powerful patron, Barchenko widened his exploratory goals by adding Afghanistan to the Tibetan itinerary of the future expedition. h ere the Red Merlin hoped to uncover secrets of ancient Sui brotherhoods—clearly a result of his intensive reading of d’Alveydre, who placed this Central Asian country in the center of his subterranean Agartha kingdom.

To prepare themselves for the coming Asian mission, Barchenko and his close friends, including Vladimirov, immersed themselves in learning Mongol and Tibetan languages, reading anthropological literature, and mastering riding horses. Although the proposed expedition was dei ned as scientii c and was not classii ed, Bokii did not want to adver-tise it too much because of the involvement of his Special Section. But Vladimirov, as always boastful and l amboyant, spilled the beans, and word about the exotic Oriental venture spread in the esoteric circles of Leningrad. One of his acquaintances, a struggling Leningrad sculptor with occult interests, begged Vladimirov to take him and two of his girlfriends. Soon Barchenko found himself besieged by acquaintances and acquaintances of acquaintances asking to join the expedition. Eventually, Bokii kicked out Vladimirov, who ironically was to serve as political commissar for the expedition, an ideological watchdog to make sure its participants would not deviate from the Bolshevik line—an odd role for Vladimirov, who had to be watched himself.

Such a large enterprise involving travel to foreign countries needed approval from Georgy Chicherin, Commissar for Foreign Af airs, a close friend of Lenin and a career diplomat with prerevolutionary 91