h inking the Americans had purposely planted Roerich to disrupt this plan, Japanese intelligence unleashed a smear campaign in the press against the painter. h
e intercepted letters that Nicholas wrote to Vladimir in 1926 on the eve of his Tibetan expedition were excavated from the intelligence archives and made public. 1 Although in a heavily dis-torted form, parts of his Great Plan were now exposed. h e press wrote that Roerich was a Mason, which was not true, and a messenger of the 217
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mysterious Great White Brotherhood that sought to establish a great Siberian state—which did contain elements of truth. Several newspapers drew attention to his brief romance with the Bolsheviks, wondering if it was still going on. Meanwhile, the American press raised hell, speculating about some hidden U.S. governmental agenda linked to the Roerich Manchurian expedition. So again the painter was caught in the crossi re of diplomatic, spy, and media games.
Still worse, the State Department informed his patron Wallace that the Soviets had sent a coni dential protest to the American government, complaining that the dangerous émigré Roerich was wandering along the borders of Red Mongolia. h e Bolsheviks were worried that “the armed party is now making their way toward the Soviet Union osten-sibly as a scientii c expedition but actually to rally former White elements and discontented Mongols.” 2 To the last moment, Wallace backed up Roerich and dismissed all insinuations against his “botanist.” Only when he realized that the painter had become a diplomatic embarrass-ment for the government and that his own career was now on the line did the Secretary of Agriculture call of the expedition, cut funding, and terminate all contact with his former guru. Eventually, along with Louis Horch, another sponsor who dropped Roerich, Wallace turned against the painter, initiating a tax-evasion lawsuit against him and seizing all his properties in the United States. FDR felt embarrassed about the whole situation and personally interfered, promising Horch and Wallace to call the judge who handled the case in order to guarantee the “correct” verdict. And sure enough, Roerich, who trusted Horch to do his i nances, was indicted. Betrayed and humiliated by his esoteric partners Logvan and Galahad, Roerich never came back to the United States, wisely choosing to settle in India.
Manchurian Candidate: The Conclusion of Roerich’s Odyssey What went unnoticed at the time was that in January 1933 in Leningrad, right on the eve of the Manchurian expedition, Boris Roerich, 218
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another brother of the painter who remained in Red Russia, was suddenly released by OGPU for good behavior before his sentence ex-pired; in May 1931, the Bolshevik secret police had set up and then arrested Boris for attempting to smuggle his own antique items to the West. Yet, there is an interesting detail here. Boris’s two-year sentence seems more a house arrest. An architect by profession, he was coni ned to work at the secret technical bureau, designing the Big House, which headquartered the Leningrad branch of the secret police and Stalin’s summer cottage! Here Nicholas Roerich’s brother worked under Nikolai Lansere, the Soviet architectural star who received a similar sentence. 3
Figure E.1. Let to right: Konstantin Riabinin, Boris Roerich, Sina Lichtmann-Fosdick, Nicholas Roerich. Urga, Mongolia, April 1927.
From Boris’s recently declassii ed secret police i le it is clear OGPU
was using him as a tool in some sophisticated game that most certainly involved Nicholas Roerich. As early as February 1929, the secret police searched Boris’s apartment, trying to i nd materials that 219
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might implicate him in espionage. Two months later he was recruited by OGPU and began working as its secret informer. h en two years
later OGPU suddenly framed and arrested him for smuggling, sentenc-ing him to three years in a concentration camp. Yet, hardly had two months passed before this draconian sentence was miraculously waived and replaced by benevolent coni nement in the golden cage of the secret technical bureau. 4
But this strange story does not end here. From 1936 to 1937, now in Moscow and again with Lansere, Boris Roerich worked on the monumental project of the All-Union Institute of Experimental Medicine (VIEM), the notorious “new age” Stalinist research center described in chapter 4. What followed was even more stunning. From 1937 to 1939, during the period of the Great Terror when hundreds of thousands of Soviet intellectuals, including Lansere, and numerous Bolshevik bureaucrats, were either shot or locked in concentration camps for a good deal less than being relatives of “enemies of the people,” Boris continued his career as if nothing was happening and even improved his material conditions by moving to an elite neighborhood in Moscow, where he quietly died a natural death in 1945. 5 It is notable that during the same time when the architect lived safely in Moscow, Dr. Konstantin Riabinin, who never fought or spoke against the Bolshevik regime, was rearrested and placed in a concentration camp for i t een more years simply for his association with the “English spy” Nicholas Roerich during the Tibetan expedition!
h e facts of Boris Roerich’s biography look shocking. Even without having such a “dangerous” brother, Boris, simply as a former White oi cer who fought against the Bolsheviks during the Civil War, was a prime candidate if not for execution then at least for a twenty-i ve-year sentence in a concentration camp. Still, by some providential force, the Bolsheviks’ vengeance never reached him. How to explain this miracle?
What was the magic shield that protected Boris Roerich? h e most obvious answer is that this magic guardian was his adventurous brother.
Remembering that the use of relatives to guarantee the cooperation of 220
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victims and the loyalty of OGPU agents was standard practice for Stalin’s secret police, all pieces of the puzzle fall in place.
It is quite possible that Boris was a bargaining chip in some devious and sophisticated spy game that involved Nicholas Roerich. I will not repeat here the far-fetched argument made by Moscow writer Oleg Shishkin that at er 1919 or 1920 the painter was always a paid Bolshevik spy and that his Master School in New York City was a cover for a Soviet spy ring. 6 h ere is simply no credible evidence to support such a case. At the same time, one cannot totally exclude the possibility that at some point Roerich was simply blackmailed by the Soviet secret police and forced to perform occasional clandestine assignments, especially during his Manchurian venture. h ese assignments might not have necessarily contradicted his Great Plan. h
ey could include monitoring Japanese military activities near Red Mongolia’s border, the location of their troops and military hardware, the status of Manchuria as a puppet state, and the general geopolitical situation in the area, a major concern for the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Bolshevik intelligence threw a tremendous amount of resources and manpower into the Far East, recruiting hundreds of unemployed White émigrés to spy on the Japanese. Besides, putting on a leash as a possible agent of inl uence the prominent Russian émigré who worked to unite White Russians and Mongols in a sacred crusade against Communism was not a bad idea. Viewed from this angle, the protest quietly delivered by the Soviets to the United States in 1935 regarding Roerich’s “armed and dangerous party” might have simply been a good smokescreen to smooth the mission of the reluctant agent.
As long as Boris remained in the hands of the Soviet secret police, the painter’s cooperation could be safely solicited anytime. h ere were signs that at er their failed Tibetan venture Nicholas and Helena Roerich wanted to drop the Bolsheviks and i nd another sponsor. h e couple probably thought their involvement of Moscow in their 1920s’ geopolitical scheme was a one-time thing. If they thought so, they made a fatal mistake. If Nicholas Roerich wanted to drop the Bolsheviks, most likely they did not want to drop him. At the least, we know that Boris 221
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Roerich, who in 1922 was ready to leave Russia to join his brother in New York, never got his chance.
At er his second attempt to launch the Sacred Union of the East from Manchuria failed and at er the Master Building was seized by Horch, Nicholas and Helena, along with their two sons, settled in northern India in the picturesque Kulu Valley. Right next door, beyond the Himalayan ranges, loomed the Tibet these “Shambhala warriors” failed to conquer. Immersing himself in painting local landscapes and entertaining occasional visitors, Roerich i nally had to lay to rest his grand dreams of becoming the spiritual redeemer for humankind. Here in Kulu, the painter peacefully died in 1947 from prostate cancer. His wife followed him eight years later.
Yet before he died, during the Second World War when Russia was attacked by Nazi Germany, Roerich suddenly again became openly pro-Soviet and patriotic. Moreover, at er the war ended, he approached the Soviet government, asking permission to return to Russia. Did the old man expect some special treatment from Stalin for occasional services he might have provided to the Bolshevik regime? Or was he simply an old, naïve idealist nostalgic for his motherland? Who knows? Fortunately for him, Red Russia refused to issue such permission. Roerich, who did not know anything about real life in the Bolshevik utopia, was certainly unaware how lucky he was. What could await him in Stalinist Russia in case he returned? h e atmosphere of total suspicion, suf ocating propaganda, and possibly a prison sentence.
In 1957, at er the death of Stalin, George Roerich, a linguist and Tibetan scholar who was always part of his parents’ Great Plan, followed his father’s footsteps; he asked for and did receive permission to im-migrate to the Soviet Union. h e Soviets not only let him in but also awarded him a prestigious job as a senior research fellow at the Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies. h ree years later he died from natural causes. h e younger son, Svetoslav, an architect, lived a long life and died in 1993 at his estate in Bangalore, India. None of them let any of spring. It surely looked as if some divine punishment was inl icted 222
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on the Roerich clan for their attempts to meddle with human evolution and to elevate themselves above God.
Shambhala the Sinister:
The Fall of Gleb Bokii and His Red Merlin In 1925, when their Shambhala expedition to Inner Asia fell through, the cryptographer Gleb Bokii and Alexander Barchenko began looking for traces of the mysterious kingdom within the Soviet Union. Using Special Section money, Barchenko traveled all over the country, contacting esoteric and occult groups and gathering prophetic lore. By the turn of the 1930s, it was getting harder to do such things. h e dictatorship Stalin had been patiently building since the 1920s had matured, turning into a full-l edged totalitarian state. h e dictator, rapidly being turned into a Red messiah to be worshipped and obeyed, was ready to phase out all his old comrades, the early Bolsheviks who, like Bokii, sometimes questioned things and for whom Stalin was not an authority.
Bokii’s Special Section was gradually stripped of its functions, which were delegated to other departments of the secret police. Moreover, research into occult and paranormal phenomena and into engineering better human beings was now shit ed to VIEM. By 1934, Bokii’s section was relegated to its original tasks, ciphering and deciphering, and it even lost its name. It was no longer Special, but simply Section Nine.
Although Bokii now occupied the prestigious rank of Commissar of State Security, the secret police equivalent of an army marshal, he did not have as much power as earlier. It was just a matter of time before the chief cryptographer would i nd himself on Stalin’s hit list. By 1931, when all dissenting voices were silenced, it became dangerous to talk about things that did not i t politically correct and oi cially sanctioned lines. All occult and esoteric societies had already been wiped out, and their members were laboring in concentration camps. h e general atmosphere in Red Russia forced people to become mute and invisible. Now Bokii had to think twice when meeting his friends and acquaintances, 223
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and especially before indulging in talks about the mysterious, occult, and paranormal. Such behavior could be easily interpreted as subversive. So the cryptographer caved in and began to avoid Barchenko.
Oblivious to what was going on around him, Barchenko, the aspir-ing Red Merlin, did not want to give up. He was still compulsively obsessed with his dream to enlighten the Bolshevik elite about Shambhala and Kalachakra, and to teach them how to model and predict the future. In early1936, he tried to press his OGPU patron to put him in touch with Viacheslav Molotov and Kliment Voroshilov, Stalin’s two closest advisors. But Bokii wisely ignored this request. Barchenko then turned to Little Karl, Feodor Karlovich Leismaier-Schwarz, one of the former secret police oi cers who had introduced him to Bokii in the i rst place. Probably driven by the same desire to partake of the great cause, Leismaier-Schwarz, now working as a photojournalist in Leningrad, foolishly agreed to Barchenko’s request. Both naively believed that Leismaier-Schwarz’s brief stint as a secret police oi cer during the i rst days of the revolution would open doors to the corridors of power. Although Little Karl was not able to reach any Bolshevik dignitaries, he was able to hand the synopsis of Barchenko’s ancient science to Voroshilov’s secretary.
Barchenko waited for a year and, having received no answer, made a more dangerous move. He decided to go straight to Stalin to enlighten him about Shambhala and Kalachakra. Turning again to Little Karl, he gave him a hazardous assignment—to get into the Kremlin and prepare a personal meeting between Barchenko and the Red dictator! A few months later, when interrogated by Stalin’s agents, Leismaier-Schwarz remembered, “Barchenko complained to me that it was very hard to penetrate party and state leadership. He was frustrated with Bokii, who was not active enough to fuli ll Barchenko’s guidelines and who could not set up a meeting with Stalin. So I volunteered to fuli ll this task.
Barchenko accepted my of er and said, ‘Try to meet Stalin personally.’ ’7
