h is time, not only did Little Karl fail to reach Stalin, but he also attracted the attention of the secret police.
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It is hard to explain what drove Barchenko and Leismaier-Schwarz to such reckless behavior. In 1937, when people all over Russia, especially in capital cities, lay low paralyzed by fear of the Great Terror, and when everybody carefully tried to exercise self-censorship, Barchenko still boldly dreamed about upgrading Communism through the wisdom of Shambhala and Kalachakra. He might simply have become a prisoner of his grand delusion to the point of obsession and conveyed this virus to the spineless Leismaier-Schwarz. Another possible explanation is that, at er losing Bokii, who generously funded his esoteric trips, he felt the need to latch on again to a powerful sponsor (the higher the better) to continue his quest. In all fairness, the advent of the totalitarian state would have sooner or later consumed Bokii, Barchenko, Leismaier-Schwarz, and the like anyway. h ey simply stood out too much with their suspicious esoteric agenda. Still, by his careless behavior Barchenko sped up the process. In the atmosphere of total suspicion and mis-trust that reigned in 1930s’ Russia, his paranoid zeal to reach out to the Bolshevik elite backi red.
h e i nal judgment came on May 16, 1937. On that day, the “Bloody Dwarf ” Nikolai Ezhov, the new secret police chief appointed by Stalin to purge old members of the Bolshevik party, summoned Bokii to his oi ce. h e cryptographer was always surprised why his former wife, So-i a, and her husband, Moskvin, welcomed this i ve-foot-tall, not-very-educated, mediocre underclass fellow to their apartment. What did they i nd in this petty bureaucrat with the watery eyes of a sadist? Maybe it was his agreeable nature and good voice: the dwarf excelled in singing ballads. Moskvin had stupidly promoted him as a secretary of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party, where Stalin noticed the obedi-ent workaholic clerk and took him under his wing.
When Ezhov demanded that Bokii turn over all compromising i les Bokii had kept since the 1920s on top Bolshevik bosses, adding that this was Comrade Stalin’s order, the cryptographer could not restrain himself: “Who cares about your Stalin. It was Lenin who put me into my position.” 8 By saying this, Bokii signed his own death warrant. For 225
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the next two days the cryptographer was interrogated by one of his colleagues, Commissar of State Security Lev Belsky, 9 assisted by a semilit-erate senior lieutenant from Kazakhstan, Ali Kutebarov, a product of the Bolshevik ai rmative-action program.
Bokii was originally accused of espionage for England and of being a member of a secret Freemason society that tried to predict the future—a reference to the long-defunct esoteric commune United Labor Brotherhood (ULB) created by Barchenko. h
e cryptographer did not hide
his doubts and frustrations about the revolution, and he also described how his interest in esotericism drove him to Barchenko’s ancient science and the Shambhala quest. Trying to save his life, Bokii revealed the names of friends and acquaintances who took part in their esoteric talks and classes. A few days later, all of these people were rounded up and arrested. Based on their stories, Belsky eventually made up a case about a subversive religious and political Freemason order called Shambhala-Dunkhor with branches all over the world, including Red Russia. According to his transcript, this sinister secret society was used by England to penetrate the minds of top Bolshevik leaders and control them. It was obvious that the compulsive grand dreams nourished by Barchenko now boomeranged. In the hands of this Stalin henchman, Shambhala, the resplendent and a peaceful Tibetan Buddhist paradise, was turned into its opposite—a sinister destructive force that threatened Red Russia.
h e transcript of Bokii’s interrogation, which was heavily edited by Belsky, reveals the process of the invention of the counterrevolutionary Shambhala-Dunkhor society:
Belsky: Give me detailed testimony about the spy activities of Barchenko.
Bokii: h e spy activities of Barchenko were mainly focused on building up a network of espionage. h e work proceeded in two directions.
First, it was the organization of a spy network on the periphery. Second, 226
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it was a penetration into the party and governmental circles. h e latter
was done to take over the minds of leadership and, following the example of Masonic organizations in capitalist countries like, for example, in France, guide their activities in a needed direction. For the work on the periphery, Barchenko used various religious and mystical sects of Eastern origin. For this purpose, he made frequent trips to dif erent areas of the Soviet Union, establishing connections with local sects and meeting their foreign emissaries. To penetrate the Soviet ruling circles, Barchenko tried to make some of them interested in his scientii c research, its signii cance for the country’s defense, and so forth. Getting somebody interested in this scientii c side, he gradually disclosed his teaching about Shambhala. h en, wrapping his victims in the web of mysticism, he used them for espionage purposes. h at is how he brainwashed me and penetrated OGPU. 10
Belsky’s imagination notwithstanding, in the 1930s Shambhala indeed became somewhat of a threat to Soviet leadership. Lamas who revolted in Mongolia against Communism linked this legend to the Japanese army that advanced into Manchuria, viewing it as the army of Shambhala. Besides, in Stalin’s Siberian backyard Buryat clergy, furious about the forced Soviet collectivization and assault on their faith, began to send around chain letters with the same prophecy about the coming Shambhala war against Red enemies of the Buddhist faith. As early as 1929, right in the beginning of the Stalin “revolution,” Agvan Dorzhiev and his lama friends, before erecting a new Kalachakra prayer site in the Trans-Baikal area, placed in its foundation nine hundred thousand steel needles, symbolizing the iron warriors of the future Shambhala king. In 1937–38, when the last Buddhist monasteries were shut down in Siberia, Soviet media began to link the Shambhala prophecy to fascism and Japanese militarism.
Although Belsky pressed Bokii hard to provide specii cs of his spy activities, he was not able to dig anything up except for Bokii’s mysticism and his membership in the long-defunct ULB. Moreover, even the 227
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Figure E.2. Lev Belsky, the Bolshevik secret police investigator, who in 1937 manufactured the case about a sinister anti-Soviet worldwide clandestine organization named Shambhala-Dunkhor.
edited transcript of the interrogation shows that, while playing to Belsky’s script, Bokii nevertheless tried to water down the accusations of espionage in order to break the whole case. Moreover, at one point he l atly rejected all espionage accusations: Belsky: Why did you seek contacts with counterrevolutionaries and spies?
Bokii: I never sought any special contacts with spy elements. I sought contacts with the abovementioned sects and cults because I was lured by Barchenko’s mystical teaching. I do admit that I placed mastering the mysteries of this teaching above the interests of the Communist Party and the state. In my eyes, the high task of mastering the scientii c-228
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mystical mysteries of Shambhala justii ed the deviation from the Marxist-Leninist teaching about classes and class warfare. However, I did not specially plan to do any harm to the party or the Soviet power, and not a single member of our order was known as a spy or a person who had links to spies. . . .
Belsky: What spy activities did you conduct personally, and what particular spy assignments did you receive from Barchenko?
Bokii: I never received direct espionage assignments from Barchenko.
By being immersed in Barchenko’s mysticism, I simply neglected interests of the state and covered his activities by the name of the Special Section, which assisted him to conduct spy work.
Belsky: h e investigator does not trust you. Trying to shit the investigation away from your spy activities, you want to move it in the other direction. I suggest that you sincerely confess your spy work. . . .
Bokii: I cannot add anything to what I have already told you. 11
To make the cryptographer look creepier, the stories about Bokii’s na-turist commune and group sex were added, along with the collection of mummii ed penises found in his apartment. So the cryptographer looked like a perfect degenerate and a pervert through and through.
Still, all this did not make a spy case convincing enough to please Stalin. It seems that at this point the crude Kutebarov entered the game.
During a second interrogation in August 1937 (one wonders what happened to Bokii during the previous two months), the cryptographer suddenly confessed that, on top of other evil things, the Shambhala-Dunkhor order planned to blow up the Kremlin and assassinate the Red dictator at his retreat on the Black Sea.
A second interrogation usually took place when a victim did not cooperate. h e arsenal of tools of persuasion varied. h ey included beatings, squeezing of genitals, breaking ribs, burning with cigarettes, and urinating on detainees. Yet the most ef ective and “cleanest” method 229
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was the practice of using victims’ relatives as hostages. One of Bokii’s daughters suf ered from asthma and could have been a good bargaining chip for his interrogators. 12 Whatever methods they used, Belsky and Kutebarov cracked the cryptographer along with other members of the Shambhala-Dunkhor “ring.” It is essential to note that Bokii was disposed of not because he was involved in mysticism and the esoteric Shambhala quest that did not i t Marxism, but because he belonged to the old revolutionaries who never viewed Stalin as the Red messiah. With or without Shambhala, merely by belonging to the old Marxists, Bokii was doomed to be exterminated, as were thousands of his colleagues. On November 15, 1937, at er a closed trial, which was conducted by three secret police oi cers and took only i t een minutes, Bokii was condemned to death, executed, and cremated on the same day. 13
All the other people who had unfortunately associated themselves with Bokii and Barchenko were also executed in 1937, including Kondiain, Leismaier-Schwarz, Moskvin, and others. Bokii’s former wife, Soi a Doller, was also zealously interrogated, and at er a “sincere” confession was promptly shot. Yet she was not included in the ranks of the Shambhala-Dunkhor culprits. Ezhov ordered that she be made part of a separate but no less exotic case. Belsky and Kutebarov assigned her and the doctor of Tibetan medicine Nikolai Badmaev to the role of Japanese spies. According to the secret police script, the Japan ordered Doller and Badmaev, her and Moskvin’s close friend, to dispose of Ezhov by using exotic herbal poisons delivered from Tibet. 14
Two years later Stalin ordered the execution of the executioners themselves. “Bloody Dwarf ” Ezhov, who, to stretch his muscles, once in a while liked to descend to a secret police cellar to perform an execution, now himself was shot by his colleagues in the same cellar at er listening to false accusations of terrorism, spying, and homosexuality. A year later, Belsky and Kutebarov followed their boss.
