Alexander Barchenko: Budding Red Merlin and His Ancient Science

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 offi ce, expecting three visitors.1 Th e fi 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 aft 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. Th e former comrades were to introduce a third man, with whom the chief of the Special Section had become

indirectly familiar aft er leafi ng through his police fi 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

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.

“Red Merlin” Alexander Barchenko, head of the United Labor Brotherhood and seeker of Shambhala wisdom. Prison photo, Moscow, 1937. Th 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 off spring of a noble lineage whose roots went back to the time

of Ivan the Terrible, Bokii had intentionally sacrifi ced his comfortable life to fi 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 aft er the revolution. Blood,

blood, so much blood! All enemies were already subdued, but there was no change for the better. He noticed that aft er the death of Lenin, the charismatic chief of the

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 coff 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. Th at is what Barchenko

claimed to know. Barchenko was equally excited about the coming introductory meeting. It was not his fi rst contact with the mighty spying machine that was striving to entangle all of Russia in its surveillance web. Th e fi rst meeting had taken place fi ve years before and at fi 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 fi rewood to keep themselves warm inside their homes. Th 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. Aft er millions died during the Great War and the subsequent Civil War,

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 “confi scating” the riches of the bourgeoisie and looking for

“exploiters” to liquidate.4 Barchenko was petrifi 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 fl 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 off 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. Th is off er had also provided an excellent chance for him to spell out his spiritual ideas about the salvation of the bleeding world. Aft 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

each other. He had felt the lectures could be a good start. Th 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. Th 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 Aff 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. Th e fl 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. Th 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 horrifi 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 offi cers did not look for evidence. Th 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 offi cer in a unit that combated counterrevolution. Th e other two,

Estonians Eduard Otto and Alexander Ricks, had proved no less intelligent and polite. Th 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 offi 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

grammar school. In 1904, he entered the medical school at Kazan University. Th e next year, Barchenko transferred to Tartu University in Estonia, at that time part of the Russian Empire. Th ere he met Alexander K rivtsov, a professor of Roman jurisprudence who liked to treat his students as friends and was

very interested in esoteric teachings. Th 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, Th eosophy, Tibetan Buddhism, and Freemasonry. For Barchenko, the meeting with Krivtsov was a landmark, an intellectual initiation into the world of the o ccult and esoteric that shaped his f uture s piritual quest. Th e professor especially fascinated the mind of the youth

with his stories about a French esoteric writer named Marquis Alexandre SaintYves 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: “Th e story of Krivtsov gave me the fi rst push that moved my mind toward the quest that fi lled all my life. Assuming that

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 fi 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, Th eosophist, junior mahatma, and member of a secret order with headquarters in the foothills of Tibet. Th e plots revolve around the professor’s attempts to put secret knowledge possessed by the order to public benefi t and the eff orts of his mahatma comrades to keep it secret. In

1911, in addition to fi ction writing, Barchenko toyed with contemporary popular science and even conducted a series of “scientifi c” experiments. His major interests were thought transfer and energy, topics popular with the educated Western public in the early twentieth century, especially aft 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 scientifi c explanation for spiritual and paranormal phenomena. Scientists involved in this research argued that paranormal eff 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 scientifi 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. Th e helmets were linked by a long piece of copper wire. Barchenko placed oval screens in front of both participants and

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. Th 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,

unemployment, decline of tradition, prostitution, alcoholism, poverty, slums, and other vices of modern society. According to d’Alveydre, for the past fi 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. Th e synarchical government was a pyramid composed of three layers. Th e top leadership was a group of priests who controlled advanced science and technology. Th e second layer was the initiated ones and the third common people. In

modern time, this well-ordered society, strongly reminiscent of Plato’s totalitarian republic, had become almost extinct except in mysterious Agartha. Here, the synarchical priests were able to preserve high wisdom immune to anarchy with its modern vices. Th e task was clear: the wisdom of Agartha was to

be retrieved and the ancient synarchical form of government restored, in order to overcome anarchy and to bring back social and spiritual stability. According to D’Alveydre, the subterranean kingdom not only represented the best form of government but also possessed the wonders of technology: “Th ey

explored everything around them, above and underneath, including the role of magnetic currents fl owing from one pole to the other. Th ey examined everything in the air, even invisible beings that exist there, even electricity transformed in an echo aft er being formed in the heart of the earth. Air

fl eets of zeppelins have allowed them to observe what is still for us out of reach. Electric railroads, made not from iron but from highly durable glass, crisscrossed this kingdom. Chemistry and physics had advanced to the highest degree, unimaginable to the modern reader.”9 Large chunks of his writings read

like the science fi ction of his famous contemporary and compatriot Jules Verne, who similarly described in his novels technological wonders in space, air, and underwater. In fact, d’Alveydre’s Agartha strongly resembled parts of Twenty Th ousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870), Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), and Th e Mysterious Island (1874). Like Jules Verne’s captain Nemo, a sad romantic hero who, fearful that the

populace might misuse his laser beams and other technological miracles, went underwater with his submarine, residents of Agartha, plagued by similar fears, went underground, taking along their own advanced knowledge. In both cases the message was obvious: superior technology and the best political system would

be open only to highly spiritual and morally perfect people. Synarchy and Agartha were clearly an esoteric response to the insecurities of the emerging modern society with its chaotic industrial development, city slums, urban worker revolts, and expansion of popular democracy. Like d’Alveydre, many contemporaries viewed these developments as anarchy and chaos. In the early 1900s, the ideas of people like d’Alveydre gradually mutated into a

conservative intellectual movement called traditionalism. Traditionalists insisted that modern society could be redeemed through an ancient order based on tradition, hierarchy, and a universal ideology that would unite people instead of splintering them into competing groups and classes. D’Alveydre located his conservative utopia in Inner Asia, feeding on the European romantic Orientalist tradition, which claimed that the source of European civilization was

the classical Orient, especially Aryan India. In fact, a desire to look for answers in the ‘‘Himalaya’’ became a staple for several generations of scholars and writers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Commenting on this cultural fad of his romantic contemporaries, Adolph Erman, a German explorer of

northern Asia, ironically called it an attempt to establish a mysterious depot for everything that was elsewhere undiscoverable.10 Th e same “out of Asia” romantic Orientalism became one of the sources of Helena Blavatsky’s Th eosophy—the fountainhead of modern Western esotericism. When d’Alveydre was

developing his Agartha political utopia, Blavatsky was shaping her own version of the Inner Asian paradise she labeled Shambhala, the habitat of the so-called Great White Brotherhood. Unlike d’Alveydre’s underground utopia, which was based on the heavily refurbished Nordic myth of Asgard, she drew on Tibetan Buddhist tradition and anchored her mysterious Asian kingdom high in

the Himalayas. Blavatsky’s dreamland was a hub of high spiritual wisdom devoid of Agartha’s political and technological traits off ensive to present-day spiritual sensibilities. Th is might explain why her Shambhala became more popular with current seekers than d’Alveydre’s subterranean country. As for Barchenko, in his talks he frequently merged these two “ancient centers of knowledge” into Shambhala-Agartha, indicating that he was feeding on both sources.

War, Revolution, and Brothers from Bolshevik Secret Police Carnage and chaos caused by World War I, revolutions, and the bloody Civil War petrifi ed Barchenko. He became convinced more than ever that the wisdom of Shambhala-Agartha should be retrieved to save the country. In fact, the occultist himself

had suff ered the horrors of war and revolutions. Draft ed into the army at the very beginning of the war, Barchenko was seriously wounded and, as he stressed, suff ered from “epileptic fi ts” caused by “organic damage to the brain.”11 Like many educated Russians, Barchenko was appalled with the

magnitude of popular violence unleashed by the 1917 Bolshevik revolution. Although he shared the deeply rooted belief of the old Russian intelligentsia that individualism and private property were evil and collectivism was inherently good, the Communist takeover with its dictatorship, despite of

intellectuals, and terrorism against the rich and the middle class appeared to him as mass insanity. So did the mob rule, which disgusted him: “I received the October Revolution in a hostile manner, taking into consideration what lay on the surface—the sentiments of the crowd. I linked the proletariat to the

dregs of society. In my view, workers, sailors, and Red guards behaved like beasts. Th is attitude planted in my soul a desire to hide away and to shelter myself from the revolution.”12 Yet soon the fi rst shock from the Bolshevik revolt passed away. He saw that the new regime had seriously entrenched itself and that the “dictatorship of proletariat” was not a short-lived project. Like many middle-class people who did not join the two million Russians

who left 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: “Th 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 fi 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 offi cers who

interviewed him. Soon, a fourth offi cer named Fedor Karlovich Leismaier-Schwartz joined them. Among these four, Vladimirov and especially Leismaier-Schwartz became close to Barchenko’s family. Th e writer and his wife lovingly referred to this soft and spineless man (God knows how he became a secret police offi 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 suff 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

as 1900. Th e future secret police offi 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. Th is hobby, in which he excelled, made him valuable to the

Bolshevik secret police. Vladimirov not only tried to read psychological profi 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 qualifi ed for this position. Yet only a year later, in 1919, he was expelled from his job. Th en in September of the same year, Vladimirov was reinstalled; then a year later he was fi 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 fi 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. Th e woman

remembered that at fi rst Vladimirov threatened her but then began to apologize— very uncharacteristic behavior for a Red secret police offi 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

talk. In 1919, when he was investigating an Englishman who was mistakenly 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 aff 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 aff 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. Th 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” nonlaboring 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 offi

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 perpetrator

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.” Th 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.

Mysteries of Arctic Hysteria and Glavnauka In 1920, amid cold, hunger, and anarchy, Barchenko fi nally saw light at the end of the tunnel. Th 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 fi 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’ fi 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 parapsychological 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. Th 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. Th e expectation was that Socialist Realism would speed up human evolution toward a bright Communist future.16

At Bekhterev’s suggestion, in 1921 Barchenko went on a fi 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 Th 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 fi eld for a scientist in a state interested in engineering a new type of people for the Communist future! Satisfi ed with Barchenko’s fi eldwork, Glavnauka, a special umbrella structure created by the Bolsheviks to promote science, endorsed and hailed his research: “Having examined the fi ndings of biologist A. V. Barchenko in the fi eld of ancient Eastern natural philosophy (natuphilosophie),

the committee recognizes their outcomes as serious and valuable, both from scientifi 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 infl 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

academia from the old regime, Oldenburg became an infl uential Bolshevik fellow traveler. From 1904 to 1929, he occupied the powerful position of Secretary of the Russian/Soviet Academy of Sciences. Th 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 fi 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. Th 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 aft 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 superfi cial

knowledge of Tibetan Buddhism, was a dwarf compared to Oldenburg who, as one of the deans in this fi 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 left 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 fi 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.

United Labor Brotherhood on Red Dawn Street In 1923, aft 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 fi 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, LeismaierSchwartz, and Vladimirov, the former Cheka/OGPU offi cers, or “checkers” as Mesmacher jokingly dubbed them, were also part of this project. Although kicked out of the secret police, Vladimirov continued on his own to report diligently to his former service on all his friends. To his credit, in these secret updates, full of gossip, he never slandered Barchenko. Th e goal

of ULB was to foster a community of people who, through studying mysticism and philosophy as well as working on traditional craft s as a team, would spiritually upgrade themselves. Th e blueprint for ULB was G. I. Gurdjieff ’s United Labor Commonwealth, which Barchenko learned of from his close friend Peter Shandarovsky, a former

member of Gurdjieff ’s circle who chose to remain in Russia. Barchenko’s brotherhood had two ranks: students and brothers. In order to the reach the brothers’ level one had to exercise rigorous spiritual discipline and reach the highest moral standards. Th e fi rst step in this direction was renouncing

property, which was not a controversial issue—in Red Russia private property was scorned as evil anyway. Despite being a leader, Barchenko modestly stated that he was still a student. A good esoteric commune had to have its own symbols, and ULB was no exception. Th e symbol of a brother was a red rose with a

white lily petal and a cross, symbols of full harmony. Th e rose and the cross were borrowed from the Rosicrucian tradition; the lily came from Musurgia Universalis by Athanasius Kircher (1602–80), a German Jesuit esoteric scholar. A black-and-white hexagon was the symbol of a student, meaning that students

still had to work hard to tune their lives to universal rhythm and harmony.20 Barchenko was well familiar with several major texts of the Western esoteric tradition. At the same time, for a person who craved to penetrate the hub of ancient knowledge in Inner Asia, he lacked any deep knowledge of Tibetan Buddhism. Barchenko simply felt inadequate in front of such giants as Oldenburg who were well read in this area, knew Tibetan and Sanskrit, and had hands-on experience with local cultures. Th e Shambhala-Agartha seeker was well aware that a question would always arise of how he, with no expertise in Tibetan Buddhism, could be qualifi ed to lead an expedition to the area. In an attempt to eliminate this drawback and to ground himself in Tibetan Buddhism, Barchenko moved for several months onto the premises of the Buddhist Kalachakra temple in Petrograd. In fact, he did so right aft er his fatal confl ict with Oldenburg, before setting up his little commune on Red Dawn Street. Th is unique Buddhist complex, which included a temple and a dormitory, was erected with the personal blessing of Emperor Nicholas II a year before the Bolshevik revolution. Its formal goal was to accommodate the spiritual needs of visiting Buddhists. Th e project was initiated by Agvan Dorzhiev (1858–1938),

a Buryat lama from Siberia who for many years served as a chief tutor of the thirteenth Dalai Lama and then, aft er 1900, as Tibetan envoy to Russia. Dorzhiev nourished an ambitious idea: to bring all Tibetan Buddhists under the wing of the Russian emperor, whom he advertized to his brethren as the

reincarnation of the legendary Shambhala king. Th e temple also served as a gathering place for spiritually charged elite and middle-class Russian bohemians who craved Oriental spirituality. One of them was the painter Nicholas Roerich, who heavily contributed to the project by designing stained glass

for the second fl oor of the temple. So in the summer of 1923, Barchenko moved into the Buddhist dormitory and was introduced to a variety of interesting characters, including Bolshevik fellow travelers from Tibetan Buddhist lands, some of whom came to Petrograd to establish contacts with the new regime and

fi nd out about its liberation prophecy. Barchenko engaged these people in conversations, trying to learn from them. First of all, he got in touch with Dorzhiev, whom the Bolsheviks inherited form the old regime. Aft er 1917, this activist lama befriended the new masters and began to promote Red Russia as

the new Shambhala. But most important for Barchenko were his talks with a Mongol, Khaian Khirva, and a Tibetan, Naga Naven. Th e former was head of State Internal Protection (GVO), the secret police of revolutionary Mongolia, a sister spy structure sponsored and built up by Red Russia. Khirva was a shady

character, and not much is known about him except that, before embracing Communism and becoming one of the top leaders of Red Mongolia, he was a young lama who preached poverty as a lifestyle.21 Khirva was the fi rst to reach out to Barchenko by knocking on the door of his apartment. He was defi nitely

Barchenko’s kindred spirit. Th e lama-turned-secretpolice-chief wanted to promote Communism in Inner Asia by explaining to his nomadic brethren that the ethics and teachings of Tibetan Buddhism and Communism were similar. Moreover, he nourished a desire to educate Communist leaders of Russia about the wisdom of

Kalachakra tantra and Buddhism in general—the same idea that so captivated the mind of Barchenko. Naga Naven was the governor of Western Tibet who quit on the Dalai Lama and threw his lot with the Panchen Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet, who in 1923 escaped to Mongolia and challenged the Lhasa ruler from

there. Naven came to Soviet Russia to solicit Bolshevik support for the Panchen Lama, but in the early 1920s the Bolsheviks still gambled on the Dalai Lama and refused to listen to Naven. Th e Tibetan introduced Barchenko to Kalachakra tantra and told him more about the Shambhala prophecy as it existed in its

indigenous hub—Tibet. Aft er his brief stay with the Tibetan Buddhists, Barchenko referred to his spiritual pursuits by the word Dunkhor, derived from Dus’khor, a Tibetan word for Kalachakra tantra. Yet, there was certainly no way for a European like Barchenko, who did not speak and read Tibetan, to learn

in a few months the wisdom that Tibetan monks usually explored for four years at special monastery schools. It is obvious that Barchenko “mastered” Kalachakra through the prism of Western esotericism, mostly Synarchy and Hermetism.22 As a result of the talks with Naven and Khirva, Barchenko’s desire to become the “Red Merlin” for the Bolshevik regime grew stronger. He recovered from his spiritual crisis and returned to the world. More than ever he became

determined to enlighten the Soviet government by retrieving the Shambhala wisdom that would benefi t and ennoble the Communist cause. Th e fi rst and foremost goal was to inform the Bolshevik elite about the powerful scientifi c knowledge that Barchenko was convinced was hidden in Shambhala-Agartha, waiting to be unlocked. Th e crown jewel of this Eastern wisdom was Kalachakra tantra, which provided necessary spiritual tools. Th e brightest and

smartest of the Bolsheviks were to master psychological techniques that would help shape people’s minds in the right direction and allow them to control and determine the future. Simultaneously, Barchenko would unfold for commissars his political plan that would stop social confl icts. Instead of pitting urban and

village underclass people against the bourgeoisie and middle class, he wanted the Bolsheviks to cultivate professional associations that would help stop the vicious circle of class warfare between the haves and the have-nots. In order to build up a perfectly harmonious society, the new Red masters, like

high priests in d’Alveydre’s Agartha, were to cultivate a commonwealth of professional guilds, consisting of productive and hardworking members. Strikingly similar projects captivated the minds of Barchenko’s contemporaries in Europe and beyond, and one of them, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, a former socialist, was already putting them into practice, setting up fascist professional corporations as the backbone of the new classless society. In 1927, in a letter to a native Buryat scholar, the exited Barchenko wrote, “Anyone, who is initiated into the mysteries of Dunkhor-Kalachakra, must admit that only the

classes based on professional affi liations can mutually aid each other. Only these types of classes will eventually become healthy living limbs of the state body and humankind in general. Only this type of social division will be capable of turning people on our planet into a healthy refl ection of

Buddha, whose limbs serve and strengthen each other instead of fi ghting one another and ruining the whole body, as happens nowadays in our society.”23 Barchenko came to view the 1917 Communist Revolution as the beginning of the global cultural showdown between the rotten Western civilization, based on

die-hard individualism, and the Orient, benevolent cradle of collectivism and high spiritual wisdom—a recurrent notion from the early nineteenth-century German Romantics to present-day avatars of multiculturalism. According to Barchenko, the fi rst step for the Bolshevik elite was to strengthen their ties

to Eastern countries and learn from Oriental wisdom. Barchenko might have begun to view himself as a social therapist or some sort of Red Merlin who would reveal high Buddhist wisdom to the Bolshevik leadership: “After deeply immersing myself in Dunkhor-Kalachakra, I began to aspire to introduce the most powerful and selfl ess leaders of Russia into this

mystery and to inform them about the correct view and the true value of the ancient and modern culture of the East.”24 At the end of 1923, the budding prophet returned to his work at Glavnauka. Now confi dent of his knowledge of Tibetan Buddhism, Barchenko revived his idea of an expedition to Shambhala to

retrieve the hidden wisdom. Yet again the same stumbling block stood in his way: scholar-administrator Oldenburg. Barchenko’s project was discussed at a closed session of Glavnauka, and Oldenburg immediately suggested that the whole scheme be thrown out. His objection sealed the fate of the project. But Barchenko was stubborn and did not want to give up. Cornered by the powerful scholarly opponent and desperate to fi nd a way out of the situation, he

turned to his “checker” comrades, Vladimirov, Otto, Ricks, and Leismaier-Schwartz, asking them to introduce him to somebody high up who might appreciate his grand plan. A desire to retrieve the sacred Inner Asian wisdom and enlighten the Soviet elite about its power became an obsession: “Until Soviet

Russia’s leaders realize what high positive values the East has secretly been harboring since ancient times, they are constantly doomed to repeat steps that are harmful and destructive both for the Orient and for Russia, even through these are driven by the best and purest aspirations.” Soon everybody in

the esoteric circles of Moscow and Petrograd knew about his compulsive politico-spiritual utopia. Some seekers began to treat him with caution as a tool of the Soviet government. Others simply called him a kook. Barchenko brushed aside these slurs: “To be honest, if one approaches my idea as paranoia and

‘impractical fantasy,’ I have to admit that my ‘insanity’ is ‘incurable.’”25 Although the “checkers” no longer worked for OGPU, they responded to Barchenko’s plea and activated old contacts. Remembering this episode, Barchenko stated, “Th e comrades told me that my work is so important that I should report about it to the government, and especially to Dzerzhinsky, the head of the All Union Economic Council. On their advice, I wrote to Dzerzhinsky about my work.”26 Reaching Felix

Dzerzhinsky was not easy. Th e only person of power accessible to them was their former boss Gleb Bokii, head of the Petrograd secret police in 1918. Vladimirov took the trouble to go to Moscow at the end of 1924 to deliver Barchenko’s letter about ancient science personally. Th e letter at fi rst landed

on the desk of Jacob Agranov, one of Bokii’s colleagues. Agranov became intrigued and several days later went to Leningrad (the new name for Petrograd) to meet the “occult doctor” at an OGPU safe house. Barchenko remembered, “In this talk with Agranov, I informed him in detail of my theory about the existence

of a hidden scientific collective in central Asia and revealed my plan to establish contacts with the owners of its secrets. Agranov was very positive about my report.” To speed up the process, Vladimirov convinced Barchenko to write another letter addressed directly to the OGPU collegium, the council of

top offi cers who ran the Bolshevik secret police. Vladimirov, who always liked to be in the spotlight, again volunteered to deliver the letter. A few days later, he returned with happy news: the “powerful ones” expected the Shambhala-Agartha seeker to come to Moscow and brief them about ancient science. Barchenko could not dream about having better luck. Now he and Vladimirov, along with Leismaier-Schwarz, who also joined the exciting venture, hurried to

Moscow, where they again met Agranov: “During this meeting, Agranov told me that my report about a hidden ancient scientifi c community was included in the OGPU collegium meeting agenda. He also added that my proposal about establishing contacts with the carriers of the Shambhala secrets in the East had a

chance to be approved, and that in the future I should stay in touch with Bokii, a member of the collegium, about this.”27 Soon Agranov stepped aside, and Barchenko had his fateful meeting with Bokii. Th e chief Bolshevik cryptographer, sensing in the Shambhala-Agartha seeker a kindred spirit, took Barchenko under his wing and tuned his ear to Barchenko’s “scientifi c prophecy.” Formal contacts quickly evolved into friendship.