Difference between revisions of "Engineer of Human Souls: Bolshevik Cryptographer Gleb Boki"
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Gleb Bokii, chief cryptographer of the Soviet Union and Barchenko’s patron, was one of those idealists who took the liberation of the “wretched of the earth” close to their hearts. He came from a Ukrainian noble lineage that traced its roots to the time of Ivan the Terrible. His father was a professor of
chemistry and the author of a textbook popular in Russian schools and universities. Raised as a wellrounded person on good literature and good music, young Bokii enrolled in the St. Petersburg Mining College. Quite possibly he would have followed the same career route as his father had it not been for one incident. In 1894, his brother Boris invited him to take part in a student demonstration against the authorities. Th ere was a brief fi ght with police, and both of them, along with other demonstrators, were arrested. On top of this, Bokii was beaten. Although the siblings were immediately released aft er
their father fi led a petition (the tsarist regime was far more liberal than the totalitarian state Bokii and his comrades would later build in Russia), the incident upset their father, who soon died from a heart attack. Th e two brothers drew diff erent conclusions from this incident. Blaming himself for the death of their father, Boris quit playing a revolutionary and devoted all his time to science. Gleb, on the contrary, blamed the regime and decided to fi ght it to the very end, eventually
becoming a professional revolutionary and joining the Marxist underground. Although he was still interested in science, the desire to change the world and the romantic lure of underground life overrode all other pursuits. Aft er four years of college, young Bokii eventually dropped out, devoting all his time
to the cause. It is possible that his mother also inadvertently contributed to Gleb’s drift toward Marxism—the “religion” of science and reason. Aft er
her fi rst infant son contracted scarlet fever during communion and died, she denounced God, stopped going to church, and became militantly antireligious.1
Like all contemporary Marxists, young Bokii and his comrades viewed themselves as the spearheads of history who had mastered the laws of human evolution
and found the key to the liberation of humankind in the “scientifi c” prophecy of Karl Marx. Th e founding father of Marxism insisted on the coming revolutionary Armageddon, that would climax in the fi ght of industrial workers (forces of goodness) against capitalists (forces of darkness), which would
eventually lead to a communist paradise, a society in which people would live happily as brothers and sisters without money, private property, or greed. Th e people who would lead the laboring masses into this fi nal battle were to be a vanguard communist party, a small group of revolutionaries who knew what
to do and would educate the populace, navigating it in the “right” direction. Young Bokii’s formal initiation into organized Marxism took place in 1900 when he joined Vladimir Lenin’s Union for the Liberation of Labor, a clandestine organization that, aft er several splits and mutations, evolved into what
became known as the Bolsheviks, proponents of a violent communist revolution. Th e next step was learning the underground craft . Aft er he was given a secret password, the young man’s fi rst assignment was to go to an apartment occupied by a certain Helena Stasova, famous for her knowledge of clandestine
work, and help her. Knocking on the door, Bokii uttered the code phrase, “I want to see the thief.” Th e woman responded, “I am the thief.”2 From that moment Bokii’s life dramatically changed. He had joined the revolutionary elect,
a tightly controlled underground Marxist organization with numerous branches all over the Russian Empire. To wake the lethargic masses for active rebellion against the regime, much work had to be done: printing fl yers and newspapers, conducting secret inspirational talks with factory workers, and organizing
strikes. Young Bokii turned out to be a quick learner and soon excelled in this craft . During one of his arrests, police confi scated ordinary school blue books fi lled with mathematical formulas. In reality, these were ciphered records of his revolutionary cell. Th is particular cipher was a personal invention of Bokii, and he was the only one who knew the key. Th e best cryptographers of the tsarist secret police wracked their brains trying to fi gure
out these formulas, but they could not crack this tough nut. An investigator kept pressing the young Marxist, “Admit this is some kind of a cipher.” Yet Bokii stubbornly replied, “If this is a cipher, go ahead and decipher it.” So the offi cer had to return the blue books.3 Between 1900 and 1917, Bokii’s life was fi lled with propaganda activities, arrests, and long prison sentences. Overall, the revolutionary enthusiast was arrested twelve times and twice
was exiled to Siberia. In 1907–08, he spent almost a year in solitary confi nement. Th e result of all the time in prison and exile was tuberculosis. Although Bokii received treatment aft er being released, he did not complete it, and the illness turned into a chronic ailment. Later, aft er the Bolshevik revolution, when he was doing counterintelligence work in Central Asia against Moslem insurgents in 1920, Bokii had a recurrence. Hearing from someone that
dog meat helped cure tuberculosis, he tried it, which certainly appalled the followers of Allah. His secret police colleagues, who disliked Bokii for his independent mind and aristocratic origin, made up a story, picturing this skinny intellectual as some Russian equivalent of Dracula who got his power by drinking human blood and munching on dog meat.4 In 1917, aft er the demise of the tsarist regime, Bokii returned to Petrograd from exile and immediately joined the Military-Revolutionary Committee set up by the Bolsheviks to speed up a communist revolution. Th is mob of mostly self-appointed radical intellectuals, workers,
and soldiers headed by Lenin and his right-hand man, Leon Trotsky, was the group that scripted and executed the famous 1917 Bolshevik revolution. Th eir immediate plan was to get rid of the so-called Provisional Government. Th is impotent structure established by liberal bourgeoisie and moderate socialists was unpopular among the grass roots anyway: it did not pull the country out of the bloody Great War and talked such nonsense as democracy, elections, and republic, which sounded Greek to most of the populace. Bokii vigorously contributed to the demise of this government by organizing workers into paramilitary units and simultaneously overseeing Lenin’s bodyguards.
Agent of Red Terror In October 1917, amid the anarchy and chaos caused by the collapse of the Russian Empire and the crumbling Provisional Government, Lenin and his comrades quickly gained power. Th ey abolished money, outlawed private property, and introduced an iron-fi sted dictatorship. A grand
experiment of building an ideal and perfect society was on the way. With his rich experience of clandestine work and interest in secret codes, ciphers, and symbols, Bokii was a natural choice to become one of the leaders of Cheka/OGPU—the revolutionary secret police created to combat crime and weed out opponents of the new regime. Although Bokii was not thrilled about this assignment, he accepted it in earnest: the revolution needed to defend itself. When
the poet-terrorist Leonid Kanegisser killed his boss Moses Uritsky and someone made an attempt on Lenin’s life, an infuriated Bokii took over as the head of the Petrograd Cheka and was ready for revenge. He became one of the chief agents of the infamous Red Terror, trying to intimidate into submission all bourgeoisie and colleagues from friendly socialist parties. In October 1918, Bokii proudly reported that under his guidance the secret police shot eight
hundred counterrevolutionaries and imprisoned 6, 229.5 Although many of those liquidated were innocent and did not work against the Bolshevik revolution, it hardly mattered; they belonged
to the bourgeois class anyway. In the Marxist scheme of social evolution, this was a vanishing class of exploiters that would have no place in the future Communist society. Aft er all, a great cause demanded great sacrifi ces, and if some people suff ered on the way to the bright future it was unavoidable
collateral damage. Th at was how many leading Bolsheviks rationalized their violence. In a snowball eff ect, the Red Terror unleashed by the Bolsheviks expanded from Petrograd and Moscow all over Russia and provoked an equally fi erce and savage resistance from the supporters of the old regime. Th e
clashes quickly escalated into the bloody Civil War (1918–22) between the Bolshevik “Reds” and the “Whites,” supporters of the old regime. Although Bokii consecrated himself with blood, to some of his more militant comrades he appeared not suffi ciently tough. Several Bolshevik chiefs wanted to escalate the
revolutionary terror by lynching and executing all “enemies of revolution” on the spot without any arrest or even a slight investigation. Bokii had some doubts about this tactic and might have started asking himself uncomfortable questions. Eventually he began to argue that instead of executing actual and
potential enemies, it would be better to round them up and ship them to concentration camps. Th ere, through the miracles of redemptive labor, they would be hammered into good Communist citizens. Th e Bolshevik government offi cially announced the creation of concentration camps for “class enemies” on
September 5, 1918. Th is ad hoc project later gave rise to the notorious Gulag, a monstrous system of penal labor camps that was widened and perfected under Stalin. Although Bokii did not create this system, he defi nitely was one of its chief intellectual sparks.6 Amid the Red Terror, this “liberalism”
expressed by Bokii outraged Zinoviev, the Bolshevik dictator of Petrograd and himself the target of an unsuccessful murder attempt. In September 1918, Zinoviev ordered that the terror be escalated: “To subdue enemies, we need our own socialist militarism. From the population of one hundred million people we now have in Soviet Russia we must save for us ninety million. As for the rest, we have nothing to off er them. Th ey should be exterminated.”7
Moreover, Zinoviev ordered Bokii to arm workers and give them the right to identify and execute all enemies of the revolution without any arrest. Asked how would they be able to spot the enemies, Zinoviev answered that “class instinct” of the workers would easily allow them to detect who were bourgeoisie and
who were people of labor. When Bokii inquired if Zinoviev was sure that some zealous worker guided by class instinct would not shoot him by mistake, Zinoviev was furious and used all his infl uence to remove Bokii as head of the Petrograd secret police, a post Bokii had occupied for barely a month. Zinoviev was not the only one to express such a bloodthirsty attitude. In fact, during the Red Terror, it was the prevailing sentiment among Bolsheviks. In
the same year, the Latvian Martin Latsis, one of the top secret police offi cers, stressed, “Cheka does not judge the enemy, it strikes him. It shows no mercy. We, like the children of Israel, have to build the kingdom of the future under constant fear of enemy attack.”8 Bokii might have eventually been stunned with the magnitude of the terror and brutality he had helped unleash. It is known for sure that his revolutionary idealism cracked somewhat in 1921
when Red Baltic sailors in the Kronstadt fortress, the major spearheads of the 1917 Red takeover, revolted against the Bolshevik dictatorship and terror. Eighteen years later Bokii admitted, “Th e Kronstadt events produced an indelible impression on me. I could not reconcile myself to the idea that the very
sailors who took part in the October revolution revolted against our party and power.”9 Th e second blow to his faith was the death of Lenin, the charismatic chief of the Bolsheviks, in 1924. Bokii, totally devastated, treated the death of his revolutionary guru as the decline of Communism. Leon
Trotsky, an outstanding Bolshevik intellectual and head of the Red Army, crossed swords with Joseph Stalin in a fi ght for leadership. Stalin was a unique combination of a street thug, an intellectual, and a master of bureaucratic games. When Trotsky tried to outsmart him by talking ideas and ideology, Stalin, for whom ideology was secondary, turned to his favorite Byzantine techniques: backstabbing, surveillance, and smearing his opponents with dirt. Th is
vicious struggle for succession, which resulted in Stalin’s enthronement, depressed Bokii. He could not stomach Stalin as the chief of the party. Eventually, this attitude cost Bokii and other old Bolsheviks their lives. In 1937–38, Stalin mowed down all of Lenin’s comrades and brought his own people
to power. Sometime in the mid-1920s, Bokii detached himself from active political life and began to avoid Bolshevik party cell meetings, which appalled his romantic soul with their drudgery and boredom. Instead, he retreated into his immediate intelligence work. In 1921 the top Bolshevik elite appointed him
chief cryptographer responsible for diplomatic and spy codes and electronic surveillance in Red Russia. At the same time, Bokii began to pose disturbing questions for himself. Is it possible to construct the perfect society devoid of social and economic problems and make people selfl ess and noble? What is
absolute truth? What represents an absolute evil and an absolute good? Th ese questions gradually led him to a diff erent realm. Bokii summarized his quest thusly: “I did not see any prospects for our revolution and became involved in mysticism.”10 Contemporary accounts stress that this originally die-hard
Marxist revolutionary, one of the top spy chiefs of the early Soviet Union, stuck out among his secret police colleagues. In his memoirs, celebrity singer Fyodor Chaliapin, who later emigrated to the West, remembered that Bokii was the only Bolshevik leader who produced a pleasant impression on him. Th e singer met him in 1918 during the time of the Red Terror: Once I found in my dressing room a basket fi lled with wine and fruit. Th en the one who sent me this kind gift appeared himself. I saw in front of me a
dark-haired skinny man with a sunken chest, dressed in a black blouse. Th e color of his face was something between dark, pale, and earthly green. His olive-shaped eyes were clearly infl amed. I realized right away that my visitor suff ered from tuberculosis. Th e man spoke in a pleasant and soft voice. All his gestures and body movements manifested
trust and good nature. He held by hand a small girl, his daughter. Th e man introduced himself. Th is was Bokii, the famous chief of the Petrograd Cheka, whose appearance and manners totally contradicted what I had heard about him. I have to state honestly—Bokii produced the best impression on me. I was
especially touched by his fatherly kindness to his daughter.11 Apparently, the revolution appeared to Bokii in his idealistic dreams as a noble enterprise that would establish a commonwealth of well-rounded people who would live in harmony, perfecting their minds and bodies. Reality turned out to be brutal and ugly. Instead of a peaceable kingdom he saw a nightmare—the
rivers of blood he himself helped to spill. Bokii might have felt that against his will the tide of events had carried him away from the noble goals of the project, and that there was no way to stop it. He was especially perturbed that the Communist revolution did not better the minds of people as he and his idealistic comrades expected. Th e Bolshevik elite did not think twice about taking advantage of material perks that came along with their new position as
the ruling class. Better than anybody, the chief Bolshevik cryptographer saw the greed and corruption of many of those who should have been role Figure 4.1. Gleb Bokii, master of codes and chief cryptographer of the Bolshevik regime. Moscow, 1922.
models of the fi rst working-class state where wealth was expected to be spread around evenly. Still, like some of his Bolshevik brethren, he never blamed the “noble cause” he served. It was always “bad people” who grossly spoiled it. Bokii was one of those idealistic Bolsheviks who hated to use the special
privileges the Communist elite promptly reserved for itself aft er seizing power. He lived with his second wife and one of the daughters from his fi rst marriage in a small apartment.12 His relatives and friends never dared to use his offi cial Packard convertible for personal needs—a practice widespread among other Bolshevik bosses. In winter and summer, he wore the same raincoat and crumpled military cap. Bokii also had an odd habit—he never shook hands
with anybody, a practice perhaps acceptable in Western countries but impossible to imagine in Russia. So this aristocrat-turned-revolutionary was a strange man, a “white crow” among his secret police comrades, who instinctively felt he was not one of them. His habit of issuing categorical judgments about other people did not help either, and soon he antagonized many of his colleagues. At the same time, Bokii was far from an ascetic. He was a passionate womanizer and also liked to sit with a glass of good wine in the company of friends, sharing intellectual conversation, but he never dominated a talk.13 The Special Section: Code-Making and Wonders of Science In hindsight, it was clear that, like his idealistic comrades of the same caliber, Bokii was doomed. What shielded him for a long time was the nature of his work and the peculiar status he and his Special Section enjoyed within the OGPU secret
police. Although Bokii was one of the heads of OGPU, his section was not subordinated to but only affi liated with the secret police. Th e Special Section was created on January 21, 1921, by a special decision of the Soviet government as the cryptographic service reporting directly to the top leadership of the Bolshevik Party. As the head of this autonomous unit, Bokii provided information
directly to Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, and other top communist bosses, b ypassing the OGPU leadership. Besides regular secret police funding, the section had an independent source of income from manufacturing and selling safe boxes to various Soviet departments inside and outside the country. Bokii could
personally dispose of these funds. Treated as the most secret unit of Soviet intelligence, the Special Section resembled the American National Security Agency. Lev Razgon, who worked for this unit for two years and later became Bokii’s son-in-law, remembered, “In the entire complex and vast Soviet
intelligence and police apparatus, this department and its director were, perhaps, the most inaccessible of all.”14 People who worked for the section were even forbidden to reveal not only the location but the very existence of the place to their relatives.
Former building of the Commissariat for Foreign Aff airs. Th e two upper fl oors were occupied by Gleb Bokii’s Special Section, which specialized in cryptography and occult experiments.
Th e greater part of the section’s services was housed not at the OGPU major premises on Lubyanka Street but on two upper fl oors of the Commissariat for Foreign Aff airs building on the corner of the Kuznetsky Street Bridge and Lubyanka Square. Unlike the rest of the secret police, Bokii’s unit did not
arrest and interrogate anybody. Its chief tasks were deciphering foreign cables and codes, developing reliable ciphers for Soviet embassies and spies, and conducting electronic surveillance, an emerging hot spy craft that promised wide opportunities. Bokii and his people were able to decipher and read all British, Austrian, German, and Italian diplomatic traffi c and to partially access Japanese, American and French cables. His codebreakers were far more
successful than those of any similar services in the West.15 Th e chief Bolshevik cryptographer gradually expanded the range of his work, adding to his formal duties the exploration of paranormal and esoteric phenomena that might be useful in intelligence work. By the end of the 1920s, the activities and research projects of the Special Section ranged from perfecting electronic spy devices and developing remotely controlled explosives to exploring things
mysterious and anomalous. From time to time, Bokii’s r esearchers brought in shamans, mediums, and hypnotists, who were scrutinized to detect the source of their extraordinary abilities. Because of the nature of their work, people hired for the Special Section usually were highly educated and intelligent folk: cryptographers, linguists, translators, and scientists. Many, like the graphologist Konstantin Vladimirov, possessed unique expertise in exotic fi
elds. Th ere were also academic scholars and scientists like Professor Pavel Shungsky, a student of Japanese culture and language and later a military intelligence offi cer, or the young chemist Evgenii Gopius, who experimented with remotely controlled explosives. Several experts employed by the section were individuals with “politically incorrect” backgrounds: barons and counts inherited from the old regime.16 Georgy Chicherin, Commissar for Foreign Aff
airs, who clashed with OGPU from time to time, once confi ded to a colleague: “Th e experts who decode foreign
dispatches are absolutely unrivalled. Bokii, the head of this section, has enlisted some old professionals from the time of the tsars. He pays them highly,
and gives them apartments more sumptuous than the ones they occupied before the revolution. Th ey work for fi ft een or sixteen hours a day.”17 Like many other Bolsheviks, the head of the Special Section believed in the wondrous powers of science and sought to explain everything from a materialistic viewpoint, including paranormal phenomena. Bokii was very interested in thought transfer—the scientifi c fad that captivated popular imagination both in
Russia and in the West in the beginning of the twentieth century. He assumed that, like radio signals, thoughts could be sent back and forth. Nikolai Badmaev, a Siberian native and expert in Tibetan medicine who cured several of the Soviet elite, remembered that during one of their meetings Bokii wondered how Tibetan doctors applied hypnosis and why mantras should be recited only in Sanskrit. Shrewdly tuning his curative philosophy to politically
correct materialist and scientifi c sentiments, Badmaev suggested that, once uttered, the words of a mantra produced sound waves that had a healing eff ect on human minds and bodies. Bokii, who was convinced that the surrounding world represented an interconnected information system, was pleased to hear such an explanation.18 As an intelligence offi cer, he certainly contemplated the wide opportunities that might arise from using mantras and reading the
thoughts of an opponent at a distance. It was natural that his secret police colleagues were jealous of the autonomous status of Bokii and his Special Section. Indeed, it was unfair. Th e chief cryptographer knew everything that was going on in OGPU, while OGPU leaders did not know what he was up to in his elite unit. Th e fact that members of the section were frequently cited for emulation did not help either. Unfortunately, Bokii himself added to this
animosity. Proud of his clan of experts, he scorned other OGPU departments as “loafers” and did not miss a chance to play fl amboyant pranks on his colleagues within and outside of the secret police.
One of his wireless stations that monitored all suspicious radio communications once intercepted a transmission ciphered in an unfamiliar code. Bokii’s people quickly deciphered the message, which was sent from a moving object and said, “Send me one case of vodka.” Th e message came from Genrikh Yagoda,
the future head of OGPU, who was having fun on a motorboat in the company of two girls. Bokii decided to play a practical joke and sent the information about the “suspicious object” to Yagoda’s own unit. Soon, Yagoda’s people were trying to break into the OGPU food supply base that was preparing to deliver vodka to the motorboat, narrowly avoiding a shoot-out. In another case, Bokii bet Maxim Litvinov, Chicherin’s deputy, a bottle of French cognac that his
people could steal classifi ed documents from the safe in Litvinov’s guarded offi ce. Special Section people somehow managed to sneak into the offi ce and steal the papers, which Bokii then returned to Litvinov. Th e top bureaucrat was so upset that instead of keeping his end of the deal, he complained directly to Lenin about Bokii’s mischief.19 In the fall of 1924, two months before Barchenko came to Moscow to report to the OGPU bosses about his ancient
science, Bokii returned from a depressing inspection trip to the Solovki concentration camp, his pet project to hammer alien classes into good Soviet citizens. On December 19, 1923, fi ve political prisoners in that camp had been shot for violating curfew. Somehow the news leaked to the West, and Bokii was included in a commission to investigate the incident.20 Although each time during his ceremonial visits to the camp he was treated as a high dignitary
who was to see a Potemkin village, he could not help noticing that the place looked like a real hell: prisoners lived in cramped barracks, hungry, cold, and subject to various abuses. It is diffi cult to say if Bokii continued to believe in the redemptive nature of this laborcamp project. Yet it would be natural for a person capable of pondering questions of absolute evil and absolute good to have at least some doubt on seeing his own idea turned into such a brutal material force.
Soviet Secret Police Master Ancient Wisdom Amid his frustrations and doubts, the chief Bolshevik cryptographer met Barchenko and learned about his ancient science: “I became acquainted with Barchenko through Leismaier-Schwartz and Vladimirov, former offi cers of the Leningrad Cheka. Th ey came to visit me at
the OGPU Special Section accompanied by Barchenko and recommended him to me as a talented researcher who had made a discovery of extraordinary political signifi cance. Th ey also asked me to get him in touch with OGPU leadership in order to put his idea into practice.”21 Aft er several meetings with Barchenko, Bokii fi nally invited him to report on Kalachakra and Shambhala to the collegium of OGPU top bosses in Moscow on the evening of December 31,
1924. Records of the meeting are not available, yet one can suggest that Barchenko expanded on the applied nature of his ancient science. He most certainly tried to convince them there were people in the East who for hundreds of years had read people’s thoughts and by the power of their minds could receive and send information over long distances. Barchenko certainly would not fail to stress that he and others had already “scientifi cally” proven the actuality of
thought transfer. Aft er a brief deliberation, the collegium, headed by OGPU chief Felix Dzerzhinsky, entrusted Bokii to look into this matter and take practical steps if needed. Barchenko remembered, “Th e meeting of the collegium took place late at night. Everybody was tired and they listened to me inattentively. Th ey hurried to be done with this and other issues. Yet, with the support of Bokii and Agranov, we were able to secure a favorable
decision. Bokii was assigned to familiarize himself with the details of my project, and if it could be useful, to fulfi ll it.”22 In the beginning of 1925, at Bokii’s suggestion, Barchenko moved to Moscow, where the chief of the Special Section secured an apartment for him and employed him as a consultant. Th e circumstances of the occultist miraculously changed. Despite his earlier contempt for material possessions, Barchenko was now happy not only to improve
his living conditions, but also to receive the abundant funds Bokii began providing to him. It appeared that fi nally Barchenko was nearing his dream of becoming the Red Merlin for the Bolshevik government. In a secret neuropsychology lab created by Bokii, he could also perfect his ideas about thought
transfer, psychology, and parapsychology, experimenting with various mediums, hypnotizers, and shamans. Earlier in Glavnauka, Barchenko’s ancient science had always been open to the academic scrutiny of such qualifi ed peers as Oldenburg. Now, surrounded by an aura of secrecy, the Red Merlin was guaranteed
that nobody would interfere with his research. Later, in 1934, the lab moved to the newly created All-Union Institute of Experimental Medicine (Vsesoiuznii intitut eksperimental’noi meditsiny, VIEM) and was renamed as a neuroenergy laboratory. VIEM was a research institute established by Soviet authorities in
1932 to conduct applied studies on the human brain, hypnosis, toxic poisons, and drugs.23
Twelve chiefs of the Bolshevik secret police cluster around their boss, Felix Dzerzhinsky, in the middle. Gleb Bokii, seated, with his head leaning on his hand, is second to Dzerzhinsky’s left . Moscow, 1921.
Projected main building of the Institute for Experimental Medicine (VIEM). Th 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 fi 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. Th e entire political and cultural climate during this decade encouraged people like Barchenko to come out of the closet. Th 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. Scientifi c knowledge was a sacred cow in the eyes of the Bolsheviks. Th 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
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. Th e prospect of retrieving scientifi 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’ scientifi c faith. Bokii might gradually have become interested not only in Barchenko’s “science” but also in his “ancient science.” Aft 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 fi t my worldview. Gradually, I became
convinced that all bloody sacrifi 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. Th 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. Th is means that one needs to fi nd a path to Shambhala and establish connections with this country. Th is task is not for everyone but only for the people of a high moral caliber. Th ese seekers should be selfl 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 diff erent worldviews who are capable of raising themselves above temporary social rivalries in order to understand and resolve more pressing issues.
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 scientifi c knowledge of Shambhala could help the Communist cause. Th 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 scientifi c belief that in Inner Asia there were spiritual practitioners of Tibetan Buddhist and Sufi 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 fi t the mindset of the cryptographer, who had spent the fi rst half of his life in a revolutionary underground fi lled with clandestine activities. Th e second part of his life, aft er the 1917 revolution, was covered with a similar aura of secrecy: electronic surveillance, codemaking and codebreaking.
Th e well-guarded clandestine world of symbols, codes, and behind-thescenes activities eventually became an intimate part of Bokii’s character. His offi 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 fi rst volunteered for these meetings soon became bored: “Th 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. Th 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 Sofi 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. Th e former worked at the Commissariat for Foreign Aff 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, aft 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. Th 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
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. Th is was a communist society, and it existed in a more advanced social (communist) and materially technical form than ours. Th e remnants of this society, as
Barchenko told us, still exist in remote mountain areas at the intersection of India, Tibet, Kashgar, and Afghanistan. Th is ancient science accumulated all scientifi c and technical knowledge, representing a synthesis of all branches of science. Th 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. Th 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. Th e charter prescribed nude sunbathing as well as collective
bathing for men and women. Th 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 Left -leaning theoreticians elevated sexual promiscuity to the level of the new Bolshevik morality. From time to time, pedestrians 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. Klimenkov, 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. Th e favorite ones
were mock church services and religious funerals. Dressed in Russian Orthodox Church garb confi 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 suff ocated when buried in the ground during one mock service. Some mornings the “nature people” would awaken to fi nd their vaginas and penises smeared with paint or mustard. To maintain these regular retreats, the participants set
aside 10 percent of their monthly salaries. Eventually, with the a dvent 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. Th 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 mummifi ed penises, which he kept in his apartment.29 It is known that in several branches of the Kalachakra tantra school, mummifi 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. Th e cryptographer might have viewed these dried organs as a healing aid from the arsenal of Tibetan medicine.
The Abortive Shambhala Expedition Besides nature retreats and empowering himself with mummifi 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. Th 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. Th ere the Red Merlin hoped to uncover secrets of ancient Sufi 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 defi ned as scientifi c and was not classifi ed, Bokii did not want to advertise it too much because of the involvement of his Special Section. But Vladimirov, as always boastful and fl
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 Aff airs, a close friend of Lenin and a career diplomat with prerevolutionary
tenure. In July 1925, accompanied by two OGPU offi cers, Barchenko visited Chicherin. At fi rst, the commissar sounded very supportive. In fact, Chicherin was already working to orient Soviet foreign policy more toward Asia and away from the West, which he did not like anyway. Yet, the next day the chief
Bolshevik diplomat completely changed his mind. It could be that the personality of the Red Merlin and his grand dreams aroused suspicion. For Chicherin, an experienced diplomat, it was relatively easy to fi gure out such characters as Barchenko. A rivalry between OGPU and the Commissariat for Foreign Aff airs surely played its role as well. An aristocrat from an impoverished noble family, Chicherin had been raised as a well-rounded intellectual in a home bubble surrounded by his protective mother, aunt, and nanny. Like Bokii, he was a high-class revolutionary idealist who joined the Red cause far before 1917 in order to liberate the “wretched of the earth.” As a young adult, Chicherin studied history and law at St. Petersburg University, with a brief detour into the mists of German philosophy: Kant, Hegel, and the like. At one point he realized that all this knowledge was just intellectual masturbation.
He craved a noble cause and real action that would change the world, and found it by bumping into Lenin and Trotsky, who gave the intellectual an activist agenda. Th e new convert to Marxism quit his job as a minor diplomatic clerk and moved to Western Europe, where he frequented émigré salons while preparing for the revolution. Now the commissar lived the life of a committed bachelor, enjoying playing Mozart at night in the company of his cat. He was seriously disturbed that some snooping folk from OGPU had passed around word he was a homosexual and hinted about his intimate relations with his chief of protocol. Th ere was always bad blood between him and the secret police. Th ose bastards, Chicherin complained to a junior colleague, not only gossiped behind his back but spied on all the top Bolsheviks, installing microphones everywhere, including his own offi ce—and Bokii was in charge of all those techs.30 Th at skinny cryptographer with penetrating eyes, enormous sexual drive, and equally enormous power
thought he could do whatever he wanted. He even took several fl oors of Chicherin’s commissariat building for his Special Section. Now, through this quack Barchenko, Bokii had the nerve to casually inform him that all passport paperwork for their Shambhala expedition was already going through rank-and-fi le clerks in Chicherin’s own commissariat without his knowing about it! Th e Commissar for Foreign Aff airs would have none of it. Chicherin was ripe for a
good intrigue and a small revenge. So aft er he sent out his original memo, in which he endorsed the Barchenko-Bokii project, the commissar decided to call OGPU bosses to check if the expedition had their approval. Th e fi rst person he called was Meer Trilisser, chief of the Foreign Espionage Department. Technically, Bokii, as the head of the autonomous Special Section, was not obligated to report about his plans to him or to any other OGPU boss. Yet,
during this phone conversation, Trilisser was angry or acted angry. He told Chicherin that Bokii had never informed him about the project, adding that Bokii’s initiative was fl awed and that there were other ways to penetrate Inner Asia. Soon, the intrigue against Bokii sparked by Chicherin involved the powerful Genrikh Yagoda, second in command in the Soviet secret police. Th is “brutal, uncultivated, and gross individual” and “past-master of intrigue,” as a former coworker described him,31 also played ignorant and spoke against Bokii’s project. Although both Trilisser and Yagoda were members of the OGPU collegium that had heard Barchenko’s report and agreed to assign Bokii to work out practical recommendations, now, a few months later, they played against it. Both men resented Bokii’s privileged status within OGPU and would not miss a chance to make life harder for the arrogant aristocrat. So the intrigue against Bokii within OGPU gave Chicherin an excellent chance to kill a project from the rival commissariat that he despised anyway. Th e next day, in his follow-up memo, Chicherin did not denounce outright the whole project but cast strong doubt on selected routes and especially on the person in charge of the expedition:
For nineteen years, a certain Barchenko has been searching for the remnants of some prehistoric culture. He has a theory that in prehistoric time humankind had developed an extremely advanced civilization that far surpassed the present historical period. He also believes that in Central Asian centers of
spiritual culture, particularly in Lhasa and in some secret brotherhoods in Afghanistan, one can fi nd surviving scientifi c knowledge left by this advanced prehistoric civilization. Comrade Barchenko approached Comrade Bokii, who became extremely interested in his theory and decided to use the manpower and resources of his Special Section to locate the remnants of this prehistoric culture. Th e OGPU collegium that heard Barchenko’s report
similarly became interested in this project and decided to use some funds they probably have at their disposal. Two comrades from OGPU and Barchenko have visited me to secure my support. I told them that they should exclude Afghanistan from their agenda outright. Not only will Afghan authorities not let our chekists [secret police offi cers] search for any secret brotherhoods, but also the very fact of their presence in that country will produce repercussions
in English mass media, which will not miss an opportunity to portray this expedition in a totally diff erent light. As a result, we will create trouble for ourselves. I repeat again that our chekists will not be allowed to contact any secret brotherhoods. However, my attitude to the trip to Lhasa was totally diff erent. If the sponsors who support Barchenko have enough money to organize the expedition to Lhasa, I would welcome this as another step to establish
links with Tibet. Yet there is one condition. First of all, we need to gather more defi nitive information about the personality of Barchenko. Second, he needs to be accompanied by experienced controllers from the ranks of serious Communist Party comrades. Th ird, he needs to promise not to talk politics in Tibet and especially to avoid talking about relations between Tibet and other Eastern countries. Th is expedition demands large funds, which our
commissariat does not have. Finally, I am totally convinced that there had been no advanced civilization in prehistoric times in this area. Yet, I assume that an extra trip to
Lhasa will not harm but help strengthen the connections we are now establishing with Tibet.32
Chicherin’s ambiguous memo and the intrigues of Bokii’s colleagues eventually buried the Shambhala project. In all fairness, it would have been hard for
Bokii and Barchenko to succeed anyway. Th e whole idea of searching for remnants of an ancient civilization using OGPU money sounded naive. Even under the most favorable circumstances, the secret police would hardly have rushed to approve the “scientifi c” expedition in search of a mythological Shambhala. Chicherin and Bokii’s rivals within OGPU had better and more reliable plans or, as Trilisser put it, other ways to penetrate Inner Asia. Besides his
personal dislike of OGPU, Chicherin’s reason for not endorsing the secret police venture might have been simply that he did not want it to interfere with his own Tibetan scheme, already underway. Th e expedition organized by Chicherin was headed by a seasoned revolutionary, Sergei Borisov, an educated indigenous Oirot from the Altai, who worked as a consultant in his Eastern Department. Borisov, who helped win over Mongolia for Red Russia, was a trusted
man. As a native, he was expected to mingle well with Inner Asians. When Bokii and Barchenko approached Chicherin in 1925, Borisov was already on his way to Lhasa with a group of Bolshevik fellow travelers disguised as lama pilgrims. Borisov was not interested in retrieving ancient Shambhala wisdom. His goal was to probe anticolonial and anti-English sentiments in Tibet and to use, if possible, ancient prophecies to stir revolts in the Forbidden Kingdom. During
the same year Chicherin was pleasantly surprised to discover two other Tibet experts. In December 1924, the Russian émigré painter Nicholas Roerich, then living in New York and also striving to reach Shambhala, contacted the Soviet embassy in Berlin. Roerich had already made several trips to the Tibetan-Indian border. In exchange for Soviet support of his new expedition, the painter offered to monitor British activities in the area and to trumpet the
Bolshevik agenda by highlighting similarities between Buddhism and Communism. Last but not least, Chicherin already had at his disposal one more Tibet expert, Agvan Dorzhiev, the former Dalai Lama tutor, now a Bolshevik fellow traveler. Cast against Borisov, Dorzhiev, and Roerich, Barchenko and Bokii appeared as naive amateurs and dreamers. For Chicherin, Comintern (the Communist International), OGPU, Shambhala, and similar prophecies were the realm of
geopolitics rather than inward psycho-techniques that could perfect human minds. Clearly Chicherin dismissed as gibberish Barchenko and Bokii’s plan to go to Inner Asia and retrieve ancient wisdom that that might benefi t the Communist cause. White Water Land, Rabbi Schneersohn, and Beyond Having failed to penetrate Inner Asia, the core of legendary Shambhala and Agartha, the chief cryptographer
and his friend did not give up. Changing the geography of their quests, the seekers of high wisdom had to focus on domestic manifestations of that legend. Using Special Section funds, Bokii, on his own, began fi nancing Barchenko’s trips to various corners of the Soviet Union to gather information on esoteric teachings and groups: Tibetan Buddhists, shamanists, Sufi s, Russian Orthodox sectarians, Hasids, and others. All these activities made perfect sense
because Barchenko and his patron believed that all contemporary esoteric teachings were surviving splinters of the universal ancient science Barchenko made trips to southern Russia to contact Sufi s in the Crimean peninsula. Later, he brought their leader, Saidi-Eddini-Dzhibavi to Moscow and introduced him to Bokii. In 1925, he also made a long trip to the Altai, a mountain area in southern Siberia on the Mongolian, Russian, Kazakhstan, and Chinese
borders, to explore, among other things, shamanic drumming. He tried to fi nd out why and how the sound of drumming plunged people into altered states. Using his status
as an elite scholar, Barchenko confi scated several shaman drums from a local museum and brought them to Moscow for his experiments. In the Altai and also during another trip to Kostroma in central Russia, he met so-called Old Believers, Russian Orthodox sectarians who resisted attempts to modernize the
Orthodox Church and subject it to state control. One of the Old Believers’ tenets was hiding from the world in the wilderness and seeking a utopian dreamland called Belovodie (White Water). To the seekers, this folk utopia, which Barchenko certainly treated as a Russian version of Agartha and Shambhala, was a safe place with fertile ground and abundant crops, and especially a safe haven where people could worship freely and experience spiritual
bliss. In the Altai, Barchenko also investigated the legend about “subterranean folk” called the Chud—a possible link to Agartha. In some undefi ned ancient times, as the legend goes, the mysterious Chud, who faced constant oppression and harassment from authorities in this world, hid away underground by cutting wooden beams to support the roofs of their subterranean dwellings. From then on, the Chud lived an invisible life, resurfacing only when the
world faced a calamity. Generously funded by Bokii, the Red Merlin traveled all over the Soviet Union, shopping around for esoteric wisdom. Th e goal of his ventures was not only to collect splinters of the universal ancient science: Barchenko and his patron nourished an ambitious idea to convene sometime in 1927–28 in Moscow a congress of all esoteric groups and use them to advance the Communist agenda.33 In hindsight, this plan perfectly fi t the religious
reform movement sponsored in the 1920s by the Soviet government and its secret police. Th e goal of the Bolsheviks was to identify and bring together religious leaders who were ready to work closely with them to promote Communism, and to weed out those who insisted the government should keep its hands off religion and spirituality. Not much is known about the work of Barchenko for the Special Section between 1925 and the early 1930s. However, there is intriguing ancillary evidence from an independent source that shows how he
contacted people from esoteric and religious groups. Th is source is Rabbi Joseph Schneersohn (1880–1950), the head of the Chabad Lubavitch Hasidic movement. Th is prominent leader of traditional Jews, who resided in Leningrad in the early 1920s, defi ed the religious reform movement and stubbornly refused to put his community under the control of the Bolshevik secret police. Schneersohn remembered how on October 1, 1925, Barchenko asked him to
provide all available information about Kabala and the Star of David. Th e Red Merlin was convinced that “mastery of this knowledge could be a source of great power.”34 Barchenko most likely viewed Kabala as a manifestation of the universal ancient science. As a jack-of-all-spiritual-trades, he was not aware that he had picked the wrong man and the wrong tradition, unless the Kabala business was just an excuse on the part of his secret police patron to
get access to the stubborn rabbi. It is clear that traditional and conservative Hasidic teaching, which was alien to any universalism, could not provide any feedback to Barchenko’s “mystical international.” Trying to win Schneersohn’s trust, Barchenko fl ashed reference letters from several Moscow scholars
and confi ded to the rabbi that he “dealt with the occult (which was also based on mathematics) to reveal mysteries and predict the future.” He also disclosed that “he had already organized a group in Moscow to pursue this study, for which they received a governmental permit. Th ey were joined with keen
interest by many leading scholars.”35 Barchenko claimed that he wanted to learn from the rabbi the “great truth” that would help create and destroy social worlds—a spiritual technique for social engineering. Having been repeatedly harassed by Bolsheviks, the rabbi was very cautious, assuming that Barchenko
was either insane or a secret police provocateur. Th e latter assumption was not totally unfounded. Barchenko’s exciting tales about prospects of infl uencing and engineering the future through ancient science sounded to the rabbi like pure heresy. However Schneersohn did not want to antagonize a person with high connections, so he acted as if he was interested in working together and even assigned his young assistant Menachem Mendel to
translate excerpts from Hasidic literature to educate Barchenko about Kabala. As a gesture of gratitude, the Red Merlin sent Schneersohn several hundred golden rubles, a large amount of money.36 But the wise rabbi returned the money, saying that the translation work was free—a smart decision. In 1927, when
the rabbi was arrested by OGPU, interrogators tried to incriminate him for receiving payments for illegal religious activities. Barchenko’s persistent eff orts to engage the rabbi in occult work and his no-less-persistent attempts to convince him to accept money make one wonder if the Red Merlin was driven
only by spiritual curiosity. Could it also be that Barchenko was simultaneously acting as an OGPU agent provocateur, trying to set up a rabbi who refused to place himself under the “protection” of the secret police? Barchenko never tried to hide his links to the government. Of course, he never mentioned OGPU
—the name scared people away. However, directly and indirectly, he always stressed that he enjoyed offi cial support. And all his ventures required a lot of money. Overall, from 1925 to the early 1930s, Barchenko received about 100,000 rubles from Bokii38—a huge amount of money, roughly the equivalent of $200,000 at that time!