part0028

L ieutenant General Alexei Yuryevich Savin, Ph.D. was and is a major player in the Russian ESP Wars. General Savin has provided us with his story and perspective, which takes us into the Russian military’s psychic program. As with our other players in the ESP Wars, providing a bit of his background will further support the idea that people who are serious about the subject, especially when trying to apply ESP to real world scenarios, are not the “woo woo” types or “flakes” that the pseudo-skeptics and debunkers would have us believe.

Creative thinking can be said to be behind “thinking outside the box,” something extremely important in the advancements of Science and Technology. Psi can certainly be considered outside that “box.” Parapsychology in the West has found a direct correlation between forms of creativity and psi performance, so, it’s no real surprise that Alexei Savin was born into a musical family. His mother was a dramatic actress and singer and his father had perfect pitch and played several instruments. His father was more than that, as he was also gifted in mathematics and physics, trained at the N. A. Zhukovsky Air Force Academy, and became an aviation officer—eventually a Major General of the Soviet Air Forces.

Because of his father, Savin was well acquainted with the Army from childhood, and dreamed about military duty thanks to the postwar heroism of the Soviet Armed Forces inspiring him. “But, at the same time,” he said, “I remained immersed in the world of music, literature, fantasy, and theater, which prepared me psychologically to delve deeply into the world of human ideas, imagination, feelings and experiences.”

His childhood was a bit atypical, as he endured an unusual succession of illnesses. At age six, he was pronounced clinically dead after a botched appendectomy. He suffered a second apparent death from pneumonia at age seven, and experienced a near-death experience yet again when he was eight. “I complained to my grandmother about my poor health, and she said, ‘Beseech the Lord.’

“I began to address God in my thoughts and immediately felt a response. Not yet realizing what was entering my life, I put my faith in this almighty force. Ever since I was a child, I had wanted to peek beyond the brink separating life and death, and to understand what happens there. And this was how my first ESP experiences began.” After the third near-death experience, Savin felt that he could read other people’s minds, literally “pick up” on them, and clearly detect the flow of a person’s thoughts. “I began to sense new qualities in myself. Information about people’s destinies—when and why they would die—began coming to me.”

Given the above, it’s interesting to consider again how the phrase “Godless Communist” became so associated with American ideas about citizens of the Soviet Union. They may have had an extreme separation of Church and State, but the people were far from godless themselves .

Savin’s psychic experiences continued throughout his life. He once predicted the death of a good friend of his, the president of the USSR Sports Federation on Weightlifting. He came to visit at the Savin home, and when they shut the door after he left, Alexei shocked his parents by saying, “It’s a pity that ‘uncle’ Dima will die today, just before he gets home.” The words were indeed prophetic, as the man actually did die of a heart attack quite near his own house. Alexei’s parents tried to explain to him in every possible way that reading another person’s mind is no better than spying through a keyhole and that no one should predict when a person will die because this knowledge could rob him of a complete life by causing him to wait, in mental torment, for death.

Savin began paying more and more attention to what his intuition was telling him, and tried to follow these hunches, “recognizing that a certain force was guiding me in my life. I began to seek the meaning of my own life as well as that of all humanity from about the age of fifteen.” He read Plato and studied Plotinus’s cosmology. He considered questions like “What makes life worth living? At whose behest was this life granted to me? And what is life, anyway?” He searched for answers to these questions in philosophical treatises and in talks with his grandfather, who was a highly intelligent person and closest to him in character. “He explained to me, ‘The source of all that exists including our universe is thought, because all creation is conceived in and begins in thought. That’s the place to seek answers.’”

Unlike remote viewers in the US who were kept from harm’s way, the Russians viewers were on the front lines in the Chechnya campaign, and as such, required combat training in weapons, hand-to-hand combat and knowledge and skill at handling large military systems. When May asked Savin what about ‘remote’—as in remote viewing—did he not understand. From May’s perspective there was never a need to put viewers in harm’s way and keep them remote from the combat. Savin, however, said he found that it allowed the Russian viewer to focus more sharply! The following set of photographs illustrates the point. They were provided by General Savin.

The first result of his extensive inner work was a shift in attitude towards people.” I stopped being irritated by people who I thought behaved improperly, after I realized that if God created us all, each individual has his intended purpose and his path. From age seventeen, I understood that we should not separate people by race or nationality. Categories such as ‘good’ and ‘bad’ became relative and diffuse. The fact is the same person can behave differently—either as a villain or a hero—in different situations.” Wise thoughts for a teenager.

In 1964, he enrolled in the Sebastopol Naval School to become a naval aircraft radio operator. He immediately became interested in the physics of electromagnetic wave-particles, and began to look for deeper meaning there. “I could barely fathom what others perceived as axiomatic—how such an enormous amount of information could be transmitted along wires. More than thirty years later, I’ve come to the conclusion that from the standpoint of the laws of physics, this phenomenon still remains unexplained. It looks to me that the physicist Tesla is the only one who came close to understanding this, but I never did find a definitive answer to this question in those of his writings that I studied.”

After graduating from the naval school with the rank of lieutenant engineer, Savin was assigned to one of the best research institutes in Russia, known at that time as the Institute of Theoretical Cybernetics (today it is the Scientific Research Institute of Aviation Systems). The Institute was associated with the defense industry and was top secret. He worked there in military reception office #1054, where the work done at the Institute was inspected for quality assurance. The Institute was a refuge for many talented and unconventional thinkers. For example, cruise missiles were conceived and designed in the scientific research institute in the 1950s, long before similar work was begun in the US. These promising designs were kept on ice by the shortsightedness of the top Soviet military brass. As a result, they had to catch up with the Americans. An entire constellation of veritable science fanatics worked practically without breaks or days off within the walls of the institute. “They perceived science through the prism of systems analysis, the inter-relations and interactions of things, and this holistic worldview became the only one possible for me.”

During his 16 years working there, Savin completed his graduate work in systems analysis (probability theory, game theory, operations research, the analysis of large systems, etc.), wrote a number of scientific papers about the development of combat aviation, and worked in areas from designing combat aircraft to working out the smallest details of their performance. He wrote a dissertation but didn’t manage to defend it, mainly because he was offered the post of senior officer in the Armaments Directorate of the Defense Ministry of the USSR in 1986. He regretted leaving, but he couldn’t turn down such a tempting offer.

“I had the occasion to come across many interesting and unusual designs during my work at the Armaments Directorate. During the 1980s, for instance, I worked with a group that investigated torsion fields.” The idea of torsion fields is that a very rapidly rotating object creates a new kind of a field which is neither electromagnetic nor like any other known fields. “This is absolutely unique, and has not yet been studied by science. Many people tried to build flying saucers and generators based on this idea, but they didn’t achieve anything in particular.” Later on, when a special group of analysts responsible for the nation’s military aircraft was formed at the Ministry of Defense, Savin was included.

I t was at this point in the history of the formation of the Directorate on the Study and Development of Extraordinary Human Capabilities within the General Staff that Savin’s involvement with ESP Wars began.

In the late 1980s, a group of civilian psychics contacted the Minister of Defense with a proposal to collaborate. They claimed that they could find lost ships locate missing persons, diagnose illnesses and treat them. This letter found its way to the Chief of the Armaments Directorate. He gave Savin, in his capacity as analyst, the assignment to investigate the matter and write a report with commentary to the Deputy Minister of Defense and the Chief of the General Staff. He assembled a commission of medical doctors, physicists, and military and civilian scientists. They examined the psychics and determined that 80% of their claims were false, while 20% appeared to be genuine. He came to the conclusion that there were several extraordinarily gifted psychic individuals in this group, and informed the leadership of this .

After this report at the Ministry of Defense, he was sent to the Chief of the General Staff, Army General Mikhail Moiseyev. He listened to Savin carefully and suggested that Savin reorganize the department that worked on advanced and non-conventional technologies formerly directed by Colonel Bazhanov, and establish a sector within the General Staff with an area of focus to develop extraordinary human potential, including psi functioning. He provided Savin a staff of ten people, the rank of acting general, and a location with a communications link to the government. Legally it was formalized as Military Unit 10003, a department under the jurisdiction of the General Staff, and almost immediately people began calling this unit “the one thousand and three nights.” This was about the same size and support as the Star Gate project at its height.

He was allocated an official apartment near the Kropotkinskaya Metro station, which they later used for meetings, negotiations, and experiments they conducted without the hassle of obtaining clearance permissions for civilians to enter the General Staff building. It was in this building that Ed May and Larissa Vilenskaya would first meet Savin. In the several times that the American researchers met him, Savin was not in uniform, underscoring the the nature of the building as non-military.

“We also had a number of other ‘support bases’ in various military offices, scientific research institutes, and military and civil establishments. Rather, more precisely, we created these support bases as needed. We named the focus area of our work the ‘Hidden Human Potentialities and Super-Capabilities Development Program.’”

The goal they set was to develop extraordinary mental capabilities in students such as the ability to memorize great quantities of data, to work with large numbers and data streams in students, and to manifest exceptional creative potential and extrasensory capabilities. They also hoped to endow people with the maximal capacity for work and their bodies with unique physical capacities, which would enable the body to tolerate extreme conditions and mechanical impact without harm. Their intention was not simply to search for psychics and train them to obtain specific information, but to develop to a phenomenal level the potentialities with which nature endowed human beings.

At the same time, they searched for breakthrough trends in the creation of new types of weapons. “We arranged patent research through the Ministry of Education, gained access to all scientific papers, reports, dissertations, conference materials, and so on. Through the auspices of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs we had priority access to attend all the foreign exhibits taking place in our country, as well as the right to examine the exhibitors’ materials in detail.”

A very high level of secrecy was established for Savin’s department from the outset. All the information was reported only to the Chief of the General Staff (equivalent to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs in the Pentagon). He, in turn, tried to avoid letting the Minister of Defense in on the details of their activities as the Minister was always involved in a web of political intrigues, and it was important to them that politics not interfere with the work. “Marshal Yazov was the Minister of Defense when the area of focus of my research in Military Unit 10003 was being determined. He listened to a report about our proposals and, unable to hold back, said, ‘You can make a person believe in the very devil himself. Get out of my sight!’”1

So they followed this order. “We were so successful at disappearing that almost a decade went by before the first vague rumors about our work filtered through to the press. The people and organizations with whom we worked knew only what was specifically related to our interaction. Certainly, the commanders of the service branches and their chiefs of staff were informed about our research in general terms, but even they did not know the details.” This parallels the US program, which for some time was not on anyone’s radar for similar reasons.

According to unwritten bureaucratic rules in Russia, a person who re-appears amidst the top brass is regarded with some degree of suspicion, “yet surprisingly, I was immediately accepted and given assistance in everything,” said Savin. “I was subordinate only to Moiseyev in the General Staff, and in due course got to know him well.” A clever, powerful, and talented man, Moiseyev was able to gather outstanding people and strong individuals around him. He generally could grasp situations instantly, and was good at sizing up the new and the unknown.

It was there in the General Staff that in 1989 Savin began to systematically study extraordinary human potential and look for the mechanisms which, when understood, could make an ordinary human into a genius through developing his intellectual, physical and psychical potential. “My reasoning was, ‘If an entire spectrum of extraordinary abilities exists, this means that mechanisms of their step-by-step formation also exist.’” History is full of examples of how generals have won battles with much smaller armies than those of their opponents. Thus, it is possible to win any campaign by creating a company of grandmasters: “such men, men with extraordinary minds, will beat their enemies in any battle, even in adverse conditions.”

Moiseyev was very pleased with the idea, and he gave Savin’s program a green light. At his order, several military organizations as well as one of the administrations of the leading Air Force Institutes were made subordinate to the unit. However, the problem of financing arose immediately. They began to handle it according to the standard model in the military bureaucracy and ran into difficulties at every step. “The accepted bureaucratic system of financing research in our nation was so clumsy and inflexible that it could take months, even years, to arrive at decisions, which cooled the ardor of any enthusiast.” To raise his subordinates’ spirits, Savin constantly shared his most optimistic plans for the future. “However, I myself felt nagging unease.”

Savin had the incredible luck to meet Valentin Pavlov, the Finance Minister of the USSR — the most knowledgeable minister in the Soviet government. He helped Savin’s group submit their documents properly and to secure the initial financing for their work. They were very grateful to him and did not expect anything further from him.

Then suddenly Valentin Pavlov became the Prime Minister, the second man in charge in the nation after Gorbachev. “We found out about it in the evening while watching television, and at 8 o’clock the next morning he was already at our office with a crate of vodka.” Savin added that there was a campaign against drunkenness in the Soviet Union at the time, and a decree was issued to outlaw drinking alcoholic beverages at the work place. In spite of this, “Pavlov took a bottle from the crate, put it on the table and said to me, ‘Gorbachev won’t find out and the Lord will forgive us. Let’s break the rule and celebrate my promotion.’ It sounded funny coming from the mouth of a Prime Minister. We had a drop to drink, and Pavlov said, ‘Give me a couple of months, and all your documents will be signed.’” Pavlov also requested that Savin and his group organize an exhibit of their work so as to visually present the main concepts, methods and means of their work with people. Pavlov was very interested in how to tap additional human potential, especially with regard to the intellect.

Savin put together a small exhibit. Within two months (record time for such a request), the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR issued a resolution that granted a special place for his research area within the weapons program, with excellent financing. Moreover, Pavlov created a system that would operate in any future political landscape, because it was included in a special part of the budget, which received financing during any administration and in any economic situation. This would be analogous to the “black budgets” in the US government.

Savin’s annual budget (in terms of hard currency) was approximately 4 million dollars and remained at this level all through the 1990s and early 2000s, in spite of inflation and fluctuations in the exchange rate. This money was allocated for research and office overhead only. It was not used to pay for employees’ salaries, which continued to be paid by the General Staff. Savin said, “It would have cost tens of millions dollars to establish a similar institution in the US Army.” In fact, however, it was approximately the same for Star Gate, which included more overhead for private companies such as SRI International and Science Applications International Corporation.

“‘Now, let’s create a super-elite, which will pull the nation out of this pile of crap,’ the Prime Minister said to me.”

Together they formulated the mission of creating a new elite in the nation—super-advisors to the government, the Central Committee of the CPSU, and the Ministry of Defense. It was decided that the process be broken up into stages. At first, they planned to create an elite group of 100 to 120 people and to base their training at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. “Our choice of the MIPT as a base organization was not a random one. This institution had created several successful and remarkable programs, and a number of its staff and most distinguished students had already taken our preliminary super-training course. The scientific directors were Nikolai Karlov, the Director of the Institute, a man of great erudition and an intellectual of the highest caliber, and Professor Igor Petrov, a broad-minded man and brilliant systems analyst.” They took up the development and evaluation of the new training programs with great enthusiasm. They chose the most successful students, and began to fine-tune the conceptual part of the program together with these “talented guys,” refining it to perfection. “This was mainly what we did during the first stage of our work.”

Pavlov recommended many talented men to Savin. “Moiseyev helped, and I also scouted them out around the entire country in institutions of higher learning, in industry and in the army. We met the Prime Minister regularly to discuss our work, and we talked a lot about life and politics.” Pavlov always listened carefully, and took many notes. He did not spare himself, he wore himself out working, and tried to do everything better than everyone else. This is why he completely overexerted himself when he became Prime Minister. Once, when he had only half an hour of free time because he had urgent matters coming up, he dropped in at Savin’s office. “He looked exhausted, and I suggested that he recline on my office cot to rest. He stretched out and immediately fell asleep, and was so tired that he even began to snore. Exactly half an hour went by, and I was already thinking of waking him up, when he suddenly jumped up and cried out, ‘Lena, Lena, bring me hot coffee.’ (Lena was the name of my secretary). He had such a remarkable sense of responsibility and timing that his internal alarm clock woke him up precisely within half an hour.”

If fate had given him the chance to work longer, he would have accomplished a great deal. “But with the downfall of the Soviet Union and Pavlov’s arrest, our undertaking was never realized.” Pavlov turned out to be an active member of the coup plotters’ group (GKChP), and was incarcerated for several years. Pavlov came out of prison broken psychologically, drastically cutting back on his social life and virtually disappearing from view. “This remarkable man died in 2003.”

W hile the main objective was training grandmasters of military art, the General Staff gave General Savin several military operational tasks, one of which was to investigate what ESP can directly accomplish that would be of benefit to their Armed Forces. “The factors of highest priority were ESP espionage and defenses against it. The area of psychic coercion, that is, psychotronic weapons, was treated separately.” Given the rumors running around the Western media that the Soviets/Russians were working on psychic mind control, this is especially interesting.

They trained groups in the Navy and Air Force to deal with the operative surveillance of other nations’ military forces. After doing several studies of defenses against psi influence, it was concluded that it is practically impossible to cram a program into a foreign president’s head that he would carry out with obedience. “Many conditions that were exceedingly difficult to set up are required for such coercion,” said Savin, “including a special relaxed psychological state, special circumstances, and time. A president is usually a powerful, strong-willed person, who is monitored by security guards, and who himself is capable of brainwashing anyone he wishes—after all it’s not without reason that he became president. So we stopped working on this matter and transferred it to the President’s Secret Service and the Federal Security Service.”

Naturally, not everyone believed in or supported Savin’s group as Prime Minister Pavlov had. They traveled to Zvyozdnyi Gorodok (Star City) in March 1990 when cosmonaut-pilot Vladimir Shatalov was head of the cosmonaut crew at the time. They began telling Shatalov about ESP, and how it could be applied in training cosmonauts. But Shatalov announced that he didn’t believe in it, and suggested that other topics be discussed. “Then one of my students said, ‘Please, place a pencil on your open palm and bend your wrist downwards.’ Shatalov did, and the pencil slid from his hand in exact conformity with the laws of physics. Then my student stared at Shatalov and said again, ‘Quickly put the pencil on your palm, but don’t bend your wrist yet … Now bend it!’ And the pencil stuck to his palm—it didn’t slide off! Shatalov shook the pencil off his hand fearfully, as if it was a wasp, and then he shouted, ‘I believe you! I really do!’” As an aside to our western readers, while this is not a good example of psychic functioning, as there are several other possible explanations, according to Savin, the demonstration convinced Shatalov.

Shatakov never did allow the group to work with cosmonauts as he turned out to be psychologically unprepared to do so. This was in spite of the timing, when the “Energiya” scientific-industrial conglomerate, which built space ships, regarded ESP very favorably, and even though a number of physicians who worked at the cosmonauts’ training center were very interested in and enthusiastic about the proposals. But Savin did transfer one of these physicians to his department to study a system of diagnosing ESP abilities using Voll’s method of electro-acupuncture diagnosis from the Federal Republic of Germany.

M ilitary hospitals, the Institute of Aviation and Space Medicine, institutes of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences (primarily the Institute of Normal Physiology), as well as the Institute for Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology, the Brain Institute, and others were powerful allies in supporting and developing their investigations. Savin’s department had to increase its medical staff, develop a laboratory base, and create work positions in some clinics and scientific centers. They were able to establish a fairly good methodical and laboratory base at the Institute of Normal Physiology, where detailed studies of the properties of water under various conditions and influences were conducted under the direction of the eminent Academician Sudakov. “In scientific and philosophical terms, the results of this research can only be called groundbreaking,” said Savin.

Under Moiseyev, Savin began working with military lawyers, investigators from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and KGB officers. Working with these people added a colorful dimension to their work, and issues of solving crimes and ensuring national security gained an important place in the work as well as providing an increase in their authority. “We often used ESP in solving crimes, and my own extrasensory abilities were also honed here. In addition to doing analytical and research work, I began to heal people, and to diagnose at a distance. I slept for 2-3 hours a day and worked all the time, because I realized that to become a leader in exploring human potential, you had to attain a certain level yourself.”

In all fairness, it should be said that the road to achieving success wasn’t easy, and that fate at times presented Savin and his group with such problems that only their team’s ability to do the impossible allowed them to ably extricate themselves from the most difficult situations. Mainly these were related to solving crimes, developing prognoses of political and economic conditions, and using non-traditional methods to determine the personal traits of individuals who had come to the attention of the security services and law enforcement agencies. These and many similar tasks were not among the team’s direct responsibilities, but the most rigorous demands were made on them since the leadership justly considered that Savin had gathered people endowed with miraculous abilities under his banner. Since the cost of a mistake was very high, such work consumed a great deal of psychic and mental energy.

M any of the situations they found themselves in were complicated. In the fall of 1990, Savin’s good friend Valerii Ochirov, a Hero of the Soviet Union and Deputy of the USSR Supreme Soviet, called and suggested a trip to his native Kalmykia. The situation had radically worsened there: mafia bosses, thieves and criminals had surfaced from the underworld, and groups of thugs had begun carving up the republic into spheres of influence. The law enforcement and legislative organizations were in need of serious help.

Savin received a green light from the Chief of the General Staff and had an analysis team, including several psychics, flown down to Elista, the capital city of Kalmykia. Ochirov and Savin drove there and quickly got down to business. After clarifying a few points, Savin’s team commenced their work. The precision and correctness with which his team of officers assessed the situation impressed the KGB staff, and they gladly helped the team .

“We worked for two days, and my analysts and psychics penetrated the main criminal network of Kalmykia’s capital. Using our ESP techniques my operatives singled out the especially dangerous criminals from the lists of suspects and even from the lists of ordinary residents. They also located on maps the places where these criminals secretly lived, met, and stashed weapons. The local KGB and police immediately arrested several leaders of the organized crime world.”

Savin’s psychics and the local Elista security officers did a first-rate job. The criminal world of Kalmykia lost its leaders and was smashed to pieces, which were then carefully gathered up by the police and security services. The journey back was quite nerve-wracking for Savin and Valerii—they drove back to Moscow in Valerii’s car without an escort, and the criminals set up a real car chase after the two, “just like in the movies,” said Savin. “But we survived and everything turned out well: the leadership of the republic restored law and order.”

Another memorable case in the early 1990s came somewhat as a result of the Chernobyl disaster. “A very high priority was put on developing ESP techniques to control nuclear installations remotely, and I was involved in this work.” Savin was in his office working on testing a new technique, when suddenly information came to him via an extrasensory channel that a nuclear explosion similar to the one in Chernobyl would occur in Great Britain, specifically in Glasgow. “I dismissed this information, attributing it to my fatigue. But the next day I experienced the same feelings of impending disaster in Glasgow. This time I used another technique, a traditional one. I began moving my hand over a map, and my arm was practically forced to the area where Glasgow was located on the map.”

There was no time to get this information to the British through the official channels of the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. These were not quick routes to accomplish this, and bureaucratic delays could cost thousands of lives. “I also had no right to contact the British Embassy due to my top-secret work and loyalty oaths that I had signed. Fortunately, I had a friend who had business connections with the British. I called him and asked him to urgently contact them to tell them that there would be a nuclear catastrophe in Glasgow. It might be an explosion on a submarine or an electric power station might blow up. They needed to check everything and try to prevent it.”

Savin received a call from his contact the next day to report that he had gone to the British Embassy and passed on Savin’s information. Naturally, he didn’t explain that the information was received via ESP, but rather simply cited “sources within the Russian General Staff.” Thus, to the British the information seemed like a gesture of goodwill, a present from Russian intelligence. “I think that this compelled the embassy officials to take it seriously and immediately pass it on to the proper agencies in Great Britain.”

Some time passed, and Savin was beginning to forget about this incident when his friend called again and told him the most amazing news. “It turned out that he had been invited to a reception at the British Embassy a few days before. They treated him graciously there and gave him an expensive present, without addressing the matter directly, but obviously expressing their gratitude. There could be no other reason for this treatment besides the information we had conveyed, and so we concluded that what we had passed on about the impending explosion was true, and that a disaster had been averted in time.” The natural pride that a psychic might feel from picking up correct information “paled in comparison to the joy and enormous relief that I felt. The Chernobyl disaster had brought so much grief and misfortune to our people, God forbid that such a thing should befall anyone else!”

However, his joy was overshadowed by an obsessive thought: “why couldn’t our government have conducted work like this earlier and avoided the Chernobyl accident? Was it a case of the Russian proverb ‘a muzhik (peasant) doesn’t cross himself until after the thunder rolls?’ What a pity!”

S ometimes in the course of routinely scheduled everyday affairs, extremely alarming and serious situations would arise seemingly out of nowhere. In one instance, Moiseyev summoned Savin and asked him to investigate the seismic situation on Kamchatka, using the psychics on Savin’s team. He needed a prediction in connection with upcoming maneuvers. A little while later, Savin reported to him, indicating where and when earthquakes would occur on Kamchatka and how high on the Richter scale they would be. Moiseyev summoned the general who was responsible for this region, and related this information. The general, instead of passing it on cautiously over the phone, sent an encrypted message to Kamchatka requiring that precautionary measures be taken. The encrypted message was disseminated around the military units. But instead of taking preventive measures, people began to leave the places mentioned in the report in droves. Genuine panic broke out.

This was at the beginning of 1991, and actions like these were considered crimes against the Party and the people. “They called from the office of the Minister of Defense and told me that if there were no earthquakes, I would not only bid farewell to the General Staff, but would be tried as a panic-monger and irresponsible rabble-rouser.” The situation was exacerbated even more by phone calls with questions and threats from the Central Committee, the government, the Academy of Sciences, and other established institutions. The General that had sent the encrypted message also called Savin to calm him down a bit, if one can call it that. “He told me: ‘Tough it out, Alexei. Things are looking bad for you, they couldn’t be worse.’”2

Savin understood that being a prophet is a rather dangerous business. If the earthquake did not occur, he would be dealt with severely as a lesson to others. “And so on the appointed day, I stayed at work; I didn’t go home. It was already midnight, then one o'clock … by two o’clock I dozed off in an armchair, and then phone call came in on the Kremlin line. I picked up the receiver and heard the General’s hysterical voice, ‘Everything was exactly as you said, Alexei, it went ka-boom there!’”

He felt genuine relief, but on the other hand, he felt sorry for the people who were affected by the earthquake. Everything happened as he had predicted; earthquakes occurred in the areas (they were off only by several kilometers), at the predicted magnitudes and times. “Then the big brass began to harass me again, practically accusing me of sabotage, saying that I was a saboteur, not a patriot, and that I had concealed a method of determining earthquakes … All told—it was a madhouse. If the Soviet Union had not collapsed at that time, I would have been in serious trouble.”

P eople are interested in their futures, not only the foreseeable future but the distant future as well. The farther ahead we try to look, the more anxiety we feel, and this anxiety is increased by the thought of death. For many—though certainly not all—the older a person is, the more concerned he or she becomes about death. After all, the question, “What will happen to me after I die?” has both disturbed and captivated people since ancient times. “This thought is exceedingly important not only from a general philosophical standpoint,” said Savin, “but also from a strictly practical military one. We considered one of our main challenges to be eliminating the fear of death from the minds of people and explaining to them what lies beyond the boundary of earthly life. To achieve this, we conducted an intriguing experiment.”

In June 1990, with the help of the KGB, Savin’s group tested approximately 100 volunteers and selected about 30 who were good hypnotic subjects. “We put them into a deep trance, and asked them to talk about their past lives. They began describing who they had been in their past lives, when they had lived and in what countries.” Their descriptions sometimes went into great detail, down to the names of villages, streets, and house numbers. The data was analyzed and then sent to the appropriate departments of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and to intelligence agencies, asking them to check out the authenticity of the information. It turned out that more than 10 of the 30 people had provided data that correctly matched old records and birth certificates. They’d provided their exact past given and family names, and correctly described the places and houses where they had lived in previous centuries. “We virtually eliminated any tricks because the questionnaires were carefully thought out. The experiment was carefully controlled by scholars, physicians, and military and security personnel, and all the information about the subjects being tested was examined in detail by the all-powerful KGB.”3

On the philosophical front, this study brought up a working hypothesis about the transmigration of souls. This strictly conducted scientific experiment became the final point in Savin’s reasoning about whether the soul and reincarnation exist. “They certainly do exist. Moreover, the soul evolves as it passes from body to body. This makes it possible to understand that in fact there is no death, and that there is no tragedy in dying. There are only changes in the form of consciousness.”

As an aside, while this may have been accepted by Savin and others as proof of survival of consciousness (or the soul), in the West, parapsychologists and philosophers argue whether or not there may be an ESP explanation (often called “super-ESP” or “super-psi”) for such detailed information on ostensible past lives.

I n the beginning of the 1990s there was another ESP research and operations center in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, headed by Colonel Vyacheslav Zvonikov, a Ph.D. and professor in the medical sciences. The Ministry of Internal Affairs used psychics to solve crimes, but Savin’s techniques of selecting people were different. Savin considered that the less bio-energy a person radiates, the better he can pick up information, and therefore, his pupils did not give themselves away through the bio-energy they radiated. Zvonikov approach was different, as he thought that the greater a psychic’s personal bio-energy was, the better the outcome. He tested this experimentally, kept records and made reports. He traveled to Tibet and to South America, and worked in remote areas with people there.

There was similar research being conducted in the former KGB (the FSB today) under the direction of Major General Nikolai Sham. They studied parapsychology and sought opportunities to use people with phenomenal abilities in intelligence and counter-espionage. General Sham also coordinated the joint work of the three security agencies.

The work of Savin’s group was gradually becoming known and at one point, several serious offers from various places came in all at once. There was a proposal to create a training area to cultivate new qualities in pilots and discover their additional potential, and to test methods of working with people at the Flight Academy in Monino. The Academy of Rocket Troops, the Military-Political Academy, and both the Ministry of Internal Affairs and counter-intelligence also became interested in the work. “I started to refine my techniques on these experimental platforms,” said Savin.

In the fall of 1991, General Vladimir Lobov replaced Moiseyev as the Chief of the General Staff. His exceptional mind, perceptiveness, and expertise were well known in military circles. “Working with such a man was both interesting and challenging,” said Savin. “I came to give him a report about our research, and found myself in an extraordinary situation. After listening to me for about three minutes, Lobov broke in and began to lecture me brilliantly on the subject of my research. His erudition shocked me, and I could not hide my admiration. Lobov saved me several months of work by giving it structure and clearly defining the main areas of research within the context of new circumstances.”

In 1991, under Lobov, Savin was awarded the military rank of General and a green uniform in place of a black naval uniform. At the time he found out about the rank assignment, he commissioned an admiral’s uniform of the kind seen on navy aircraft, but then he was suddenly informed that he had to go to the presentation in a green general’s uniform. There was no time left to make a new uniform, and in order to appear before the Minister of Defense for promotion to a rank, he was obliged to “undress” some of the other generals, borrowing a jacket from one, a shirt from another, and trousers from a third. “Finding a jacket my size proved impossible, and I was presented to the minister in a jacket two sizes larger than my own, with the sleeves hanging down my sides.” This newly minted general looked like a recruit who had put on a military uniform for the first time. “Lobov, who attended the presentation, could not suppress a smile and winked at our guys: ‘Our so-called clairvoyant could not predict the color of his own uniform—he really slipped up!’” The Chiefs of Staff chuckled amiably.

I n 1992 at the request of Marshal Shaposhnikov, the Minister of Defense, Army General Victor Samsonov replaced Lobov. He was a very dry, rigid person, and a great lover of order. Many generals said that the blood in their veins ran cold as they approached his office. When Savin first came to him with a report, Samsonov listened to him without showing any emotion or saying anything, but his opinion was apparent in his eyes. Savin’s perception was on the order of “Well done, fella, you’re working, you’re doing your duty, and not asking for anything. Proceed in this manner.” He did, and as before, no one prevented Savin from continuing his work.

One of their military program’s main areas of focus was the development of a large-scale program to train service men and the personnel of law enforcement and counter-espionage agencies in the use of “our methodology to develop extrasensory abilities.” Specifically, they formed several groups of officers from the Navy and Air Force. Operational Naval surveillance of the locations of missile-carrying submarines of potential enemies is very important for naval intelligence. It is very difficult to detect these boats, as they may lie on the ocean bottom silently, doing their best not to reveal themselves. “We did some experiments, and after our psychics underwent special training, it became apparent that they could locate these boats on a map in real time with extreme precision. We trained several groups for the Navy which continue to work there even today.”

The aviation people trained by Savin’s group located ground targets both on maps and on-site during flights with about 80% accuracy. The officer-psychics in operational surveillance groups had detailed knowledge of the state of health, personal traits, and even the attitudes toward service of practically every crewmember flying American strategic jets. Using photographs, they could also determine the technical condition of many forms of US combat equipment and the level of readiness of the major types of weapons. “ Interestingly, the guys they trained, even after they retired, proved themselves to be equally brilliant in civilian life—for example, they began to diagnose illnesses and to treat people.” The Ministry of Defense film production studio shot a couple of documentary films for internal use about this work. These films were later declassified, and several excerpts were shown on central TV (and shown to both May and Vilenskaya on one of their visits to Russia).

I n 1992, Savin’s group put together a group of “lifers” who were to be discharged in six months. “They were mostly smart-alecky, cynical ‘bullies’—in Russian military jargon ‘grand-dads.’ Half a year after we began working with them, they were unrecognizable,” said Savin. “They had begun writing poems, bringing flowers to the woman who was head of the project, and had given up smoking. They began showing some manners, and their reactions to disturbing events mellowed. After six lessons in self-regulation, the boys walked on broken glass and burning coals, and felt no pain at all when their bodies were stuck with needles. Lessons in the martial arts, memory training, speed-reading, and language immersion were conducted on an experimental basis.”

Savin went on to say that “everything went off with flying colors, and we were able to streamline our techniques. By this time, I myself had already learned to tune into the data field, and I began to fine-tune this technique with the students. Would a healthy, spiritually and intellectually developed individual ever harm anyone? On the contrary, he will extricate himself from a difficult situation and help others. By the time these men left the service, it was impossible to imagine that they would engage in bullying as their personal cultural and spiritual levels no longer permitted such behavior.”

He concluded with the statement, “This is a fine example of how ESP solved the hazing problem in the Army.”

Vegetarianism and alcohol-free living were the rule in Savin’s groups. “Alcohol and meat block the brain and clog blood vessels. They block the flow of energy, and make tuning into the information field difficult. I myself have not eaten meat for 30 years. It was sometimes necessary to drink alcohol; there was no escaping it. Business negotiations, the conferral of ranks and awards, and much else traditionally require booze. It’s an idiotic tradition, but it must be followed for the sake of the cause. You don’t have to be a psychic to realize that the sooner we get rid of this tradition, the better for our nation’s affairs. And the best place to begin is for everyone to introduce his own reasonable personal limits. ”

Such beliefs and practices also surround some psychic development techniques in the West, though there are also techniques and practices that contradict the necessity for dropping meat and alcohol from the diet to bring out ESP experiences and abilities. In some cultures around the world, the consumption of alcohol is part of the ramp up for psychic performance and eating meat is said to “ground” the practitioner. However, for Savin’s people, this seems to have worked well according to his reports.

“But let’s return to our history,” said Savin. General Victor Dubynin, a “very intelligent man and profound thinker,” soon replaced Samsonov at the General Staff. Dubynin was able to find a strong feature in every officer’s character and to structure things so that each officer showed his strong suit. Unfortunately, he had an advanced case of liver cancer, and it was impossible to save him. “We were stunned—what kind of apparition haunted those who occupied the office of the Chief of the General Staff? If, in the past, people were simply sent off to retirement, now it was a matter of death. This could turn you into a believer in mysticism, even if you had no desire to become one.”

According to Savin, “Cancer is essentially a mystical illness. It is often called incurable, even though there are thousands of people in the world who have completely recovered from cancer, including some without any help from physicians. Very often unconventional methods are exactly what heal people of cancer. In any case, cancer is a spiritual test, and a means for a person to revise his views about life and the world.”

One of Savin’s good friends was Nikolai Yegorov, the President’s Chief of Staff in the mid-90s. “He obviously possessed psi abilities. It was apparent that he had special intuition and I think that he had an unconscious intuitive channel of communication with the higher dimensions.” He was a very interesting person, loved art, and was a gifted speaker. Savin developed incredible rapport with him. The State Committee on Science and Technology, called the “Council of the Wisest,” was created under him at Savin’s recommendation. The Committee’s objective was to introduce the most progressive ideas to industry, science, and the social spheres. Savin’s team specifically proposed a number of these ideas and decisions.

Yegorov had cancer, and he was in severe pain. “We might have cured him, but he did not believe in his own recovery, and this is the most important factor for success. It is a pity to lose such good people, but he had probably fulfilled his duty in this life, and that was why he was taken from us.” Savin went on to wonder, how much Yegorov could have accomplished in close contact with the eternally drunk Yeltsin in the eternal swamp of dirty intrigues? “So what happened in the outer world was that cancer stood in the path of positive changes in our nation. Actually, it just wasn’t the right time. ”

In December 1992, General Mikhail Kolesnikov replaced Dubynin as Chief of the General Staff. One curious point worth mentioning in the context of psi functioning is that although Kolesnikov was a smoker, when it came to his olfactory sense, his ability to detect scents rivaled that of a hound. He could determine people’s traits purely based on their body odors and had certain associations between odors and human traits that only he understood—most likely, they were linked through images. If he felt that “something was off” with the way a person smelled, he would not get up to greet the person. The man was practically a lie detector and seemingly could even determine a person’s mood by his scent. Was there a psi component to his perception? Or was this something similar to the ability of some dogs trained to smell changes in human blood sugar levels (“diabetes dogs”) or presence of cancer (“cancer dogs”) we’ve seen of late in the West?

Kolesnikov was informed in the most general terms about the scope of Savin’s work and regarded it rather skeptically. During the first report that was delivered to him, Kolesnikov told Savin that the decision had been made that there was no place for him in the General Staff. He recommended that Savin see General-Colonel Stanislav Petrov, who was head of the Chemical Defense Troops. “In a very curt manner, Kolesnikov told me ‘Petrov is a Ph.D. in the sciences, you speak the same language. You’ve already made the rank of general, so you won’t lose anything when you leave the General Staff.’ I had already turned to leave, but Kolesnikov noticed some videocassettes that I was carrying.” The following conversation was described by Gen. Savin.

“What’s that?” Kolesnikov asked.

Savin replied, “Films about expanding human potential and working with ESP in the armed forces.”

“Are they long?”

“No,” said Savin. “The first film is about seven minutes, the second one, twelve.” (He used a little guile in that response, as the first film was 15 minutes long, and the second one 35.)

“Well, all right, play the short one,” Kolesnikov said reluctantly. He eased himself into an armchair and watched without saying a word.

At the end of the film, Kolesnikov got up, got a bottle of cognac and two glasses from a sideboard and suggested, “Now then, shall we have a drink?”

“I won’t refuse,” replied Savin.

“I thought that you didn’t drink,” Kolesnikov teased.

“It’s no sin to break with tradition on an occasion like this,” Savin countered .

“What’s the occasion?” Kolesnikov slyly narrowed his eyes.

“On the occasion of your decision to keep me on in the General Staff.”

“Oh, these psychic prophets! What else can you say?”

“That you’re going to support us.”

“Looks like I’ll have to,” Kolesnikov broke into a smile, “since it’s already in the stars…”

They drank their glasses of cognac, and Savin showed him the second film. Kolesnikov watched the entire film very carefully, and concluded, “I’ve made my decision. Stay on with me, and train at least five such unusual people for me.” He instructed his personal assistant to receive Savin without an appointment at any time, day or night. There were only ten people whom he stood up to greet and with whom he shook hands, and Savin was now one of them. Later they began to understand one and other so well that they spoke in allegorical terms rather than in plain language, so that Savin’s reports to Kolesnikov often bewildered those of Savin’s associates who were present.

Kolesnikov’s position as Chief of the General Staff office was very beneficial for Savin’s work. He doubled the staff under Savin and intensively began to refine Savin’s techniques of training military personnel. Savin had 25 full-time people who worked in his department and a multitude of people and organizations working on contract with them, which included academies, learning centers, scientific research institutes, troop units, and many civilian educational and scientific institutions. To top it off, there was no getting rid of the increasing number of new people who wanted to participate in this interesting work.

Pilots and missile specialists were among the first groups to begin the training. For example, the head of the Peter the Great Academy of Strategic Missile Forces assigned a group of over seventy people to Savin’s department after releasing them from their other studies. “Working with them was not easy at first. Sitting in front of me were the ‘children from the outskirts of town,’ who had lived poor, boring and often semi-criminal lives in small provincial towns and, as a result, were full of cynicism. To arouse their curiosity and encourage their interest, I chose psychologically appropriate tactics, brought in flamboyant students and displayed their psi powers, and I told stories about unusual research. While I can’t say that I achieved it right away, I did manage to tune these suspicious students to the right wavelength. I attuned their brains, so to speak, to the stream of energy coming from the Earth’s data field.”

The cadets were divided into groups, and Savin’s students began to work with them. The initial results stunned even the General, while the head of the Academy, unable to restrain his amazement, impulsively wrote a letter of gratitude to Kolesnikov. “The cadets discarded their cynicism and began thinking about what is bright and good. They began treating their associates humanely, they started going to church and writing decent poetry and prose. The inner source of their creativity had been awakened. Their minds began to work better, their ability to think became more powerful, and their physical health also improved.” Many cadets were surprised to find themselves diagnosing illnesses and apparently healing people.

“Something had happened to their brains. ‘Hooking up’ to the information field added new qualities to their thought process,” said Savin. “Many of them stopped drinking and smoking. Nearly all of them became philosophers, reflecting on Russia’s destiny, and on the Armed Forces’ place and the place of each individual in that destiny. It was very similar to a real-life transformation to a ‘new man’ to which Marxist-Leninist ideology had aspired, or more accurately, had declared that it aspired to. In a sense, these cadets became missionaries of enlightened ideas, which they then carried to the masses—the soldiers and officers with whom they served. This was my super-mission, and I had fulfilled it.”

Savin remembers that during this period Kolesnikov, after seeing the results of the work, once said that” the world would not be won by weapons, but by a qualitatively new human being who would be close to God, a human with cosmic consciousness.” It’s one thing to hear language and ideas like this from a philosopher or a priest, but quite another thing to hear it from the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Russia.

Soon after, Kolesnikov gave Savin and his team permission to meet with their American colleagues, Edwin May and Joe McMoneagle, who Savin now counts as his friends. “Edwin and Joe were involved in ESP research in a joint US military intelligence-CIA program, and until just recently, were still considered our adversaries, practically our enemies. However, Kolesnikov turned out to be capable of transcending the existing leaden stereotypes and coming to a new level of understanding of global problems. It was gradually becoming clear to all of us that if we developed an ideology that corresponded to the highest ideals, on the one hand, we would prevent all wars because people would begin to live according to different set of morals and, on the other hand, that we ourselves would wake up to the meaningful priorities that could unite and ‘conquer’ the world. And that it was a very good thing that we had these trends in Russia and that they were emanating from Russia, because they represent the philosophy of the future.”

In other words, it seems that working to use ESP for war had an impact on the practitioners, pushing them to use such developments to end war. This is an extremely important point to make, that a better understanding of ourselves as human—which some would say would be an “evolved viewpoint”—would lead to peaceful coexistence. We all hope for that .

D uring this time in the early 1990s, Savin worked with his team to put together a conference on contemporary cosmology at Moscow State University in which about 600 philosophers took part. This conference aroused interest, but he could sense that Russian philosophers were not yet ready for these issues—everyone was still too blinded by Marxist-Leninist philosophy. Seeing the need to shatter these entrenched views, Savin summarized a great deal of material, ranging from Buddhist philosophy and Plato to Tolstoy and the Russian cosmologists, and wrote the book The Foundations of a New Cosmology, which served as a textbook in their studies as well as the basis of his future doctoral dissertation in philosophy.

In 1993, their project was picking up speed and everything looked optimistic, but at that same time, the threatening events overtook the nation, and the realities of daily life forced Savin to alter his plans drastically. The Parliament burned in the autumn of 1993. Law enforcement agencies became overwhelmed searching for thugs of all stripes, weapons and drugs caches, and exposing the secret hideouts of terrorists and the dead drops and transfer sites of the foreign agents who were flooding the nation. Moscow had to be cleaned up. Kolesnikov ordered Savin to set aside his primary work and put all efforts into helping KGB officers and the police. While Savin’s men were searching for criminals, arms caches, and terrorists’ meeting places, they were training counterspies and criminal investigation personnel, and creating “advanced” teams for each of the security agencies.

General Kvashnin, who held one of the top positions in the General Staff, was entrusted with coordinating the teamwork. “He acknowledged our capabilities and the operational efficiency of our work, while I was impressed by his ability to concentrate during emergencies, his unconventional thinking and capacity for work. This was when we became friends. The police and counter-espionage personnel appreciated our participation and sent laudatory testimonials to Kolesnikov.” A little while later, they wound up on the pages of the Moskovskii Komsomolets newspaper and, unexpectedly for Savin’s group, many people saw the true magnitude of the work they had done.

S avin spent most of 1994 working on these objectives, and then, in late 1994, the Chechen War began. Savin understood the real reasons for this war. “It was essentially manipulation by the oligarchic elite, which was intent on distracting the public from the newly begun rapacious privatization and on setting up unregulated channels of fraudulent financial and commercial schemes its own benefit. The battle for Chechen oil also played a significant role.” Savin recalls that it was, in fact, Prime Minister Chernomyrdin who convinced Yeltsin of the need for the war. Savin’s friends in the FSB related how, on the eve of the invasion of troops into the Chechen Republic, Aleksandr Korzhakov, Chief of the President’s Security Service, wrote Yeltsin a note in which he cautioned against initiating military action. The Chechen leader Dudayev also requested negotiations. Yeltsin vacillated, but on the eve of the fateful decision, Chernomyrdin visited him in the evening and convinced him to send troops to Chechnya, so that others didn’t follow on the separatist path. “Could this have happened without the direct interests of the oligarchic elite?”

The grim horror that began in Chechnya ended in the treacherous Hasavyurt Agreement and was renewed after a short pause in the “Second Chechen War.” Savin was summoned by the leadership in early 1995 and given orders to fly to the combat region. His assignment included analyzing the distinctive features of this war, developing new operational and tactical means, including techniques of military ESP, working with the commanders, evaluating the interaction of the troops, and working on the frontline with his staff of psychics. In addition to discharging military tasks in Chechnya, it was essential to continue developing training methods for preparing grand masters of the military arts.

Savin began to implement his program. He spent time at various staff headquarters and on the frontlines. He frequently flew around in helicopters and combat aircraft, attempting to see everything in order to include it all in training top-gun combat aces. After a month of intensive work, he summoned a number of colleagues with psi capabilities from Moscow in order to embed them with the troops and to use their help in fine-tuning several programs under combat conditions.

At first glance, it may seem as if psychics can serenely remain at home and accomplish operational tasks at a distance, using their remote and telepathic capabilities. Ed May had a lengthy discussion with Savin on this point by asking, with a twinkle in his eye, “What about remote in remote viewing do not understand? It should not be necessary to put your viewers in harm’s way.”

Savin responded that in actuality this applies to tasks of a more general, strategic nature. In active combat operations, where the conditions change with every second, it often becomes impossible to contact a psychic located at headquarters or even in Moscow, assign him a task and wait for his recommendations, which in turn often require clarifications. Both mountainous terrain and electromagnetic interference can serve to impede stable radio communication. “Our experience showed that a psychic operative must be located in the zone of combat operations or in close proximity to it in order to quickly solve tactical combat problems. Energetic factors, related to the emotional tension in the conflict zone, also distract the psychic operatives, but if they’re given appropriate training, this emotional tension can help them concentrate on their work.”

To Savin’s great surprise, he saw his own son Anton among the officers and civilian personnel when they arrived. At that time, Anton Savin was already fully trained in the martial arts and a fairly good marksman, and he possessed psi powers developed with my techniques. Anton was a civilian who had nothing to do with the war in Chechnya. What’s more, he had just finished graduate studies and was getting ready to defend his dissertation, so his arrival did not fit into Savin’s plans at all. However, given the pressure of the circumstances, the General was forced to agree to his presence in Chechnya. Anton subsequently fought in a detachment and saw action numerous times, conducted operational ESP espionage, and was decorated with several medals.

“In Chechnya, I could test the work of my most talented psychics and instructors, some of whom were women, in the field. The ‘gals’ conducted operational psi espionage, assisted in interrogating captured militants, evaluated people’s characters, distinguished between those who lied from those who told the truth, and tackled many other problems.” Daily reports about their work were sent to Kolesnikov, and he later recommended them for government decorations and the Order of Courage. They received insignia of distinction from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and medals for distinguished national service. “Of course, it was tougher for the women than for the men. Everyone understood this and tried to ease their burden at least in some small way. They arrived in Khankala in camouflage uniforms that were specially tailored to their bodies, but with open-toed sandals on their feet. The militia commander, a tough, stern-looking guy, made a trip into Grozny at great risk during a shelling and brought back soft gym shoes so that our gals would not injure their feet and suffer.” The women helped everyone there, diagnosing physical ailments, providing soldiers with information about what was happening at home, and how their mothers, wives, or children were doing. “Before they left the region, they were presented with many gifts.”

While he was visiting the battle zones, Savin met Sergei Vishnevsky, a well-known martial arts coach. Savin became acquainted with him a few years before, while studying weaponless martial arts systems. Witnesses related that during skirmishes he defeated militants at a distance of 3-4 meters through weaponless bio-energetic manipulations—their inner organs burst, their eardrums split, and their eyes popped out of their sockets. A mystical fear would overtake his enemies to such a degree that they would forget to fire their weapons at Vishnevsky, who was frequently unarmed, and they would flee. “Sometimes I invited General Kvashnin to Vishnevsky’s training sessions and demonstrations, and his skill made a big impression on everyone. Unfortunately this Hercules perpetually had a cigarette in his mouth, and he recently died of lung cancer. ”

Chechnya became a good school for Savin where he addressed special matters of intelligence, evaluating the actions of our forces, and anticipating events through both parapsychological and logical prediction. He studied how the staffs of different levels worked in extreme conditions, how operations were conducted, and how battles and operations were prepared for and analyzed. They searched for camouflaged targets, combat groups, and caches in the mountains, and observed people during periods of psychological pressure and under bombardment. All this helped him to consider the question of the kinds of skills the person he was training should possess. “For example, my men studied how to make a person feel less pain so that fewer of our wounded die from the shock of pain.” He explored various types of latent reserves within the men, and helped develop their physical, intellectual and psychological potentialities.

“I must single out the outstanding success of using ESP methods during the war in Chechnya as the results that my psychic staff achieved there were just brilliant.” As mentioned, they received medals and other government decorations for psychic intelligence work and for carrying out combat tasks using extrasensory methods. “After the Chechen war, we can now boldly assert that on the whole ESP is a proven and effective tool in the arsenal not only of strategic military means but also tactical operational ones.”

The Chechen war was a complete and utter all-around set-up, a partition of oil and financial resources, and a battle for drug and arms trafficking. He recalled a meeting in August 1996 in Khankala at which Doku Zavgayev (President of the Chechen Republic), Sergei Stepashin (Chief of the RF Government Staff), Kvashnin and Savin discussed the possible consequences of the capture of several neighborhoods in Grozny by militants. They were put on guard by the calls from Moscow and the equivocation of the Moscow leadership’s position about what was happening. Due to the complete lack of concrete information, they began to realize that something was going on that would change the situation and probably not for the better. “It was clear that the first blow would be delivered to Zavgayev. I felt compassion for him. He was a wise and decent man who was being betrayed in the crudest way imaginable. I heard his conversations with Chernomyrdin and was amazed at the monstrous injustice leveled against Zavgayev and marveled at the forbearance of this remarkable man, who literally fought until his final days as a leader for the true interests of his people.”

The most absurd orders were coming from above. Businessman Boris Berezovsky, who had been accepted into Yeltsin’s “family,” constantly interfered in government affairs. The sale of everything and everyone at both the wholesale and retail level was proceeding with the government’s silent assent, and Berezovsky appeared wherever he could pick up the smell of money. In 1996 General Lebed, who was appointed by President Yeltsin as secretary of the Security Council, began portraying himself as a peacemaker. To create this image he had to establish peace at any price, even at the cost of Russia’s political and military ruin. In the summer of 1996 at Berezovsky’s order, government tough guys in jeeps arrived in Chechnya, and “we immediately realized that we had already been sold, and that they had now arrived to betray us. This was the Hasavyurt Agreement: senseless victims and a disgraceful campaign. And we, the generals, understood all of this, and this was why, it was important for us not only ‘to get the enemy’ but to also save the entrapped and deceived, and to bring the truth to them. I once saw a captured Chechen, about 20 years old—he was almost a child, and his hunched back had caught my glance. A lump rose in my throat even though I had seen many battles and death. His image clearly showed the cost of dirty political and financial deceit.”

Savin spent two years in the Chechen Republic. In August 1996, when he was about to fly to Moscow for treatment of a serious injury, the commander detained Savin’s airplane and informed him that Kolesnikov was being dismissed as Chief of the General Staff and replaced by someone Savin knew, Samsonov. Shortly thereafter, there were two new appointments—Samsonov as Chief of the General Staff and Igor Rodionov as Defense Minister. “I spent some time in the hospital, and when I was discharged, Samsonov received me as one of his own. But we did not work together for very long on the second go-around.”

In May 1997, Yeltsin dismissed Samsonov and Rodionov, and Marshal Igor Sergeyev was appointed Defense Minister. That evening Pyotr Aven, the president of the Alfa Bank, called Savin to tell him that Army General Anatoli Kvashnin was going to be appointed Chief of the General Staff. “I should mention that though a banker, Aven’s forecasts turned out to be a great deal more accurate than the predictions of any astrologer. After he once secretly whispered to me that it was his opinion that ‘Volodya Putin’ would be appointed Prime Minister and then later President, I then took Putin’s climb up the ladder of power for granted. Very few people knew who Putin was at that time, but apparently, everything had already been decided. Sometimes I joked that Pyotr Aven was a super-talented seer, however it was not the case—the choice of Putin was clearly a matter of backroom politics. The question arises: who elected the President of Russia—the people or those who had already chosen him? What kind of elections, what kind of democracy could one possibly speak about in our nation?”

Aven’s prediction about Kvashnin’s appointment turned out to be absolutely correct. In June 1997 General Anatolii Kvashnin, with whom Savin was already on friendly terms, was confirmed as the next Chief of the General Staff. He supported Savin’s research in every possible way and adopted the decision to turn Military Unit 10003, which was still operating as a department of the General Staff, into a full directorate. The scope of their strategic tasks was expanded, and Savin’s staff grew to fifty people.

This new development forced Savin to come face-to-face with the cream of the bureaucracy in Yeltsin’s administration. It would seem that since his department was now a directorate, he would have automatically become its boss. However, given it was a higher position, he still had to go through the formality of presenting himself to the President’s Administration. “When I arrived at the office, I saw a rather unkempt, semiliterate young man sitting there, putting on airs. Speaking with him was unpleasant, but this was just minor. More importantly, and for security reasons, I didn’t have the legal right to describe my work to him. Here he was—without a security clearance—evaluating my work and me! It was a real bureaucratic gem of a situation!” When Savin returned home, his superiors called to tell, “They don’t want to confirm you in the new position; they say you’re working on the wrong things.” Fortunately, Kvashnin made a call to someone, and General Savin was confirmed at once. The question one might ask is, “What was the point of this show?”4

After some time, Savin was recommended promotion to the rank of lieutenant general. “The paperwork was sent to this boor again, but I simply didn’t go to present myself.” A reaction was not long in coming and he received a call on a Friday evening from the Executive Office of the President. He was told that he “had to come in for a talk, i.e. a tongue lashing, on Monday with Sevastyanov, the personnel policy expert. I decided to use my own methods, and spent the weekend applying my own extrasensory techniques. I tried to make the best of the situation through ‘harmonizing’ with it, even though I didn’t feel well physically.”

On Monday morning, he woke up in a great mood feeling that it was a marvelous day, and that his weekend psi work would result in a positive outcome. He turned the TV on and heard the news that Sevastyanov had been dismissed. Two weeks later, a presidential decree conferred the rank of lieutenant general on Savin. “These were the kinds of unconventional methods that I sometimes had to resort to in order to counteract the bureaucracy. Of course, I’m not claiming that there was a direct cause-and-effect connection here; rather that it was a case of Jungian synchronicity. Nonetheless, evidence that the harmonization ESP techniques are effective exists, and they are linked to the new scientific paradigm.”

In the meantime, the work continued. In 1998, Kvashnin approved Savin’s proposal to create an Analytical Center within his Directorate. One of the tasks of the Analytical Center was researching issues related to military education, and Kvashnin himself initially drew on their research. At the time, a reform of military education was being developed, with the goal of introducing a system of quality into military education. Kvashnin charged Savin with formulating the criteria that define quality in military education and developing special methods to improve the system.

One of the first goals was the elimination of hazing, “which arises from the low intellectual and cultural levels of servicemen,” said Savin. He continued:

Hazing disappears when these levels are increased—we proved this in practice. This was—and is—not only an issue within the Army, but also a question of the educational system in general, the overall cultural level and social climate in the nation as a whole. We had to work not only with soldiers, but also with officers for whom it is at times more expedient to turn a blind eye to violations in the Army, and easier to control their men through the institution of hazing. High levels of intellectual and cultural development had to become the main criteria in selecting cadets for military school and in their training—only then would our Army change qualitatively. But this would be possible only if continuity between the general educational system and the military education system could be established. I began to introduce methods to develop human mental, intellectual and physical potential, and I developed off-site methods to keep the entire education process uninterrupted. Unfortunately, all this work remained in project form and all the plans came to naught after I left.

O ne real achievement of their Analytical Center at that time was the creation of a set of computerized psychological testing programs, which made it possible to evaluate the professional and personal qualities of individuals from their photographs, handwriting, signatures, and voice recordings. The statistics gathered in the completed evaluations and their further practical research were highly accurate. “But we must immediately qualify this by adding the proviso that the help of a well-trained psychologist or sociologist, as a rule a Ph.D., is indispensable in working with this suite of programs. A computer can be a serious aid to a psychoanalyst but it cannot itself replace one. A human operator is essential in order to make up for the deficiencies of a computer system.” According to Savin, they were able to determine:

hidden character traits

level of intellectual development

thinking proficiency (operational performance; judgment, etc.)

moral qualities and communication skill s

ties to corrupt and criminal organizations

emotional qualities, character, etc.

This suite of computerized testing materials is now being used in both security and commercial organizations (an abridged version is used with software screened by the FSB). “We cannot say that everyone responded positively to our undertaking. To be sure, the introduction of our system of computer psychological testing turned out to be a serious blow against dishonorable, apathetic and incompetent directors and staffers.”

The Analytical Center also collaborated with other ministries and departments, and external organizations such as the Emergency Control Ministry. The head of this ministry, Sergei Shoigu, still uses psychics in its work to this day, including those Savin trained in his program. These psychics have rescued many lives. However, this is a different subject, and we will have to explore it in another book.

B y the year 2000, there were over fifty people in Savin’s Directorate in the General Staff, half of them civilians. They included specialists from various general fields in addition to military affairs, and many talented psychics including some who held a Ph.D. or M.D. Some of them possessed truly extraordinary ESP skills, such as Lyudmila Osipova M.D., who was able to map out a patient’s blood count in detail on the basis of the patient’s name, and Margarita Mishkina, who was able to read other people’s thoughts, evaluate their characters, and describe their biographies and the circumstances of their lives without seeing them in person. “These specialists, my deputy and very talented manager, Major General Alexander Prozritelev, and I made a very powerful team.”

With more power came more responsibility. In 2000, Savin did an analysis of their work performance in order to find additional ways to increase productivity. Initially this goal seemed unachievable as people were so loaded down with work that no additional push could have achieved the desired outcome. However, on one occasion, while using an ESP technique that had been designed earlier for picking up information about complex situations, Savin suddenly came to the stunning realization that he was the one who was excluding the most outstanding, self-motivated, and talented staff members from the creative process. “In fulfilling my assignments, they were involved in a daily grind, which consumed the greater part of their mental, intellectual, and, to some degree, physical energies!”

Savin asked the question, “How do we treat those members of our staff who have excelled the most at work?” and then answered himself with “We promote the individual, burdening him with still more administrative concerns. If he proves to excel in his new position, we promote him again, piling even more administrative work on him, and so on down the line. In this way, we keep distancing him farther and farther from the creative process and scientific inquiry in which he excelled most remarkably and powerfully. As a result, by advancing the most talented people along the executive path with our good intentions, we so greatly impoverish the intellectual and creative potential of the entire team that we are forced to ask our superiors for additional staff and to hire new people who, in turn, distract us from our work since they need to be trained, nurtured, managed, and so on.”

After some reflection on this process, Savin suggested creating an unstructured directorate in which all the intermediate positions and departments would be eliminated, leaving three main areas: the staff, the scientific, and the economic sectors, which he and his deputy would oversee. The head of the General Staff, General Kvashnin, supported the idea, and it was soon implemented. Savin kept the day-to-day administration unstructured so there was independence, but strict discipline and a system of quality control as well. He did not wish to cultivate officials of any type, even uncommon ones. He wanted his staff to be involved only in creative work. “The talented people whom I fostered had the opportunity to engage in real work without superfluous bureaucratic hassles.”

These changes introduced new, intense competition and the motivation to advance in the career track. Positive results were not long in coming, and there was a real increase in work effectiveness, productivity and quality. A society of equal opportunity was created, and anyone, even a civilian, could now aspire to occupy Savin’s position, that is, become the head of a Directorate in the General Staff. This was great for work, but very dangerous for the mass of uniformed functionaries ensconced in the General Staff as their irrelevance became completely obvious. “Backroom politics began to fester. Grey bureaucratic mice in general’s uniforms set their sights on gnawing away at our directorate in order to secure their own cozy futures.”

Savin went on to say, “A group of deeply envious persons (there’s no getting away from them!) began to form and Kvashnin listened to them from time to time. Rumors about me had already been circulating that I was a magician and the General Staff’s soothsayer and astrologer, that I knew everything but didn’t want to share my secret knowledge with anybody, that I was capable of reading minds, and inducing illness. Sometimes the generals behaved like old women in a huddle, gossiping.” These rumors propagated, and were furthered by happenstance. Savin lost three of his personal drivers to death: one slipped and had a bad fall while walking his dog, the second was a closet alcoholic who died of a heart attack, and the third one died of a ruptured ulcer.

“Rumors immediately spread that this was my doing, that I had either put a hex on them or murdered them telepathically. Some people were afraid of my gaze. On one occasion, the three of us, Colonel General Anatolii Sednov, Kvashnin, and I, were on a flight to Moscow together. They were talking with each other, while I was thinking to myself, looking out the cabin window right through Sednov. When he arrived in Moscow, Sednov convened an annual work review meeting at which he said, ‘I flew to Moscow with Savin. The way he looked at me just made my flesh crawl.’”

Savin remarked that at many times it was ridiculous, but these situations sometimes could develop into full-blown plots that he always had to be aware of. One example he recalled had to do with a particular annual review by the Minister of Defense. At the end of a session, Kvashnin said, “And so, the chiefs of staff, the commanders-in-chief, and Alexei Yurievich will now go to lunch with me,” referring with the patronymic to Savin.

The generals exchanged wondering glances, indicating they questioned whether this could actually be happening. “It was as if they were saying things like ‘Savin must have hypnotized Kvashnin’ and ‘he’s aiming for a higher post’ or ‘Kvashnin didn’t even invite his deputies, but by all means Savin is welcome’ or ‘hey, he’s even addressing Savin on a first name and patronymic basis!’ I could feel their unkind, envious eyes on me, and thought that I’d better opt out of having lunch with my superiors, or I would have to pay dearly for it.”

As it happened, Savin had already made arrangements with colleagues whom he hadn’t seen for a long time, to get together during a break in an out-of-the-way back room to knock back a drink and have a heart-to-heart. “So that’s what I did. When we all came back after the break, Kvashnin asked me, ‘Why weren’t you at lunch? If the Chief of the General Staff invites you, you are obliged to come.’”

All the folks at the meeting appeared happy that Savin was raked over the coals right in front of them. At the end of the meeting, Kvashnin invited him to his private office. The other generals followed him with looks of sympathy, assuming that his dressing down would continue. But instead, Kvashnin started asking Savin about how his work on the new book about military education was progressing. “It was hot in his office and he was in his shirtsleeves while I was wearing my service jacket. He was drinking fragrant green tea, and offered me some. When I walked out of his office, I was all red-faced and perspiring from the hot tea. The envious generals were exultant that it appeared I had been torn to shreds and I nearly got a round of applause. They followed me with sympathetic looks as I left and winked, ‘Hang in there, fella, we’re with you!’ As you can see, the fame of being a psychic and hypnotist isn’t always that rewarding.”

There were denunciations all through those years, and at times accusations were even leveled at Savin’s department. In one instance, there was a cadet who “went crazy at the Flight Academy, and the envious ones seized the occasion to cast the blame our way, alleging that this had happened because our psychics had worked with him.” An investigation was begun, and the Ministry of Health and the FSB became involved. “It’s a good thing that we found the cadet’s data on file at a psychiatric clinic just in the nick of time—it showed that he had been experiencing nervous breakdowns since childhood. In response, we demanded an official explanation to our questions—how could a person with an unbalanced mind have been granted access to combat aircraft? What would have happened if he had broken down during a flight carrying a load of missiles? That was how we survived that particular head-on collision with our enemies.”

A major assault on their work and the directorate by a group of political enemies, “including two deputy ministers of defense,” followed, with the clear intent to shut them down. “A commission was organized to review our activities. Its findings were honest and objective, and the commission cleared our name. But I was beginning to see that working on the larger mission was impossible with the present leadership, and that the time of great leaders had come to an end. A different era had dawned.”

Anticipating the threat of being misunderstood by the leadership, Savin began to wind his program down. He handed over certain projects to other sections of the Ministry of Defense, where they were reasonably well developed. He put other programs on hold until better times, and began to work on some projects either independently or jointly with “particularly dedicated associates, among whom I would single out Colonel Viktor Melentiev.”

The growing negative tendencies intensified when General Yuri Baluevskii was appointed Chief of the General Staff. He soon formalized the demise, and a presidential decree about the elimination of Savin’s Directorate appeared at year’s end in 2003. Savin wasn’t even informed about it, “I found out about it after Baluevskii signed it. The day after the decree appeared, I just did not go to work. In early 2004, my personal aide sent in my papers and I retired. I had no desire to work in any government agencies or private firms—for me the happy period of creative scholarly and literary activity had finally arrived.”

Savin often asks himself the question “Why was our research axed?” He believes it was most likely because the top brass was frightened by the knowledge and skills they possessed. “I feel that it takes a great man to dare to work with a team of grand masters, and not everyone can do it. I certainly wanted to leave a group of specialists in the General Staff who would train grand masters, but this did not happen. Nonetheless, from my point of view, our mission in the General Staff had been accomplished: we had perfected the methodology itself.” Savin believed that they had not only discovered the methodology to allow them to “start accessing the database of the Universe, we had gained a philosophy. The path is open to those who are capable of advancing further. Authorities come and go, but universal concerns remain.”

For his part, Savin is endeavoring to pass on his knowledge and techniques to students who are ready to accept them. Thus, he turned over some of his projects to Viktor Melentiev and has advised him on many occasions. “I should mention that Viktor established Mevil, a private ESP diagnostics and healing center, which ‘harmonizes situations’ and offers assistance in solving many other problems. We jointly outlined the course of our future work, namely, the establishment of RAMEX, a Russian-American center to engage in similar activities at the international level.” Currently, Savin is also contemplating the possibility of organizing an international school to develop extraordinary human potential and to train psychics using his methodologies, which have been proven by many years of practice.

W hat can he say in concluding his account? What might onlookers say about him?

That Savin is a general, a former communist who believes in God and communicates with higher beings. That he’s “a real oddball” or that people like him should be put into prison so they don’t mess up people’s minds. “But what kind of person would say such things? Only someone of limited intellect or spiritual outlook. In fact, raising the cultural and intellectual levels of such people and broadening their horizons of understanding the world became my true mission.”

Savin believes that his group finally achieved their goal of devising a methodology that “enables us to train different types of professionals—professional military men, social workers, government officials, and philosophers—in developing extraordinary human capacities. This methodology is not our unique achievement; it is the common heritage of recent decades.”

In the initial phase, they were developing a system for training people based on a selection of techniques that already existed in the nation and elsewhere in the world. They supplemented the work with the scientific achievements of many foreign scholars, primarily, of Americans. The group considered them scientific partners, not opponents or competitors, because all were working on common universal challenges. Said the General:

In order to improve and fine-tune our techniques, we supervised a specific group of people in these methods, who, as a result of this training, were able to control the process of connecting with and entering the universal information field when necessary. Plato, Tolstoy, Solovyov, and Tsiolkovsky were pillars of philosophy; they gave us the foundation upon which to base our work, but we took a path different from those who came before us.

We understood that a new cosmology is essential to the future of mankind, as it represents the morality of the future, relationships of the future, maybe even future industrial technologies. Using simple techniques and practices, we can open the path to extraordinary new capacities and a new way of viewing the world for average children, which will inevitably instill a higher level of culture in them. And, once an individual attains a high cultural level, he possesses a powerful immunity to banality, moral filth, insolence, and crudeness, and he will not become a gangster, a thief or a rascal. We may get puffed up about the prestigious school or elite university that we graduated from, but that’s not what is important. We should be seeking a place where we can learn to be good, decent people. The Universe needs us to be morally advanced individuals who can rise to a new level of understanding of universal processes, of our own places in them, and of our own most vital human concerns. We are confident that our techniques, which are based on the humanitarian philosophy of cosmic consciousness, will be capable of meeting the challenge of developing such individuals.

Perhaps these are lofty goals, but based on past success, perhaps these goals can be achieved—provided such programs are not subjected to political or bureaucratic restraints or academic prejudice. In the following sections, we’ll consider the closure of the various programs in the US and Russia, some reasons why the governments decided to close them down and even prevent them from resurrecting, reactions from the academic/scientific communities to the declassification of the programs, and whether there is a future for the children of the ESP Wars .

2. Ed May relates a parallel story in the US, of a viewer giving him “a ton of unsolicited material about an attack on the State of the Union address during the Reagan Administration. Tons of details and I passed it along to the DIA Rep Jim Salyer.” Salyer asked May if he were giving it to him officially. “What does that mean? Well the Government would take action and God help me if I were wrong!” May said, “That led to the most difficult 24 hours of my career. In the end, the only parts of the 18 pages or so that were correct were (a) Reagan would have a foreign head of state at that address with him and (b) there was a pink hat associated somehow. Margaret Thatcher was next to him and was, in fact wearing a pink hat, and pictures appeared in the next days’ papers.”

3. While this may surprise some of our readers, the subject of reincarnation has had serious study even in the West, especially of children who report remembering previous lives. The late Ian Stevenson from the University of Virginia spent a major portion of his career studying reincarnation cases in the US and other places around the world, and such work continues there today.