The Mystified Unknown—Sacralizing Influence in Soviet Science, Religion, and Ideology

Abstract

This article investigates a distinctive discursive space within Soviet society where scientific inquiry and mystical thought coexisted, despite the state’s official commitment to atheism. Referred to as the mystified unknown, this space provides a framework for understanding the persistence and intertwining of religious and mystical elements within Soviet scientific discourse. By focusing on the concept of “influence”, the study examines discussions in Soviet psychology to demonstrate how the regime’s political need to influence the masses, coupled with its suspicion of foreign ideas and a covert desire to wield influence, shaped the development of certain scientific disciplines, particularly the imaginaries they produced. This environment, characterized by doublethink and secrecy, nurtured the growth of scientific fantasies and mysterious imaginaries, allowing mystical concepts to endure under the veneer of science. Consequently, Soviet society became more inclined to re-enchant science rather than uphold it strictly as a symbol of secularism.

1. Introduction

In 1922, Nikolai Bukharin, one of the key ideologists of the early Soviet Union, presented his vision for eliminating religion from Soviet society and replacing it with science. The scene, portrayed by him in the first issue of Bezbozhnik, a newspaper of the League of Militant Atheists, was, indeed, militant. Bukharin called to “put the main gods on trial” before the proletarian tribunal and requested them to be “driven out of the temples and moved to the cellars” (Rezvushkin 1925, p. 4).

This vivid image had little in common with modern atheism’s indifference to “nonexistent” gods. The Bolsheviks, after toppling Tsarism, wasted no time in launching an all-out assault on pre-Soviet religion. Churches and monasteries were seized, their treasures confiscated; religious education gave way to atheist propaganda in schools, and church holidays were replaced by state celebrations (Pipes 1991; Daly 1997, pp. 235–67). In a 1922 letter to the Politburo, Lenin called for a “ruthless battle” against defiant clergy. “The more of them we manage to shoot on this basis”, he wrote, “the better” (Smolkin 2018, p. 29).

However, despite the heavy blows suffered by the pre-Soviet “gods”—to borrow Bukharin’s words—they never disappeared. Dethroned, exiled to the cellars, and literally repressed, they survived. Though Bukharin never meant his metaphor to be taken literally, it proved perceptive. Even conventional religions—with their doctrines and rites—never fully vanished from sight. Since the primary strategy for marginalizing them involved re-educating minds through scientific materialism, they remained a constant presence in both scientific propaganda and popular literature (Smolkin 2018). From the 1920s onward, religion was closely linked with science, which took on the role of addressing former theological questions. Everything mysterious and miraculous, all existential longings once explored through faith, were now dissected by science. And even more so, the population’s primal numinous longing did not vanish; instead, it appeared to form a new adaptive amalgam. To extend Bukharin’s metaphor, in the metaphorical “cellars” of Soviet social and cultural life, this desire took on strange hybrid forms—where science, power, and the mystical began to speak each other’s language.

The era that marked the birth of the Soviet state and its evolving sensibilities played a role in the formation of these hybrids. The fin-de-siècle spirit was open to alternative definitions of the religious and the scientific (see, for example, the case of spiritualist societies, Razdyakonov and Hiatt 2016; Razdyakonov 2020). It was also an era of powerful scientific metaphors. Not only the theory of evolution, which still captivated universal imagination, but the discovery of thermodynamic laws, the theory of relativity, and especially the rise of electrification (Kalinin 2022) nourished the Soviet spiritual “dreamscapes” (Jasanoff and Kim 2019).

The Soviet case was not unique in this regard. Yet this case most strikingly illustrates how such imaginaries can be ossified through the exertions of power and transmitted across generations. While the fascination with scientific mysticism and science-infused occultism had already engrossed Soviet society in the 1920s and 1930s (e.g., Mannherz 2011; Burmistrov 2011, 2022), it took on new intensity in the post-Stalin era. Ufology, thought transmission, astrology, parapsychology, mystical cybernetics, and fringe medicine drew in the technical and academic intelligentsia of the 1960s and 1970s. By the 1980s, it had expanded to the broader public (Mitrokhin 2020; Panchenko 2018) and seemed to continue into the post-Soviet period as well. The infiltration of religious lexical choices and concepts into scientific discourse (and vice versa), already underway in the early Soviet period, was not the only factor contributing to these fascinations. The political and scientific production of images played an equally significant part. As is well known, the images conveyed by a culture’s primary ontological narratives are central to shaping the societal imaginary and fostering cultural and religious transformations (Searle 1995; Castoriadis 1987; Taylor 2007). Official Marxism undoubtedly mobilized all of these symbolic resources.

Although some recent interpretations of Soviet scientific mysticism attempt to distance it from religious expression (e.g., “Soviet incredible”, Konakov 2022), the main body of literature continues to rely on terminology drawn from the religious studies. This phenomenon has been referred to as the Soviet New Age (Panchenko 2018), occulture (Menzel et al. 2012), transformed religiosity and parascience (Mitrokhin 2020), and Soviet esotericism (Zorya 2023). The very diversity of these terms reflects the still-uncertain conceptual status of the phenomenon and invites continued engagement in terminological debates. At the same time, these Western-developed terms point to similar developments that have occurred in Western societies. Many of these developments can be seen as part of a broader Western “spiritual turn” (Watts 2022) and are often examined in relation to other expressions of alternative religiosity that emerge in the course of modernization and within various frameworks of (de)secularization. Indeed, many Soviet practices and representations not only resonated with their Western counterparts but also drew direct inspiration from Western sources (Mitrokhin 2020).

In this article, I align with interpretations that view Soviet scientific mysticism as a manifestation of alternative religiosity. However, my aim is to reconstruct its specifically Soviet form. This reflects a widely accepted academic view: modern religiosity, including (de)secularization, varies across cultural contexts. The Soviet case, shaped by ideologically enforced secularization, offers a particularly instructive example.

The specific Soviet form of scientific mysticism, I argue, is characterized by an orientation toward a particular type of mystery. It was reinforced by the political culture of the Soviet Union, its antireligious scientific propaganda, and the imaginary rooted in Marxism. This particular mystery resonated deeply with the Soviet soul. Further, I will employ terms such as mystery, the mysterious, and mysticism, which also serve to stress the atmosphere of secrecy cultivated by the Soviet structures of power and the mystification facilitated by political manipulation. This understanding forms the foundation of the central analytical concept of this article: the space of the mystified unknown, where scientific inquiry and mystical imagination coexisted, despite—or perhaps because of—the state’s official commitment to atheism. In the mystified unknown, unexplained phenomena were framed as mysteries yet to be unraveled by science and were granted a politically safe realm for imaginative and daring interpretations.

The theme of influence is particularly effective in capturing the dynamics at play within the mystified unknown. As a conceptual lens for interpreting natural, supernatural, and political forces, the motif of influence gave rise to potent metaphors and emotions. The regime’s acute attention to influence shaped its decisions on the ground, steering policies toward specific sciences and their anthropological assumptions. As we will see, the Party’s political imperative to mold the masses—combined with suspicion of foreign influences, fear of unseen forces, and a desire to harness covert influence—proved crucial in this process. In this context, the mystified unknown became a metaphorical “cellar”, a space where invisible influence took on mystical dimensions and acquired the texture of imagined reality.

Although the mystified unknown permeated numerous areas of Soviet science (see, e.g., Zhirov 2001; Altshuller 1973; Kurdyumov and Malinetsky 1983), I now take a closer look at the case of psychology. This discipline stood at the forefront of the Soviet battle against religion and served as a tool for the materialist framing of influence. It was specifically tasked with eradicating all traces of “religious” and “idealistic” influences on the Soviet soul and replacing the idea of the soul with that of the psyche. However, within the space of the mystified unknown, the need to define the soul in materialist terms and the attempt to narrate its story in scientific language ultimately led to the re-enchanting of materialist psychology itself.

2. The Hidden Drives

In 1924, the Kharkiv publishing house released Georgij Malis’s pamphlet Psychoanalysis of Communism. Its main character was “the Unconscious”, which Malis sought to harness for the young Soviet state. In the pamphlet, Malis attempted to present Freud’s theory scientifically. However, he placed the unconscious in dangerous proximity to everything that was “now collectively referred to as the supernatural”. It was a yet-to-be-discovered power, like those unknown phenomena that primitive humans attributed to gods. “We too, he wrote, must resemble primitive man as we step into a new, unknown realm” of psyche (Malis 1924, p. 28).

Malis’s case is instructive for understanding how the Soviet mystified unknown was formed. The unconscious, in Malis’s mind, was an invisible force lurking beneath the surface. We knew little about it, but it had a profound influence on us. “We must assume”, Malis proposed, “that each of us carries another person within ourselves, another consciousness. This second consciousness, our second ‘Self’, hinders our work, causing erroneous actions, making us forget a certain fact, and say one word instead of another” (ibid., p. 28).

Malis’s vision of the unconscious, as he admitted, was “rather fantastical”. And indeed, it acquired mysterious features. Being itself “not a subject to the laws of time and space”, it was assumed to be responsible for mysterious phenomena, including hypnosis, spiritualism, telepathy, and other “metaphysical phenomena” lying “in another plane of the fourth dimension”. Science was to explain them in the future. But “for now” they were “the result of energetic contact” with this unconscious world (ibid, p. 38).

This for now was a typical topos of the mystified unknown, granting Malis’s theory a temporary status but at the same time giving broad freedom to his imagination. Since the inception of the Soviet state, the space of the mystified unknown provided excellent opportunities to incorporate mystery into the ostensibly objective Soviet science. In its realm the “unexplained”, “unidentified”, or “invisible” mysteries—if framed as awaiting better scientific explanation and politically safe—became a legitimate subject for the most daring interpretations.

Malis’s critics sensed something was amiss very early on. As one of them complained, “the Unconscious, as understood by Malis (with a capital letter, i.e., as a certain independent entity), is a path to pure devilry and popery”. But it was not the overt mystical underpinnings that led to the authorities’ veto on the unconscious. In mid-1920s Soviet Freudianism itself was suspected an invisible influence. It grew to be recognized as “a foreign element dressed in the costume of clergy”, a “corpse worm of modern bourgeois science” that “has deeply penetrated us” (Karev 1924). This was a fatal indictment, as Soviets displayed a strong unease whenever discussions turned to unseen influence, starting from Lenin himself, who made sure that the figure of an invisible foreign element, lurking everywhere, stayed firmly in the Soviet minds. As Krupskaya reminded, Lenin used to say: “the enemy is among us, but we do not see him” (Krupskaya [1937] 1968, pp. 261–62).

Paradoxically, however, the Party’s deep concern about forces that operated beyond the reach of conventional control hinted often at a realm where ideology and belief intersected with something less tangible and more enigmatic. The alchemical formula of influence has never been fully discovered, but for now, it often carried a subtle undertone of the mystical.

The figure of a hidden, invisible, not fully understood, and thus potentially hostile, influence constituted the political realm of the mystified unknown. It was tinged with ambivalence, not least because those who held influence were easily associated in this society with quasisacred qualities. The idea of power had traditionally been sacralized in the Russian Empire (Uspensky 1998; Lukin 1998), and the religious potential of the communist project only amplified it. The religious features of communism were unmistakably sensed by contemporaries (Berdyaev [1937] 1955; Bulgakov 1903; Rozanov 1918). The fascination with the “opium” of communist ideology and quasireligious conversion to it, often in “acute and sometimes hysterical form” (Crossman 1950, p. 3), was evident not only among Soviet people (Aron 1955). For many Westerners, it served as convincing evidence that “there is little difference between a revolutionary and a traditionalist faith” (Fischer et al. 1950, p. 16).

The Party did not hesitate to mobilize this potential. It swiftly replaced religious rituals with their Soviet equivalents, engaged in the sacralization of spaces (Clark 2003), and the sanctification of leaders. Lenin’s cult of personality began during his lifetime. As some argue, the Soviet government deliberately sought to harness the potential of collective religiosity to cultivate it (Semenenko-Basin 2011; Kaunov 2018).

Thus, attempts were made by the regime to simultaneously harness the forces of influence and eliminate them as competitors, coax them onto its side and assume their place.

This also characterized attitudes toward the unconscious. In the early 1920s, psychoanalysis attracted revolutionary leaders. The unconscious was recognized a powerful energy, which could be used “for our purposes”. Projects like the Children’s Laboratory House, started in 1920 at the State Psychoneurological Institute, aimed to redirect “hidden drives” in children towards “class feelings”. Faith had to be uprooted from the unconscious, and chief Soviet atheist Yaroslavsky promised that new “tribes” of atheist children would soon be raised to relate to the world in a communist manner (Yaroslavsky 1958, pp. 167–8). The idea of delving deep into the psyche to find the “golden key” to controlling humans was appealing. Freud’s hypnotic experiments, illustrating the power of psychoanalysis, were often cited in Soviet texts. Though the patient has no memory of the hypnotic state, wrote Freud, “an impulse arises in his mind to do this or that”. The action is carried out consciously, but without understanding why (Freud [1913] 1994, pp. 29–34). Thus, hypnosis research, continuing from the tsarist era, was permitted under strict Party supervision.

However, psychoanalysis both attracted and frightened the Party. The unconscious seemed to be a challenging partner, and there were no evident results of applying psychoanalytic principles to Soviet social engineering (the Children’s Laboratory House was soon closed). Instead, there was fear of the uncontrollable nature of the unconscious mind, not to mention that Freudian metaphors were particularly unsettling when applied to the Soviet context.1

By the 1930s, condemning Freudianism became obligatory. In 1931, psychoanalysis was declared by Stalin as a covert enemy interference: “Trotskyist smuggling”. The campaign against it began immediately, and 1932, the journal Psychology linked psychoanalysis with “bourgeois” influences personified in Trotsky. Psychologists, who once believed in the unconscious, were compelled to repent. The religious language used by them smuggled the sacred back into the discussion. Aron Zalkind, director of the Institute of Psychology, Pedology, and Psychotechnics, confessed faith in psychoanalysis in a Biblical manner: “I led the young astray” (Zalkind 1931, pp. 7–14). Two years earlier, some Marxists declared Freudian teaching finished for Soviet psychology. One even lamented, “during this skirmish, psychoanalysis temporarily perished among us”—a “Freudian slip”, as only sacred forces can perish temporarily and resurrect (Schmidt 1929, p. 17). Now, Zalkind promised to drive “a stake through the grave of Soviet Freudianism”, painting it in demonic colors (Zalkind 1931, pp. 7–14).

However, Zalkind was not saved by his confession, but dismissed and soon died of a heart attack. Similarly, psychoanalysis, like religion, was not eliminated but rather relegated to a metaphorical “cellar”. It still survived there, as illustrated by the story of the double portrait in the office of Odessa psychoanalyst Yakov Kogan. During working hours, the portrait displayed Pavlov, a prominent Soviet reflexologist recognized for his “primary contribution to materialistic psychology” (Schmidt 1929, p. 17). After hours, during illicit analytic sessions, the portrait was turned to reveal the face of Freud (Khersonsky 1991, pp. 5–24). Beneath the surface of the visible, the psyche continued to exert and be subjected to mysterious influences.

3. The Imaginary and Externalization of the Influence

In the 1920s, other processes were also unfolding. In his article On the Importance of Militant Materialism (1922), Lenin called for an alliance with “representatives of modern natural sciences who are inclined to materialism” (Lenin [1922] 1970). It was expected that every intellectual would now become a dialectical materialist (Sonin 1994, p. 21). The same year, some prominent personalities who did not yield to this demand were expelled from the country. Intense negotiations of various psychological currents with Marxism took place over the next decades, with the painful result of the expulsion, dismissal, or arrest of scientists who, in the opinion of those in power, did not meet the task.

Soviet psychologist Alexander Luria distinguished three stages of this “struggle against all idealism and all mysticism in science” (Luria 1933, p. 27). In the first stage (before 1922), idealistic psychologists dominated in it. In the second (1922–1931), “mechanistic” movements that tried to abandon idealism emerged. In the third stage (after 1931), the truly Marxist psychology was established (Luria 1933, pp. 33–34).

Changes have, indeed, occurred in the discipline, but further smuggling was happening under the surface. Although Luria described psychology before the 1930s as a thing of the past, this period left a significant mark on the ontological fundaments of Soviet science. It was in Luria’s “second stage” (attempts to abandon idealism in 1922–1931) that a pioneering effort to harmonize psychology with Marxism was made and some mysticism found its way in under the guise of Marxist science.

While Freudian ideas were being dismissed in the official narrative as “idealism”, Party ideologists focused on “extracting” influence from the inner realm to the outer. At the First Pedological Congress, speakers insisted that changes in revolutionary masses could occur faster than thought and that the revolution should also affect the physiological nature of the individual (Bukharin) (Krupskaya et al. 1929, p. 12). To achieve this, emphasis should be placed on the environment and external conditions (Semashko) (ibid.). Attention needed to be given to “influencing variability [of human personality] shaped by environmental factors” (Zalkind 1931, p. 15). Everything internal and inaccessible to outside influence was declared unimportant and Lilliputian (Etkind 2006).

Framed as a “new stage” in science (New Stage 1929, pp. 5–6), the new Soviet psychology was, according to Luria, no longer concerned about “inner world of experiences”. Now, “it has become necessary to learn mastering a human being” (Luria 1926, p. 129). The objective was practical. There was a truly Goethean task to accomplish: to create a New Soviet Man, a Soviet homunculus, born from the proletarian masses, the “willful, rapidly growing, life-hungry mass of people” (Bukharin 1924; Etkind 2006, p. 69). It was a powerful force itself, but, in Maxim Gorky’s expression, “a young force that has not yet worked” and in need of manual (Gorky [1932] 1953, p. 450). Science was supposed to assist in guiding it more satisfactorily than before, and the competition for the status of a recognized Soviet psychology—more Marxist and more materialistic—began.

However, in these new theories of 1920s, an unnoticed factor in the mystification of science seems to have come to the forefront: the imaginary. In scholarship of this period, we can find truly holistic images portraying cosmic and social unity, interconnectedness, and living, dynamic, and thinking matter. They corresponded surprisingly well to both Marxism and, as we will see—the Soviet occult.

One less obvious reason for tolerance of such imagery was personnel shortages. Although, after Lenin’s decree of 1918, a campaign was announced to open universities for red professors, they were still badly read and belonged to an oppressed class, which Marxists themselves recognized as not self-sufficient to conduct scientific inquiry. Until the cultural revolution produced results, the Party had to admit that, in Lenin’s words, “we are illiterate (Lenin [1923] 1970, pp. 369–77). Besides, according to participants of the events, there were “extremely few Marxist workers” in the academy (Kostrigin 2017).

The lack of personnel gave way to the old elite of the prerevolutionary formation, even those speaking harshly about Marxism. In fact, both scientists and science popularizers of prerevolutionary world continued to operate in the Soviet Union at least until 1928 (Andrews 2003). Many of them, professors in the 1920s, were shaped by a world that had now gone. They belonged to an academic culture where research on electricity could blend with an interest in spiritualism, or Darwin’s theory, with pantheistic mysticism. They shared the sensibility of the fin de siècle, and their imagination was deeply influenced by thermodynamics, electrification, and Einstein’s discoveries, which envisioned a single material–energy–force principle underlying the universe. Terms such as “living matter”, “energy”, “force”, or “development” were common for scientific texts of this generation. Many of them had broad humanistic horizons, an interest in Big questions and a cosmic imaginary. It is these professors, “very great people of the old world”, as Bukharin once called them (Bukharin 1924; Etkind 2006, p. 69), who were now to participate in elaboration of the new ontological fundaments of the Marxist science.

Their generational belonging may be one of the explanations as to why the texts of this time often endow the external environment—the main factor of influence—with cosmic and almost divine features. “The environment is something huge”, wrote Mikhail Basov, professor in the Herzen State Pedagogical Institute; it “reaches the limits of infinity”, “it is limitless in terms of boundaries, infinitely diverse in content and eternally changeable”, it possesses the astonishing “creative power”, “power of influence”; “the environment is everything, it is the whole” (Basov 1928, p. 61). In this imaginary, Basov was not much different from the scientific cosmists of either the prerevolutionary or the early Soviet eras. Some of them were straightforward mystics, such as the founding father of Soviet astronomy Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, whose thought combined “a unique syncretism of vitalism, panpsychism, and monadology, with aspects of gnosticism, theosophy and spiritualism” (Hagemeister 2012, p. 451). In this kind of imaginary, interconnected animate and inanimate matter, bacteria, people, and stars were placed against a background of a generative and energy-filled Universe.

Thus, attempts to externalize explanations of influence, while aligning the ontological basis of the sciences with Marxism, created powerful and enigmatic metaphors that became deeply rooted in the Soviet imaginary.

4. The Reactological Metaphor: Bekhterev

In the matter of influence two proponents of the objective study of behavior were crucial: Ivan Pavlov and Vladimir Bekhterev. Both were keen to explore the external factors of influence, both were devoted to scientific objectivity and materialism, and both rejected the unconscious to argue against introspective psychologists (Kozulin 1989, p. 79). But it was their imagery that remained unnoticed by the power, as it was sneaking into science some mystical content.

Bekhterev willingly accepted the revolution. In 1924, he elaborated on the consistency of his concept with dialectical materialism. His version of Soviet psychology seemed materialistic enough to “cease (…) our debates about the dualism of ‘soul’ and ‘body’” (Bekhterev and Dubrovsky 1926, p. 89). Bekhterev wrote that “thought, feeling, movement of the bowels, clenching of the hand into a fist are coequal” (ibid., p. 88). His doctrine was recognized as “pure psychophysiological monism” (ibid., p. 89). There was social unity as well, especially metaphorically powerful in his concept of a “collective personality”—a social organism that reacted jointly to stimuli, a factor of external influence.

However, in addition to the conceptual dimension, there were also images and an old prerevolutionary cosmic sensibility. Paradoxically, Marxists’ monism helped in their survival, since it itself placed animated and inanimate matter, cosmos and society, atoms, amoebas, and humans on the same material plane. Bekhterev thought about the universe in terms of matter and energy. Before the revolution, he spoke of energy as a path to immortality (Bekhterev 1918). Now he treated it dialectically. Matter was constantly in movement: “everything moves, everything flows” (Bekhterev and Dubrovsky 1926, pp. 79–80). Energy was present in celestial bodies, individuals, cells, and electrons (Bekhterev 1928, p. 86). The “world energy” permeated the entire world and manifested “its unique form in living nature”. He fitted “the whole society, that is, the social or superorganic world” into an all-encompassing world process (Bekhterev and Dubrovsky 1926, p. 77). This endowed matter and energy with images that, in the previous epoch, were interpreted mystically.

Bekhterev had also his insights into the concept of invisible influence. A renowned specialist in hypnosis, he studied it before the revolution at various institutions. In his remembered 1897 address, Suggestion and its Role in Social Life, he demonstrated the power of suggestion, addressing phenomena such as witchcraft and demonic possession (Bekhterev and Strickland 1998). These studies influenced his reflexology project (Engmann and Steinberg 2019). Reflexology, in which society was seen as living matter, provided a scientific explanation for influence and gained political significance. The “collective personality”—a group, a crowd, or a nation—in Bekhterev’s concept could react to an external stimulus as one person. Bekhterev theorized that an invisible yet potent force amalgamated individuals into a unified entity. It operated through “invisible but effective connections” that drew them together, like the invisible force of a magnet attracting iron. On the imaginative level, the collective personality could be perhaps visualized as a huge, many-headed creature acting as one person. In scientific terms, Bekhterev believed that its manifestations were subject to the same pattern as in an individual. All human actions, including thinking, were explainable as reactions to a stimulus, while collective actions were reactive to “even a slight external push” (Bekhterev and Dubrovsky 1926, p. 76).

Bekhterev’s theory fell precisely into the political sensibility of the Soviet mystified unknown in the field of influence. As Bekhterev wrote, revolutions were reflex responses of the social collective to a stimulus. Mass reactions could be grafted artificially: “Thus, at the sound of a march, the crowd begins to march to the beat of the music (…). When a crowd flees with threats of execution or attacks someone, inflicting violence, it produces a collective defensive or offensive combination reflex” (Bekhterev [1987] 1990). Hypnosis and telepathy aligned with this, as hypnotic influence involved thought transmission within a single living, “collective” matter.

It is no surprise that Bekhterev’s metaphors and research into hypnosis attracted both secret services and genuine occultists.2 How close it was to both politics and mysticism, the case of Evgenii Teger and Vadim Chechovsky’s group illustrates. This was the group of occultists operating in the 1920s in the basement of Little Lubyanka street 16, in Moscow. Chechovsky saw himself as a scientist. He first tried to create an occult group around the magazine Culture and Science in order to publish “scientific articles with an occult tinge” and discuss “occultism and modern materialism”. Later he somehow managed to get affiliated at Bekhterev’s Brain Institute3 and claimed that Bekhterev treated his research with a “friendly and attentive approach” (Nikitin 2004, p. 60).

The reason for Chekhovsky’s execution by the regime in 1929 was not an ideology inconsistent with Marxism. In the same years and later on, as some authors believe, the Soviets were exploring similar issues in closed laboratories, to mention only the famous Eighth Department of the Cheka/GPU and its director Gleb Bokiy, known as a bloody Chekist and an occultist involved in a paranormal research (Shishkin 2012). The reason for Chekhovsky’s repression was his ambition for planetary power over people, a monopoly that the Party wanted to maintain (Nikitin 2004, pp. 56–57).

5. The Reactological Metaphor: Pavlov

While Bekhterev was just a tolerated, even if authoritative, researcher, Pavlov was to become the official legitimization of the Soviet anthropological narrative for decades. Pavlov, who had attempted to study as a priest before his interest in physiology, in his Nobel speech in 1904 described mental mechanisms as “shrouded in deep darkness” into which religion, literature, and art aimed to “shed light” (Pavlov [1904] 2014, p. 114). He, thus, framed mental phenomena as the mystified unknown. But as he tried to unveil this mystery, it became clear that it was science that Pavlov had real faith in.

Again, in his discussions with the authorities, religious language stubbornly returned. Religion, science, and the Party re-emerged as interchangeable elements there vying to control the invisible, with “faith” often lurking in the background. While Pavlov criticized Bolsheviks for “religious” faith in Marxism, he was himself accused of a “subconscious” faith in the “invisible and non-existent strength of the bourgeois order of things” (Bukharin 1924, pp. 187–88). This discussion lasted for years, and in the 1930s, Pavlov still insisted that the dialectical materialism did not “differ by a hair from the theology” (Pavlov [1931] 1999). Despite these tensions, Pavlov received protection from Lenin in 1921. Valued as a world-renowned scientist whose “doctrine of conditioned reflexes supported materialism” (Bukharin 1924, p. 170), he reinforced the belief of Soviet social engineers: “our nature is malleable” (Ukhtomsky [1927] 2002, p. 112).

Just like Bekhterev, Pavlov used the metaphor of material unity. He praised “unity of nature, infinitely mysterious and majestic” (Sukhov 1973, p. 257). Yet his concept of unity was different from Bekhterev’s. Despite utterly secular scientific language, it bore almost biblical echoes. In Pavlov’s teleology, the Word is not at the beginning but at the end of material development, becoming the crucial factor of influence. It is speech that creates a second signaling system unique to humans. The word acts as a comprehensive conditioned stimulus, facilitating thought exchange and societal interconnectedness. Among other factors, it powerfully influences humans, even affecting their bodies. Pavlov believed he could explain previously “inexplicable” mystical phenomena, such as religious ecstasy, martyr perseverance, and stigmas, as a result of purely verbal influence. This forever linked Pavlov’s concept with religion, which perhaps was supported by the fact that words are not entirely material. As Bekhterev’s student Platonov noted in his book on The Word in Pavlov’s doctrine, the word is “distracted from reality” and “replaces” it. In Platonov’s opinion, they were still far from fully understanding its “real influence on deep and hidden processes”, which shrouded it in mystery and viewed through the lens of the mystified unknown (Platonov 1961, p. 7).

Pavlov’s conditioned reflex became the key metaphor in Soviet discourse for decades, explaining all things religious and spiritual. Since 1940, when Pavlov’s teachings became an official doctrine, this explanation was used in all atheistic texts. “Hypnosis” and “suggestion” became key terms in the antireligious struggle. Religion, especially the clergy, along with imperialists, were accused of exerting a hidden influence on the consciousness of the Soviet man. The dictionaries of scientific atheism, published during Khrushchev’s atheization campaign, stated that Soviet psychology of religion was strictly dedicated to studying religious influence and developing an atheistic impact on the human psyche (Novikov 1978).

Malicious influence was perceived in all religious areas, with religious practices explained as stemming from external influence. Prayer was used “by clergy as an important way of influencing believers in order to arouse and reinforce religious ideas” (ibid., p. 150). Religious rituals were “strong means of emotional influence on a person” (ibid., 164). Liturgy was nothing more than “an effective way of influencing believers” (ibid., p. 138), not to mention the ecstatic experiences of the Pentecostals, when believers “jump, run, spin, and engage in a ‘spiritual dance’, and completely ‘lose the sense of reality’” (ibid., p. 190). This was due to ascetic practices and suggestion, which “tire some parts of the brain and revive the activity of the subcortical centers associated with emotions” (ibid., p. 194).

Religious virtues could not be an achievement of a Soviet man either. Confession “in the hands of the Church [was] a means that allows one to retain the believers with their influence” (ibid., p. 217). Asceticism encouraged the “influence of religion” (ibid., p. 200) and even love for one’s neighbor was interpreted as something “helping to keep the working masses in obedience” (ibid., p. 139).

It is obvious that the miraculous was also explained by influence. Miraculous healings were conditioned by “suggestion” (“навеивание”), an “emotional influence on the human psyche”, to which children and poorly educated people were especially susceptible (ibid., p. 157). Holy places were used to “arouse prejudice among the masses” (ibid., p. 202). Belief in the Transfiguration provided another opportunity to “influence the everyday life of believers” (ibid., p. 184). Stigmata, as we know, were a self-suggestion: this was an “imaginary burn” or “imaginary blow” (ibid., p. 220),. With the help of the saints, the Church “constantly influenced the believers” (ibid., p. 203).

Religion seemed dangerous for the regime because its powerful influence on humans was not open to control. As the Atheist’s Dictionary wrote, “the supernatural world (…) is an invisible world, incomprehensible and unknowable by nature”. It was “scientific understanding of suggestion” that was to “take the mystery out of these phenomena” (Okulov et al. 1978, p. 175). Yet as we have seen, it often happened that when science was placed in the same realm with religion, it was endowed with mysterious qualities. In ideological texts, the powerful hypnotist began to take the place of the divine. Writers included descriptions of bizarre spiritual phenomena, much more captivating than the ideological clichés. The mystery firmly settled within science itself, and the dictionary precisely presented the formula of the mystified unknown: science not only solved “the mysteries of the world” but was constantly “adjacent to the unknown” (ibid., p. 181).

6. Dialectics and the Inner Impulse

When Lenin died in 1924, the author of the main Marxist magazine Under the Banner of Marxism described him as “the greatest leader of the human masses”, “born by the masses and created to lead these masses” (Nevsky 1924, p. 5). With this loss, the issue of mass influence became even more acute because of the internal struggle within the Communist Party, which saw Stalin gradually consolidating power.

The late 1920s and early 1930s marked, as was already mentioned, tightening party policy concerning sciences. One after another, psychoanalysis, pedology, psychotechnics, reflexology, and reactology faced repression. Sciences were required to conform to Marxist ideology, including “developing the Leninist stage in the development of dialectical materialism” and now also “materialist dialectics in the works of Comrade Stalin” (Zhdan 2004, p. 418).

In 1929 Under the Banner of Marxism highlighted the conclusions of the Second Conference of Marxist–Leninist Research Institutions. The theoretical debate with the mechanists had ended, and the mechanists had acknowledged their errors (Karev 1926, p. 23). Dialectical materialism, “expanding its influence among the broadest masses, [was] increasingly penetrating all areas of scientific knowledge” (New Stage 1929, pp. 5–6). With the end of this debate, the focus of the search for the influence factor appeared to tend toward an inward shift once more.

It seems that for Stalin, who favored the NKVD’s implicit methods of influence, hidden from the uninitiated, this shift was appealing. It was facilitated by the fact that in the discussion with mechanists, voices were heard that in the field of influence it was necessary to remember the classical postulates of Marxism. For example, in 1926 Under the Banner reminded readers that Lenin, in his text On the Question of Dialectics, wrote that “for a dialectical materialist, movement is not merely the result of external actions from the environment but also an internal movement inherent to the object itself”. Misunderstanding this led to vulgar mechanistic views in which an “external push” becomes close to a god (Lenin 1925).

Even if “external push” were to go out of political fashion, in a typical manner of Soviet doublethink, this did not pose a theoretical problem. It was remembered that Lenin, as Bukharin confessed back in 1924, “had a purely practical attitude towards theoretical concepts”, often modifying the Marxism constructs to such extent that it “disturbed our international conscience to the depths of our souls”. As a master of influence himself, Lenin understood “what slogans needed to be thrown at any given time, what mass psychology was like (…), how one can achieve a bond with the maximum number of people (…), who can act as energetic forces against the class enemy”. The mass character of Marxist theory, and coordinating it with practice, became Soviet clichés. Marxism was, to quote Bukharin, a weapon directed “now in one direction, now in another”; it held “nothing sacred” except the interests of the social revolution (Bukharin [1924] 1988, pp. 71–72).

In Stalin’s time, this ability to “vacillate with the party line” became even more vital. In his paranoid manner, Stalin was once again playing out the issue of invisible influence. In April 1929, at a joint plenum of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission, Stalin declared the line of Bukharin’s own group to be a deviation from the general line of the party. He blamed it for an attempt “to disguise its own line, different from the party line, in order to secretly undermine the party line” (Stalin [1929] 1949, p. 8). Their actions were thus hostile but hidden—and so could be unnoticed by others, but not by Stalin himself, who was now looking for an ideological basis for tightening state power (ibid., p. 71).

His role as the owner of Soviet gnosis and virtuoso of Marxism, who alone could interpret it correctly, was easily justifiable ontologically. In dialectical materialism it was stated that what appears on the surface as a play of chance, in reality, “always turns out to be subject to internal, hidden laws” (Engels and Marx [1845] 1961, p. 306). Most of the laws, as the one of unity and struggle of opposites, were conveniently ambivalent. The struggle of opposites occurred “inside every whole” and allowed us to understand any phenomenon as a system containing incompatible elements. This provided the opportunity to interpret any phenomenon “in such a way that it is permeated by the logic of its historical development” (Great Soviet Encyclopedia 1938, pp. 460–71). The Party was liable to possess the esoteric knowledge of internal historical processes.

In Stalin’s seminal text On Dialectical and Historical Materialism (Stalin [1938] 1997)—which became a mandatory part of the Short Course on the History of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), reprinted in tens of millions of copies—Stalin explained his course using the ontological metaphors of dialectical materialism. First, dialectics considers nature as a “unified whole, where objects and phenomena are organically connected”. Second, nature is “in a state of continuous movement and change”. Third, development moves from “hidden”, “imperceptible and gradual” quantitative changes to “sudden qualitative” ones (ibid., pp. 254–55).

Dialectical materialism thus perfectly explained why “imperceptible” changes were transformed into the voluntary of the Supreme Leader. Paradoxically, however, in this discourse Stalin used images of living, unified, dynamic matter not very different from the enchanted imaginary discussed above. It introduced the metaphor of unity to the masses. It established human consciousness as thinking matter. On Dialectical and Historical Materialism quoted Engels: “The picture of the world is a picture of how matter moves and how ‘matter thinks’” (ibid., p. 261). The hidden influence was present in this ontology. In the place from which gods were expelled, the Marxist “inner impulse” was situated.

It seems, thus, that it was dialectical materialism itself that enhanced the mystical potential of the Soviet ontological imaginary. Based on Hegelian idealism, in which, as Sergey Averintsev recalled, one could find quite nonatheistic things, infused with the imagery of its mid-19th-century creators, it merged with the cosmic imagination of the “old professors”, contemporaries of Stalin (Averintsev 2002). The most notable feature of this ontology was the monistic worldview, which explained nature, humanity, and society in material terms and portrayed this unity as dynamic, thinking, eternal, and energetic. Articulated through obscure language, it created an imaginative complex that was accessible even to those with limited ideological education. As the official version of Marxism, it generated verbal clichés spread through propaganda and fossilized the holistic imaginary in the Soviet masses for generations.

Ideologists of science contributed to the implementation of the esoteric doctrine to Soviet imaginary. They sought to reject religious explanations of influence, but effectively just rebranded it. The famous pseudobiologist Trofim Lysenko dismissed the notion of a “mystical vital force” as the source of life impulse, asserting instead that “Marxist–Leninist dialectics developed by comrade Stalin revealed the sources of vitality”: the internal opposites. In keeping with the Party’s fondness for everything secret, Łysenko praised “Stalin’s science of gradual, hidden, imperceptible quantitative changes that led to qualitative fundamental changes” (Lysenko 1949, pp. 43–44).

Thus, invisible influence became intertwined with political esotericism and the Marxist holistic imaginary. It is interesting, that Stalin also established the mystified unknown as an official doctrine: “There are no unknowable things in the world, but there are only things not yet known, which will be revealed and known through the forces of science and practice (Stalin [1938] 1997, p. 261)”. One only had to keep in mind that the Leader was himself the ultimate originator and arbiter of this scientific Revelation.

7. Loosening of the Regime

One can agree that, although the Soviet cult of science is often associated with the era of Khrushchev’s Thaw, it was almost entirely initiated by Stalinism (Konakov 2022, p. 10). Nonetheless, Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization in the late 1950s and 1960s brought a new development to the sciences and the theme of influence. Just as many areas of science were repressed in 1930, now, when a wave of rehabilitation swept across the country, they were allowed again. Genetics, cybernetics, and structural linguistics were rehabilitated, and sociology and nature preservation (ecology) emerged. Already in the postwar years, more intensely after Stalin’s death, and even more so in the 1960s, various ideas, currents, and practices began to emerge as more freely explored. Furthermore, as some authors think, social crisis was imminent as the main Soviet myth, the Marxism–Leninism–Stalinism narrative was weakening. “The idea that encapsulates a society’s core values and beliefs lost its luster”, and disorientation and a search for “something else” made the scientific occult especially attractive (Rosenthal 2012, p. 390).

The main features of the mystified unknown became especially evident during this period. The metaphorical “cellars” preserved many repressed, but still vibrant, ideas from previous epochs. Hypnosis, continuing to be studied and used for treatment in the Soviet Union, was widely discussed by the late 1950s. Although constrained to “surface” versus “depth” directive psychotherapy, it was present at important conferences (Hoskovec 1967, pp. 1–3). Research into the unconscious had not entirely vanished either. Ideological control limited but did not suppress individual researchers, who adapted terminology to official theories or presented their work under other official concepts, continuing their studies as secondary phenomena related to different topics (Kozulin 1989).

The rehabilitation of some forbidden topics was initially carried out under the slogan of competition with the West. Freudianism was smuggled in under the slogan “We must know our enemies by sight” (ibid.). But, as is often the case with prohibitions, Western ideas became especially attractive and, when finally allowed, quickly became a source of borrowing. Under the guise of “familiarizing with Western scientific knowledge”, it became possible to advance risky scientific ideas (Panchenko 2018). Yet there were also numerous domestic loopholes in public institutions, surprisingly sanctioned by the state itself.

The following story, recounted by Igor Vinokurov, shows how the mysterious could be smuggled into universities in the late 1950s. In 1959, the state publishing house released Mysterious Phenomena of the Human Psyche by Soviet academic Leonid Vasiliev, which included a chapter on telepathy. The book quickly sold out and was read by Vinokurov, then a student. His interest was further piqued by Bernard Kazhynski’s article on telepathy in Komsomol Truth, leading him to invite Kazhynski to speak at his university’s biology club. Although the event was canceled by the party bureau, Kazhynski’s lecture on the Electromagnetic Hypothesis of Thought Transmission still occurred in a smaller, unauthorized setting. Vinokurov recalls: “A colleague invited me to the physiology department, where Kazhinsky’s unsanctioned lecture was underway. I heard Bernard Bernardovich’s calm and confident voice. Despite the reduced audience, his talk continued!” (Vinokurov and Gurtovoy 1993).

From 1960 onwards, more official platforms for unconventional scientific ideas emerged. Lectures by the All-Union Knowledge Society, the main organ of antireligious propaganda, and popular science booklets began to explore topics such as UFOs, parapsychology, hypnosis, and teleportation. Articles on these subjects appeared in scientific and popular science journals such as Science and Life and Technology for the Youth and featured in TV shows such as Incredible but True (Konakov 2022, p. 7l; Kukulin 2017; Mitrokhin 2020). This formed a powerful movement of Soviet scientific mysticism, which, unlike the Western New Age, was far from criticizing science but used science as a “pressure valve” for society (Konakov 2022, p. 80).

In this atmosphere, various topics within the mystified unknown increasingly revealed their occult potential. In 1975, the Great Soviet Encyclopedia included a classical formula of the mystified unknown, stating, in the article “Parapsychology”, that while parapsychological phenomena do exist, their physical basis remains undiscovered. It emphasized the need to distinguish between “supernatural” phenomena, promoted by mystics and charlatans, and phenomena that truly exist but lack scientific explanation (Great Soviet Encyclopedia 1938, pp. 192–93). The space of the mystified unknown expanded in capacity. By 1987, cases such as Nineli Kulagina’s telekinesis became possible, with the Soviet court indirectly recognizing the reality of her abilities based on the fact that this phenomenon had not been fully studied and that several scientists were studying them at the USSR Academy of Sciences.

Forbidden sciences and religions, after their long-term suppression, were now released from the metaphorical “cellar”; now intermingled, they presented a peculiar amalgam. Scientific esotericism continued its battle against religion in the old way, explaining religious elements scientifically but in fact rebranding them with a different type of mysticism. In the Kulagina case, Yuriy Gulyaev, Deputy Director of the Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics, described her “special” biofield as an “inexplicable natural phenomenon”, claiming it “has nothing to do with mysticism.” Parascientists “unraveled” mysterious biblical phenomena, citing biblical quotations (Panchenko 2018). Soviet holistic imaginary flourished in these texts on an unprecedented scale.

In the realm of the imaginary, the Soviet New Age matched the Western one with impressive synergy. However, it drew on domestic ideas and metaphors from earlier Soviet periods, such as Gurvich’s biofields and Vernadsky’s noosphere, Bekhterev and Pavlov metaphors, and on the imaginary of energy and living matter. By the 1960s, the concepts of fields and biofields, along with psychics, began to gain traction. The popularity of psychic healer Djuna in the early 1980s prompted the Party to delegate the Academy of Sciences to investigate these phenomena. This led to a burst of research combining physics, biology, medicine, and psychology, leading to the creation of devices to measure various “radiations” from living organisms.

The topic of influence, both on matter and psyche, employed all these metaphors. For example, energy as an invisible influence, and a dynamic matter as a subject of it, found its way into practices such as “cloud busters”. Participants in seminars led by Boris Zolotarev were known for their power over clouds. Ukrainian psychic Albert Ignatenko, who claimed to influence massive cloud formations, described his process: “I imagine my hand emitting energy. I direct this energy precisely to the spot where the sun should be at that moment” (Rezko 1996, p. 19). Kiev television covered these events. Alan Chumak, a psychic healer and hypnotist who also could disperse clouds and summon wind but was more famously known for charging water jars with healing energy and for remote hypnotism, was featured in major official media. In an interview, he explained that the space around us is filled with energy. In line with the Soviet doctrine of absolute, inexhaustible energy, he noted that this energy is sufficient to make humanity happy if used skillfully.

Chumak spoke to millions first as a Soviet journalist, influencing the masses through the TV broadcasts. As he himself stated in an interview for Moscow Pravda, “evidently, there is some connection between my work on television and my interconnection with huge masses of people through the screen” (Kuznik 1995, p. 77). Thus, ideological influence over the masses through words was easily transformed, in Chumak’s practice, into esoteric influence over the masses through energy—all under the banner of science.

8. The Space of Paradoxes

The ambivalent attitude of Soviet authorities toward influence and the ambivalent position of the mystified unknown, as an official loophole for mystification, created a unique potential for re-enchanting Soviet science. The Soviet Union of the second half of the century was full of these contradictions. The Khrushchev era was a time of relaxed repression, allowing Soviet occultism in science to emerge more openly. Yet it was also a period of a scientific atheism campaign initiated in the mid-1950s, further intertwining science, religion, and ideology. It was, besides, the height of the Cold War. This fostered growth of classified scientific sectors and an increased demand for the scientific and technical intelligentsia working within them. Ironically, but unsurprisingly, these sectors became the primary carriers of scientific occultism (Kukulin 2017; Konakov, 2022; Panchenko 2018) and amplified the intertwining of scientific and esoteric discourses in exploring phenomena such as nuclear energy, hypnosis, and UFOs. They best understood the paranoia surrounding foreign influence.

It is a true paradox that state secrecy intensified a desire for mystical science by fueling distrust in official sciences. The belief that “things were not as we were told” played a crucial role in spreading a science-based mystical sensibility in the general population. Theories once dismissed as mysterious now gained full legitimacy. This led to the natural conclusion that if once-forbidden ideas were now permitted, then other risky scientific teachings might also be valid. As Nikolai Mitrokhin notes, if these sciences were rehabilitated, “then futurology, ufology, astrology, ‘methodology’, and ‘noosphere science’ would soon gain recognition. It would only take small efforts to overcome the ‘rigid’ thinking of ‘scientific bureaucrats’. If there are computers and space travel, why not perpetual motion machines and UFOs? If acupuncture and the miraculous remedy ‘mumie’ are positively mentioned in the Soviet press, why not healing, paranormal abilities, and an immortality drug?” (Mitrokhin 2020).

The inconsistency could be observed in the official publication policy. The Soviet press was permitted to publish esoteric content, and officials often sought the services of bioenergetic therapists. However, the same press also launched campaigns to debunk occult publications as unscientific. Such campaigns had little impact. They faced skepticism, particularly from scientists who distrusted the institution of scientific critique as politically compromised. Besides, the mystified unknown was inherently resistant to criticism, as any mystery could be viewed as an unexplored aspect of a natural phenomenon. The campaign had little effect on the esoteric practitioners as well, as the story of Pyotr Utvenko well illustrates. Utvenko, a Ukrainian psychic healer, became renowned for treating high-ranking officials, including members of Ukrainian Politburo, but also faced criticism in the Party publications such as Pravda Ukrainy. Legend has it that when a journalist came to him, pretending to be a patient in order to write a critical article, Utvenko read his thoughts and paralyzed him, leaving him frozen in the yard (Gorbovsky 1991, p. 48).

Thus, the Party was losing control over the space of the mystified unknown. Yet the belief that nothing was as it seemed united Party conspiracists, fighters against influence of the West, and esoteric scientists. It also affected ordinary citizens, who had been for a long time deprived of the opportunity to express their religious sense, if they had one. This atmosphere contributed to peculiar reversals, where ideological efforts often led to mystical conversions.

Alan Chumak experienced a conversion in 1970 while working as a journalist assigned to write a critical article about healers. In his memoir, he reflected on how official papers shaped “the trusting Soviet reader”, who understood that the printed word didn’t reflect the truth but what was deemed suitable for official use. Approaching the assignment with a mix of trust and skepticism, Chumak unexpectedly discovered his own extrasensory abilities. This religious awakening unfolded within a holistic imagination: “Suddenly, I saw the world with my eyes closed. It was an astonishing world! (…) Before me flowed multicolored streams of energy, illuminating the auras of my acquaintances (…). And I saw: everything here is interconnected—things, phenomena, people—all exist within a multitude of informational connections, in unity” (Chumak 2022, p. 15).

Scientific mystifiers presented themselves as scientists and doctors. But some vigilant late-Soviet viewers, those who lacked a sense of the mystical, disagreed. One newspaper reader expressed this in Marxist terms: “Hypnosis, telepathy, it’s all lies (…)! We always said that religion is the opium of the people. But these self-proclaimed psychics and telepaths are just as harmful” (Kuznik 1995, p. 69).

It is telling that Soviet citizens unmistakably sensed in scientific mysticism something close to what the Soviet Union had unsuccessfully tried to eliminate—religion.

9. Conclusions

Soviet scientific mysticism is a unique phenomenon that defies easy classification within existing categories. This makes it a case of “metaphors pointing to the challenge of naming” (Menzel 2012, p.20). To describe the paradoxical space, where the Soviet experiment blended seemingly disparate elements—simultaneously repressive and permissive, prohibitive and yet offering official loopholes—we need special metaphors. This space has been referred to by various authors, for example, as the “space of exotopy” (“прoстранствo вненахoдимoсти”, Yurchak 2006), or, closer to our topic, “the reservoir of the incredible” (Konakov 2022). In this article, I propose to see it as the space of the mystified unknown, where scientific secrecy and mystical sentiment, seasoned with political ideology and imagery, became paradoxically interwoven. It became one of the metaphorical “cellars” where the motif of invisible influence, explored in this article, took on mystical characteristics.

The case of influence revealed further paradoxes. While official atheism aimed to replace religion with science, it ended up structurally linking them. Within the mystified unknown religious mysteries merged with scientific ones, borrowing each other’s traits. Religious language appeared in both scientific and political discourse, while efforts to align science with Marxism led to holistic imagery and recurring metaphors of dynamic, energetic, thinking matter—easily convertible into mysticism. This vague esoteric ontology, introduced in Soviet science and society at large, became rooted in Soviet thought. As the regime loosened, it took on sacred meaning.

The Soviet authorities played a key role in these processes. As in the case of influence, their need to control the masses, fear of hidden alien forces, and hunger for covert power fueled Soviet society’s warped attitudes toward mystery. A regime of doublethink, where the population was trained not to trust their own eyes, paradoxically fed belief in scientific fantasies.

It was not only the Soviet regime that fostered an atmosphere of the mysterious. Totalitarian regimes often do. They sacralize power, surrounding it with fear and an ideological mist. They draw heavily on their own quasireligious potential, as shown by persistent scholarly efforts to interpret Marxism–Leninism, fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism as forms of “political religion” (Plamper 2012; Adler 2012, pp. 8–13; Gentile 1996; Griffin 2005; Halfin 2000; Klinghoffer 1996; Thrower 1992). While viewing institutional religion as a rival to be co-opted or eliminated, totalitarianisms often embrace the occult as a practical replacement. It acts as a handy tool, promising triumph in shady projects, vengeance on enemies, and a cure for existential dread. It offers hope of claiming the master key to influence. Some argue that psychic safety, grounded in the comfort of strict hierarchy, also links esoteric and totalitarian systems (Hapchenko 2023).

Not only the Soviet but the Western “secret intellectual history” (Sedgwick 2004) is filled with such fascinations. Western intellectuals interested in esoterism and occultism, such as Julius Evola (e.g., Evola and Ur Group [1927] 2018; Evola [1931] 1995) and Mircea Eliade (e.g., Eliade 1935), and René Guénon (e.g., Guénon [1925] 2005) openly flirted with totalitarian regimes, while occult ideas played a certain role in the early fascist regimes in Italy, Romania, and Germany (Giudice 2022; Galli 2012). Many traits behind the Soviet mystified unknown in the early 20th century were part of a broader zeitgeist. At that time and later, Soviet thinkers developed pseudotheories, similarly to their Western peers (e.g., systems theory, methodology, noospherology, synergetics, futurology etc.; see Mitrokhin 2020). What seems to be a distinctive feature of the Soviet case is that in the Soviet Union, the early 20th-century zeitgeist left a lasting generational imprint.

The unique Soviet context facilitated this. It was within this unique context that Soviet scientific mysticism adopted its own forms. Soviet scientific mysticism was not rooted in conservative visions but in leftist and militant antireligious ones. It was not created in the way Guénon or Evola might have imagined—not as a traditionalist reaction to the “crisis of the modern world” (Guénon [1927] 2001); not in spite of progress but because of it. The Soviet Union saw itself as an answer to the failure of the bourgeois system, a leader of the progressive world and the avant-garde of “advanced science” based on Marxism–Leninism. Like the modernization project itself, Marxism originated in the West. In the USSR, however, it was digested and transformed into a domestic imaginative product, forged into millions of propaganda clichés, and gave rise to an imaginary that coexisted well with both mass consciousness and scientific mysticism.

Finally, what made the Soviet case truly unique was its special culture of doublethink. In the numerous legitimate loopholes it produced, mysticism and mystification could survive, not in opposition to the regime but in a twisted harmony with it. While Western hippies and environmental movements developed New Age ideas in the dream of breaking free from the “iron cage” of capitalism, the Soviet New Age developed as a loophole—a psychological release valve (Kukulin 2017, p. 80), which helped to release public tension in the dull Soviet everyday life but also released “gods” from the “cellars”.

In the Soviet context, doublethink adapted the Biblical saying “let not the left hand know what the right hand is doing”, on the condition that it posed no risk to the regime. The mystified unknown was allowed in this space to fulfill needs the state couldn’t meet. Alternative medicine and bioenergy therapy treated hopeless diseases. Noospherology and synergetics helped to imbue the world with meaning and a vision of integrity. When needed, esoteric teachings were even used in the fight against Western “idealistic” teachings (Zorya 2023). The Party elite also sometimes used its resources. Paradoxically, it was precisely because of the regime’s “normative instability”, where one had to “waver in line with the party”, that some Soviet-born scientists chose science as a stable foundation for their quasireligious worldview (Rogińska 2023).

Without a doubt, Soviet scientific mysticism was partially a product of political engineering. However, it absorbed and repurposed cultural material in unintended ways. This can also be applied to Soviet forced secularization, which brought about an unintended re-enchantment effect in a distinctly Soviet manner. The phenomenon serves as yet another illustration of the surprisingly diverse paths that the process of secularization can take. Moreover, in this case, evolution may intriguingly continue after the collapse of the Soviet Union, since, as research shows, similar patterns of holistic, dynamic matter in the imaginary of the divine persist in the minds of post-Soviet scientists (Rogińska 2021, 2024). If this is the case, we are witnessing another post-Soviet paradox, where the previous era, reportedly atheistic, continues to impact and enrich religiosity decades later.