Thought Transfer and Mind Control

What is telepathy? A fantasy, a remnant of ancient myths and superstitions, or an obscure capacity of the human psyche? Can human thought be transmitted directly from one person to another, and if so, what physical, psychical, or social processes underpin such thought transfer? To answer these questions scores of scientists around the world conducted countless experiments and debated their results for nearly 150 years.

This volume offers the first detailed history of scientific research into telepathy in one particular locale—revolutionary Russia. Drawing on extensive archival research, it investigates why and how the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 gave a great boost to telepathy research and polemics during the turbulent formative decades of Soviet rule. It reconstructs the remarkable experiments carried out jointly by the celebrated circus clown and animal trainer Vladimir Durov and the eminent neurologist and psychiatrist Vladimir Bekhterev, along with those of their numerous collaborators and critics.

Moving from scientific laboratories, conferences and publications to newspapers, circus performances, cinema and science fiction to government offices and ideological struggles, the book reveals how ideas about thought transfer circulated across science, popular culture and politics. It shows that the rise, and eventual fall, of telepathy research was inseparable from the creation of the Soviet system of state-funded science and its continuous transformations.

At once a history of an extraordinary scientific pursuit and a wider study of scientific knowledge during revolutionary times, this richly documented volume illuminates the competing visions of what science is and ought to be, the shifting boundaries between science and non-science, and the complex relationships among scientific ambition, ideology, culture and political power in early Soviet Russia.