- LEV TERMEN
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- The story of Lev Sergeievitch Termen
reads like a spy novel. In the United States he was known as Leon Theremin.
Professor Theremin was born in the city of St. Petersburg, in the Imperial
Russia, in 1896. He became one of the most important pioneers in the development
of electronic music through the instrument the Tereminvox (commonly referred
to as the Theremin). He lived in New York, and had a number of high society
patrons who helped him with funds to conduct his experiments. The devices
he came up with , unusual and fantastic for the time, included a prototype
color television system. In 1938 Theremin was kidnapped from the New
York apartment he shared with his American wife, the black ballet dancer
Ivana Williams. The operation was carried out by the NKVD (forerunners
of the KGB). Leon Theremin was transported back to the USSR, accused of
anti-Soviet propaganda, and sent to the Gulag concentration camps. While
he spent some time in Magadan, Soviet agents spread the rumors that Theremin
was executed. However, the Soviets recognized his talents, and he was put
to work on top secret projects.
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- During the years he spent as a Soviet
"scientist-slave" (some of them in a missile design office behind
bars, or "sharashka" in Russian) he met such imprisoned scientists
as Sergei Korolyov. Theremin invented the "bug", a sophisticated
electronic eavesdropping device. Theremin supervised the bugging of the
American embassy, and of Stalin's private apartments. He was awarded the
Stalin Prize. Theremin was also asked to head the UFO research laboratory.
Soviet Radio magazine published an interview with Theremin in its Issue
# 8 (1990). During the early 1960's Lev Termen was offered to head a laboratory,
a secret facility designed and built for the research of "flying
saucers" apparently captured by Soviets. The scientist believed in
neither E.T.s nor in "saucers", and he refused.
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- Lev Termen had returned to the United
States years later, when the system that had imprisoned him had fallen
apart, and there was no more Soviet Union. He died in 1995.
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- SERGEI KOROLYOV
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- As I mentioned before, Termen met Korolyov
in a prison for Soviet scientists. Sergei Korolyov's life was dedicated
to space exploration. Yet in his lifetime Korolyov witnessed both UFOs
and concentration camps.
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- His biography included the following
facts (Military Encyclopedic Dictionary (Moscow, Ministry of Defense of
the USSR publishing house VOYENIZDAT, 1986):
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- "Korolyov Sergei Pavlovich (1970-66),
a Soviet scientist, designer of rocket space technological systems, founder
of the applied science of space travel, twice Hero of Socialist Labor (1956,
1961), Academician of the Academy of Sciences, USSR (1958). Graduated
from the Moscow Technical College (1929). From 1930, senior engineer at
the Central Aerodynamical Institute; from 11933, Deputy Director of the
Jet Propulsion Scientific Research Institute, head of the rocket aircraft
section. During the Great Fatherland War, Deputy Chief Designer at the
Experimental Design Office. Under Korolyov's guidance, ballistic and geophysical
missiles had been created; first artificial Earth satellites, and artificial
Sun satellites, various purpose satellites ("Elektron," "Molniya-1,"
"Kosmos," "Zond," and others); the spacecraft "Vostok,"
"Voskhod" -- through the use of which, for the first time in
history, mankind's spaceflights and the entry into space were undertaken.
Recipient of the Lenin Award (1957)." In short, Korolyov was a credible
man.
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- There are episodes in Korolyov's life
that could never be included in a Soviet publication. He was arrested in
1938 by secret police. Stalin's henchmen find him guilty of treason,
and sentence Korolyov to ten years in concentration camps. He is sent to
the horrifying prisons and camps of the Gulag. Even in the darkest periods
of Soviet history brave people resisted the tyranny: Korolyov found friends
in high places and was released in 1944. While in prison, Korolyov worked
in the"sharashka", a prison for scientists whose brains could
be cheaply utilized for the good of the State. He was fortunate enough
to find himself at the famous "Prison Design Center" of A.N.
Tupolev, designer of Soviet TU aircraft, as Tupolev's assistant.
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- Korolyov believed in the existence of
extraterrestrial civilizations. He did mentioned (albeit briefly) in his
memoirs a mysterious "laboratory for the study of flying saucers"
Korolyov's interest was primarily in the engine design a alien crafts.
Soviet cosmonaut Georgy Grechko confirmed it. In the late 1950's Grechko
worked with Korolyov. They were developing ballistic trajectory for the
MAR-I spaceship.
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- Grechko was an ardent proponent of the
E.T. explanation of the Tunguska Phenomenon. At the Korolyov designer bureau
he found six more scientists who believed likewise. They found a report
put together by A. Zolotov (who was murdered in 1995). The report stated
that there was a nuclear explosion of alien spaceship in 1908 over the
Siberian taiga. An expedition to the site was long overdue, in the opinion
of seven scientists. Korolyov heard them out, and to their surprise, fully
agreed. But he would not fund it, although his bureau had plenty of funds.
Valentin Krapiva, a UFO researcher who has collected information about
Korolyov, thinks that the latter wanted to conceal the fact of such an
expedition. But he did find a way to help them pay for it.
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- Grechko's memoirs were published in Stroitelnaya
Gazeta newspaper (November 25, 1989). The part about the actual expedition
undertaken by future cosmonaut and his colleagues was omitted from the
memoirs.
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- One thing is certain: after his meeting
with Stalin regarding the unidentified flying objects, Korolyov became
an ardent supporter of A. Kasantsev's (a famous Soviet sci-fi writer, himself
an ex-colonel, and head of military plant) idea that the Tunguska Phenomenon
could have been an alien spaceship. Not only did Korolyov encourage his
employees to conduct a search of the object that exploded over the taiga
in 1908, but according to some reports, he himself organized one of the
expeditions. As reported in Yuri Smirnov's article "The Tunguska Explosion"
(Chetvertoye Izmereniye newspaper, Yaroslavl, Issue 6, 1992), S.P. Korolyov
did not exclude the possibility that an alien spaceship conducted maneuvers
over the Siberian taiga. Sergei Pavlovich was one of the first organizers
of the helicopter expedition to the area of the Podkamennaya Tunguska.
Mr Smirnov is the head of Yaroslavl UFO Study Group, a well known Russian
scientist, author and researcher of UFO phenomena.
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- Korolyov personally experienced a UFO
sighting over the Baikonur Cosmodrom in 1962. The engineers, who accompanied
the rocket designer, reported that the UFO was a disc-shaped object in
the center of a spiral cloud, and it had four rays aimed downwards from
the hull.
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- Paul Stonehill Director Russian Ufology
Research Center
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