HiddenMysteries: Professor Yefremov's KGB Files

Ivan Antipovich Yefremov (1908-1972) led a life full of adventures, scientific research and accomplishments, discoveries, and hard work.

He was born in a village in 1908 (the true year of his birth), the son of a peasant’s daughter and a Russian government official. As a teenager, lost in the war-torn land, he joined the Red Army, was adopted by a motor transport company during the Civil War and he was badly wounded by a shell from a British gunboat.

Countless other Soviet boys (and adults), including the author of this article, for years had read his stories about explorers and scientists; and loved Yefremov’s bold science fiction novels, too. He was a distinguished scientist; geology and paleontology were his main fields of applied research. Doctor of biological sciences, Ivan Yefremov had written more than 100 scientific works (unfortunately, only few of them were published in languages other than Russian ), a brilliant sci-fi writer, and a bold visionary.

Professor Yefremov’s favorite Western authors were H. G. Wells, H. Rider Haggard, Joseph Conrad, Jules Verne, and Jack London.

This was a human being who loved to help and assist people any way he could. His kindness and goodwill were combined with toughness, for he knew how to defend his point of view; yet he always remained respectful, and mindful of the dignity of other people.

Let us look briefly what Yefremov accomplished between the time he left the Red Army and 1972. He worked as a sailor in the mid 1920s (in the Far East and the Caspian Sea); was a driver; participated in zoological expeditions, and began his scientific education in paleontology.

He was no bookworm! Yefremov, a physically powerful individual with a sense of humor, was adept in anything he did; according to his son, the man could do the work of a carpenter, a lathe operator; and repair any device.

From 1929 on he dedicated himself fully to academic studies, and participated in the paleontological expeditions to remote areas of the Urals, Central Asia, and Siberia. Ivan had a keen eye, and took detailed notes; later, he authored stories about his travels and work. He was a capable student, too, and received his Ph. D. in 1935 (at the Leningrad College of Mines). Then, in 1937, in a very bloody year of Soviet history, Yefremov became the director of the laboratory of low vertebrates of Moscow Paleontological Institute. Finally, he received the Doctor of Science degree in the spring 1941.

A talented paleontologist, Ivan Yefremov coined the term taphonomy and founded the study of taphonomy in 1940 (and by doing so has turned paleontology into exact science). Taphonomy (“laws of burial” in Greek) is the science that studies the process of decay and fossilization. By using the methods of taphonomy it is easier for scientists to find the dinosaur bones.

Young Russian scientist Yefremov used such methods during his Mongolian paleontological expeditions.

When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Yefremov was sent to carry out the defense-related projects in the Urals ( but he wanted to go to the front, to fight the invaders…). There he began his writing career by writing and publishing wonderful short stories and science fiction novels. Looking back now, it is uncanny that Yefremov was able to predict the discovery of diamond deposits in Yakutia; it is fascinating to realize that because of his ideas a Soviet scientist some years later was able to discover practical holography. What is also uncanny is that the KGB later whined that Yefremov knew where the diamond deposits were located but would not tell the authorities and instead revealed the state secret through his story.

YEFREMOV’S WORLDS

His imagination ranged between mysteries of ancient history and depiction of a distant future. His novels include the wonderful The Land of Foam, the story about friendship among escaped slaves (Africans, Greeks, Semites and others) set in ancient Egypt, subtropical Africa, Crete and Greece; he enthralled Soviet readers with his description of Minoan Crete, and other ancient sites. His novel Tais of Athens described chronicles of the protagonist’s life from meeting Alexander the Great, to her travels through the Hellenic world to her reign as queen of Memphis in Egypt. It was a superbly researched novel describing the history, customs and geography of oecumena, the populated ancient world; it also carried mention of ancient and lost scientific devices …such as medical machine used in China for accurate diagnosis, and Babylonian telescopes.

He loved Earth and had faith in humanity’s potential, but knew of the dangers that could destroy both. Long before it became an issue and fashionable, Professor Yefremov demonstrated concerns about ecology of the planet, and harm to the environment during the nuclear arms race.

Yefremov believed that Man is part of vast Nature whose redoubtable essence no one is able to determine to the fullest extent. His protagonists are beautiful, highly moral, superbly trained people, both physically and psychologically. Yefremov was convinced that a human personality can be fully established in the process of physical, emotional, and spiritual development.

Erich Fromm, psychoanalyst and author, had an influence on Professor Yefremov’s outlook. Breaking from the Freudian psychoanalytic tradition which focused largely on unconscious motivations, Fromm held that humans are products of the cultures in which they are bred. Yefremov was not as kind to the late Middle Ages as Fromm. To him, they represented religious fanaticism, the dark ages, burning of those who were different, horrible fate of women…Throughout his novels and stories one sees great influence of ancient Greece. Yefremov was a lover of life; he constantly emphasized beauty, especially the beauty of human body, beauty of healthy Eros. He hated religious fanatics, all those who destroyed beauty and human psyche.

He possessed encyclopedic, comprehensive knowledge, and his books, whether historical or sci-fi novels were full of precise scientific details. Yefremov’s knowledge (revealed in his stories and novels) encompassed biology, physics, astronomy, sociology, philosophy and medicine. Everett C. Olson of the UCLA Department of Biology, a former chair of the department, member of the National Academy of Sciences, and recipient of numerous medals and awards, was an internationally recognized pioneer in studies of the origin and evolution of vertebrate animals. He passed away in 1993. Professor Olson, who knew the Russian scientist and corresponded with Ivan Yefremov, described his colleague as a person who seemingly did not feel boundaries of time and space. The Russian writer was equally at home among the stars, in the open ocean, in the cataclysms of the distant geological epochs, or in the nonexistent world of anti-matter. On occasions Yefremov seemed to the American scientist to be an enigmatic representative of his society. What society?

A DIFFERENT COMMUNISM

Ivan Yefremov dared to have his own vision of Communism: of a humane society, of a future world based on the ideas of equality of all in reason and in spiritual life regardless of the distinctions between races, tribes, customs and religions. Professor Yefremov took fundamental principles of Soviet ideology (Communism and dialectics) and applied to them his own meaning, greatly removed from their orthodox Marxist ideas. His complex philosophy combined materialism with a dialectical (but non-Marxist) base and ideas derived from Eastern philosophies . He was not neither truly a Soviet (in the ideological sense) nor an anti-Soviet writer. But millions of Soviet readers devoured his books and visions of a different, complex and beautiful future.

Professor Yefremov’s vision of Communism did not include the existence of the all-knowing and “wise” Communist Party, and the sinister, hilarious, boring, stifling, ridiculous attributes of every-day Soviet life. His books, even the utopian Andromeda –the Space Age Tale (1956) challenged the official ideology by exposing the inadequacy and constraints of existing Marxist dialectical materialism and showing the necessity for a new spiritual philosophy. This did not bode well with the Soviet leaders and the “shield and sword” of the regime, the KGB, although the Russian writer was a patriot of his country, and did not view Western capitalism as an alternative. He was concerned with the future of the planet, and had his own ideas what it ought to be.

At the same, he was con vinced to the day of his death in 1972 , that war between the Soviet Union and China was unavoidable, and he believed the United States should be afraid of China, too. This is according to The Other Side of the Medal (1990), Professor Everett C. Olson’s book published in UCLA.

Average Soviet people loved his novels, to the extent that many of them (including the nation’s cosmonauts) chose their professions and education because of the influence of Yefremov’s novels. The novel was translated into dozens of languages of the world. That stupendous future he described in Andromeda-the Space Age Tale and Cor Serpentis (Heart of the Snake) ( 1958 ) was drastically different from the dreary contemporaneous reality, and worth fighting for. But even such prominent Soviet personalities as the father of Soviet space program, Sergey Korolyov, according to his assistant V. Tsibin, loved Andromeda and Yefemov’s ideas.

What an unusual adventure genre and science fiction writer he was for the Soviet readers: he believed in the spiritual power of a man, psychological and physical self-improvement; he created a vision of a magnificent, brilliant, breathtaking future of humankind, of space exploration, of cooperation between ours and the extraterrestrial civilizations through the use of the Great Circle, a marvelous association that consolidates isolated planets (like Earth) in the interconnected totality by remarkable methods of communication. And yet the future was not as bright in a later novel…

His novels Andromeda-the Space Age Tale, and The Hour of the Taurus describe panorama of life on Earth and inhabited outer space set at the end of fourth millennium. The world he described in Andromeda was an attractive alternative to the Soviet reality of Khruschev’s socialism, although many Soviet people still believed that Soviet-led scientific and social progress would lead to true Communism (what is meant is the culmination of social development, not ideology itself).

However, Yefremov was no dissident, and apparently did change some controversial (for the regime) paragraphs in his novel The Hour of Taurus , when the Communist Party boss Demichev had a discussion with the author after denunciations of the novel made their way to the top (one of them came back from the KGB chief Y. Andropov).

Professor Yefremov was quite ill in 1967, when he began to write the book; he knew there would be difficulties with its publication. According to his letters, he led a life of an Indian ascetic man; he almost died in the prior year, and worked slowly.

The book was published after the changes were made, but after Yefremov’s death it was banned and removed from Soviet libraries until 1988. It was a sci-fi story set on a fictional, gloomy and dark planet Tormans whose very Soviet-like and Red Chinese-like system and ruling regime are criticized. Tormans is inhabited by descendants of Chinese refugees who fled Earth centuries ago; when the spaceship from the now-changed home planet arrives, they exist in a totalitarian society.

The writer never mentioned Russian Communist leader Vladimir Lenin in his futuristic novels, although he was pressured to. In the 1930s the Communist Party would not accept him for membership because of his father’s “wrong” social class, and in the 1950s Yefremov declined to join it, stating that his father’s social class had not changed… Professor Yefremov could not leave the USSR after his visit to China in 1958, to prepare the joint Soviet-Chinese scientific paleontological expedition, even if he wanted to. He was not chosen for the actual expedition, and this caused him to leave the beloved Paleontological Institute in anger.

The authorities tried to silence any mention of Yefremov’s achievements (even in paleontology…) after his death, and for a number of years they did succeed, until of a massive campaign of famous Soviet scientists, artists, pilots, and cosmonauts, together with his courageous wife, forced the Communist ideologists to relent in the mid-1970s. The other explanation could be that the criminal investigation did not find whatever Andropov’s henchmen were looking for…

A STRANGE KGB INVESTIGATION

One month after his death in October of 1972, the KGB sealed off his modest apartment, full of books, diaries, scientific treatises, maps, notebooks, and many other items. The KGB looked for more than just subversive literature in his apartment on the Spasoglinischevsky Pereulok (Lane).

Eleven KGB officers searched the apartment using X-rays and a metal detector. They intended to open the urn with Yefremov’s ashes, but his wife was determined not to let them. When she tried to find out later what was the reason for all this, the KGB said that they found an anti-Soviet article someone (who left no return address) mailed to the writer. At the same time she was repeatedly questioned about her husband’s wounds, and all details of his life, from birth to death. The prosecutor’s office wanted to know how many years she actually knew Yefremov. She asked the KGB a direct question: what are you accusing him of? The direct reply was that they are not accusing him, as he is a dead man.

Yefremov’s wife, Taisia Iosifovna, kept a copy of the KGB (Moscow and regional departmental jurisdiction) search report; it stated that they were looking for “ideologically harmful literature”. They confiscated Yefremov’s old photographs (from different periods of his life), his letters to his wife, letters from readers, photos of his friends, and receipts. No author’s manuscripts were taken, but they did take homeopathic medicine bottles, some minor things; a book about Africa in English (it had dry leaves inside); his geological minerals, a cane with a “sharp metal object inside”, and a stick made from colored metals. They never returned the last two objects. The KGB had searched the apartment of the famous paleontologist for over 13 hours. Were they looking only for subversive literature? It is hardly likely…

The KGB had continued the investigation of Ivan Yefremov’s life and activities for eight years after the writer’s death. The “Yefremov’s Dossier” comprised forty (40) volumes.

MYSTERIOUS DOSSIER

Three Russian investigative journalists tried to uncover the truth. One of them, A. Izmailov, published his findings in NEVA magazine (Issue 5, 1990). Two others, Nikita Petrov and Olga Edelman, published their findings in 2002 in http://www.ruthenia.ru/logos/number/2002_02/02.htm . They were able to see the files pertaining to the case, files from the Office of the Prosecutor of the USSR.

The absence of the modern division of power in the USSR resulted in the empowering of the Prosecutor’s Office with unprecedented supervisory functions, enormous and unchecked powers. Among the objectives of the Prosecutor’s Office was to ensure compliance of the governmental bodies with the Constitution and laws. The prosecutor used to be the sole guarantor of the proper implementation of laws during pre-trial inquiry and investigation. He exercised the power of active interference to rectify the consequences of the unlawful actions of investigation bodies. He was issuing warrants of arrest, surveillance and other actions significantly restraining the constitutional rights of the citizens.

The Prosecutor’s Office was empowered to oversee cases initiated by the state security services (KGB), and every criminal case had its twin file in the Prosecutor’s Office, where updated information from the case was filed. The case had this designation in the Russian archives: ÖÃÀÐÔ . ô . Ð -8131. Îï . 36 Ä . 5653 (according to the Russian historian N. V. Boyko who presented his information in 1997, at the First International Yefremov Symposium).

The contents of the dossier provided no clear answers and raised even more questions. The cause of death was not determined, and Yefremov might not have been the person her appeared to be, that is what the files stated, and because of the above, a criminal case was opened, and an investigation ensued in January of 1973. No mention of the November search of the deceased author’s apartment was found in the file (although the Prosecutor’s Office authorized it, as the journalists learned later). The criminal case was officially closed in March of 1974, and the Prosecutor’s Office was informed. Fifteen people were questioned about Yefremov’s identity, and it was determined that he died from natural causes. But the KGB investigation went on.

Many years later, Izmailov was able to meet with the investigator, who told him there was no underlying denunciation against Yefremov. Habibulin, the original investigator, was very reluctant to talk about the case even in the waning days of the USSR. In 1989 the journalist was able to get an official response from the Moscow KGB office that the search of Yefremov’s apartment was due to suspicion that the author died a violent death. But the search had caused such suspicions not to be confirmed…

Allan Yefremov was certain in 1997 that there was a denunciation (donos in Russian) to the KGB against his father, had definite suspicions as to who might have done it, but would not talk about them without definite proof.

BRITISH AGENT HYPOTHESIS

The rumors that spread through Moscow in 1972, after the search, had it that Yefremov was actually a British agent who “substituted” the writer during the Mongolian expeditions. Some rumors had it that the KGB installed recording device in the author’s home, and recorded his death…According to the former office of the KGB’s Second Department (Counterintelligence), V. Korolyov, who published his article in 1991 (Stolitsa Magazine), their Moscow office had few activities to occupy the time. To justify their murky existence, Lt.-General Alidin decided to make Yefremov into a British agent. Viktor I. Alidin was head of the Moscow and regional KGB from 1971 to 1986, a very unusual career stretch. And for eight years after Yefremov’s death Alidin had kept the case open…Petrov and Edelman, who have researched thousands of KGB files, found very unusual inconsistencies in the Yefremov’s files obtained from the Prosecutor’s Office.

But besides the inconsistencies stated above, the idea that the British intelligence would spend money and efforts for sending a spy to the USSR under a guise of a paleontologist is somewhat outlandish. The period of early 1970s was the time of the glorification of the KGB, and its operatives, Soviet “knights”, depicted as dedicated and modest heroes out to disrupt evil foreign espionage nests that had penetrated the Socialist Fatherland. While Alidin remained silent about the Yefremov affair in his memoirs, Petrov and Edelman cited general Oleg Kalugin’s (a famous KGB defector living in the U.S.) mention of the Moscow KGB’s account of a Soviet author’s relative who escaped to the West, while a British spy took his place to ideologically destroy the Soviet society; apparently Alidin had pestered the Kremlin with this “case” for years. The Soviet author was not mentioned by name.

Why was the case against the Yefremov initiated by the KGB? The British espionage accusation is not in the files pertaining to the case. Accusation of “anti-Soviet” activities is nowhere in the files (unlike in most other KGB cases); unless more files are missing from the special division. The Prosecutor’s Office division that handled Yefremov’s files would not even deal with major espionage cases. But with his death, had Yefremov been suspected of being a spy, the case would have been closed. Yet it was not…What remains is the mysterious verification of identity, the accusation that Yefremov was not who he pretended to be. The investigative journalists came to a conclusion that for some unknown reasons, the KGB needed a formal cover-up to initiate a criminal case against the Russian writer. Inconsistencies did not bother the KGB operatives. When the need to continue the case was gone, they stopped the case.

There remains one, the most fantastic explanation, of the case against Yefremov. A. N. Strugatsky, one of the most famous international science fiction writers, a beloved author in the former Soviet Union who with his brother comprised the best known team of the genre’s writers, proffered the explanation in his conversation with Izmailov. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the U.S. Armed Forces and the CIA had created departments that had seriously studied flying saucers, and possibilities of ET invasion of Earth. The Soviets might have similar ideas.

Mysterious Sky: Soviet UFO Phenomenon (2006), co-authored by Philip Mantle and the author of this article, describes Soviet military research of UFOs, as well as the KGB interest in the subject (dating back to 1920s). Hence, Strugatsky, perhaps unbeknownst to him, was right in the sense that the Soviets had similar agencies and programs. And the very unusual Soviet author interested them immensely.

At the same time, Soviet sci-fi fans came up with a persistent idea that leading sci-fi writers were agents of extraterrestrial civilizations. Many letters reached famous Russian sci-fi brothers Strugatsky. What if a KGB officer, who took over the newly created agency, with “romantic” imagination, believed in the absurd idea that sci-fi writers are ET agents…He ordered that Yefremov was to be under observation while alive, as they were afraid to capture a “live” alien whose actions could be unpredictable. But when the author, or” alien”, died, they could uncover some means of his communications with a civilization that was well advanced, in comparison with ours. Not knowing what the “means” would look like, the KGB grabbed whatever they could. Not finding what they were looking for, they later returned the objects.

This account explains the unusual KGB conduct: the search of the apartment after Yefremov’s death, confiscation of certain items, their attempt to open the urn, the KGB concern that the author was cremated on the second day after his death (no autopsy was performed); even strange questions asked of his wife; and the statement that Yefremov was not accused of anything. The KGB was simply interested in his work…He interested them, as a person, or…

IMMESURABLE EXTENT OF KNOWLEDGE

After all, the man was a visionary who wrote about alien artifacts found during paleontological expeditions (his novel Star Ships was not published until 1948, because of the ideas presented there that there are many inhabited planets in the Universe, that the evolution of sapient beings is quite similar, that all sentient beings are humanoid in appearance). Professor Yefremov was convinced that all claims to the effect that we will not be able to understand civilizations that have arisen on other planets in different conditions were groundless. The factual reality, in his words, was this: the universe is built according to the same plan, from the same bricks or elements, with the same properties and cause-and-effect relationships. Consciousness, thought, and intellectual matter throughout the universe are structured in accordance with these laws, and, as much as they originate from them, represent their product and reflection. Therefore we would definitely understand each other’s minds; we cannot fail to…

He wrote about holography any years before it was discovered.

Yefremov was only able to publish a story he wrote back in 1943, about genetic memory, in 1968 (A Secret from Hellas , proved to be too “mystical” for the ideologists…). His story of “life-giving” water, to be discussed later, written at the same time, as well as his story about mysterious Mongolian death worm was published in 1944.

There had to be knowledge in his possession that has not been revealed fully. Yefremov was the person who described such fascinating concepts as the ancient Imhotep directly seeking information and receiving accurate answers from the Egyptian deity Thot in his sanctuary in a place known as Ra’s Souls…The wise Imhotep, a great mind, statesman and scientist of ancient Egypt came back to his Pharaoh with the accurate answers, and much more: he was shown wonders that no previous Pharaohs had ever been shown.

Imhotep was given knowledge back in approximately 2880 BCE, in the period when many other centers of newly gained knowledge sprung up in China, Crete, Sumer, and India; when men received knowledge from “gods” who arrived on our planet…Imhotep kept objects, similar to powerful modern computers, in a special sanctuary.

The KGB, likely interested in Yefremov’s precognition of holography, would be no less interested in his knowledge of such computers. The state security service no doubt found other talents and abilities of the Russian Jules Verne to be of interest to them.

This was a man, who knew English, French and German and who knew and discussed Agni Yoga, an esoteric teaching founded by the Russian painter and philosopher Nicholas Roerich and his highly adept empathic wife, Elena. Inspired by the Vedic traditions, as well as by Buddhism and writings of H.P. Blavatsky, the Roerichs published the "Agni Yoga" series of books, with contents inspired by the Mahatmas from their stronghold in the Himalayan Mountains, Shambhala.

Yefremov knew and respected writings of ancient Jewish philosophers, and possessed knowledge of Kabbalah.

Yefremov also knew well a very curious book (unavailable in the USSR), "Le Matin des Magiciens (The Morning of the Magicians), really, the progenitor for most of the "New Age" literature. Yefremov predicted discovery of the Yakutia (Sakha) diamonds years before anyone would suspect they would be found (in his story Diamond Funnel, 1944). The man possessed unusual insight into essence of things, interconnectedness of forces of nature and human history. He called it “scientist’s intuition” in his 1972 letters that served as a preface to the English-language edition of Andromeda.

He recalled in his preface to an early collection of stories, that when he was torn between remaining a sailor and becoming a scientist, he happened to be in a motor-boat on the Caspian Sea on his way to Baku. Yefremov was gazing into the sunlit depths of the sea. In some places the bottom was quite visible…and he realized what he was seeing down below. It was an inaccessible, submerged town, with walls and towers. Yefremov began to discern elusive outlines of streets and houses…but then the wind blew across the surface of the sea, and the vision was gone. When he came ashore, the sailor found waiting for him a telegram from Academician Sushkin, a paleontologist who influenced his life before, offering him a minor position in the Academy of Science . Young Russian sailor decided to pursue the life of a scientist, to explore the unknown…

Yefremov mentioned something there else that was of interest to the author of this article. During his travels (in Gobi Desert, etc.) he got into habit of day-dreaming where visions would arise before his eyes that were not so much mirages as scenes from the play of his imagination, weird and unusual scenes, but quite real at the same time…

He possessed incredible knowledge of hypnosis; his “experimental” book the Razor’s Blade (1963) includes four parts and is notable for a huge amount of the scientific facts and dynamism (hypnotism, genetic memory, human psyche, Alexander the Great and his mysterious crown found at the bottom of the ocean, ancient India, nonstop adventures…) was always the bestseller of the Soviet black markets, and is reprinted year after year.

Allan Yefremov had revealed in 1997, during the First International Yefremov Symposium, that his father was quite familiar with Buddhist Hinayana and Mahayana systems, Pythagorean and Gnostic teachings, learned five stages of Yoga, and was interested in Nestorianism and Manicheanism.

It would be wrong to make him an adherent of occult sciences. Yefremov was an atheist and believed in his version of Communism. He was not a mystic, but neither was he dogmatic. Allan Yefremov revealed that his father was greatly interested in Hinduism, religion of the world soul. His novels about ancient Egypt are full of very curious details. At the same time, he possessed a great talent: he could accurately diagnose diseases, surprising doctors. He told his son that nothing pointed to Nicholas Roerich’s speedy demise...

There is something else that is quite extraordinary about Yefremov, and had to be known by those who kept him under their watchful, spying eyes. According to P. Chudinov, PhD of Biological sciences, and Professor Yefremov’s student and assistant, the man had possessed a fantastic sense of being one with Nature. It seemed to people around him, on occasions, that he had visited the areas where his expeditions arrived in, although they knew for certain he had never been there before…This is important to keep in mind when we look at his Mongolian “dinosaur expeditions”. As a geologist, Ivan Yefremov discovered unique deposits of oil, copper, lead gold…As a paleontologist he discovered unique fossils of prehistoric animals and solved many complex riddles of the origin of the long-ago vanished life forms…

Professor Yefremov had a special fascination with the Minoan civilization. Ancient Crete and its mysterious, vanished inhabitants held a special interest for the Russian writer. Again, he seemed to know much more than was revealed in his novels…

Towards the end of his life, Yefremov was interested in everything (except political science, according to Allan; his extent of knowledge was immeasurable. The KGB might have been interested in the source of all his knowledge and vast talents.

Furthermore, the Africa angle was not considered by investigative journalists. But it is possible that the KGB did pay attention.

Yefremov, according to his son Allan (named in honor of Allan Quartermain from H. Rider Haggard’s novels, and himself a geologist), loved Africa and had many books about the continent in English, German and French. He did know quite a lot about Southern Africa.

In 1942-43 Yefremov wrote and shortly thereafter published a story titled Meeting over Tuscarora. Let us look at its plotline.

In 1925 a Soviet ship in the Far East ran into a floating wreck of an old wooden sailing ship. Two divers went down to set charges to blow the wreck; they were able to recover some items, including pewter that concealed remnants of a manuscript. The seamen, including the narrator, Eliseyev, learned that a certain English Captain Ephraim Jesselton and his vessel, Saint Ann, suffered a wreck in 1793. Before his certain death, the Captain wrote down information about his amazing discovery during the investigations of the depths of the ocean between Australia and Africa. Using a bronze cylinder, Jesselton’s crew took samples of different matter from the bottom of the sea. One day they brought up in the cylinder what was later termed as “life-giving” water; it healed bad wounds, infections and provided rapid recovery. The Captain ran some tests and found out that the gravity of the water was much higher than that of the ordinary sea water; its color was unusual, bluish-grey. He drank some, and immediately felt an increase in vitality, strength, and experienced peculiar well-being.

The Captain made two bottles, one for his chemist friend (it is not clear whether he found a way to send it to Aberdeen), and one for himself. The sample was taken from the very bottom of a long, circular depression, and Yefremov provides exact coordinates in his story. The depth was nineteen thousand feet (Jesselton invented special means of taking samples). The Captain was certain he would such water in the ocean depths in the latitude of the Higher Forties, where there are very large depressions spread over wide areas. In the mysterious depths he hoped to find ancient matter which has never risen to the surface from the bottom (where there are no currents or waves).

Eliseyev who was transferred to another Soviet ship, later had a leave in Cape Town, South Africa, where by chance he met a singer, Ann Jesselton, whose repertoire included a song about the good ship Saint Anne, brave Captain Jesselton who sailed the South Seas, and his discovery near the Island of Mystery, of the water of life. This water provided vitality and brought the dead back to life. The Captain, the song told us, disappeared without leaving a trace.

Theirs was a chance meeting; it is clear from the story. The girl was eager to talk with Eliseyev until he mentioned Captain Jesselson. She did ask him about the ship’s departure, and later sent a radiogram to Eliseyev that she wanted to meet him when he would come back to Cape Town; no address was provided. Back in the USSR, Eliseyev tried to interest Soviet scientists in the matter, did get one famous geochemist excited who confirmed that there could be certain substances (which have disappeared from the earth’s surface, minerals and gases which are different from the existing ones in their chemical and physical structures) that can be found in the ancient hollows between Australia and S. Africa. But unconfirmed observations could not provide enough support for a lengthy expedition…Eliseyev (and Yefremov) was clearly sad.

The author of this article has liked the story ever since he read it; and believes there are interesting messages and information in it.

Was Yefremov trying to tell the world something about this “life-giving” water, including the coordinates where it can be harvested from the ocean’s floor? It is of interest that Yefremov sometimes jokingly referred to himself as “old Ephraim”.

Captain Jesselson begged those who would discover his manuscript to let the world know his secret. Did he indicate that he was not the only one who knew? There are clues in the strange story; and what did happen to the second bottle? Of course, the KGB could clearly be interested in it, too, if they believed that it is more than a work of fiction. Professor Yefremov had an obscure comment about the story in September of 1972. Commenting on his early stories, he wrote that the problem of the heavy water accumulation at the ocean depths outside of the thermal mixing still remains open…

DINOSAUR BONES, GIANTS, AND WORMS OF THE GOBI

In 1946, the Paleontological Institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences negotiated with the Mongolian People's Republic to send expeditions to the Gobi Desert to search for fossils. Under the overall supervision of Academician Yuri A. Orlov, the actual field expeditions of 1946-1949 were led by Ivan Yefremov. The first expedition, in the summer of 1946, was mainly for reconnaissance. Great discoveries were made (keep in mind that the expeditions were poorly equipped and used inadequate means of transportation…): a huge partial skull and vertebrae of a gigantic tyrannosaurid were unearthed. The world-renowned 1948 expedition was a joint one of Soviet, Chinese, and Mongolian paleontologists.

The final expedition took place in 1949. Yefremov and his colleagues, having explored more than 25,000 kilometers, discovered many new sites with a great number of dinosaur and other reptiles bones. The Soviet scientist successfully applied some methods of taphonomy during the Mongolian expeditions. He made an assumption that Central Asia during Cretaceous was a territory with numerous bogs; water, and luxuriant vegetation. Those conditions were favorable for dinosaurs. Therefore, one could expect to find their remains…and plenty of fossils (460 cases, more than 120 tons taken to two museums in the Soviet Union and Mongolia) were discovered, just as he knew they would be…

But Yefremov’s health had deteriorated during the expeditions…

His fascinating nonfiction book Doroga Vetrov is dedicated to the Mongolian expeditions of the “dinosaur hunters ”.

Perhaps, the KGB wanted to find out what exactly Yefremov discovered in Mongolia in the 1940s. The dinosaur bones would not pose any threat to the Soviet Union, and he had nothing to hide regarding the paleontological aspect of the expeditions. However, as reported in an article from an obscure Russian magazine Mir Zazerkalya (Issue 11, 2002), Yefremov did discover something else in Mongolia. In a valley of burial grounds he found one that contained a skeleton of a giant measuring almost three meters. If true, this was a new revelation. The source named in the article is Vladimir Scherbakov, a well known, and controversial Russian writer, who wrote about ancient civilizations, riddles and mysteries of history, and similar subjects, and who passed away in 2004. Search of archives and books about Yefremov’s paleontological discoveries produced no tangible results for the author of this article.

It should be also mentioned that during his travels in Mongolia, Ivan Yefremov heard rumors and legends about the Mongolian Worm, and published a story in 1944 about a deadly encounter with the creature. Allghoi khorkhoi is said to possess an effective ability to kill people and animals instantly at a range of several feet. Yefremov described a creature that belonged to a completely unknown species. It was great thick worm wriggling over the mauve sand, repulsive and seemingly helpless. When approached by men, the worms turned into rings, and their color changed and darkened. The worms killed the two men in the story who ran toward them. But how did they kill? Yefremov described some ancient Mongol legends; the natives were quite terrified by the creature, and the worms were never examined by explorers. The creature kills at a distance and inflicts instantaneous death; it might do so by an exceptionally powerful electrical discharge, or some poison it emits. In 1972 Professor Yefremov wrote that there had been no confirmation that the worms actually exist today, that it was a creature that had become extinct but kept alive in folk tales; but some explorers today would argue his conclusion.

During the expeditions to Mongolia, Yefremov came up with a very interesting hypothesis. Earth's Rotation Axis -is the imaginary line that goes through the north and south geographic poles and that the Earth rotates around. Earth's rotation causes day and night to occur. If the sun's path is observed from the Earth's reference frame, it appears to move around the Earth in a path which is tilted with respect to the spin axis at 23.5°. This path is called the ecliptic . It tells us that the Earth's spin axis is tilted with respect to the plane of the Earth's solar orbit by 23.5°.

Yefremov advanced an idea that around 300 million years ago the Earth’s rotation axis was in the plane of Sun’s orbit. What forces would have tilted it to its present location, and what terrible consequences had resulted from the disaster of such proportions? This is a mystery that has not been solved …

This is hopefully the first of many research articles about a great scientist and writer who possessed incredible knowledge. The source and the fate of the knowledge are not at all clear. However, it is clear that the KGB looked for them.

In memory of the great writer, astronomers of the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory named after Yefremov one of the asteroids of the Solar system. This asteroid, called Efremiana , circles the Sun for about five years. A mineral, efremovite (NH4)2Mg2(SO4)3, was named in his honor, as well as some prehistoric animals. Yefremov’s remains lie in the Komarovo cemetery near Saint-Petersburg . A basalt tombstone covers the grave; an irregular polyhedron is placed over it. Two words are carved on the polyhedron: Ivan Yefremov, a nd the years of his life: 1907-1972.

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Paul Stonehill
Author of the Soviet UFO Files (1998), and co-author of Mysterious Sky: Soviet UFO Phenomenon (published: 2006 in English, 2007 in German, and 2009 in Portuguese)

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Professor Yefremov's KGB Files

Tuesday, November 03 2009 @ 10:54 AM CST