Paul Goble
Staunton, Sept. 22 – The list of those some Russians hold responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Union keeps growing. Mikhail Gorbachev, Aleksandr Yakovlev, Boris Yeltsin, the CIA, and the non-Russians figure prominently in most lists. But now there are two new names, “the shamans of perestroika.”
The term refers in particular to two parapsychologists who were given prominent play on Soviet television as perestroika took off, Anatoly Kaspirovsky and Alan Chumak. Their job and that is why Yakovlev gave them their chance was to undermine the confidence of Soviet people in the Soviet media, Lev Kotlyarenko says.
According to the Russian commentator, Soviet citizens believed everything that appeared in the Soviet media. That worked to block the disorienting messages the perestroika advocates wanted to spread, and to undermine public confidence in the media, these people chose such parapsychologists (odnarodyna.org/article/kak-razrushali-sssr-shamany-perestroyki).
When two such obvious frauds appeared, that had the effect, Kotlyarenko says, of undermining public confidence in the media; and that in turn made the job of the perestroika people easier. If Soviet citizens ceased to believe in the news media, they could more easily be led around by the nose by those who wanted to destroy the system.
After their star turn on Soviet television, appearances that spawned other lesser “shamans,” the commentator says, these two travelled abroad spreading their poison. Chumak died in 2017 but Kaspirovsky is still alive and maintains an online presence. Both had to live with a world that their actions helped create.
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