Thursday, October 05, 2006
I am Igor Fyodorevich Kropotki--I mean, Skippy!
The recent, increasing declassification of documents from the Soviet era has provided a wealth of information Russian historians could previously only dream of, ranging from the mundane (lumber industry quotas for Karelia, 1943-1977) to the delightfully bizarre (Stalin’s plans to create a manpanzee super-soldier). As with so many things, however, some things were better left unknown, because their unreachable mystique was really all they had going for them. For example, during the Cold War, UFOlogists doubtless salivated over each tiny, tantalizing fragment of mysterious footage smuggled in from beyond the Iron Curtain. “If this is what was able to get out, imagine what amazing extraterrestrial evidence is still there, under armed guard in the depths of the KGB offices?”, the reasoning likely went. Well, now that evidence is out, and suffice it to say that it has failed to rock any worlds. And unlike in the U.S., where true believers can always maintain that the government has only released what it sees fit for the public to know, in the interests of national security, in Russia, with its current kleptocratic regime, if there was anything worth seeing that might bring in a few rubles on the open market, it would be out by now. The result of all this, of course, is that the once inconceivably mysterious realm of Russian UFO sightings has been reduced to a level we know quite well, that of “Mysterious Mysteries”-esque TV shows on TLC. I saw one of these the other day (on one of the four networks, each controlled by a prominent oligarch, that my hotel gets), apparently about UFO sightings from Soviet nuclear submarines. It was kind of unclear what was going on, because they constantly intercut stock footage of atom bomb tests and sperm whales and bad pencil drawings of what alternately appeared to be an octopus, a flying saucer, or the unholy spawn of an octopus and a flying saucers. Really, it was even unclear whether the show was about UFOs or USOs (unidentified swimming objects, or whatever the real acronym is, you crazy kooks; perhaps I will watch Abyss again to find out). All I know is that they interviewed a bunch of old dudes in naval-themed offices with lots of medals on their jackets (aside: I actually saw a Russian army veteran from WWII wearing his medals at an outdoor dance hall the other day—I totally thought that was made-up), then cut to blurry footage of something that looks like nothing flying around. Then to a 17th-centry lithograph of a “sea monk.” So, again, the same crap we have on our shows. And though I couldn’t understand a word of it, I’m pretty sure the closing thoughts were also along the lines of, “And although conclusive evidence remains elusive, perhaps the day will soon come when this noble woodland beast, the sasquatch, steps out of the mists of legend into the clear light of reality. And until that day, amateur researchers like Buford Q. Apenuts will continue to watch…and wait.”
The recent, increasing declassification of documents from the Soviet era has provided a wealth of information Russian historians could previously only dream of, ranging from the mundane (lumber industry quotas for Karelia, 1943-1977) to the delightfully bizarre (Stalin’s plans to create a manpanzee super-soldier). As with so many things, however, some things were better left unknown, because their unreachable mystique was really all they had going for them. For example, during the Cold War, UFOlogists doubtless salivated over each tiny, tantalizing fragment of mysterious footage smuggled in from beyond the Iron Curtain. “If this is what was able to get out, imagine what amazing extraterrestrial evidence is still there, under armed guard in the depths of the KGB offices?”, the reasoning likely went. Well, now that evidence is out, and suffice it to say that it has failed to rock any worlds. And unlike in the U.S., where true believers can always maintain that the government has only released what it sees fit for the public to know, in the interests of national security, in Russia, with its current kleptocratic regime, if there was anything worth seeing that might bring in a few rubles on the open market, it would be out by now. The result of all this, of course, is that the once inconceivably mysterious realm of Russian UFO sightings has been reduced to a level we know quite well, that of “Mysterious Mysteries”-esque TV shows on TLC. I saw one of these the other day (on one of the four networks, each controlled by a prominent oligarch, that my hotel gets), apparently about UFO sightings from Soviet nuclear submarines. It was kind of unclear what was going on, because they constantly intercut stock footage of atom bomb tests and sperm whales and bad pencil drawings of what alternately appeared to be an octopus, a flying saucer, or the unholy spawn of an octopus and a flying saucers. Really, it was even unclear whether the show was about UFOs or USOs (unidentified swimming objects, or whatever the real acronym is, you crazy kooks; perhaps I will watch Abyss again to find out). All I know is that they interviewed a bunch of old dudes in naval-themed offices with lots of medals on their jackets (aside: I actually saw a Russian army veteran from WWII wearing his medals at an outdoor dance hall the other day—I totally thought that was made-up), then cut to blurry footage of something that looks like nothing flying around. Then to a 17th-centry lithograph of a “sea monk.” So, again, the same crap we have on our shows. And though I couldn’t understand a word of it, I’m pretty sure the closing thoughts were also along the lines of, “And although conclusive evidence remains elusive, perhaps the day will soon come when this noble woodland beast, the sasquatch, steps out of the mists of legend into the clear light of reality. And until that day, amateur researchers like Buford Q. Apenuts will continue to watch…and wait.”
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