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---
category: "Skeptics & Critics"
category: "Scientists & Researchers"
tags:
- Person
- Skeptic
summary: "Naumov's claims, along with other 'wild stories' from Soviet psi research, were later featured in the 1970 book *Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain* by Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder."
- SovietUnion
- Parapsychology
- TechnicalParapsychology
- PopovSociety
- Telepathy
- Moscow
alias:
- Eduard Naumov
- Edward Naumov
- Eduard K. Naumov
- Edward K. Naumov
- Eduard Konstantinovich Naumov
- E. K. Naumov
- Professor Naumov
- Naumov
summary: "Moscow parapsychologist, the Soviet Union's best-known public spokesman for the subject in the 1960s, who described a Soviet submarine telepathy test to Western writers in 1968, sentenced to a labor camp in 1974."
born: 1936
died: 1997
location: "Moscow, Soviet Union"
relations:
- type: member_of
with: "[[Popov Society]]"
start: 1965
end: 1967
role: "deputy chairman of the Bio-Information Section under I. M. Kogan, in 1967; left to found his own section"
fn: 2
- type: head_of
with: "[[Laboratory of Technical Parapsychology]]"
start: 1967
role: "chief of technical parapsychology at a laboratory affiliated with the physics department of the State Instrument Engineering College of Moscow, ten months old in May 1968; in DIA reports, Director of the Institute of Technical Parapsychology"
fn: 2
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Moscow-Leningrad Telepathy Experiment]]"
start: 1967-03
role: "accompanied the telepath Karl Nikolaev to Leningrad"
fn: 1
- type: subject_of
with: "[[KGB]]"
start: 1974
role: "sentenced in 1974 to two years in a camp according to the 1975 DIA study; Lev Regelson stated he had been warned by the KGB over contacts with foreign scholars"
fn: 3
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Chelovek i Zakon]]"
start: 1986
role: "testified for Ninel Kulagina in her 1986 defamation suit against the magazine"
fn: 8
created: 2025-08-05
updated: 2026-10-05
---
Eduard Konstantinovich Naumov was a [[Moscow]] biologist who became the best-known popularizer of parapsychology in the [[Soviet Union]] of the 1960s. The researcher Igor Tsykunov gives his years as 1936 to 1997.[^1] [[Sheila Ostrander]] and [[Lynn Schroeder]], who met him in 1968, wrote that he was then thirty-six and had given more than 460 lectures on ESP across the country, showing scientific films at scores of institutes, and said that the parapsychologist's profession "didn't exist in the Soviet Union" a decade earlier. He told them that in 1957 Soviet publications carried three articles against the subject and none for it, and in 1966 152 articles on psychic research, fifteen of them negative. He named the Kiev publicist [[Bernard Kazhinsky]] as an early mentor, whose book he had arranged to be published by the [[Soviet Academy of Sciences|Academy of Sciences]] in [[Kiev]] after Moscow refused.[^2]
[[Eduard Naumov]] was a [[Soviet Union|Soviet]] parapsychologist. At a conference in Moscow in 1968, Naumov announced to Western researchers that the Red Navy had successfully replicated the entire [[The Nautilus (Telepathy Project)|Nautilus experiment]] using one of its own submarines. He further claimed that Soviet military researchers had developed a method for telepathically tapping into other people's psychic communications.[^1]
### [[Popov Society]] and technical parapsychology
Naumov's claims, along with other "wild stories" from Soviet psi research, were later featured in the 1970 book *Psychic Discoveries Behind the [[Iron Curtain]]* by [[Sheila Ostrander]] and [[Lynn Schroeder]]. While some of his assertions were met with skepticism, his work contributed to the growing concern within the U.S. intelligence community about a potential "psi gap" between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Naumov was also interested in "Kirlian photography" of human "biofields" and believed in the influence of sunspots on destiny, which led some at the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] to view his work as influenced by mystical beliefs.[^1]
Naumov was deputy chairman of the Bio-Information Section of the A. S. Popov All-Union Scientific and Technical Society of Radio Technology and Electrical Communications, directed by [[I. M. Kogan]], in March 1967, when he accompanied the telepath [[Karl Nikolaev]] to Leningrad for the second Moscow-Leningrad telepathy experiment with the electrophysiologist [[Lyutsia Pavlova]] and [[Genady Sergeyev]].[^2][^1] A DIA study of 1975 named a "Naumov-Sergeyev-Pavlova team" that found EEG records changed when a telepathic impulse carried an emotional message.[^3] Ostrander and Schroeder wrote that he broke with the Popov group, which worked exclusively on telepathy, and founded a section of technical parapsychology attached to the Scientific and Technical Association for Instrument Engineering; by May 1968 he had been for ten months chief of technical parapsychology at a laboratory affiliated with the physics department of the State Instrument Engineering College of Moscow, whose creation they said was presided over by the [[Moscow State University|Moscow University]] physicist [[Yakov Terletsky]], [[E. Sitkovsky]] of the Communist Party's [[Academy of Social Sciences]], and [[Pavel Oshchepkov]], founder of Soviet radar. He described work on a man who moved a cigarette with psychokinesis only when drunk, on skin sight, on psychic photography, on [[Kirlian Photography|Kirlian]] currents in the hands of mediums, and on the effect of telepathy on groups.[^2] The DIA's 1972 report named him chairman of the Division of Technical Parapsychology at the Popov institute, credited him with long-range telepathy tests from Moscow to several cities, and reproduced a photograph of him with Nikolaev and the physicist [[Yuri Kamensky]].[^4] The 1978 DIA study located his "Laboratory of Technical Parapsychology" "probably at the [[Polytechnic Museum|Polytechnical Museum]]," with objectives of telepathy, psychokinesis and "psychoenergetics in general," long-distance message transmission and sensitive instruments for electromagnetic or physiological parameters, and noted his interest in behavior modification.[^5] Among his publications Ostrander and Schroeder listed "Brain Reserves" (*[[Nauka i Religiya|Science and Religion]]*, 1966), "What Is Parapsychology?" (*[[Moskovskaya Pravda]]*, August 14, 1966) and "Extra-Terrestrial Civilizations and Parapsychology" (*Moskovskaya Pravda*, March 14, 1967); a [[United States Air Force|U.S. Air Force]] [[Foreign Technology Division]] translation of his *The Riddle of Psi Phenomena* (FTD TT 64-288, 1964) is listed in a 1985 Army thesis.[^2][^6]
### The 1968 conference and the submarine test
In Moscow in 1968, on the day they met and before the conference opened, Naumov told Ostrander and Schroeder in their hotel that "if your Navy didn't do the Nautilus experiment, then Soviet scientists were the first in the world to test ESP from a submarine," and described a test "about three years previously" in which baby rabbits were placed on a submarine and a mother rabbit with electrodes implanted in her brain was kept in a laboratory on shore; when assistants killed the young one by one, her brain reacted at each synchronized instant. The reports, he said, "are, I'm sorry to say, not public." When the British delegate [[John Cutten]] observed that the test implied close cooperation with the government and military, Naumov replied: "Mr. Cutten's remark speaks for itself."[^2] [[Jim Schnabel]] writes that Naumov announced that the Red Navy had replicated the entire [[The Nautilus (Telepathy Project)|Nautilus]] experiment with one of its own submarines, and that Soviet military researchers had developed a method of telepathically tapping into other people's communications; Schnabel adds that Naumov was interested in Kirlian photography of human "biofields" and believed in the influence of sunspots on destiny, which led some at the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] to view his work as influenced by mystical beliefs.[^7] The DIA's 1975 study attributed the rabbit test to "Dr. Pavel Naumov, who bears no relation to the now imprisoned Edward Naumov," and dated it "around 1956"; in Ostrander and Schroeder's account the narrator is the Naumov they met on arrival, Edward, and the date is about 1965. See [[Pavel Naumov]].[^3][^2]
Ostrander and Schroeder reported that on the conference's opening morning copies of [[Pravda]] carried an attack on [[Ninel Kulagina]] and on scientists who had worked with her; Naumov told them "we've been forbidden to show the Mikhailova film" that he had made, and the second day of the conference was canceled. He had earlier said he was more interested in psychokinesis than in telepathy and that "if we can find the laws governing this energy it would have tremendous practical application."[^2] The 1975 DIA study stated that Soviet authorities "took the strongest possible exception" to the book, in which Naumov "was cited throughout as the journalists' guide and mentor," that a [[Voice of America]] broadcast discussing it was construed as an attack using parapsychology as a weapon, and that a 1973 article by [[Vladimir Zinchenko|Zinchenko]], [[Alexei Leontiev|Leontiev]], [[Boris Lomov|Lomov]] and [[Alexander Luria|Luria]] named his Institute of Technical Parapsychology in its denunciation.[^3]
### Arrest and trial
The 1975 DIA study stated that in March 1974 Naumov was arrested and sentenced to two years of hard labor, that in January 1975 the parapsychologist [[Larissa Vilenskaya]], who had been allowed to visit him in jail, was herself arrested, and that the charge appeared to be taking fees for lectures without permission. It recounted that the club's director and his assistant, who had collected the fees, were declared psychologically unfit to testify and certified as schizophrenic at the [[Serbsky Institute]], whose director [[Andrei Snezhnevsky]] testified at the trial that parapsychology was a pseudoscience; that forty witnesses said they had bought tickets from the director or his representative; and that, according to the [[Moscow]] physicist [[Lev Regelson]], Naumov's offense was that despite repeated KGB warnings he had "maintained free, personal, human contacts with foreign scholars" and used what he received to disseminate information on parapsychology.[^3] The Psi Encyclopedia, relying on James Conrad, states that the [[KGB]] arrested him and that he was imprisoned for a year in a work camp, apparently because of his frequent meetings with Western parapsychologists.[^8] The 1978 DIA study described him as "not currently active," with Vilenskaya "now" conducting her own studies of skin vision.[^5]
In 1986 he appeared as a witness for Kulagina in her suit against the [[Ministry of Justice of the Soviet Union|Ministry of Justice]] monthly *[[Chelovek i Zakon|Man and Law]]*, and stated that she had shown no desire for publicity or profit; the court found that the magazine had produced no tangible evidence of fraud.[^8]
### Footnotes
[^1]: Schnabel, Jim. *Remote Viewers*. Dell, 1997.
[^1]: I. V. Tsykunov, "Telepaticheskaya odisseya Karla Nikolaeva," *Aliter* (2022), which gives his years as 1936-1997. https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/telepaticheskaya-odisseya-karla-nikolaeva
[^2]: Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder, *Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain* (Prentice-Hall, 1970), chapters 1, 3 and "Political Smoke Screens and Parapsychology," and Partial Bibliography, read in the archive.org copy of the 1984 printing. https://archive.org/details/shelia-ostrander-psychic-discoveries-behind-the-iron-curtain-1984
[^3]: Defense Intelligence Agency, "Soviet and Czechoslovakian Parapsychology Research (U)," DST-1810S-387-75, September 1975, prepared by U.S. Army Medical Intelligence and Information Agency, Part I (the discussion of Soviet attitudes), Part I Section III and Part II, CIA-RDP96-00787R000500420001-2. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp96-00787r000500420001-2
[^4]: Defense Intelligence Agency, "Controlled Offensive Behavior - USSR (U)," ST-CS-01-169-72, July 1972, para. 4 and Illustration Two, CIA-RDP96-00788R001300010001-7. https://archive.org/details/CIA-RDP96-00788R001300010001-7
[^5]: Defense Intelligence Agency, "Paraphysics R&D - Warsaw Pact (U)," DST-1810S-202-78, March 30, 1978 (prepared by the Foreign Technology Division, Air Force Systems Command). https://archive.org/details/ParaphysicsRDWarsawPact_201609
[^6]: W. Gary Norton, Major, USA, "Psychokinesis and Its Possible Implication to Warfare Strategy," master's thesis, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, 1985, DTIC ADB097979, bibliography. https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADB097979
[^7]: Jim Schnabel, *Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies* (Dell, 1997).
[^8]: K. M. Wehrstein, "Ninel Sergeyevna (Nina) Kulagina," Psi Encyclopedia, Society for Psychical Research, citing J. Conrad (2016) and *Chelovek i Zakon* 1986, no. 9, and 1987, no. 6. https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/ninel-kulagina/