The_Info_Web/10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Yuri Kobzarev.md

aliases	category	tags	summary	born	died	location	relations	created	updated
Yuri Kobzarev Yuri Borisovich Kobzarev Yu. B. Kobzarev Yu. B. Kobzerev Yuri Kobzerev Kobzerev Kobzerov Kobzarev	Scientists & Researchers	Person SovietUnion Radar AcademyOfSciences Psychoenergetics Parapsychology Psychokinesis	Soviet radar pioneer and academician who chaired the Academy of Sciences review commission on psychoenergetics from 1975 and signed the 1978 statement, quoted in a 1987 DIA briefing, that Ninel Kulagina's psychokinesis was genuine.	1905-12-08	1992-04-25	Moscow, Russia	type with start role fn employed_by Leningrad Physico-Technical Institute 1926 senior researcher in the short-wave laboratory; head of the radar detection laboratory from 1936 1 type with start role fn employed_by Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics 1955 part-time from 1955; head of a department from 1968; adviser to the directorate from 1980 1 type with start role fn member_of Soviet Academy of Sciences 1970-11 full member, Division of General Physics and Astronomy (radiophysics) 1 type with start end role fn head_of Kobzarev Commission 1975 1978 chairman of the Academy's psychoenergetics review commission, directed by Vladimir Kotelnikov 2 type with start role fn investigated Ninel Kulagina 1978 the commission he chaired evaluated her in 1978 and reached conclusions similar to those of a 1970 Leningrad commission; he signed a 1978 statement that her psychokinesis was not a trick 2	2026-09-22	2026-10-05

Yuri Borisovich Kobzarev was born on November 25 (December 8, New Style), 1905, in Voronezh, into a military family of the nobility, lost his father at fifteen, and finished school in Kislovodsk. He graduated in 1926 from the Kharkov Institute of People's Education and went to Leningrad that year, working at the Leningrad Physico-Technical Institute in the short-wave laboratory; his early work concerned quartz stabilization of oscillator frequency, for which he received an inventor's certificate in 1928. In 1935 he became assistant to Professor Dmitry Rozhansky in organizing a laboratory for radar detection of aircraft, headed it in 1936, and with two graduate students built and in April 1937 tested the first Soviet pulse radar; the RUS-2 detection station was adopted for air defense in 1940. He received the Stalin Prize in 1941 for the first Soviet pulse radar.¹

In summer 1943 he was told to organize a radar chair at the Moscow Power Engineering Institute, becoming its first head while chairing the scientific department of the Radar Council attached to the State Defense Committee. From 1950 to 1960 he headed a department of NII-20, where in 1954 his laboratory built the "Tropa" coherent long-range radar, in service until 1980. From 1955 he worked part time at the Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, heading a department from 1968 and serving as adviser to the directorate from 1980; he was elected a full member of the Academy in November 1970. The Heroes of the Country biography states that "on his initiative" a scientific and engineering center of biomedical radioelectronics was created at the institute, "whose task was the study of the human organism by radiophysical methods." He was named a Hero of Socialist Labour on December 4, 1975, received four Order of Lenin, and received the Popov Gold Medal in 1980. He died on April 25, 1992, and was buried at Daryino, Moscow Oblast.¹

Psychoenergetics review commission

A Defense Intelligence Agency report of March 22, 1982 stated that the high-level commission that reviewed Soviet psychoenergetics began in 1975, "was chaired by Yu. B. Kobzerev," described in a footnote as "Member, Academy of Sciences, and leading radar researcher at the Institute of Radioengineering and Electronics (IRE), Moscow," and was directed by Vladimir Kotelnikov. It stated that the commission "arranged experiments and took part in them as observers" over about three years, that at least two of its reports addressed the validity of the phenomena, and that one, signed by Kobzarev in 1978, read: "I am persuaded that the phenomena demonstrated by N. Kulagina ... are by no means tricks but rather the existence of the manifestation of unusual capabilities in man. My conviction is shared by many people including a group of professors and academicians." The DIA text carries parentheticals naming each subject's task: for Kulagina, moving objects without contact; for Rosa Kuleshova, sight without the assistance of eyes; for L. Korabelnikova, the reading of Zener cards (ESP) cards concealed in thick wrapping. A similar document, it added, was signed by Kotelnikov, Kobzarev and others. The report stated that the commission evaluated Kulagina in 1978 and "similar conclusions were reached" to those of a Leningrad commission of 1970; that it was preceded in the early 1970s by a psychologists' review ("the Zinchenko report set the stage for Kobzerev's review commission"); and that Kobzarev's review "helped re-establish the Popov Society's public sector" and set up its Bioelectronics Section.²

A DIA briefing for the United States Air Force in 1987 reproduced the 1978 statement on a slide attributed to "Yu. B. Kobzerev, radar pioneer, member USSR Academy of Science," with the Kuleshova clause omitted, followed by a slide quoting Kotelnikov that "psychokinetic abilities of N. Kulagina are real."³ See also Ninel Kulagina and Psychoenergetics.

Kulagina and the institute's laboratory

The newspaper Izvestiya reported on July 3, 1986 that "at the beginning of 1978 a group of Moscow scientists headed by academician Yu. B. Kobzarev investigated Kulagina's unusual abilities," in the course of which Gulyaev "(now academician)" detected acoustic pulses, "clicks," periodically emanating from her, lasting hundredths to tenths of a second.⁴

The physicist Alexander Taratorin wrote in 1997 that Kobzarev heard about Kulagina through acquaintances, brought an oscilloscope with an electrode to Leningrad, and registered a strong electric field around her hands; that the institute's deputy director Yuri Gulyaev went with him "to expose" her and was surprised; and that rumors of the Leningrad experiments reached the leadership, after which the institute was given funds and staff for a special laboratory.⁵ The engineer Serge Kernbach, in a 2013 survey of Russian open sources, wrote that the group of Gulyaev and Kobzarev investigated Kulagina's phenomenon, which had been studied since 1977 at the ITMO University under Gennady Dulnev.⁶

The 1978 statement names L. Korabelnikova, the subject of a remote-viewing experiment published by I. M. Kogan in 2000. A protocol of the Popov Society's bioenergetics group dated May 13, 1987 records the telepaths Karl Nikolaev and Ludmila Korabelnikova giving a location for a soldier missing near Rivne, whose skeleton and documents were found on August 3, 1987 in the area indicated, according to Igor Tsykunov.⁷

Footnotes

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1. "Kobzarev Yuri Borisovich," Heroes of the Country (Geroi Strany), biography by Sergei Kargapoltsev. http://www.warheroes.ru/hero/hero.asp?Hero_id=14432 ↩︎

2. Defense Intelligence Agency, Defense Technical Intelligence Report DST-1810D-948-82-RPT-4, "The Soviet Psychoenergetics Research Program (U)," March 22, 1982, sections II.B-II.C and III.A, declassified in part 2011, NSA-RDP96X00790R000100020003-3. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-nsa-rdp96x00790r000100020003-3 ↩︎

3. Henry E. Shinol, Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff, Studies and Analyses, Headquarters USAF, to the Defense Intelligence Agency, "Soviet Parapsychology Research Briefing," June 12, 1987, and cover note of July 14, 1987, with paper briefing slides "Soviet Activities in Psychoenergetics," CIA-RDP96-00789R002600320001-8 to -004-5. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. https://archive.org/details/CIA-RDP96-00789R002600320004-5 ↩︎

4. B. Konovalov, "Extrasense Through the Eyes of Physics," Izvestiya, July 3, 1986, p. 6, as translated in JPRS-UBB-86-022, USSR Report: Life Sciences, Biomedical and Behavioral Sciences, December 5, 1986, pp. 105-108. https://archive.org/details/jprs-report_jprs-ubb-86-022 ↩︎

5. Alexander Taratorin, "Nevydumannaya istoriya ekstrasensov v Rossii" (1997), lib.ru. http://lib.ru/ZHURNAL/istoria.txt_with-big-pictures.html Sole source for the passages so cited, written by a member of the laboratory. ↩︎

6. Serge Kernbach, "Unconventional research in USSR and Russia: short overview," arXiv:1312.1148 (2013), a secondary survey of Russian open sources. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1312.1148 ↩︎

7. I. V. Tsykunov, "Telepaticheskaya odisseya Karla Nikolaeva," Aliter (2022), citing I. Kogan, "Opyt dalnovideniya L. A. Korabelnikovoy," Parapsikhologiya i psikhofizika 2000, no. 1, pp. 13-21. https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/telepaticheskaya-odisseya-karla-nikolaeva ↩︎