GEORGE NOORY: Russia may be one of the areas on this planet
that has been ladened with
incredible amounts of UFO activity
since the beginning of time.
ERICH VON DANIKEN: These flying machines
were seen all over the Soviet Union.
NICK POPE: The Soviets knew something about UFOs.
They had secrets.
NICK REDFERN: The Soviets have in their possession
no less than the remains of five crashed and recovered UFOs.
DAVID WILCOCK: There is undeniable evidence
that Russia is sitting on a virtual treasure trove
of information that proves
that extraterrestrials visited Earth in our distant past.
NARRATOR: Since the dawn of civilization,
mankind has credited its origins to gods
and other visitors from the stars.
What if it were true?
Did extraterrestrial beings
really help to shape our history?
And if so...
might the ultimate proof
be found in Russia's secret files?
Moscow, Russia.
December 25, 1991.
At 7:00 p.m., Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev
makes a nationally televised address
to announce his resignation.
GORBACHEV (translated): I hereby discontinue
my activities at the post of President of the U.S.S.R.
NARRATOR: Moments later,
the Soviet flag is lowered from the Kremlin
for the final time.
One of the world's two superpowers...
has fallen.
From 1922 to 1991,
Russia was under the restrictive regime
of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,
which ruled over much of northern Asia
and Eastern Europe.
The Soviet government was known for its brutality,
oppression and culture of absolute secrecy.
POPE: It was very much a case
of everything that happens
within government stays within government,
and the consequences were lethal.
This was a closed, highly secretive society
that kept secrets, not just, of course,
from us in the West,
but from its own people.
One of the challenges of defending
this vast landmass in Russia is that, uh,
its borders are very insecure, at all points.
So in order to conquer space,
it has an obsession with national security.
Secrecy has become imbedded within the political culture;
and also, many people in Russia agree with the idea
that most things should be kept a secret.
NARRATOR: When the Soviet Union was dissolved,
so too was its main security agency-- the KGB.
The top-secret KGB files were suddenly vulnerable,
with many in the hands of former agents,
ready to sell them to the highest bidders.
Thousands more were smuggled out by Vasiliy Mitrokhin,
who worked in the KGB's foreign intelligence archive
from 1972 to 1984.
The documents that have been leaked
include KGB information on secret Russian weapons caches,
Russian spies,
and even UFO reports.
RICHARD DOLAN: The Soviet Union
had a large number of UFO encounters.
Western researchers had really no knowledge
of what was going on behind the Iron Curtain.
We now know that there were thousands
and thousands of Soviet UFO cases
that were taking place during that time.
A number of records did indeed come out.
And we now have access to them.
NARRATOR: Could the definitive evidence
of extraterrestrial contact
lie hidden within the secret KGB files
that are just now coming to light?
Ancient astronaut theorists say yes,
and suggest recent findings reveal
the Soviets were not only covering up modern UFO reports,
but also proof that aliens visited Earth
in the distant past.
Leningrad, Russia.
December 1, 1934.
Sergei Kirov,
a Communist party leader
and rival to fellow party leader Joseph Stalin, is murdered.
The assassination marks the beginning
of the darkest period in the history of the Soviet Union:
The Great Purges.
With Kirov gone,
Stalin's power grew,
and he unleashed a widespread campaign
of ruthless political persecution
meant to weed out dissenters...
...and consolidate his absolute authority.
(speaking Russian)
Among the millions who were arrested
and interrogated during this period
was respected Russian scientist
and philosopher Dr. Genrikh Ludvig.
PAUL STONEHILL: An incredible human being.
This was a person who could speak 20 ancient
and modern languages.
He had incredible encyclopedic knowledge.
NARRATOR: Dr. Ludvig was accused
of being a spy for the Vatican
and spent decades
in one of Stalin's brutal Gulag labor camps.
But in 2011,
38 years after his death,
an article in the Russian newspaper Sovershenno Sekretno,
or Top Secret,
revealed the true purpose of Ludvig's work at the Vatican,
and possibly also for his arrest.
The reason he was accused of being a spy for the Vatican
is because in 1920s,
as a young student of architecture,
he visited the Vatican,
where he was given access to the secret library.
In that library, he found manuscripts
that describe extraterrestrial civilizations and more.
Dr. Genrikh Ludvig discovered a number of manuscripts
suggesting that there had been
historic extraterrestrial contact
with ancient civilizations in Egypt,
Israel
and Mesopotamia.
These manuscripts that talked, for example,
about the pyramids
and described them as energy machines.
DAVID CHILDRESS: When he went back to the Soviet Union,
they treated him very poorly,
when, in fact, he was perhaps
the greatest of all the early researchers
into the whole concept of ancient aliens
coming to our planet.
NARRATOR: Might Dr. Ludvig have really discovered
ancient manuscripts within the Vatican
that describe extraterrestrials
visiting Earth?
Did the Russian government
accuse him of espionage in an attempt
to suppress his controversial findings?
Ancient astronaut theorists say yes,
and claim Ludwig was not the only one silenced
by the Soviet government for his research.
When Vladimir Lenin seized power in 1917,
he established the first state
to seek the elimination of religion.
The Communist regime
also actively suppressed a philosophy
that had become widespread throughout Russia
in the early 20th century:
Cosmism.
JENKS: There is a Russian tradition,
beginning in the late 1800s called "Cosmism."
The cosmists began with a philosopher,
a guy named Nikolai Fyodorov,
in the 1870s and 1880s,
who inspired the father of Soviet rocketry,
who actually designed the rockets
that put the first man into space.
They believed that human civilization
actually had origins
in outer space
and that it was our destiny, as human beings,
to move back into space;
we would go back into the "cradle of civilization."
And after Joseph Stalin died, many of those individuals
that were exploring the idea
of ancient paleo-contacts with aliens,
uh, were allowed to voice their opinions publicly.
NARRATOR: In 1961,
Russian physicist and mathematician Matest Agrest
published a controversial paper
proposing that extraterrestrials
had visited Earth's ancient civilizations.
Similar theories were also offered
by author Alexander Kasantsev
and astronomer Iosif Shklovskii.
But while these researchers did not suffer
the same persecution as those that came before them,
they claimed that the Soviet government
worked to suppress their theories.
GIORGIO TSOUKALOS: The idea
that there were Soviet astronomers
who were seriously studying
these topics and ideas
leads me to think
that we're the one's who are on to something.
And we are now able to access information
that for so many years, has remained censored.
NARRATOR: Is it possible
that the truth about extraterrestrial contact
was hidden behind the Iron Curtain
of the former Soviet Union?
Perhaps further clues can be found
by examining a mysterious site that may hold proof
of an ancient extraterrestrial visitation.
Coming up...
HUGH NEWMAN: Arkaim has been described
as Russia's Stonehenge.
CHILDRESS: Someone, possibly extraterrestrials,
identified this as a site of special energy.
NARRATOR: Russia.
Spanning a staggering
6.6 million square miles,
it is the largest country on Earth.
Its massive territory
is also the most geographically diverse,
consisting of some of the most extreme terrain on the planet,
including dense forests,
frozen tundra,
remote mountains,
and barren deserts.
Despite its physical size,
as much as 50% of Russia
remains uninhabited
and largely unexplored by mankind.
Russia is almost twice the size of the United States.
Just to compare, the United States
expands over four time zones,
while Russia expands over eleven time zones.
The size of Russia,
its harsh climate,
especially in the northern parts of Russia,
makes it very difficult to explore.
NARRATOR: One of Russia's most mysterious areas
is a valley just north of Kazakhstan,
where in 1987,
archaeologists from the University of Chelyabinsk
discovered the remains of an ancient settlement,
which they were able to date back
to between the 17th and 20th centuries B.C.
Much of the original structures of this megalithic site,
known as Arkaim, no longer exist,
but scientists have mapped out its original design,
which includes massive circular walls
similar to Stonehenge.
So, Arkaim has been described as Russia's Stonehenge.
Now, this is quite intriguing
because its a very similar latitude to Stonehenge.
It's been suggested that it could've been put there
for astronomical and surveying purposes.
It seems that Arkaim, at some point,
was some type of an observatory,
which I think is incredibly fascinating,
because it means that worldwide,
our ancestors witnessed other things
that would explain this long-held
fascination with the stars.
STONEHILL: The way the city was built,
it was a circular structure.
It had a very interesting central square.
Basically, it was an interior circle
surrounded by a circle, which to many,
means the Mandala principle of the Buddhism...
...or a depiction of the universe
in a very miniaturized way.
NARRATOR: Incredibly, archaeologists have found
that Arkaim was built with features aligned to measure
as many as 18 astronomical events,
such as the solstices and equinoxes.
And discovered among the ruins
was an ancient statue of a man
looking up to the sky.
Adding to the mystery
are reports of strange anomalies in the region,
that continue to this day,
which include magnetic inconsistencies,
strange lights,
and curious fog formations.
WILCOCK: When you consider the strange lights,
the weird fog, the magnetic anomalies,
the unusual hallucinations,
and things that have happened to people there,
it appears that this is some sort of energy node
or vortex point on the Earth...
...that was actually utilized by extraterrestrials
when this was constructed.
If you actually look at the shape of Arkaim,
it could have been the platform for a spacecraft,
like a rocket, to launch off from.
NARRATOR: Could Arkaim really have been the site
of an extraterrestrial visitation
thousands of years ago?
And might this be why the structures found here
were built with such precise astronomical alignments?
Ancient astronaut theorists say yes,
and suggest physical evidence of such a visitation
might exist in the nearby Ural Mountains.
Ural Mountains are very old mountains
stretching from, uh,
the Russian north to the Russian south.
It, kind of, splitting Russia into two parts,
Europe and Asia.
Indeed, people living in the Ural Mountains,
witness some strange phenomena in the air and on the ground.
NARRATOR: Dozens of visitors to the Ural Mountains
have reported strange sightings of fireballs
and cigar-shaped crafts.
But even stranger,
is what has been found in the earth here.
In 1991, geologists led an expedition
into the mineral-rich Urals in hopes of locating gold deposits.
While excavating sites near the Kozhim, Narada,
and Balbanyu rivers,
just 600 miles north of Arkaim,
the scientists discovered something unexpected.
At depths of over 30 feet,
they unearthed a scattering of tiny metal coils and springs.
That soil wasn't touched for hundreds of thousands
or more years.
The area where it was found,
was probably tens of kilometers around.
It's as if something exploded thousands of years ago
and the fragments were lying all over the place.
NARRATOR: The metal fragments,
some as small as 1/10,000 of an inch,
were sent to the Russian Academy of Sciences
in St. Petersburg for analysis.
Their shape resembled manufactured technology,
rather than naturally occurring minerals.
The smallest pieces were found to be tungsten,
a metal used in spacecrafts and missiles,
due to its ability to withstand high temperatures.
They are these metal spirals
that consist of copper, but also tungsten,
and Molybdenum,
which are both very rare metals.
We're looking at nanotechnology.
WILCOCK: When you look down at them in a microscope,
they're extremely regular in their structure.
They're very nice coils.
The only way we could make them, even now,
is with machine-guided technology.
You could not do this by hand.
What we're seeing here is proof
that someone had advanced technology
sufficient to build the type of circuitry
that we normally only see in semiconductors,
computer chips,
high technology equipment,
using metals that are not commonly known.
So these spirals are clear evidence
that someone had a very advanced civilization
right here on Earth near Arkaim.
NARRATOR: Might extraterrestrials
have visited the Ural Mountains in the distant past?
And if so, did they leave behind evidence
of advanced technology?
Could they have helped to build
the prehistoric observatory of Arkaim,
as ancient astronaut theorists contend?
Perhaps further clues can be found
by examining much more recent accounts
of otherworldly visitations.
He had collected hundreds of UFO cases.
DOLAN: The Soviet Union would not give it public credence.
But we now have very good information that
it was reality.
NARRATOR: Moscow.
May 17, 1967.
In a secure government building,
a meeting is held of scientists dedicated
to collecting comprehensive research
on reports of unidentified flying craft.
It is the first official Soviet UFO Study Group,
and six months later, on November 10,
the government gives its approval
for the group's deputy, astronomer Felix Ziegel,
to present its findings
on Soviet Central Television.
Felix Ziegel asked the public
to contact them with sightings.
Now this was an extraordinary development.
Previously, little if anything, had been made public
about official interest in this.
And here you have somebody going on television
talking about it quite openly
and inviting people to send in their sightings.
Well, needless to say,
there were a lot of sightings that were then reported,
but the project itself
soon was dogged by controversy and dissent.
NARRATOR: Shortly after the television broadcast,
the government forced the group to be disbanded,
fearful that it might lead to reports surfacing
of top secret Soviet military tests.
But Ziegel still managed to collect a huge amount of data,
including reports from Russian pilots.
He was able to publish some of his findings
in a 1968 anthology titled Inhabited Cosmos.
VON DANIKEN: I met Felix Ziegel in Moscow.
He had collected hundreds of UFO cases.
He said that these flying objects
were seen all over the Soviet Union.
Some of them were small, others large and spherical.
Their technology must be extraterrestrial,
because they reach an incredible speed
that no human would survive.
NARRATOR: While publicly the Soviet government
denounced the research of Felix Ziegel,
they did not stop him from continuing his work,
and even reviewed his findings.
But why?
Ancient astronaut theorists suggest that the government
may have been aware that there really was an alien presence
in their skies.
And they used Ziegel and other UFO researchers
as a way to secretly monitor this activity.
A number of records have surfaced
from the Soviet Air Force and the KGB,
showing that particularly in the '50s, '60s, and '70s,
they took the UFO subject very, very seriously.
TSOUKALOS: Soviet scientists
had to come up with incredible ways
with which to share their knowledge
with their colleagues in the Western World.
So, they essentially hid their messages in code,
in letters, in different types of correspondence.
Why would anyone risk going to jail
by encoding messages to people and scientists
outside the Iron Curtain,
if you weren't compelled enough
that what you're writing about is the truth?
NARRATOR: Throughout the 1960s and most of the '70s,
the Soviet government's interest in UFOs remained unofficial.
But that changed after September 20, 1977,
when numerous residents of Petrozavodsk
reported seeing a glowing object floating in the sky above
for over 5 minutes,
showering the city with rays of light.
A copy remains of a lost photograph
that was taken of the object,
and astonishingly,
similar UFOs were reported
all across Russia and Eastern Europe
within a four-hour window.
On the heels of this mass sighting,
the Soviet Union established
the Russian Academy of Sciences' UFO commission.
In 1984,
they appointed Major-General Pavel Popovich,
the eighth man ever to reach space,
to head up this research team.
Pavel Popovich brought forth
a lot of the UFO information himself
and he was able to obtain the KGB UFO files--
124 pages-- in 1992.
He said that he knew of the existence
of three underwater bases,
where the extraterrestrials exist and operate.
This is a man whom we should listen to.
(indistinct radio transmission)
DOLAN: He had two UFO sightings himself,
a very significant one in 1978,
when he was flying back from the United States to, uh, to Russia.
Out his window, he saw an absolutely enormous--
football field size, or larger--
triangular craft,
that was moving at a really good clip.
I mean, easily overtook,
uh... the commercial airliner that he was in.
He wasn't the only one on his plane to see this, by the way.
He talked to a lot of the other people,
many of whom where academicians, coming back from a conference,
many of whom saw this.
NARRATOR: Did Major-General Pavel Popovich
really witness firsthand an extraterrestrial spacecraft?
And might he also have found evidence
in secret KGB files
of underwater alien bases?
Ancient astronaut theorists say yes,
and suggest even more profound evidence can be found
in a small mountain town in eastern Russia:
the remains
of a crashed UFO.
DOLAN: What people there saw
was this low flying, very slow object.
It dropped, almost like a stone.
It wasn't made on planet Earth.
NARRATOR: One of the most decorated test pilots
in Russian history
is a woman named Marina Popovich,
the wife of astronaut Pavel Popovich.
Marina set over 100 records during her career
in the Soviet Air Force,
which includes being the first woman
-to break the sound barrier. -(sonic boom)
Like her husband,
she, too, reported on extraterrestrial encounters.
In 2003, Marina published a book
disclosing her firsthand experiences with UFOs.
In it, she also referenced
thousands of similar UFO sightings
by other Soviet military
and civilian pilots.
She told their stories at speaking engagements
all over the world.
Like the story of a fighter pilot
who was asked to fire upon an unidentified,
disc-shaped craft.
(speaking Russian)
Marina Popovich is one of the most famous aviators in history.
She was in a good position to know what she knew.
She was a very well connected individual.
She talked about something like 3,000 UFO cases
that had occurred in the Soviet Union
over the years which,
considering the fact that we knew next to nothing
about the history of Soviet UFOs before that,
was very significant.
There is particular interest in sightings from pilots.
Pilots are able, for example, to judge distances,
speeds, heights, in a way that maybe the average person can't.
And Marina Popovich has made a particular effort
to collate all these pilot stories.
REDFERN: What's particularly notable
about Marina Popovich's comments on the UFO subject
is that she stated that sources have informed her
that the Soviets have in their possession
no less than the remains of five crashed and recovered UFOs.
NARRATOR: Did both Marina and Pavel Popovich,
along with scores of other respected Soviet pilots,
really encounter alien crafts?
And if so,
might there be even more sightings
recorded by the Russian authorities
that have not yet been disclosed to the public?
Dalnegorsk, Russia.
January 29, 1986.
Just before 8:00 p.m.,
in this small mining town in eastern Russia,
hundreds of people see a red, glowing, sphere
moving slowly through the sky above a nearby mountain.
It appeared to slow down,
before crashing into the hillside.
Many reported seeing a fiery blaze from the site
for as much as an hour after it went down.
STONEHILL: The sphere flies into the Izvestkovaya Mountains
and burns up.
There is an explosion...
and people want to find out what happened,
because I've read eyewitness accounts-- incredible.
NARRATOR: Because of the huge number of eyewitnesses,
the crash became known as the Russian Roswell.
And like at Roswell,
physical evidence was recovered from the site,
proving that a crash of some kind did,
in fact, occur.
STONEHILL: Some local people and researchers
managed to get to the site.
They find very interesting artifacts, remains.
NARRATOR: While officials
dismissed the event as a possible meteor crash,
microscopic analysis of the debris yielded unusual results.
The samples contained a complex system of woven metallic fibers;
and the atomic structure of the metal itself
appeared to change when exposed to heat.
When they melted the metal
and put it to a spectrum analysis,
the gold and silver and other metals were gone.
And instead, there was titanium
and molybdenum there.
And so, you have here, some kind of metals,
which apparently are mutating into other metals.
Which was very, very unusual.
NOORY: I think it's part of some kind of machinery,
nanotechnology machinery,
but it wasn't made on planet Earth.
STONEHILL: It was later studied
by a number of Soviet scientific institutions
and some of them said that technology like this
does not exist, uh, on Earth today.
POPE: Subsequent to the Dalnegorsk crash,
there have been a number of sightings
in exactly the same area.
Some people have even seen an object
apparently land on the hillside
where the first crash took place.
NARRATOR: Might the object that crashed at Dalnegorsk,
and was witnessed by hundreds of people,
really have been an alien craft?
Could the physical evidence left behind
provide undeniable proof
that otherworldly beings are visiting planet Earth,
and have been for thousands of years?
Ancient astronaut theorists say yes,
and believe that Russians have had contact with aliens,
not just here on Earth,
but even in space.
WILLIAM HENRY: They describe seeing seven angelic beings
traveling alongside their spacecraft.
POPE: Whatever it was they were witnessing,
it was real.
It was out there.
NARRATOR: Salyut 7 space station.
July 12, 1984.
Cosmonauts Oleg Atkov,
Leonid Kizim,
and Vladimir Solovyov,
enter the 156th day of their 237-day stay
aboard Russia's scientific research space station.
To date, everything has gone according to plan.
But on this day,
all three crewmembers witness an extraordinary event.
In 1984, Soviet cosmonauts on board Salyut 7
saw a strange orange glow
around the spacecraft.
And they saw what they thought, at first, was maybe a gas leak.
But it seemed that the whole station was surrounded
by this orange cloud.
And as they looked at it,
the cloud coalesced into a shape.
HENRY: Suddenly, they are all blinded by this orange light.
When they regain their vision,
they look out the portals of the spacecraft
and they're astonished by what they see.
They describe seeing seven angelic beings
that are traveling alongside their spacecraft,
and did so for ten minutes.
NARRATOR: The men described huge, winged creatures,
as much as 80 feet tall,
that appeared to have glowing halos.
Officials dismissed the incident as a group hallucination
resulting from oxygen deprivation
and pressure fluctuations.
Later that summer,
three more cosmonauts joined the Salyut 7 crew.
All six of them, once again, saw these winged beings.
But how could all of these cosmonauts
share one hallucination?
It seems to me that this was not hallucination,
that whatever it was they were witnessing,
it was real. It was out there.
Now, angels?
Aliens?
I don't know, but, uh,
when one looks at the recurrence
of winged figures in human history,
in terms of religion, in terms of culture, mythology.
Are we looking at something real?
Are these angels that we see
actually extraterrestrial entities?
NARRATOR: Might the winged figures
seen by the Salyut 7 crew,
really have been extraterrestrials?
Ancient astronaut theorists say yes,
and suggest that similar sightings
were secretly reported by many Russian cosmonauts.
Soviet cosmonauts had a really interesting
and challenging dilemma when it came to truth telling.
Because at the same time that they were the public face
of the Soviet space program,
there was the always hidden goal of the Soviet space program,
which was to prove
intercontinental ballistic missile capability.
So the cosmonauts were publically to disguise
those parts of the mission that were secret
and involved in national security,
making it all that much more interesting
when we try to assess what they saw, when they talk about
anomalous things that they supposedly encountered in space.
KARASH: You have to understand that many cosmonauts,
even if they witnessed something strange in space,
were, um, highly reluctant to openly talk about it,
because of the concern of being decommissioned
for the reason of insanity.
Indeed, some of the Soviet and the Russian cosmonauts
did have very strange experience in space.
NARRATOR: Could strange encounters
reported by Russian cosmonauts, as well as military pilots,
be connected to the artifacts discovered in the Ural Mountains
and the Dalnegorsk crash site?
Ancient astronaut theorists believe the answer can be found
by examining not just what the Russian cosmonauts
have seen in space...
(speaking Russian over radio)
...but what they've heard.
NARRATOR: Ever since Yuri Gagarin
became the first man to reach space in 1961,
cosmonauts,
along with other astronauts from around the world,
have had visions and experiences in space that defy explanation.
Perhaps the most curious among these incidents
is what has become known as the "space whisper."
DOLAN: There's an anonymous cosmonaut,
I think he's simply known as Cosmonaut X,
who allegedly talked about an experience that he
and another cosmonaut had while they were in orbit.
What this anonymous cosmonaut said,
he heard, something speaking to him inside his mind.
(disembodied, eerie voices)
Both apparently heard this same whispering
inside their heads, a kind of telepathic message.
This cosmic whisper
said that they were his ancestors
from the very distant past.
They told him things about his own family in the Urals
that no one would have known.
And they also told him that they should go back to Earth.
That Russia was not ready for what they were attempting to do.
And, in a sense, go back home and,
you know, prepare yourself.
STONEHILL: There were more than one cosmonaut.
Some of them knew not to report it
because this would eliminate their presence
in the space program.
But they talked among each other when they could
and they found out that it was more than one person
and in different spaceships, that had been subjected to this.
NARRATOR: How could so many Russian cosmonauts
have heard the same mysterious whisper
while traveling through space?
And just what was this celestial voice trying to communicate?
Ancient astronaut theorists believe it is another example
of extraterrestrial activity
that is only now being disclosed.
CHILDRESS: With all of the massive secrecy in Russia
and all of the things we're just learning,
it would seem to only be the tip of the iceberg
of the many visitations of extraterrestrials
that have been occurring all over the world.
STONEHILL: There is a great wealth of information
in the former Soviet Union.
And when people in the west find out more and more
about events and observations over Russia, they become amazed.
TSOUKALOS: If we were to get access
to some of the Russian files on extraterrestrials,
it could answer some of the questions that we have,
because what if some of those stories
corroborate the ones that we're familiar with?
Because then, it could only mean one thing:
we've all been visited by the same visitors.
NARRATOR: Does the ultimate proof
that extraterrestrials have visited Earth
exist within Russia?
Could such information have been purposely covered up?
And if so,
might the most compelling evidence
still be under lock and key?
Perhaps as more of Russia's secret files are revealed,
we will discover that hidden within these vast archives,
lies the truth about our alien origins.