Original subtitles

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."

So, this idea was imbedded within Russian culture.

NARRATOR: Both Lenin and his successor, Joseph Stalin,

saw to it that talk of Cosmism

and humanity's alien origins was silenced.

But these ideas would emerge again in 1961,

when the Soviet Union successfully launched

Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin into orbit,

and beat the United States at sending the first man to space.

Many Russians saw this accomplishment

as a fulfillment of man's destiny to return to the stars.

With the successes of the Soviet space program,

Sputnik in 1957, the first man in space.

Simultaneously this kind of kick-started,

or created anew, an interest in investigating

alien origins of human civilizations.

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.

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.

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 tranission)

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.

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.

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.

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