Soviet Psychic Warfare Programs: The Cold War’s Secret Battle

While the U.S. and USSR raced to build nukes and rockets, another weird Cold War battle played out behind the scenes—psychic warfare.

Both sides secretly trained people to use mind control, telepathy, and other wild stuff, hoping it could give them an edge.

It sounds like sci-fi, but they took it seriously.

How the Soviets Tried to Turn Psychic Powers into Science

Back in the 1960s, the Soviet Union decided psychic powers might actually be real—and useful.

Instead of calling it “parapsychology” like the West, they called it psychotronics.

Sounds cooler, right?

They believed psychic stuff like telepathy was just unknown science—probably some kind of brain-powered electromagnetic energy they hadn’t figured out yet.

Here’s the wild part: their communist worldview said everything had to be explained by science, even the weird stuff.

So if someone could move a spoon with their mind, it wasn’t magic—it was physics they hadn’t cracked yet.

That thinking gave scientists a green light (and a lot of money) to study things like mind control and remote influence.

Unlike in the U.S., where people rolled their eyes at this kind of research, the Soviets went all in.

They weren’t just curious—they thought psychic powers could become a real weapon.

Nina Kulagina: The Housewife Who Stopped Hearts

Meet Nina Kulagina. Before she became the Soviet Union’s top psychic subject, she was just a teenage tank soldier fighting Nazis in WWII.

No big deal. Then, years later, weird stuff started happening—objects moved when she got mad. Like, full-on poltergeist vibes.

At first, she thought it was just creepy. But Soviet scientists? They saw potential. Big potential. They put her in a lab and started running experiments as part of their secret psychic weapons program.

Her most famous moment came on March 10, 1970, in a Leningrad lab.

Surrounded by scientists, cameras rolling, Nina stared at a frog’s heart—and made it stop beating. With. Her. Mind. Supposedly.

They filmed other stuff too: Kulagina moving objects without touching them, messing with compass needles, and affecting living things using nothing but her brainpower.

Those black-and-white tapes quietly made their way to Western intelligence agencies—and freaked them out.

The $1 Billion Psychotronic Arms Race

While the U.S. and USSR were building nukes and space rockets, they were also secretly throwing serious cash at something way weirder: psychic warfare.

The Soviets weren’t playing around—they poured nearly $1 billion into studying psychic powers like it was the next big thing in weapons tech.

Here’s what they were working on:

• Remote viewing & ESP: Could psychics spy on U.S. military bases from across the world without leaving a chair? The Soviets wanted to find out.
• Psychokinesis: They tested if someone could disable machines or hurt enemies just by thinking really hard. Basically, mind bullets.
• Mind control: The creepiest part—using psychic influence to mess with people’s thoughts, choices, and maybe even loyalty.
• Biological effects: Could someone make you sick (or worse) using nothing but mental energy? Soviet scientists ran experiments to try.

This wasn’t a side project. Dozens of research centers, universities, and military labs across the USSR joined in.

Top scientists worked on it like it was the next nuclear bomb—and it got funding to match.

In the Cold War, everything was a battlefield. Even the mind.

The Western Response: Project Star Gate and Beyond

When the U.S. found out the Soviets were dumping cash into psychic warfare, they freaked a little—and started their own secret program:

Project Star Gate. It ran from 1972 to 1995 and was basically America’s attempt to keep up with the USSR’s psychic experiments.

One congressman called it “a hell of a response,” which is government-speak for we’re not letting them win the mind war.

Here’s what the U.S. focused on:

• Remote viewing: Could psychics “see” stuff happening in enemy locations without actually being there? That was the big question.
• Psychoenergetics: A fancy word for things like telepathy and moving stuff with your mind (yep, just like in Stranger Things).

Unlike the Soviets, the U.S. mostly stayed on the defense.

No mind control tests, no frog-heart experiments—just lots of staring at envelopes and maps hoping someone could “see” a missile silo in Siberia.

The CIA and Army ran thousands of experiments over two decades.

It was low-budget compared to the USSR, but they took it seriously. At least until the ’90s, when the funding dried up and everyone quietly pretended it never happened.

Scientific Skepticism and Methodological Challenges

While the Soviets were busy testing mind powers, not everyone was buying it.

A lot of scientists—both in the East and West—called out the psychic research as sketchy.

Why? Because most of the experiments had messy methods, weak data, and results no one else could repeat.

Take Nina Kulagina, for example.

Some people said she had real powers. Others said she just knew how to fake it.

She was actually caught cheating a few times, according to books and reports.

But then in 1987, she sued a Soviet magazine for calling her a fraud—and won part of the case. So yeah, it’s complicated.

The Intelligence Assessment

Western intelligence agencies conducted extensive assessments of Soviet psychic warfare Western spy agencies didn’t just laugh off Soviet psychic experiments—they took them seriously.

Some experts, like analysts from RAND, basically said: “If this psychic stuff is real, the Soviets are way ahead of us in figuring out how to use it.”

Here’s why they were worried:

• The Soviets threw big money and real structure at their psychic programs.
• Communist ideology actually supported this kind of research, which made it easier to fund and organize.
• People like Nina Kulagina were out there doing strange things on camera, and those tapes raised eyebrows.
• If the Soviets cracked even part of this stuff, it could give them a major strategic edge.

So the fear wasn’t just “Do psychic powers exist?” It was, “What if the Soviets figure out how to use them before we do?”.

That thought kept some folks in Washington up at night.

Declassified Documents and Revelations

We only found out how deep this psychic arms race went after the Cold War ended—when the CIA and military finally declassified a bunch of files.

And yeah, it turns out the U.S. took Soviet mind-power experiments way more seriously than they let on.

Here’s what the docs showed:

• Top U.S. officials got regular briefings on Soviet psychotronic research. Not just weird side notes—real updates.
• The CIA and military threw real resources into tracking this stuff. They even tried to recruit Soviet scientists and get their hands on psychic tech.
• They weren’t just curious—they were worried. The Soviets looked organized, well-funded, and maybe even onto something.

These files proved the psychic war wasn’t a myth.

It was a legit Cold War front—just one the public didn’t hear about until years later.

The Legacy of Psychic Warfare Programs

When the Cold War ended, the psychic arms race basically fizzled out.

The Soviet Union collapsed, their researchers scattered, and a bunch of secret files got declassified.

On the U.S. side, programs like Project Star Gate were shut down too—partly because results were all over the place, and partly because the government moved on.

But the story didn’t totally end there.

Some of the research—especially stuff about how the brain works—found its way into real science.

Think neuroscience, the placebo effect, and studies on human consciousness.

So even if nobody ever built a real mind-control weapon, some of the science stuck around.

Lessons for Modern Intelligence and Defense

Even though psychic warfare didn’t become the next nuclear bomb, it taught some solid lessons for modern intel and defense teams:

• Stay open-minded: Sometimes you have to check out weird threats, even if they sound like sci-fi.
• Use real science: Testing strange ideas is fine—but you still need solid methods and skeptical thinking.
• Spend smart: Don’t throw cash at random experiments. Focus on stuff that actually has a shot.
• Competition fuels creativity: Rivalries (like the U.S. vs. USSR) push people to explore strange new territory—sometimes useful, sometimes not.

In the end, the psychic warfare era was part Cold War paranoia, part fringe science experiment, and part weird-but-fascinating chapter in military history.

Conclusion: The Enduring Mystery

The Soviet psychic warfare program was one of the strangest parts of the Cold War.

No one ever proved psychic powers could be weaponized, but both the U.S. and USSR took the idea seriously enough to spend real money and time chasing it.

Nina Kulagina, moving stuff with her mind (maybe), became the face of it all.

The whole thing blurred science, politics, and fear in a way that only the Cold War could.

Even if it didn’t lead to mind-controlled missiles, these programs showed how far countries will go to win—even into the world of telepathy and frogs with stopped hearts.