Report on Conversations with Soviet Scientists on Subject of Unidentified Flying Objects in the USSR

This CIA report from August 1967 records what an American astrophysicist heard when he raised UFOs, as a side topic, during a trip to Soviet observatories. It is a snapshot of how Soviet scientists talked about the subject in private at a time when the U.S. Air Force was funding the University of Colorado study.

What Soviet scientists said

The answers varied. A translator in Moscow said with a laugh that he knew of no sightings. The astronomer N. A. Kozyrev said he knew of some reports from the north of the USSR but that newspapers would not print them. At the Main Astronomical Observatory in Kiev, I. K. Koval said he and colleagues had seen a curious reddish object streak across the sky; they were sure it was neither satellite nor meteor but first guessed it was a piece of a satellite or rocket burning up on re-entry. L. I. Galkin of the Crimean observatory, who had been with them, confirmed the sighting.

In Alma-Ata, the institute director G. M. Idlis said Donald Menzel’s skeptical book had closed the question – until the American described James McDonald’s critical work, after which Idlis allowed it was “clearly still an open question.” Another astronomer said repeated ball-lightning reports in northern Kazakhstan had turned out to be car headlights reflected from an atmospheric inversion layer.

The visitor’s conclusion

He judged that the USSR had no official treatment of UFOs and that Soviet scientists leaned on American work, mainly Menzel’s book, to dismiss them, while being widely aware of and curious about the phenomenon.