Filed Under: Video > Journalism > "The Mysteries of the Century": Post-Truth and Mystical Nazism on Russian TV
"The Mysteries of the Century": Post-Truth and Mystical Nazism on Russian TV
1 00:00:00,600 --> 00:00:05,160 Every Mysteries of the Century episode throws up more questions. 2 00:00:05,320 --> 00:00:10,120 Clearly, we're missing a vital card from our spread. 3 00:00:12,600 --> 00:00:16,960 WE SEEK AND WE FIND 4 00:00:19,880 --> 00:00:22,920 Let's see if we can work out what that card is. 5 00:00:23,800 --> 00:00:27,000 When Hess was in Spandau Prison, 6 00:00:27,160 --> 00:00:31,480 he reportedly referred to Haushofer as a master of the occult, a magician 7 00:00:31,880 --> 00:00:36,520 who had been initiated into a mysterious Japanese order 8 00:00:36,680 --> 00:00:38,280 called the Green Dragon. 9 00:00:38,960 --> 00:00:42,080 The color green certainly has mystical qualities. 10 00:00:42,720 --> 00:00:48,120 Jean Robin wrote a book called Hitler: Chosen by the Green Dragon. 11 00:00:48,560 --> 00:00:53,680 In it, he writes that Rasputin, who was a German spy, 12 00:00:53,840 --> 00:00:56,400 received dispatches from Stockholm 13 00:00:56,760 --> 00:00:59,280 signed in green ink. 14 00:01:00,000 --> 00:01:04,920 In the '30s, there was a mysterious Tibetan living in Berlin 15 00:01:05,120 --> 00:01:07,640 known as "The Man in the Green Gloves". 16 00:01:08,600 --> 00:01:13,320 They say he predicted the future of the Reich. 17 00:01:14,960 --> 00:01:19,800 Jean Robin also reminds us of Himmler's strange obsession 18 00:01:19,960 --> 00:01:22,640 with the Green Book, the Koran, 19 00:01:23,240 --> 00:01:29,240 and that he always kept his favorite green pen on his desk. 20 00:01:30,760 --> 00:01:36,600 In mysticism, everything has meaning: colors, images, and symbols. 21 00:01:37,160 --> 00:01:41,080 It's curious that in her letters to the doctor Badmaev 22 00:01:41,240 --> 00:01:47,680 and to Kolchak's officers, many of whom had deep roots 23 00:01:47,840 --> 00:01:49,880 in the German aristocracy, 24 00:01:50,040 --> 00:01:53,840 the tsarina drew a swastika symbol. 25 00:01:54,440 --> 00:01:58,080 Some say she was taught the symbol by Badmaev. 26 00:01:58,240 --> 00:02:02,600 But her own family lineage 27 00:02:02,760 --> 00:02:05,040 can be traced back to those 28 00:02:05,160 --> 00:02:08,120 who well knew the ancient meaning of the swastika 29 00:02:08,280 --> 00:02:10,400 and considered it their own. 30 00:02:12,920 --> 00:02:16,800 She believed it offered protection, 31 00:02:16,960 --> 00:02:20,200 and drew it on the walls in the places 32 00:02:20,360 --> 00:02:23,560 where the royal family were harshly imprisoned. 33 00:02:24,160 --> 00:02:26,920 And there's the mad Baron von Ungern-Sternberg, 34 00:02:27,080 --> 00:02:30,520 who at one point controlled Mongolia. 35 00:02:30,680 --> 00:02:34,000 Mad according to historians, that is. 36 00:02:36,440 --> 00:02:41,240 The Russian soldiers under his command wore swastikas 37 00:02:41,400 --> 00:02:42,960 on their epaulets. 38 00:02:43,200 --> 00:02:46,400 He proved to the local lamas that he was a Buddhist, 39 00:02:46,560 --> 00:02:51,000 but as a Sternberg, he came from an ancient aristocratic family. 40 00:02:51,720 --> 00:02:55,560 Hitler adopted this same Buddhist symbol 41 00:02:55,720 --> 00:02:58,960 for the purposes of the Nazi party. 42 00:02:59,120 --> 00:03:03,280 He recognized the unusual effect it has on people 43 00:03:03,880 --> 00:03:09,360 and its influence on the subconscious mind. 44 00:03:10,160 --> 00:03:14,440 Rauschning recalled Hitler talking about the Freemasons 45 00:03:14,600 --> 00:03:18,920 and the significance of a particular symbol they used. 46 00:03:19,080 --> 00:03:22,840 It could help you work on a subconscious level 47 00:03:22,920 --> 00:03:27,080 to draw the various factions of a party or population to your side. 48 00:03:28,880 --> 00:03:34,000 A swastika was photographed on the wall of the Ipatiev house in Yekaterinburg. 49 00:03:34,160 --> 00:03:36,440 The photograph, and also 50 00:03:36,600 --> 00:03:40,960 an icon of St. Seraphim of Sarov that was found on the tsarina's dead body 51 00:03:41,120 --> 00:03:43,520 were kept by General Kutepov. 52 00:03:44,280 --> 00:03:47,680 Inside the icon was an inscription. 53 00:03:47,840 --> 00:03:51,800 Written in English in the tsarina's own hand 54 00:03:52,160 --> 00:03:55,400 were the words "Green Dragon". Just as you thought. 55 00:03:55,560 --> 00:03:59,240 The book Conspirology sees mysticism at work in history. 56 00:04:00,480 --> 00:04:04,800 Aleksandr Dugin tells us how General Kutepov 57 00:04:05,240 --> 00:04:09,880 was kidnapped and killed on board the yacht Ashkhet. 58 00:04:10,680 --> 00:04:12,200 A strange coincidence, 59 00:04:12,360 --> 00:04:16,360 since this was the name of the land ruled by King Thule. 60 00:04:17,600 --> 00:04:22,080 What, then, did brother Marcion have in mind when he spoke 61 00:04:22,280 --> 00:04:23,840 of the flight of Hess 62 00:04:24,120 --> 00:04:26,920 and the bond between the initiated? 63 00:04:27,400 --> 00:04:31,560 The members of the Order of the Green Dragon, perhaps? 64 00:04:31,920 --> 00:04:35,960 We find traces of the order in Tibet and Japan, 65 00:04:36,240 --> 00:04:38,720 in Russia and Germany. 66 00:04:39,360 --> 00:04:43,160 As far as Britain is concerned, we don't know. 67 00:04:44,040 --> 00:04:49,640 There may have existed a more extensive network of secret societies. 68 00:04:50,800 --> 00:04:54,240 Its presence, if only intuitively, 69 00:04:54,400 --> 00:04:57,960 is felt by politicians even today.
Aired on two of the main state TV channels in 1992-1993, Mysteries of the Century (Tainy veka) featured one of the earliest media appearances of fringe far-right mystical philosopher Alexander Dugin (1962-). The show was also one of the earliest examples of “post-truth” in post-Soviet mainstream media, anticipating a tendency prevalent in the Putin era that followed. The show was technically in the genre of cultural/ historical investigative reporting, except that it was entirely comprised of alternative histories and conspiracy theories. Almost a parody of perestroika’s razoblachenie or unmasking of “top-secret” materials, it included fake or deceptively edited visits to the KGB archives and interviews with self-styled academic experts, former American and Russian spies, and Freemasons. There were also episodes about vampires, secret “psychotronic weapons” allegedly employed by both the KGB and the CIA, and the murder of the Romanov family.
In the main cycle of episodes, the two hosts—Dugin and the journalist Yuri Vorobyovsky—presented what they claimed to be sensational discoveries, drawn from recently unsealed KGB archives, about the mystical undercurrents of Nazism and Ahnenerbe—an SS-administered pseudoscientific institute (1935-1945) tasked with investigating the allegedly ancient origins and intrinsic superiority of the “Aryan race.” The endless chain of far-fetched connections among seemingly unrelated historical events rendered the show’s atmosphere somewhat hallucinatory, as did its audio backing of repetitive and alienating jaw harp sounds and chanted mantras.
The excerpt in this artifact, drawn from a 1992 episode titled “Mysticism of the Reich: The Enigma of the Green Dragon [Mistika Reikha: taina zelenogo drakona],” exemplifies the dark mysticism, pseudoscience, and improbable conspiracy theories that animated Dugin and Vorobyovsky’s show. In it, Vorobyovsky sits in a dark room, a green light projected onto his face and hands, placing cards with “mysterious,” esoteric symbols on a table. “Every episode of Tainy veka,” he intones, “raises new questions.” The “missing card” in his deck may belong to a secret Japanese group called “The Society of the Green Dragon,” whose members included Karl Haushofer, a theorist of German expansionism and an associate of Hitler’s deputy, Rudolf Hess. Meanwhile, the Russian mystic Grigory Rasputin, Vorobyovsky explains, was a German spy who received messages from Stockholm signed in green ink; and, in 1930s Berlin, there was “a mysterious man from Tibet who used to wear green gloves.” Heinrich Himmler had a “strange liking” for “the green book of the Koran,” and always kept his favorite green pen on his desk. The Tsarina Aleksandra Fedorovna, wife of Tsar Nicholas II, used to draw swastikas in her correspondence with the Tibetan healer Petr Badmaev. The mystical “crazy Baron” Roman von Ungern-Sternberg, a commander in the White Army known for his ruthlessness, used to decorate his soldiers’ epaulets with a swastika… and so on and so forth.
The episode resembles a dark version of Sergei Kuryokhin’s 1991 Lenin-Mushroom TV prank. While following the same shimmering or shifting stiob-logic, it overlays it with an additional patina of mystery and pseudo-academic solemnity. In the next sequence, Dugin, as if revealing the show’s surreal essence, explains that he is perfectly aware of the mystifying nature of all conspiracies, while at the same time arguing that “it doesn’t really matter if [a conspiracy] is real,” since “if it exists in people’s consciousness” as “a sociological fact, as a model used to understand what is happening,” the conspiracy is “already real.”
Tainy veka exploits the thirst for truth, mystery, and transgression widespread in the late-Soviet and early post-Soviet periods. Like sex and violence, Nazism was a key discursive taboo. To violate it was to reject the hypocritical, if well-intentioned, late-Soviet calls for tolerance and equality, as well as the soon-to-be-broken neoliberal promises of prosperity and freedom that dominated early post-Soviet media. Dugin and Vorobyovsky’s show denies the very possibility of truth by mocking the perestroika-era obsession with “unmasking” truths hidden beneath layers of Soviet-sanctioned propaganda and mystification. But it also surreptitiously reclaims the dark, surreal essence of post-Soviet reality as a source of identity. In so doing, the show hints at the possibility of exploiting the radical cynicism and skepticism of the then-dominant neoliberal ethos for reactionary—or, from the point of view of its creators, revolutionary—purposes. Ultimately, Tainy veka seeks to turn “the society of the spectacle” (Guy Debord) against itself.
In the main cycle of episodes, the two hosts—Dugin and the journalist Yuri Vorobyovsky—presented what they claimed to be sensational discoveries, drawn from recently unsealed KGB archives, about the mystical undercurrents of Nazism and Ahnenerbe—an SS-administered pseudoscientific institute (1935-1945) tasked with investigating the allegedly ancient origins and intrinsic superiority of the “Aryan race.” The endless chain of far-fetched connections among seemingly unrelated historical events rendered the show’s atmosphere somewhat hallucinatory, as did its audio backing of repetitive and alienating jaw harp sounds and chanted mantras.
The excerpt in this artifact, drawn from a 1992 episode titled “Mysticism of the Reich: The Enigma of the Green Dragon [Mistika Reikha: taina zelenogo drakona],” exemplifies the dark mysticism, pseudoscience, and improbable conspiracy theories that animated Dugin and Vorobyovsky’s show. In it, Vorobyovsky sits in a dark room, a green light projected onto his face and hands, placing cards with “mysterious,” esoteric symbols on a table. “Every episode of Tainy veka,” he intones, “raises new questions.” The “missing card” in his deck may belong to a secret Japanese group called “The Society of the Green Dragon,” whose members included Karl Haushofer, a theorist of German expansionism and an associate of Hitler’s deputy, Rudolf Hess. Meanwhile, the Russian mystic Grigory Rasputin, Vorobyovsky explains, was a German spy who received messages from Stockholm signed in green ink; and, in 1930s Berlin, there was “a mysterious man from Tibet who used to wear green gloves.” Heinrich Himmler had a “strange liking” for “the green book of the Koran,” and always kept his favorite green pen on his desk. The Tsarina Aleksandra Fedorovna, wife of Tsar Nicholas II, used to draw swastikas in her correspondence with the Tibetan healer Petr Badmaev. The mystical “crazy Baron” Roman von Ungern-Sternberg, a commander in the White Army known for his ruthlessness, used to decorate his soldiers’ epaulets with a swastika… and so on and so forth.
The episode resembles a dark version of Sergei Kuryokhin’s 1991 Lenin-Mushroom TV prank. While following the same shimmering or shifting stiob-logic, it overlays it with an additional patina of mystery and pseudo-academic solemnity. In the next sequence, Dugin, as if revealing the show’s surreal essence, explains that he is perfectly aware of the mystifying nature of all conspiracies, while at the same time arguing that “it doesn’t really matter if [a conspiracy] is real,” since “if it exists in people’s consciousness” as “a sociological fact, as a model used to understand what is happening,” the conspiracy is “already real.”
Tainy veka exploits the thirst for truth, mystery, and transgression widespread in the late-Soviet and early post-Soviet periods. Like sex and violence, Nazism was a key discursive taboo. To violate it was to reject the hypocritical, if well-intentioned, late-Soviet calls for tolerance and equality, as well as the soon-to-be-broken neoliberal promises of prosperity and freedom that dominated early post-Soviet media. Dugin and Vorobyovsky’s show denies the very possibility of truth by mocking the perestroika-era obsession with “unmasking” truths hidden beneath layers of Soviet-sanctioned propaganda and mystification. But it also surreptitiously reclaims the dark, surreal essence of post-Soviet reality as a source of identity. In so doing, the show hints at the possibility of exploiting the radical cynicism and skepticism of the then-dominant neoliberal ethos for reactionary—or, from the point of view of its creators, revolutionary—purposes. Ultimately, Tainy veka seeks to turn “the society of the spectacle” (Guy Debord) against itself.