Filename: Omni0792.Art
Type : Article
Author : Patrick Huyghe
Date : 07/??/92 (July 1992 Issue Omni Magazine)
Desc : Russian view of aliens

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Omni Magazine July 1992 Page 72

RUSSIA'S ALIEN IDEAS
By Partick Huyghe

Westerners were intrigued back in 1989 when the Soviet news agency,
Tass, reported the claims of some school children from the city of
Voronezh. A spectacular UFO landed in town, the children insisted,
along with its ten-foot-tall occupant toting a tube-shaped gun.
Scrutinizing the Tass report, the Western press assumed the Russians
were letting off steam after years of censorship. Some UFO buffs in the
United States called the episode a hoax, but one Western scientist
ignored the ridicule and left for Moscow instead.

In January of 1990, Jacques Vallee, a computer scientist regarded by
many as the world's major UFO researcher, held a week-long series of
meetings with the Soviet Union's leading UFO lights. He met with a
scientist who'd studied the mysterious explosion that had rattled the
Tunguska region of Russia in 1908 and with an ex-Soviet Naval officer
who detailed his UFO sightings by Navy personnel. But according to
Vallee, the most compelling sighting was the one in Voronezh itself.

In his new book, UFO Chronicles of the Soviet Union (Ballantine,
1992), Vallee describes the cast of dozens--adults as well as children-
-who reportedly witnessed the spherical Voronezh craft, its three-eyed
giant, and an accompanying robot. He also cites engineers who examined
an imprint allegedly left by the craft, an object they claimed weighed
11 tons. While Vladimir Migulin, a member of the Soviet Academy of
Sciences, attributed the markings to a rocket launched from Volvograd,
Vallee does not agree. "Migulin's skeptical attitude," he says, "is not
very different from what you would get from our own National Academy of
Science."

Why does Vallee believe the Soviet sightings are for real? The weight
of the craft, he notes, was "in the range of estimates reached by
French scientists studying physical markings left by UFO landings in
France." And though the beings bore no resemblance to the familiar,
short, Hollywood-style UFOnauts, they were similar to aliens reportedly
seen "in a very similar case in Argentina in 1978."

Vallee's sojourn--and his ideas--have taken fellow UFOlogists by
surprise. Some wonder how scientific the Russians really are, given
that they regularly use dousing to gather information about UFO sites.
"With all due respect," says Michael Swords, a professor at Western
Michigan University and editor of the Journal of UFO Studies, "some
Russians are questionable in terms of UFO research. They tend not to be
very well disciplined, nor are they good at documenting their work." As
for Vallee's book, Swords says "it sounds like 'What I Did on My Last
Vacation.' Vallee may have met a lot of interesting people and heard a
lot of interesting tales, but he doesn't document things properly, and
if he has, he never seems to share it with anybody."

But Vallee insists the Russian findings are significant, in part
because of the region's weak coverup system. "With the chaos spreading
over the Soviet Union," Vallee explains, "I felt there was genuine
information coming out from the witnesses."

Vallee supporter and experimental psychologist Richard Haines agrees
that the French researcher is onto something real. Explaining the
misunderstanding about Vallee's work, Haines says, "He's a
theoretician. He doesn't claim to be a field inverstigator. And I think
he has some very challenging ideas."

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