Enoch & Other Cosmonauts

The controlled newspapers and magazines of the Soviet Union ridiculed the Western craze for flying saucers. But ever since the first Sputnik, the Russians have indulged in their own kind of science fiction about possible visitors from outer space. One Aleksandr Kazantsev theorized that the great Tunguska depression in Siberia, actually caused by the fall of a meteor in 1908, had really resulted from the explosion of a nuclear-powered spaceship attempting to land on earth. Reputable Soviet meteor experts and astronomers ridiculed Kazantsev's theory and accused him of being a charlatan and a cheap sensationalist, but his theories continued to turn up in the Literary Gazette, the publication of the Soviet Writers Union. Last week the Gazette opened its pages to Valentin Rich and Mikhail Chernenkov, who made Kazantsev's imagination seem earthbound indeed. Starting from the premise that earth cannot possibly be the only inhabited planet in the universe, the co-authors searched for evidence that the world has been visited in times past by "cosmonauts" from outer space, and found much of their "proof" in the Middle East and the Bible.

They concluded that the famed "Baalbek verandah" in Lebanon--a vast and ancient platform of huge stone slabs--may have been the launching site for the return trip of cosmonauts from another world. Though discounting the Bible as a source of revealed religion, Writers Rich and Chernenkov eagerly accept it as a historical document. References to angels descending to earth, they decided, may refer to travelers from outer space, "just as some hundreds of years ago the first Spaniards were taken for gods by the Indians." Such Biblical figures as Enoch and Elijah, who "reportedly" ascended to heaven, may have been sample earthlings taken back in the cosmonauts' spaceship.

Further, "the attention of modern man familiar with the discoveries of nuclear physics must be struck by the Biblical description of Sodom and Gomorrah." The Soviet co-authors "transcribed" the Biblical passage into modern language and decided that the columns of smoke, the fire and brimstone that destroyed the cities resulted from the blast "caused by the cosmonauts, who, before takeoff, arranged to blow up dumps of extra nuclear fuel after first warning the surrounding inhabitants" to flee. Those who looked back (e.g., Lot's wife) "were blinded and perished." A little nervously, the Literary Gazette prefaced this saucer-eyed silliness with the caveat that it "stands on the borderline of daring scientific guesswork and scientific fantasy."

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