Did the Soviet Union Try to Make an Army of Ape-Man Hybrids?
In the MonsterQuest episode entitled "Stalin's Ape Man", the team takes a look at the reports of half man, half ape creatures in the former Soviet Union. There are reports that Stalin authorized a project to create an ape-man army in the 1920s. A Russian historian claims to have the remains of a descendent from a Bigfoot type creature known as an Abanu. They look at the possibility that Bigfoot and Abanu sightings are a result of an evolutionary throwback condition known as atavism. The MonsterQuest team takes a look at what is behind these stories.The Creation of an Ape-Man Soldier
In 2005, an open editorial appeared in the New York Times that was authored by animal psychologist Clive Wynne. This article mentioned "In 1926, a Soviet scientist named Ilya Ivanov decided to breed a humanzee: a human chimpanzee hybrid." This article was soon followed up by a number articles in Russian newspapers about this humanzee program. A 20 December 2005 article in the Scotsmen Newspaper reported about "Stalin's Half-man, Half-ape, Super Warriors".
The story that was forming out of all of these articles was that Stalin had instituted a program to create a super soldier. In 1926, the Politburo had requested that the Russian Academy of Science work to build a new living war machine that was insensitive to pain and indifferent to the quality of food. These programs were to create an invincible ape-man army.
According to historian Alexis Pogorelskin, the 1920s was the golden age of Soviet science. Following World War I, the Soviets were attempting to use science to modernize many aspects of Soviet life. The Soviet army was in great need of additional forces and modernization. Stalin was very aggressive with research and did not have many moral qualms about the use of science or anything else.
The MonsterQuest team went to Russia to find out the truth behind these reports. Russian Academy of Science Historian Kirill Rossiianov has researched the Academy documents for the history of these experiments. Rossiianov found documentation that Stalin approved funding for Ilya Ivanov's experiment to create an ape-man hybrid.
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