In the mid-1980s in the USSR began a passionate fascination with astrology, extrasensory and parapsychology. The President of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR Anatoly Alexandrov, who at that time was already in the honorable ninth tenth, told then:
In 1916, my sisters became engaged in spiritism. There are always such fun moments. My father, addressing them, said:
“I can still believe that you can invoke the ghosts of Leo Tolstoy or Anton Chekhov, but that they talk to you, fools, for two hours, I will never believe!”