CIA · CIA-UAP-010
Conversations With Soviet Scientists on UFOs, Is the USSR Interested? (1967)
This CIA report relays a US scientist's account of conversations with Soviet astronomers across several observatories about UFOs and whether the USSR was officially interested in them. The picture it draws is consistent: little or no official Soviet treatment of the subject, frequent reliance on the American skeptic Donald Menzel's book to dismiss it, but a widespread private awareness and curiosity among individual astronomers, several of whom described their own unexplained sightings.
Key excerpts
“The general feeling one gets is that no official treatment of the UFO problem has been given in the USSR. Instead people refer to the US work, principally Menzel's book, to demonstrate the absence of real scientific problems. (p. 2)”
“I.K. Koval mentioned that he and several other astronomers had been out in the countryside one evening and had seen a curious, reddish object flashing through the sky that they were convinced was neither a satellite nor a meteorite. (p. 2)”
Alternative hypotheses
The report accurately captures a real divergence between official Soviet silence and private scientific interest
most probable for the attitudes).
The individual "sightings" were prosaic re-entry or atmospheric events
most probable for the objects).
Soviet reticence was deliberate concealment of state interest rather than genuine disinterest
less supported here).