'Flying Saucers Are a Myth': Embassy Moscow Reports the Soviet Line, 1968
In March 1968 the U.S. Embassy in Moscow sent home a Soviet newspaper article dismissing UFOs as Western propaganda, and pointed out that Moscow had recently told American readers something rather different.
What this record is
This five-page record is Department of State airgram A-1221, unclassified, from the American Embassy in Moscow to the Department, dated 22 March 1968. It was drafted in the Embassy’s science section, and its contents were approved by the First Secretary. The typed subject line reads “Flying Saucers Are a Myth”. Someone at the Embassy has added by hand “(or maybe a myths)”. It refers to an earlier Moscow airgram, A-1095 of 20 February 1968, which is not in the file. The covering page is followed by four pages of an English translation titled “Flying Saucers? They’re a Myth.” The record comes from the National Security Agency’s files.
What it says
The covering note is one paragraph. It reports that a long article in Moskovskiy Komsomolets of 16 February 1968, by Vil Lyustiberg, science editor of the Novosti Press Agency, “debunks flying saucers completely.” Lyustiberg, it says, “is quite emphatic throughout his article that unidentified flying objects (UFOs) do not exist.” Then comes the Embassy’s own comment: “He makes no attempt to square this belief with previously published Soviet articles, including that rather spectacular article primarily for U.S. consumption in Soviet Life.”
The translated article works through the familiar stories one after another. Kenneth Arnold is the “godfather” of flying saucers. The death of Captain Thomas Mantell in January 1948 is attributed to a secret Navy “Skyhook” balloon, and Lyustiberg adds that Mantell forgot he had no oxygen equipment. Stories of saucers crashing, a disc found in a Spitsbergen coal seam, a saucer blamed for the 1965 American blackout and a West German magazine’s “Interview with a Man from Venus” are dismissed as tall tales. Saucers, he writes, “appear to those who believe in them” and stay away from air observation posts, meteorologists and astronomers. He notes that there is no convincing stereoscopic photograph. Doubtful photographs, he argues, show thrown hats, double exposures or foreshortened household objects, and the convincing ones probably show ball lightning. He adds that a November 1967 “saucer” over Sofia turned out to be a NATO reconnaissance balloon. He praises Donald Menzel’s debunking book and dismisses George Adamski and other contactees as frauds.
The final section turns political. Lyustiberg claims that saucer waves follow American presidential elections and the Korean and Vietnam Wars. He concludes that in “imperialist countries” flying saucers are “a well-camouflaged means for misinforming the people,” there to distract readers from wage freezes, rising prices and unemployment.
Context
The Embassy’s note refers to a real change of direction in Soviet public statements. In late 1967 and early 1968 some Soviet scientists had spoken publicly in favour of studying UFOs, and an article of that kind is usually identified with the February 1968 Soviet Life, an English-language magazine the USSR published for American readers. Lyustiberg’s piece belongs to the official rebuttal that followed within weeks. The Embassy clearly noticed that the message for foreigners and the message for young Soviet readers did not match, and the handwritten note suggests some amusement. The CIA’s 1967 record of conversations with Soviet scientists, covered here, shows the same interest from the American side.
On the substance, Lyustiberg’s article mixes sound scepticism with propaganda and some errors. The Mantell explanation he gives, a Skyhook balloon and a pilot without oxygen, matches the account generally accepted in the West (see the Mantell case). His election-cycle theory is not supported by any data in the article.
Status
A diplomatic report on Soviet press coverage, with no sighting at its centre. It reached the National Archives in 2025 as part of the NSA transfer.
Sources
- National Archives catalog entry: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/596347897
- PDF of the record: https://catalog.archives.gov/medialz/electronic-records/rg-615/580103959/457UAP00006_released.pdf
- Series: Records from the National Security Agency Relating to Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/580103959
- National Archives, Record Group 615 UAP records: https://www.archives.gov/research/topics/uaps/rg-615