History Of Paranormal Research In Russia And The Soviet Union: 1917 To Present

Unconventional research in USSR and Russia: short overview is a fascinating document.  I've just excerpted bits below and added a few comments.  Of course the Americans did this kind "research", so you would expect the Russians did as well.  I didn't know they were up to it this early, however:

No further work was done until the beginning of the Cold War:

Most of the recent research is considered pseudo-scientific in The West.  And indeed it seems as though a good deal of  modern day pseudo-scientific beliefs originated behind the Iron Curtain.  Some of us are old enough to remember "pyramid power" from the 1970s.  Interestingly enough:

There is debate over who coined the term "pyramid power." Author Max Toth has claimed he coined the phrase,[20] as has Patrick Flanagan.[citation needed] In the 1970s, both authors released books entitled Pyramid Power.[21][22] This led to a lawsuit by Flanagan against Toth, according to Toth.[20]

However, the term in the context of its current usage first appeared in print in Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder's 1970 book Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain.[23] They claim the term was coined by "Czechoslovakian researchers" in the 1960s.[24]

And indeed we see that research on like topics continued even into the new millenium:

In any case, one of the things that first made me love the Internet was Jessica Utts analysis of the Stargate Program .  It was made available as a downloadable document, charts and tables and all, and it made me think that the on-line would become a repository of secret knowledge.   A library of magic, perhaps.   In the end it it turned out to be a repository of hardcore porn, but for a brief moment...