Soviet Scientist, Occultist, and Seeker of the Ancient World

Alexander Vasilyevich Barchenko was born on March 25, 1881, in Yelets, a provincial city in what is now Lipetsk Oblast in central Russia. His father was a sworn attorney and notary of the district court — a man of rational, legal temperament whose son would spend his life pursuing precisely the opposite of rational certainty. His mother came from the clergy. It was perhaps this tension between law and faith that shaped Barchenko’s life...