Red Shambhala: Magic, Prophecy, and Geopolitics in the Heart of Asia

With all the action and suspense of a bestselling mystery novel, Red Shambhala takes you on a thrilling journey into the underground occult agenda of the 1920’s Soviet Secret Police. Using historical archives and primary documents, former Library of Congress historian and Professor Andrei Znamenski reveals the strange accounts of the Bolsheviks’ clandestine quest for ultimate power. Red Shambhala details the zealous Bolshevik commissar Gleb Bokii’s and renowned occult writer Alexander Barchenko’s attempts to use Tibetan Buddhist wisdom to conjure a divine era of Communism by tapping into a power of mysterious Shambhala, a prophecy about a land of pure mystical bliss where inhabitants enjoyed god-like capabilities . This romantic dream also caught the attention of other die-hard revolutionaries, staunch nationalists and Theosophical occultists, forging a most unlikely 20th century enterprise. Bolshevik secret police, Tibetan lamas, the famed occult couple Nicholas and Helena Roerich, and the right-wing fanatic baron Roman von Ungern-Sternberg known as "Bloody White" embarked in unison on dangerous quests through Mongolia, Tibet and farther to the Himalayas. Despite their different agendas, they pursued the same goal: to use the potent power of Tibetan-Buddhist prophecies. For all these impassioned crusaders victory meant bringing the dawn of perfect man and obtaining the keys to a benevolent all-powerful ideal society that would serve as the beacon for all humankind. For all those interested in the secret machinations that often occur behind political movements, Red Shambhala proves impossible to put down! Blackmail, ritualistic blood sacrifice, Tantric "avenging" lamas, fiery psychic visions from masters of a Great White Brotherhood and a magical black stone that fell from heaven, Red Shambhala reveals that real-life history is at times far stranger than fiction.

296 pages

About the author: Andrei Znamenski, a native of Russia, has studied history and anthropology both in Russia and the United States. Formerly a resident scholar at the Library of Congress, then a foreign visiting professor at Hokkaido University, Japan, he has taught various courses at Samara Pedagogical University, The University of Toledo, Alabama State University, and the University of Memphis. Among them are World Civilizations, Russian history, and the History of Religions. Znamenski’s major fields of interests include Shamanism, the history of Western esotericism, and Russian history as well as indigenous religions of Siberia and North America. Znamenski lived and traveled extensively in Alaska, Siberia, and Japan. His field and archival research among Athabaskan Indians in Alaska and native people of the Altai (Southern Siberia) resulted in the book Shamanism and Christianity: Native Responses to Russian Missionaries(1999) and Through Orthodox Eyes: Russian Missionary Narratives of Travels to the Dena'ina and Ahtna(2003). After this, Znamenski became interested in the cultural history of shamanism. Endeavoring to answer why shamanism became so popular with Western spiritual seekers since the 1960s, he wrote another book,The Beauty of the Primitive: Shamanism and Western Imagination(2007) and edited the three-volume anthologyShamanism: Critical Concepts(2004). Simultaneously, he continued to explore shamanism of Siberian indigenous people, traveling to the Altai and surrounding areas, which led to the publication ofShamanism in Siberia(2003). Between 2003 and 2004, he resided in Japan, where along with his Japanese colleague, Professor Koichi Inoue, Znamenski worked withitako, blind female healers and mediums from the Amori prefecture. Znamenski is currently an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Memphis, Memphis. He resides in Memphis, Tennessee.