Issue #24/79, December 12 - 26, 1999  

Editor's Note: Last week, noted political analyst Andrei Piontkowsky's column was permanently removed from the pages of the Moscow Times after the former protested the paper's apparent censorship of one of his columns. The ugly dispute was made public after Piontkowsky, who is regarded by many in the Western diplomatic and business community as the authentic moral voice of the Russian people, sent a letter to the Times in which he called MT editor-in-chief Matt Bivens a "fool". Times readers responded quickly, sending a deluge of letters, chiding the paper for depriving them of the insights of what many believe is the most authoritative political analyst in this country. No permanent replacement has been found yet to take Piontkowsky's place.

Not long ago, as I was traipsing through the beautiful wilds outside my dacha in Klyazma, thinking about the future of Russia, I came to a revelation. Or, to put it more plainly, a revelation came to me.

It was about two in the morning. The fields around me were empty, which was not unusual for that time of year, and a slight but bracing autumn breeze was blowing through the few remaining strands on my head. Earlier that evening I had been engrossed with powerful ruminations about Russia and its future, about Chechnya and the government-induced provocation which had caused the war there, but now my thoughts was surprisingly clear and placid. It was as though I had subconsciously shifted into a state of mind suitable for receiving truth and wisdom from new sources. I sighed as I recalled that I had not felt in such an agreeable frame of mind since the disappointments of the early Gaidar years.

Then, just at that moment, I saw, above a row of trees in the distance, a faint glow of light. Wiping the condensation from my glasses, I squinted and took a closer look. The light was too constant and brightly-glowing to be coming from an airplane--and, what's more, it was approaching at far too great a rate of speed to be coming from an airplane. Within a few moments the light had advanced to a spot in the sky directly in front of me, at a distance of about a kilometer. Upon closer inspection, I could see that the light was illuminating from a long, irregular object, cigar-shaped and hovering noiselessly in the sky.

"Hello there!" I said, waving a hand.

But there was no answer--the ship simply stood motionless in the air. For a moment I was confused. Was this real, or a hallucination? Was it man-made, a new experimental contribution to our Russian air forces? It was hard to say. I tended to doubt the latter. Our scientists don't have the funding to make such things. And the Americans don't have the knowledge. No, this had to be something else...and indeed, before I knew it, the craft (for I had determined already that it was a craft of some kind) was turning, arranging things so that the broad side of its fuselage was facing me.

Suddenly a sound blared out from the direction of the craft. It was like a siren, only it was biological rather than mechanical in origin-almost like a sheep bleating. The sound was at once deafening and seemingly specifically directed, so that despite the overwhelming volume I had the impression that it would not necessarily be audible to anyone else in the area. I covered my ears, and as I did so, I saw what appeared to be a cascade of incandescent rocks or granules pouring out of the craft onto the ground. I couldn't see where they were landing, but I could feel the wind whipping all around me, seemingly picking up speed; then before I knew it, my hands and my eyes and gone numb, and I felt dizzy. I laid down on the ground to rest...

Silence. I was asleep, or half asleep, for what seemed like an eternity. I have no recollection of any specific contact with any creatures, but I did seem to have a dream of some kind in which I was engrossed in some kind of heated discussion around a long table filled with Arabs with thick, spittle-filled beards. The argument seemed to go on for a long, long time, and only after some effort was settled. I woke up just as the Arabs and I were getting up from the table, and found I was still in the fields near my dacha. I checked my watch; two hours had elapsed. There was no sign of the craft in the air. My clothes were damp from the knees to the waist, and I had a faint but persistent half-erection. A doctor's examination later ascertained my perfect physical health.

I have no proof, of course, that the ship that I saw in the air that day contained aliens from another world. But I do know what I saw. It has often been said that there are no such things as UFOs. But in this day and age, on cannot always be sure.