The Worker's Cauldron
A podcast about the cultural politics of the paranormal. Where Karl Marx shakes his fist at the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot speaks to us about the legacies of colonialism. We discuss the contemporary obsession with all things supernatural through a socialist, feminist lens and ask what our strange experiences and beliefs tell us about the society we live in.
The Worker's Cauldron
Communist Cryptozoology Part 1: The USSR
How a select group of explorers and scientists from the Soviet Union and People’s Republic of Mongolia came to believe that a species of primitive, human-like creatures called Almas or Almasty haunted the mountains of Central Asia. Also, we interview Dr. Ed Guimont on the role socialist science fiction may have had on a leader of the Soviet expedition to find the Yeti. Check out his podcast, The Impossible Archive, here.
Sources
Boris Porshnev, The Soviet Sasquatch
Artemy Magun, Boris Porshnev's Dialectic of History
Translated Essays from Porshnev, Koffman, and Damdin at the Relict Hominoid Inquiry
Ingvar Svanberg and Sabira Ståhlberg, Wildmen in Central Asia
Edina Dallos, Albasty: A Female Demon of Turkic Peoples
Monstertalk, The Zana Problem