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From movies like the Fly and The Island of Dr. Moreau to modern classics like Splice or Dog Man, the movie going public can't seem to get enough of a human mixed with some kind of other animal. Plots involving these types of monsters aren't just great sci-fi fodder either. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a worldwide fascination in scientific advancements led many of those on the less ethical side to ask the question “why can’t we make monkey men?” And by “less ethical,” we mean “Joseph Stalin.”
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From movies like The Fly and The Island of Dr. Moreau, to modern classics like Splice or Dogman
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the movie-going public can't seem to get enough of a human mixed with some kind of other animal
0:11
Plots involving these types of monsters aren't just great sci-fi fodder either
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During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a worldwide fascination in scientific advancements
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led many of those on the less ethical side to ask the question
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why can't we make monkey men? And by less ethical, we mean Joseph Stalin. No, really
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So, today we're investigating whether Stalin's Russia really created human-chimp hybrids. You may think you've heard about every bizarre secret project undertaken by Nazi Germany
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But what about Russia's attempts to unleash a human-ape hybrid super army? Oh, really
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there was a human-ape hybrid program in Soviet Russia under Joseph Stalin
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But despite Stalin being one of history's greatest bad guys, it was actually the work of one particularly dedicated and deranged Soviet scientist
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So, thanks to all the scientific advances of the time, the 19th and 20th century was fertile ground for wild and unethical experiments
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Once the politically and financially powerful got the idea of eugenics in their heads
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they wasted no time using science to further subjugate and control populations
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But ape men were never on Stalin's radar. It was actually an earlier Russian scientist named Ilya Ivanov
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who had conducted experiments on cross-disseminating humans and chimpanzees. So how did Stalin's name get in there
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Because of a single journal article written by Russian scientist Kirill Rosyanov
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that pinned the whole idea on him. Academic journals are supposed to be peer-reviewed
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with legitimate sources, which made Stalin's culpability in the matter seem credible
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But neither his name, influence, nor approval are present anywhere in Rosyanov's reference article
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It is likely Stalin didn't even realize such experiments existed and read about them at the same time as everybody else in the newspaper
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And to be honest, he doesn't really seem like a super ape kind of villain
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Super bears, maybe. Instead being popularized by 20th century creationists who wanted to promote the salacious story so they could buff up their arguments against evolution
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So noted and celebrated bad guy Joseph Stalin was not the leader of the man endeavor and likely had nothing to do with it So who was Ilya Ivanov and what the hell was he up to Ilya Ivanov was a highly respected Russian scientist
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with a keen dedication to all of the wonderful new advancements in the science world
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He also played it pretty loose with the ethics portion of the scientific method
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and wasn't big on asking if something should actually be done just because it was technically possible
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Ivanov spent most of his career working with livestock in an attempt to improve horse breeding
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His studies and successes with artificial insemination made him a world-renowned scientist
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in the field, producing livestock hybrids such as a zebra-donkey mix, delightfully known as
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the Zedonk. But as evidenced by his lectures and writings, Ivanov had one mad scientist project
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he had been aching to try out since at least 1910, the possibility of birthing a human-ape hybrid
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A few years after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, Ivanov thought that the new regime might be up for funding his research
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The initial plan was not to develop an army of super soldiers covered in hair
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but more to conduct additional, higher-quality artificial insemination procedures with the backing of the government
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The only monkey wrench in Ivanov's plans was his controversial decision to include humans in his research
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This resulted in very few people willing to do business with him, with little support coming in and none of it from Stalin
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Despite concerns, Ivanov attended a prestigious scientific event that included the likes of famed scientist Ivan Pavlov
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The project was awarded the equivalent of $10,000 by the Soviet Financial Commission, which gave Ivanov the go-ahead to explore human-ape hybrid possibilities in 1924
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You may be asking yourself how we won over support for such deranged experiments
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Well, a lot of it had to do with their relationship to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution
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Darwin had included the close relationship that chimpanzees and humans had on the evolutionary tree
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Ivanov's thinking was that he could take Darwin's theory a step further
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providing the missing link in the chain. Ivanov was also looking to discredit and disavow religion altogether
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So such a successful experiment could potentially display the superiority of science over religion
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something the Soviets were very keen on showcasing. But his failure to produce a man-ape hybrid would only make the case stronger for religion
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something Ivanov could not abide. So in his mind it was all or nothing With his newfound grant money in hand Ivanov and his team got right to work at their research station in French Guinea by March of 1926 The idea was for local hunters to poach wild chimpanzees and bring them back to the scientists so they could perform their experiments
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The team eventually wound up with three juvenile female chimpanzees as test subjects, who were inseminated with human sperm
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When this first round of tests failed, Ivanov figured he'd try the reverse
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only he didn't want to waste time with things like informed consent
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So, under the pretense of a standard medical exam, Ivanov had the idea to trick local women
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into being impregnated with chimpanzee DNA. Luckily, the governor of French Guinea rejected this proposal outright
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and presumably threw Ivanov out of his office. This bump in the road forced Ivanov back to the drawing board in Russia
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He continued to have no luck tricking women into participating in his experiment
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so he adopted a new scheme for creating his human-ape hybrid. 20 chimpanzees were sent over to Russia from Africa to live in a Soviet chimp nursery
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but when the plane finally landed, only four survived the trip. The remaining chimpanzees were brought to a warmer region of the USSR
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where Ivanov somehow convinced five local women to agree to possibly become proud parents of a cross-species warrior
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But this attempt also failed after the remaining four chimpanzees died shortly after arriving in Russia
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Okay, the universe is trying to tell you something, Ilya. When Ivanov's experiments all predictably failed to produce a human-ape hybrid
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creationist supporters and evangelical Christians around the world celebrated the results. If Darwin was running around saying that humans and chimps were pretty much the same thing
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then why couldn't they breed together? Answer that one, Charlie! Evangelical Christians at the time were focused on invalidating Darwin's
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theory, and Ivanov was helping them out immensely. This is what eventually popularized Stalin's
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alleged connection to the Soviet ape-man super army, partly because it discredited Darwinism
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in its theories, but mostly because it was a great way to take potshots at Stalin in the process
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Any action that could deal damage to the credibility of the Soviets was taken with gusto
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Ivanov eventually exhausted all of his government funding. But by that time, the scientific world had grown pretty tired of the idea of a human-ape hybrid
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Growing nationalism across Europe also had sensibilities changing, prompting leaders and citizens to explore different approaches to eugenics Suddenly the idea of a monkey man wasn all that enticing if it had ever been in the first place Also helping to douse the ape hybrid ideology was
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the rise of the Nazi party. When it was first popularized, eugenics was a discussion about
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parents being able to optimize the genes of their children, potentially eliminating disease
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or maybe even choosing their eye color. However, eugenics is pseudoscience, primarily associated with racism. And it quickly evolved into regimes using it as an excuse to
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eliminate lesser populations. Hitler's Aryan master race concept rapidly replaced the sensational
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idea of a human ape warrior. After World War II, eugenics became scientifically and socially
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unacceptable, otherwise known as quackery. This was a major hit to the chimp-human hybrid field
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and it was never able to recover. After Vladimir Lenin died in 1924, Stalin began consolidating his power in Russia
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eventually rising to the top of the heap by 1930. At that time, Stalin decided a good old-fashioned
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purge of intellectuals was necessary and started things off with the scientific community first
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Ivanov was arrested and accused of inciting a counter-revolutionary movement. But really
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we think it was because of the ape thing. He was exiled to Kazakhstan, where he lived until his
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death two years later from a stroke. His old buddy Pavlov even wrote his obituary. But Ivanov's
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projects did not continue after his exile. As far as we know. With the real mastermind behind
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human-ape hybrids dead and buried, you may think that was the end of the whole human-zees idea
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However, Ivanov's ideas did not die with him. Take the unusual case of Oliver the chimpanzee
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one of the most human-like chimpanzees ever observed. Claims were made that Oliver existed somewhere in the genetic space between humans and chimps
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the missing link sometimes associated with Bigfoot. If true, this could lend some unintended credibility to Ivanov's theories
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Besides somewhat looking the part, reports indicated that Oliver had 47 chromosomes
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as opposed to the normal 48 that make up a chimp's DNA. This places him much closer to the 46 chromosomes found in humans
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These clans were disproved, however, after Oliver's DNA was tested in 1996
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and scientists found all 48 chromosomes present and accounted for. So was Oliver just an unusually handsome chimp, or the work of a mad scientist
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Those guys never stay in the ground for long