During the height of the Cold War, where much of the world formed around two power blocks, the USSR and China were allies on a very loose foundation. Part of this comes down to differing interpretations about the path the socialist societies should take towards “communism”; other reasons were cultural; and others due to the fraught relationship between Stalin and Mao, one of distrust.
The extent of this distrust led to Stalin having samples of excrement, apparently from Mao, being analyzed. According to a former Soviet agent, this was in order to build-up a psychological portrait of the founding father of the People’s Republic of China.
Interviewed by the BBC, former Soviet agent Igor Atamanenko reports he has discovered, through accessing the archives of the time, evidence that Stalin’s secret police established a special department, led by Lavrenti Beria, to obtain people’s feces, and to subject this to unusual and somewhat smelly analysis.
Atamanenko, these days, has turned his hand to writing books on the Soviet period. The success of some of these works has given him access to the archives of the Russian secret services.
Atamanenko told The Daily Telegraph: “In those days the Soviets didn’t have the kind of listening devices which secret services do today. That’s why our specialists came up with the most extravagant ways of extracting information about a person.”
This was pseudoscience. However, Stalin was apparently of the view poop analysis could reveal important information. For example, had the laboratory analysis of Mao’s excrement detected high levels of the amino acid Tryptophan, it would indicate he was calm and approachable; conversely, a lack of potassium would suggest someone of a nervous disposition. It is not known to the extent that Stalin reacted to such revelations.
