From salivating dogs to mass indoctrination: Pavlov’s sinister legacy

When two post-Soviet supermodels committed suicide in the noughties, both throwing themselves off high buildings in New York and Kiev, the trail into what made them so depressed led to a ‘personality development’ organisation in Moscow that offered ‘trainings’ that would help ‘find your truer self’.

The moment you entered the dark Stalinist gothic theatre, filled with dozens of other ‘students’, you were under the control of the ‘life coach’. Drawing confusing pictures on a whiteboard, he would talk quickly and loudly about ‘transformation’. Then came days of non-stop psychiatric-style exercises. People went on stage and were instructed to recite their most traumatic past experiences. Some talked about rape, others about bullying. The life coach would turn on them and scream that this was all their fault; they had allowed all this to happen and now he would make them strong. Humiliation was followed by elation, confession by group ecstasy, weeping by wild laughter.