How Soviet TV Audiences Fell Under the Spell of Mass Hypnosis Artist Anatoly Kashpirovskiy
Polish filmmaker Łukasz Konopa’s documentary “Kashpirovskiy. Under the Spell”, screening at the Ji.hlava documentary festival, revisits the Soviet-era television hypnotist Anatoly Kashpirovskiy. The story matters as a portrait of a mass cultural phenomenon during the political and social upheaval surrounding the collapse of communism.
A trained doctor, Kashpirovskiy became widely known through televised sessions that reached an audience of about 300 million people across the Soviet Union. His claims and stunts included operations without anaesthetics and persuading Chechen leader Shamil Basayev to release 1,500 prisoners. Researchers across Ukraine, Poland, Georgia and the Czech Republic found hundreds of hours of archival footage; HBO provided completion funding in 2025.
In short
- Kashpirovskiy became a Soviet television sensation.
- His broadcasts reached an audience of about 300 million.
- A new documentary draws on hundreds of hours of archival footage.
Explained simply
During the final years of the Soviet Union, television reached hundreds of millions of people across a vast country undergoing political and social change. Anatoly Kashpirovskiy, a doctor by training, became famous for televised hypnosis sessions that viewers watched from their homes.
Kashpirovskiy made striking claims about his abilities, including that he could enable operations without anaesthetic. He was also associated with a claim that he persuaded Chechen leader Shamil Basayev to release 1,500 prisoners. His fame became a large-scale media phenomenon, and a documentary revisits it through archival footage gathered by researchers in several countries.
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