What Happened to Vladimir Alexandrov?

Rund Abdelfatah and Cristina Kim try to unravel the mystery of a Soviet scientist who was helping to spread the word about nuclear winter theory—until he disappeared. This is a peek at the kind of exclusive bonus content Throughline+ supporters get every month. Want more like this? Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/throughline http://plus.npr.org/throughline. And thank you! See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This message comes from the Southern Environmental Law Center. No one voted for dirty air and water. That's why S E L C is fighting back to defend the healthy environment everyone depends on, because it's not political, it's fundamental. Learn more at selc.org.

• 0:17Rund Abdelfatah?

  Hey, it's Rund. Just a quick thing before we start. This is a special bonus episode of Throughline. Every month, we make exclusive episodes just for our very special Throughline Plus supporters that take listeners behind the scenes of our work. But this month, we thought we'd give everyone a chance to listen. If you're already a Plus supporter, thank you so much. It means a lot to us, and you got first access to this episode in your Plus feed. But if you're not a Plus supporter yet, we hope you'll consider joining. It's a great way to support NPR and public media. Go to plus.npr.org/throughline to join now.

• 1:01Rund Abdelfatah?

  Earlier this year, I worked with producer Christina Kim.

• 1:05Speaker 02

  Hey, Rund.

• 1:05Rund Abdelfatah?

  On an episode about nuclear winter theory, which is the idea that if every world power that had nukes started to actually use them, the world would descend into nuclear winter. Think the end of the world, à la the end of the dinosaurs.

• 1:26Speaker 02

  It was a theory popularized by the astrophysicist Carl Sagan and other scientists in the 1980s. Some credit the theory with helping to avert nuclear war at the height of the Cold War.

• 1:37Speaker 03

  A new consciousness is developing which sees the Earth as a single organism and recognizes that an organism at war with itself is doomed.

• 1:49Speaker 02

  Sagan was the scientist of the time, in large part because he hosted this public media show called Cosmos that made science accessible. And, well, human. He was part scientist, part poet, and 100% magnetic.

• 2:04Speaker 03

  We are one planet.

• 2:07Rund Abdelfatah?

  You should check out the episode if you haven't already. But we're telling you all this because while Carl Sagan was bringing nuclear winter theory to US audiences, he had a Soviet counterpart.

• 2:19Speaker 04

  Vladimir Alexandrov.

• 2:21Rund Abdelfatah?

  Vladimir Alexandrov.

• 2:23Speaker 04

  He was handsome and young, and he spoke decent amount of English and had a sort of a fluency that let him befriend many American scientists.

• 2:33Rund Abdelfatah?

  This is Andrew Revkin. We interviewed him for the original episode because he wrote a big cover story for Science Digest magazine about nuclear winter theory in 1985.

• 2:43Speaker 02

  And that's when he told us that over the course of covering the nuclear winter story, something happened that the global scientific community couldn't explain.

• 2:52Speaker 04

  Not long after, my piece ran in March of 1985 in Science Digest magazine. And it was just a month or two later, I started getting emails and I think a call from some of the scientists I had interviewed, saying that one of their Soviet colleagues appeared to have vanished. And this was Vladimir Alexandrov.

• 3:15Speaker 02

  At the height of his scientific career, Vladimir Alexandrov had disappeared.

• 3:24Rund Abdelfatah?

  Ever since I heard this story, I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. Where did Alexandrov go? Why would he want to disappear? Or who might have wanted him gone?

• 3:34Speaker 02

  And so for this month's Throughline Plus episode, we're leaning into the infamous genre of true crime.

• 3:40Rund Abdelfatah?

  Oh, boy.

• 3:41Speaker 02

  Just kidding. We won't be recording ourselves in a car as we chase down a red herring lead. We don't have that kind of budget.

• 3:47Rund Abdelfatah?

  But we will be bringing you the mystery of Vladimir Alexandrov with help from Andrew Revkin.

• 3:56Speaker 05

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.

• 4:01Speaker 06

  The 2026 midterm elections are upon us. On November 3rd, voters will determine what the next two years of their local leadership and the balance of national government will look like. Listen to the NPR News Now podcast for all the updates you need ahead of and after November 3rd from NPR News.

• 4:23Speaker 07

  Instead of scrolling mindlessly, engage mindfully with the NPR app. With a mix of on-demand news, stories from this station, and your favorite podcasts, you can relax without shutting off your brain. Download the NPR app today.

• 4:38Speaker 00

  This message comes from ProLon. Want to look and feel your best this fall? ProLon's five-day fasting-mimicking diet is a clinically-developed nutrition program with the goal of promoting fat loss while protecting lean body mass. Developed at USC's Longevity Institute, it aims to assist the body in entering a fasting-like state that helps reset metabolism, target visceral fat, and support healthy metabolic markers. Get 15% off plus a bonus gift when you subscribe at prolonlife.com/NPR.

• 5:10Rund Abdelfatah?

  OK, so here's what we know. Alexandrov's specialty was atmospheric science, but he got on the nuclear winter train pretty quickly.

• 5:18Speaker 04

  He was sort of groomed to be the public face of this issue.

• 5:24Rund Abdelfatah?

  At the time, Revkin wrote, quote, "Central casting could not have provided the Soviets with a more attractive spokesman. Tall and charismatic, Alexandrov had a charming wife and a chubby, rock-music-loving daughter, a command of English and Italian, a craving for barbecued spare ribs and hamburgers, and a taste for Western films and popular novels."

• 5:47Speaker 02

  Pretty much the perfect guy to pair up with the charismatic Carl Sagan.

• 5:52Speaker 04

  I think Sagan recognized the value of Alexandrov as a public voice from that side of the question.

• 6:00Rund Abdelfatah?

  Sagan and Alexandrov got together to spread the word that it would be best for the whole world if the US and the Soviet Union didn't use their nukes to blow each other up.

• 6:10Speaker 04

  He was already kind of on this world tour, often along with Carl Sagan and/or others, to try to beat the drama of disarmament and that nuclear winter demonstrated that nuclear war was unwinnable.

• 6:23Speaker 02

  Alexandrov went to the Vatican to talk to the Pope. He was on US TV. And he even...

• 6:28Speaker 04

  Testified in Congress.

• 6:31Rund Abdelfatah?

  And all of this was possible because at this time during the Cold War, science was both a means by which the two powers wanted to win, the arms race, but also the bridge.

• 6:42Speaker 04

  There was this sort of détente, Glasnost effort to use science as a bridge between the Russians and the United States. Alexandrov, he was part of that.

• 6:53Rund Abdelfatah?

  As part of this exchange, Alexandrov spent a lot of time in the US with American scientists.

• 6:59Speaker 04

  They were congenial friends of his. He had spent enough time in the United States that he had an Oregon driver's license. This is a Soviet scientist in the, you know, early 80s.

• 7:10Speaker 02

  Alexandrov was a public figure, the Soviet Carl Sagan, friend to American scientists. And no one could have predicted that he would simply disappear on a work trip to Spain. But that's exactly what happened.

• 7:24Rund Abdelfatah?

  Alexandrov traveled to Spain in March 1985 to attend a conference in Córdoba.

• 7:29Speaker 04

  He was speaking at a nuclear free zone meeting. It was mayors from nuclear cities around the world that wanted to declare that we won't house nuclear weapons here. We won't support nuclear war.

• 7:42Speaker 02

  So, nothing too out of the ordinary for Alexandrov. He's doing his thing, spreading the word about disarmament. But from the start of his trip to Spain, something had seemed off.

• 7:52Rund Abdelfatah?

  According to the timeline Revkin pieced together through his reporting, Alexandrov arrived in Madrid. And even though there was a Spanish chauffeur waiting for him, he's escorted immediately from the airport to the Soviet embassy by embassy staff. After about half an hour, Alexandrov emerged and immediately asked the Spanish driver, who was waiting nearby, to take him to a bar, any bar.

• 8:16Speaker 04

  He was very distraught.

• 8:18Speaker 02

  Alexandrov got drunk and spent the five-hour car ride to Córdoba, where the conference was taking place, alternating between sleeping and getting sick.

• 8:27Rund Abdelfatah?

  That night, after arriving and getting set up in his room, he goes out.

• 8:31Speaker 04

  He was seen drinking a lot.

• 8:33Rund Abdelfatah?

  And is found by Spanish police, lying in the street, unconscious. His friends later tell Revkin, this is not like Alexandrov.

• 8:42Speaker 03

  I've tossed a few vodkas down with him on occasion, but he certainly was not a heavy drinker. Bob Sess, atmospheric scientist at the State University.

• 8:51Speaker 02

  City of New York, Stony Brook. He's drunk throughout the three days of the conference. He refuses to talk to the press. The Spanish newspaper El País writes, quote, "No one saw him until Sunday morning, when he turned up at the conference headquarters in a state of apparent inebriation."

• 9:09Rund Abdelfatah?

  And by Sunday, the conference is over. His original Spanish driver, plus an additional driver for support, are tasked with taking Alexandrov back to Madrid.

• 9:19Speaker 02

  According to the driver, Alexandrov is like, "Airport, airport, airport." And the driver's like, "Sí, claro." But really, no. The folks from Córdoba have told the driver to take him back to the Soviet Embassy.

• 9:33Rund Abdelfatah?

  OK, and here's where the details get lost in contradictions. This is what we know based on reporting Andrew Revkin did shortly after Alexandrov disappeared.

• 9:43Speaker 02

  Alexandrov reportedly starts to act violently in the car. The drivers are then asked to take him to Hotel Apartamentos Habana. The drivers refuse.

• 9:52Speaker 04

  There are reports of him being bundled into a van.

• 9:54Rund Abdelfatah?

  Some say he's put into a van by embassy officials and dropped off at the hotel. According to the receptionist, who was not on duty at the time Alexandrov arrived, but whose friend was. Alexandrov was not drunk or disheveled, and was given a room key.

• 10:11Speaker 02

  OK, so important note here. Several sources, including some with connections to intelligence, told Revkin that at the time, Hotel Habana had a close relationship with the Soviet Embassy. So anything the hotel employees told him needed to be taken with a grain of salt.

• 10:27Rund Abdelfatah?

  So then, again, according to the receptionist at the hotel, Alexandrov left the hotel and did not spend the night there. The next day, when representatives from the Soviet Embassy came, he wasn't there. So they took his belongings, paid his bill, and left.

• 10:46Speaker 02

  And that's where the case ends. Since that night, Alexandrov hasn't been seen ever again. There were a lot of questions, but...

• 10:55Speaker 04

  There's no body.

• 10:57Rund Abdelfatah?

  At the time, it all seemed a bit hush-hush. The Spanish authorities and press are not reporting that he's missing. In fact, it's Alexandrov's American scientist friends that start to ring the alarm. And they actually call up Andrew Revkin.

• 11:13Rund Abdelfatah?

  And say,

• 11:14Speaker 04

  "We need help. Can you help us find him?"

• 11:16Speaker 02

  Andrew started digging into it. Where was Vladimir Alexandrov?

• 11:21Speaker 04

  There was tons of information that I pulled together. You know, I had many different lines of evidence leading to why he might have vanished. But it all kind of ended up murky.

• 11:35Speaker 02

  There were a lot of questions and ideas of what exactly had happened.

• 11:39Speaker 04

  There are theories that Cuban operatives in Spain had worked, had maybe been too heavy-handed.

• 11:46Rund Abdelfatah?

  There was the idea that Cuban security guards at the Soviet Embassy roughed him up too much. Or, as his friends hoped, that he had simply defected from the Soviet Union and was starting a new life elsewhere.

• 11:59Speaker 03

  Who knows? Maybe it'll have a happy ending and we'll find him on a beach in Greece with a girlfriend.

• 12:05Speaker 02

  But his friends, like American scientist Bob Chevren, weren't optimistic.

• 12:11Speaker 03

  My gut feeling? I think I'm fairly safe in saying we will never hear from him again or see him again.

• 12:19Speaker 04

  Everything leads to him being killed for reasons that can only be examined and not nailed down firmly without someone in the Soviet Union, someone in Russia, coming out with a clear basis for information.

• 12:39Rund Abdelfatah?

  The prevailing theory is that Alexandrov was killed. But by who and why? Without more information from Russia, it's hard to piece it all together, according to Andrew Refkin. But there is some information that's come to light that helps us understand what could have been a possible motive.

• 12:58Speaker 04

  I do think some of that relates to some of the questions about whether he was a spy for us. Or a spy for them in terms of technology access.

• 13:09Rund Abdelfatah?

  Was he a spy, a double agent?

• 13:12Speaker 04

  This, you know, there was a telling moment late in his life, just before he vanished, actually, when the visa he was granted for his last visit to the United States was marked, he should have no access to supercomputers. So someone within the United States government was starting to get concerned about his level of access to technology here. There are many, I can go on and on about why that is unlikely to have been a real issue, but it certainly was seen to be an issue by the State Department.

• 13:47Speaker 02

  Revkin can't confirm one way or another, but he knows that the US government was keeping close tabs on Alexandrov.

• 13:54Speaker 04

  They were tracking him very carefully because of his access to American supercomputing technology in the 80s and late 70s.

• 14:03Speaker 02

  The US State Department limited how much Alexandrov knew about the USA's supercomputers. And they were well aware that the Soviet government had supported his role as the Soviet face of nuclear winter theory.

• 14:15Speaker 04

  He was put forward by others within the Soviet science apparatus to direct his attention to nuclear winter.

• 14:23Rund Abdelfatah?

  Had the US decided he knew too much? Or had the Soviet Union feared they'd lost him to the West, especially the more he promoted nuclear winter theory? Was he caught sharing information to one side or both sides? Or had he simply been the victim of professional rivalry? Or a mental breakdown from the pressures of being such a prominent scientist?

• 14:45Speaker 02

  In the end, there's always more questions than answers. Andrew Revkin tried as best as he could to piece it together in 1986, a year after Alexandrov first went missing. He didn't provide anything conclusive, but some people in power did think he tipped the scales.

• 15:02Speaker 04

  When my story on the disappearance of Vladimir Alexandrov ran, there was an article in the Liternaia Gazeta, a Soviet publication. They thought that my implications in my article on Alexandrov, that he had been kidnapped and perhaps murdered or accidentally killed by Russian operatives. They didn't like that very much.

• 15:25Rund Abdelfatah?

  Today, we still don't know what happened to Vladimir Alexandrov. Andrew Revkin is still thinking about it. He's currently working with a British documentary team trying to find answers to understand how and why the Soviets' leading scientist on nuclear winter theory vanished and was never found.

• 15:47Rund Abdelfatah?

  OK, that concludes this bonus episode of Throughline Plus. If you're already a Plus supporter, thank you. And if you aren't yet, we hope you'll consider joining for exclusive content just like this. It's a great way to support NPR, public media, and of course, Throughline. Go to plus.npr.org/throughline to join now. And thank you.