An extensively referenced paper has been published to the physics archive arxiv.org and reveals in detail the long history of Soviet and Russian paranormal research.

According to the document found at http://arxiv.org/pdf/1312.1148v2.pdf

Summing up the section on the period from 1980 to 2003, it should be noted that with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, these program are first reduced, and around 2002-2003 completely closed … Due to academic and non-academic researchers the instrumental psychotronics, denoted sometimes as torsionics, still continue to grow, but we cannot speak about government programs in Russia any longer.

The appearance of generators and detectors of ’high-penetrating’ radiation in 2003-2004 indicated the beginning of a new stage in the development of instrumental psychotronics. These effects can by examined by independent researchers and even by non-technical (e.g. biologists) experts. This factor played a major role in the evolution of this research area after minimizing and closing governmental programs.