In the Footsteps of the Russian Snowman: A Record of Investigation Paperback – October 1, 1996

In the Footsteps of the Russian Snowman: A Record of Investigation features Russian Bigfoot sightings throughout history and in different regions of the vast country. Pages 15-18 describe the experience of Russian Army doctor Lieutenant-Colonel Vazghen Karapetian, who in December of 1941 in the Caucasus examined a strange hairy man almost fully covered with dark brown hair resembling a bear's fur and concluded that the man was not a human being. Page 64 notes a sighting in the Crimea Peninsula on the Black Sea in September of 1974 or 1975 in the mountains west of Feodosia (a coastal city in eastern Crimea) by a female witness gathering wild growing Cornelian cherries in a deep ravine, who saw a Bigfoot that was more than two meters (6 feet -- 6 and 47/64 inches) in height and covered with short black hair; the Bigfoot walked in big strides and lifted its feet unnaturally high as it vocalized two or three times sounds that sounded like "oo-ruk." Pages 71-75 feature the testimony of Major-General Mikhail Topilsky, who in the autumn of 1925 in the Pamirs saw a dead manlike animal that was not a human being with brown and gray hair, a slanted forehead, powerful brow ridges, a flat nose, and a massive lower jaw. Pages 78-79 feature the testimony of geologist B.M. Zdorik, who in 1934 climbed one of the flat mountain tops in the upper reaches of the Dondushkan and saw an unknown sleeping animal with shaggy reddish-brown hair like a yak's wool and legs and bare black feet that were too long and too differently shaped to be those of a bear. Page 104 features a photograph of Zoology Professor Vitaly Khakhlov, who, as a college student, collected information on the wildman in Eastern Kazakhstan and Kirghizia, and who reported his findings in 1914 to the Russian Academy of Sciences; Khakhlov's experiences and history are featured on pages 42-46 of The yeti. Page 198 notes the observations of senior game warden Igor Pavlov, who saw on August 20, 1988 on the Kola Peninsula (in the north-western corner of Russia) near Lake Lovozero a light-gray-haired Bigfoot, who was 2.5 meters (8 feet -- 2 and 27/64 inches) in height and ran fast and smoothly in long strides. Pages 219-220 feature former border guard Constantine Shembarev's and his ethnic Uzbek driver's sighting report near the city of Birobidzhan in a forest on the Chinese border in the winter of 1983 of a dark-colored Bigfoot with long head hair, who threw snow onto their fire and walked away, turning the whole upper body back a few times to see if there was pursuit. Pages 231-232 note the sighting in August of 1970 on the Chukchi Peninsula on the Amguema River of a Bigfoot by Victor Chebotarev, who described the Bigfoot's walk like that of the Bigfoot in Roger Patterson's film before he saw the film.Author Dmitri Bayanov's other books are Bigfoot Research: The Russian Vision, America's Bigfoot : Fact, Not Fiction.Photographs of towering, tremendous mountains and vast forest wilderness and abundant natural resources information in The Nature of Russia show the habitat potential for unknown hominoids.

I gave this book 4 stars because it is a subject I have an intense interest in. As someone who enjoys cryptozoology books, especially hominids, this is a must have book. I would not recommend this book for people who have a casual interest in wild men/bigfoot/yeti.The Good: It has a lot of eyewitness accounts I had never read as well as interpretations of historical accounts - all from Europe and western Asia, all of which gets short shrift in the U.S. In fact, the topic of relict hominid populations gets almost no mention here in the U.S., so this book was refreshing in that sense.The Bad: There is no continuity with in the book. No overriding hypothesis. It is not very well edited. A lot of it seems like a series of letters from other people interested in relict hominids in the Soviet Union. I believe this book was translated from Russian and was not done extremely well. This makes it a little bit harder to read.The Ugly: First the title - "Snowmen" implies the yeti, which is not part of this book at all. Additionally, the author seems to try to make a connection between these relic hominids and the North American Bigfoot/Sasquatch phenomena. It is obvious from the first that Sasquatches and the hominids discussed in this book are very different creatures. Why try to make a connection?Bonus: Was an autographed copy. Not a big deal but fun to have.Conclusion: Steer clear if you are not really into the subject. If you are looking for good Bigfoot books, check out either Jeff Medlrum's books or, for a more in depth but thorough study read The Hoopa Project by David Paulides.

I picked this book up at the Forten Times 'Un-Convention' in 1998. I've been hooked ever since. I guess I read the book at least once every two years, in fact when I get home next month it's on my list to pick up again.The book looks at Russian study into their own Bigfoot/ Sasquatch which is generally referred to as 'The Snowman' within scientific circles. The 'Snowmen' are reported from all across the old Soviet empire. The book discusses sightings from across the different regions and studies that have been made into them. It seems that there could be a number of different types of 'Snowmen' ranging from very human-like beings to those that are much more apelike.That the Russian Scientific Community and general population have taken the sightings/ stories seriously and away from the tabloid frenzy that they are so often portrayed as in the West is testament to a wiser view of the world around them. While the West by and large relegates the study of Bigfoot to folklore and more unkindly hoaxing, some Russian scientists see the Snowmen as neither supernatural, beings from outer space or merely large bipedal apes, but rather as what they term 'super-animals': this may explain why they are so hard to track and why they have remained largely unknown.This was a major book find for me. I know it's generally only available second-hand now at very expensive prices, but it's well worth the buy if you can't pick it up from a local library. We hear comparitively so much about bigfoot like creatures from North America that this is an invaluable insight into what truly is a world-wide phenomena.