Stalin - the wild man of Russia?

Did Soviet Communist leader Joseph Stalin seriously consider breeding an army of ape-human hybrid super-soldiers? Of course he didn't. Stalin did have some pretty original ideas about science (Lysenkoism, anyone?) but this was not one of them. This rather trivial conclusion, however, isn't reached until the last five minutes of "MonsterQuest: Russia's Killer Apemen".

Before that, we are forced to watch filler about primate aggression, legends of Russian ape-men (the Almas or Almasti) interbreeding with humans, and even some footage of Trotsky and (I think) Radek. We also "learn" that humans and other hominids were interbreeding for millions of years before the advent of modern man. Really? Sez who?

The culprit in the human-ape hybrid scheme turns out to be one Ilya Ivanov, who was using his substantial grant of money from the Soviet authorities for somewhat unorthodox purposes. He wanted to impregnate orang-utans with human sperm, and when that didn't work out, cracked the idea that perhaps human females could be impregnated with chimpanzee sperm. The mad scientist even managed to recruit a willing subject, but he fell from grace with the Soviet regime for other reasons before the experiment could commence. (Stalin's super-soldiers were eventually equipped by more conventional methods, known as "Lend-Lease".) Interestingly, "MonsterQuest" reveals that Ivanov cooperated with the French Pasteur Institute! So who wanted to create that human-ape hybrid, really...?

This could have been an interesting program, but unfortunately "MonsterQuest" is as boring as usual. And, of course, sensationalist infotainment. After killing the story of Stalin's ape-soldiers, it conjures up another mystery. The Almas were supposedly interbreeding with humans. The skull of a deceased human-Almas crossbreed from Georgia have been preserved. The DNA tests on a tooth taken from the cranium turned out to be...inconclusive. Holy smoke, maybe there are human-ape hybrids after all???

Except, of course, that there are not. The documentary has already revealed that the tooth was DNA tested at an earlier occasion, and proved to be...100% human.

A bit like Stalin, I suppose.