Project Zmei
Project Zmei was a Soviet Russia attempt at creating psychic agents out of military personnel. During the 1980s the GRU (Soviet Military Intelligence) rounded up dozens of potential psychics, as well as Siberian shamans and Central Asian Sufi mystics. While soldiers spent years undergoing instruction in biofeedback and mental conditioning.
By the time the Soviet Union collapsed the project was known to be a failure. In actuality General Alexis Derkov, one of the project overseers, had been misleading his superiors. There had been some results, Derkov fled the country with copies of this research. He hoped to turn it into a profit-making venture. The eventual result of which was the projection firm NextWorld.
References
Orpheus: Orpheus Rulebook , p. 277