Magic Healer of Soviet TV
by David Remnick
MOSCOW -- Early every morning across the Soviet Union, thousands of people rub the sleep from their eyes and sit in front of the television waiting to be healed. About 7:15 a.m., Allan Chumak appears on "120 Minutes," the Soviet equivalent of the "Today" show. Sitting behind a desk, the owlish middle-aged man with a mane of white hair stares at the camera and flings his hands about, as if he were petting an irritable cat. Five minutes of silent thrashing, and he is done. Chumak's followers -- and there are hundreds of thousands of them according to the telegrams, letters and bouquets of flowers he gets every day -- say they feel his "healing energy," even via videotape. They put bottles of water and open tubes of cold cream in front of his televised image, worshiping this Good Samaritan version of the czarist mystic Rasputin.