Nikolai Federov believed that it is humanity's duty to colonize outer space, put an end to death, and resurrect the dead. He spawned a movement that inspired the Soviet space program, the musical instrument known as the theremin, and a range of occult, scientific, and pseudo-scientific research programs. Although Cosmism was eventually banned by the Soviet authorities, its influence changed the music and film of the twentieth-century USA. Today cosmism is enjoying a revival in modern Russia and is now virtually the state religion of a little-known north Caucus republic called Kalmykia. In 1997 the President of Kalmykia shocked Russia's leadership when he confided to Boris Yeltsin that he had had a close encounter with E.Ts. Since then the popularity of cosmist ideas in Kalmykia and the Eurasian world has only grown.