Anatoly Kashpirovsky

Anatoly Kashpirovsky died at home in Moscow on the morning of 3 October 2026 at about 06:45, aged 87. Director Sergey Rudykh informed RIA Novosti. Television presenter Andrey Malakhov also announced the death. According to the outlet Shot, relatives called an ambulance and the reported cause was acute heart failure.

Russian and international outlets including Lenta.ru, Kommersant, and Mixnews carried the news the same day. He was survived by Gulizar Chalbashova and daughter Ellina, and by children from his first marriage including son Sergey; daughter Elena had died in 2018.

Anatoly Mikhailovich Kashpirovsky was born on 11 August 1939 in Stavnytsia, a village then in Medzhybizh Raion of Kamenets-Podolsk Oblast in the Ukrainian SSR (today in Khmelnytskyi Oblast, Ukraine). His father, Mikhail Yakovlevich Kashpirovsky (1912-1985), served in the military. His mother, Yadwiga Nikolaevna Khmelnitskaya (1918-2002), was of Polish nationality.

He grew up in the postwar Ukrainian SSR and later recalled hard physical side work alongside medical training. English-language summaries sometimes list his birthplace as Khmelnytskyi; Russian biographical sources specify the village of Stavnytsia in that region.

Kashpirovsky graduated from the Vinnytsia Medical Institute (now Vinnytsia National Medical University named after N. I. Pirogov) in 1962. He later held advanced degrees reported in Russian sources as Candidate of Medical Sciences and Doctor of Psychological Sciences.

After graduation he entered psychiatric practice rather than a conventional hospital specialty track, spending years in institutional psychiatry in Vinnytsia before moving into sports psychotherapy and public television work.

From 1962 he worked for many years as a psychiatrist, including roughly a quarter-century associated with the A. I. Yushchenko psychiatric hospital in Vinnytsia. In 1962-1963 he also worked in a railway hospital physical-therapy unit. He trained seriously as a boxer and weightlifter and earned Master of Sport of the USSR status in weightlifting.

In 1987 he served as psychotherapist to the Soviet national weightlifting team. In 1988-1989 he headed a republican psychotherapy centre in Kyiv, then an international psychotherapy centre there through the early 1990s. Television appearances in Kyiv in 1988, including claims of treating childhood enuresis in mass sessions, preceded his all-Union fame.

Central Television's "Health Sessions of Psychotherapist Anatoly Kashpirovsky" began with a first broadcast on 8 October 1989 (some contemporary accounts date the premiere evening as 9 October in local listings). Six programs aired into December 1989. Earlier, a Kiev-Tbilisi telebridge featured him addressing surgical patient Lesya Yurshova; he claimed psychological anaesthesia, while she later told journalists she still felt terrible pain but endured it so as not to undermine the broadcast.

After the television peak he toured halls and stadiums across the USSR and post-Soviet space. In the mid-1990s he lived and worked for a time in the United States among Russian-speaking immigrants, then returned to Russian stage and television life. From 2020 he posted online sessions on YouTube during the pandemic years.

In December 1993 Kashpirovsky was elected a deputy of the State Duma of the Russian Federation (first convocation) from the 189th Yaroslavl single-mandate district as an LDPR candidate. He served until 16 December 1995.

Faction relations were turbulent. Technical issues kept him out of the LDPR group at first while he was in the United States; he faxed a resignation accusing Vladimir Zhirinovsky of racism and war propaganda in March 1994, then remained in the faction after returning to Russia in April 1994, and finally left on 1 July 1995.

In June 1995, during the Budyonnovsk hospital hostage-taking, he took part in contacts with Shamil Basayev's group. Later testimony recounted by rights researchers said he tried unsuccessfully to hypnotize Basayev and left the seized hospital before the assault after a call from Sergey Stepashin.

Kashpirovsky's first wife was Valentina Nikolaevna. They had a son, Sergey, who boxed, and a daughter, Elena (1968-2018), who trained as a doctor.

His second marriage, to Irina, lasted from 1992 to 2014. His later spouse was Gulizar Bekirovna Chalbashova. Russian biographical notices record their daughter Ellina as born on 6 August 2025. Concert director Sergey Rudykh publicly discussed the late-life child and Kashpirovsky's attachment to her in 2025 and 2026 interviews.

Places associated with his life included Stavnytsia and Vinnytsia in Ukraine, Kyiv, Moscow, periods in the United States in the 1990s, and touring cities across the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

Kashpirovsky presented his work as psychotherapy and "programming situations" that, he argued, could mobilize the body against organic disease, aging, and pain. He rejected the label of hypnotist in interviews, calling classical hypnosis a weak tool, yet public memory fixed him as a television hypnotist and psychic healer.

He was openly hostile to rival television healer Allan Chumak, whom he called a fraud. During the COVID-19 period he promoted online sessions and voiced conspiracy-tinged skepticism about American vaccines, according to reporting summarized in Russian and English secondary sources.

He cultivated a stark stage image: black clothing, short dark hair with a fringe, and a monotonous delivery that comedians widely imitated.

Scientists and physicians repeatedly challenged his claims. Academician E. P. Kruglyakov of the Russian Academy of Sciences Commission against Pseudoscience grouped him with other healers whose temporary relief, he argued, came from belief and could leave disease untreated. Trauma specialists and neurologists later said brief suggestion cannot repair structural injury, and that dramatic on-stage recoveries lacked clinical documentation.

Former Gosteleradio chairman Mikhail Nenashev said the sessions had been allowed to calm a politicized audience and were dropped once they looked like pure charlatanism. In 2006 an administrative case in Chelyabinsk related to unlawful medical activity cited expert concerns that his hypnosis methods could harm mental and physical health, including advice that cancer patients listen to recordings of his voice.

In December 2005 he struck sexologist Igor Knyazkin on the ear during Andrei Malakhov's talk show. He pursued and faced defamation and related suits involving VGTRK, military psychiatrists, regional deputies, and Channel One's "Evening Urgant." A Moscow district win against VGTRK in 2011 was overturned on appeal. In 2016 a Perm court cleared him in one regional healing-related case.

Patient Lesya Yurshova's later interviews undercut the famous televised surgery narrative by describing extreme pain during the operation.

Kashpirovsky became a stock figure of perestroika nostalgia and satire. Parodies were performed by Vladimir Vinokur, Alexander Shirvindt, Yefim Shifrin, and Yevgeny Petrosyan (including a routine of "letters to Kashpirovsky"). The sketch show "Big Difference" lampooned his sessions.

He was a prototype for Yuri Koshmarovsky in the film "Russian Miracle" and for Viktor Stavitsky in the television series "The Miracle Worker." Writers including David Remnick discussed him as a late-Soviet cultural symptom in accounts of the USSR's collapse. In 1990 he received a special Polish television Wiktory award recognition for television personality work.

• Master of Sport of the USSR in weightlifting
• Polish television Wiktory award, special (pozaregulaminowa) recognition for a television personality, 1990
• YouTube Silver Creator Award threshold recognition noted in biographical summaries for his channel's subscriber count

His State Duma service (1993-1995) is a political office rather than an honorific prize, but it marked formal entry into federal politics at the height of his post-television celebrity.

Kashpirovsky's 1989 broadcasts remain a shorthand for the late-Soviet turn toward the paranormal on state television. Cultural historians treat the sessions as both entertainment and social anesthesia during systemic crisis. The post-Soviet boom in paid occult and healing services is often narrated against the backdrop his fame helped normalize.

Admirers credit him with pioneering mass-media psychotherapy and insist some viewers found lasting relief. Critics see a cautionary tale about televised authority, delayed medical care, and the politics of calming a restless public. Either reading keeps him among the most famous physicians-turned-performers of the Soviet twilight.

His website, kashpirovskiy.com, and YouTube channel continued to present his methods to new audiences into the 2020s.