The territory of the former Soviet Union was, in this century, an interesting area for relic hominid research. The western world learned about developments through the publications of Boris Porchnev and Marie-Jeanne Koffmann, but especially through Dmitri Bayanov, whose interesting and regular reports appeared in several English-language magazines. The West's conception of Russian research relies heavily upon him. The wealth of Russian literature is generally unknown outside Russia. Because of this Bayanov's book  In the footsteps of the Russian Snowman (Moscow, 1996), the first on this subject in English and written by Russians themselves, was awaited with keen anticipation. For some readers this turned out to be a disappointment and we will come back to this later.

The drastically abridged German version of the book Auf der Spur des Schneemenschen. Der russische Yeti. (Stuttgart, 1998) shows two Caucasian mountain peaks, Nakra-Tau and Dongus-Orun, on the front cover and precisely this region is where an unusual meeting took place between Germans and the Russian Society of Cryptozoologists (RSC). This is one of the reasons for this publication.

During their first trip, lasting several months in 1993, by members of our group to Russia, they visited various 'snowman' areas. One of these areas was the Caucasus, which for a long time has been the object of Russian research. Some of us subsequently had some unexpected and very unusual experiences with Dr Marie-Jeanne Koffmann, that after six years of field work in Russia, a new light was thrown on the activities of the RSC. Some of these experiences will be reported here.