State Secrets: An Insider's Chronicle of the Russian Chemical Weapons Program

CHAPTER 4 I Become a Person from “The Box”

Before we had to defend our theses, the members of our class of 1958 were assigned to various scientific research institutes and plants. I was offered work at “Post Office Box 4019”, located on the Highway of Enthusiasts in Moscow. I agreed to this, though I knew nothing about this enterprise or about my future work there. The institute was a secret establishment which was significant for the defense of our country, so my future seemed romantic and thrilling.

I came to work at the beginning of September, after military camp and a trip home to Stary Kangysh with Rita to meet my parents.

I arrived at my appointed time, but I couldn’t start working because I had no clearance to access secret documents. That process took a little more than a month. Then it turned out that I was supposed to work in the experimental unit, Workshop 17, for developing the technologies for producing boranes, which are highly explosive and poisonous compounds used in making rocket fuel.

I passed the test on safety measures, and I went to the plant, where there was a continuous line of machines and devices with valves, under a glass hood purged by a powerful stream of ventilating air.

Like all employees, I had to change into cotton work overalls before entering the workshop. They were a whitish-blue color and hung on me like an old potato sack, because of numerous washings with bleach. I was given a gas mask, which I had to carry with me at all times while working in the unit. We wore white cotton caps on our heads, and to be honest, we looked somewhat ridiculous. To top it all off, we had heavy crudely tanned leather boots, and our feet were wrapped in soldiers’ foot-wrappings. All this made us look like the prisoners in the movies of that time.

There was a pungent smell in the workshop that almost blew the caps off our heads, despite the powerful ventilation. It was literally killing us, as it slowly but constantly permeated our entire bodies. I was completely nauseated. I asked the assistant foreman Efimych, how long that smell would persist. He flashed me a toothless smile, and said that it would always be so. For some reason, Efimych’s eyes were sparkling unnaturally and he was waddling like a boatswain on a ship in stormy weather…

Soon I successfully completed my study at the unit and started working as a shift engineer. From time to time, the work was very intensive and dangerous, because the experimental reactor for producing diborane was leaking occasionally. It was damaged at high temperatures by the corrosive mixture of poisonous and explosive gas. In those days, it was very hazardous and labor-intensive work to trace the leak in time and to replace the reactor. If this happened during the night shift, it was twice as difficult, and of course people got seriously poisoned. We spent an hour in the chamber of this reactor saturated with poisonous diborane, replacing this damned unit.

Though we were in our so-called hose-type gas masks and breathed fresh air pumped in from the outside when we were in this chamber, our clothes absorbed a lot of diborane. When we finished our work and left the chamber, we went through a corridor where other shift workers without gas masks, were standing near the control panel. Then we went to shower and change our clothes. On our way through, we breathed in high concentrations of diborane emitted by our clothes, and the men and women standing around in the corridor were also forced to breathe in this poison.

People with various qualifications and levels of training worked on my shift. Most of them had solid work experience, and they helped me adjust well to this dangerous profession. After a few months, I developed good relations with my workers and they hardly ever let me down. Still, we did have a few accidents, which I will never forget.

During each shift I got about 30 liters of ethyl alcohol on receipt (it smelled strongly of toluene) to wash down the machines and units that were being repaired. We were pretty careful with this liquid, though not entirely. Everyone knew that it wasn’t poisonous, and sometimes people even drank it without any noticeable consequences. During one of the night shifts, I told two young workers, Kostya Dzhavadov and Dima Eminov, to wash down the alkaline hydrolysis unit with this alcohol, though I didn’t stay to supervise this operation because it was too trivial. Soon I heard Dima’s shrill cry, and he ran to his work station, along with some other workers. He buried his face in his hands and moaned with pain, so we dragged him to the water tap and washed his eyes and face. We did everything we had to, according to the safety instructions for cases of eye burns with alkaline solution. I called the ambulance, which immediately arrived and took Dima to a Moscow hospital.

The accident was largely my fault, because according to the instructions, the supervisor was directly responsible for everything that happened on his shift. Still, I was puzzled: how did this accident occur, if there was no alkaline in the unit being cleaned?

Later, during the investigation, we found out that the two young men had finished their job and started fooling around, pouring alcohol over each other. Some of the alcohol got into Eminov’s eyes. Fortunately, his burn wasn’t serious and he soon returned to work. Of course I was punished for my negligence, and I was deprived of my quarterly bonus.[9]

Another emergency incident occurred on another of my night shifts that literally shocked me. A young worker on my shift was studying journalism by correspondence at Moscow State University, and this was the source of his pride and arrogance. He had the highest worker’s category and conducted an important technological operation – the low temperature distillation of diborane. Purity of the product depended on the precision work of the operator. If the quality of the end product was lower than standard, they had to run the distillation over again and the reactor unit had to be stopped.

I started noticing that my aspiring journalist often came to work not quite sober. According to the protocol, I was supposed to dismiss him immediately and send him to the clinic for a medical examination. I decided that a reprimand would be sufficient, but it happened a few more times. I sincerely sympathized with the young man because he would have been fired at once, if I had dismissed him.

One night my “journalist” arrived tipsy again for his shift. Though he assured me that everything would be fine, I decided to stand near him and we would conduct the distillation of the product together. We worked like this until almost midnight, and then I was called to another machine. I had to leave him for just a few minutes, but this was long enough for an accident to take place. I heard the frightened cries of women, who were working nearby on the drainage unit, and ran back. A shaft of flame was bursting from the wall. I immediately understood that the “journalist” had opened the purge valve, which was never supposed to be used under any circumstances, unless all the gas mains had been purged with inert nitrogen gas. The valve had to be plugged immediately, but this hadn’t been done. Every second counted. Flames were licking the pipelines filled with diborane and hydrogen, and this could easily have resulted in a powerful explosion. There were two large tanks of pure diborane, only a few steps from the raging fire, behind the door on the landing. If they exploded, only a pile of ashes would be left of our entire Post Office Box institution and its personnel, and a whole block of buildings in Moscow would be seriously damaged. The situation was terrifying.

I acted like an automaton. I grabbed a roll of asbestos cloth, which was hanging on the opposite wall, and threw it over the valve, having no time to unroll the cloth completely. Urgently I covered valve with the cloth, and quickly I began to turn it off. Fortunately, it worked. The fire went out and when I came to myself, I just felt a slight chill. Only then did I notice the silence. There was no one around anywhere. Everyone was terrified and had run away.

Soon they returned to work, and I wrote a report about the incident. I felt confident because I had managed to do everything that was necessary. Privately, I was pleased that I didn’t panic in this critical situation. However, my worries were not over. Another worker reported that our “journalist” was nowhere to be found. He had vanished into thin air, but since the guards couldn’t let anybody leave the workshop without my written permission, I decided that my hard worker was still around there somewhere. We started looking for him, but to no avail. Suddenly, an idea struck me and I decided to check out my guess. There was a degassing chamber in the unit, which was used for removing poisons from the machines and reactors. It was flatly prohibited to enter this chamber without a hose-type gas mask on. That is where we found our “journalist” stretched out on the floor, sleeping like a log.

Luckily, it turned out that he wasn’t poisoned at all and was quite healthy. But this served as a good lesson for me, for my whole life. After that, I tried to be guided by common sense, not just by feelings of sympathy or pity.

My work at Post Office Box 4019 exhausted me. It was especially difficult during the night shifts, because I couldn’t sleep properly when I came home. We were living in one room with Rita’s parents then, and it was so cramped when our daughter Lena was born that you couldn’t even turn around. I quickly came to the realization that the work of a shift engineer required practically no initiative or elements of creativity. This was a real impasse for me. So, despite all the obstacles, I started to prepare to enter graduate school. That was the only way for me to leave my work, because I was obliged to work for three years at the place of my assignment, irrespective of my wishes. Only two years of work experience were required to enter graduate school.

Hard work and bad living conditions had an adverse impact on my health. At my medical exam, the doctors recommended that I start getting treatment immediately, warning that I could be sent to a hospital. Soon my health improved and our living conditions changed for the better.

I wanted to study at the graduate school of the Institute of Petrochemical Synthesis of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences, which I knew well. But when my documents had to be submitted, I discovered a very important paper was missing: the character references from my workplace, signed by the director of the institute, the chairman of the trade union committee, and the secretary of the Party Committee. I quickly collected signatures from the director and the chairman, but there were problems with Sorokin, secretary of the Party Committee. He said that the party thought that young specialists were necessary right there at this important production site, and if I wanted to study I had to do it there. I almost cried from resentment and profound disappointment. However, I decided that I would return to him 10 days later. Probably he would relent and give in.

But the party boss didn’t change his mind then either. Instead, he rebuked me as a persistent slacker who was trying to shun his duty to the party and to the people. They had let me study and had fostered me, but apparently it wasn’t a success.

When I came on my shift that evening, I was upset and unable to hide my feelings. Of course my workers asked what had happened, so I told them. Then Dima, who became a professor of law in the future, said “Give me that paper!” I gave it to him and was surprised to see that Dima calmly signed it in place of the secretary of the “mind, honor, and conscience of our era”. He said that I would be a fool if I let “that idiot Sorokin” stop me.

I had to agree with this dubious method because there was no other choice. I am still sure that nobody ever read this paper – it was simply a formality. After all, I was going to study at my own risk and lose half of my salary. I wasn’t looking for some kind of government award or career advancement.

Probably I left Post Office Box 4019 just in time. These days, it no longer has a secret name. It is called the Institute of Organic Silicone Compounds Technology and is close to GOSNIIOKhT, where I would work 26 years…

In 1959, our “Post Office Box” designed a large plant for producing boranes (diborane, pentaborane, decaborane, etc.), which was built in the Redkino settlement, located halfway between the cities Klin and Tver.

Later, my boss and I visited this plant to evaluate its readiness for operation. We found significant defects in the assembly of the gas mains and the layout of equipment, which we reported to Vladimir Rostunov, the chief engineer. He was an energetic and resolute looking middle-aged man.

Twenty years later I met him again at the Novocheboksary Chemical Plant, which produced the chemical agent Substance 33, an analog to the well-known VX nerve gas. By that time, Rostunov had become the chief engineer of the Main Administration “Soyuzorgsynthesis” at the U.S.S.R. Ministry of Chemical Industry, which supervised the production of chemical weapons. He and other bosses were awarded the Lenin Prize, as well as other honors and regalia of the Soviet era, for launching the Novocheboksary Plant. He was a talented engineer and probably would have gone on to achieve more, except for his fondness of alcohol, which hindered his further career advancement.

In the early days, during my business trip to Redkino, I met many of my fellow students who had been “assigned” to this plant, where a branch of our “Post Office Box” was soon organized.

Many years later, I learned that a lot of the people who had worked there got poisoned with boranes. Some of them died, and some remained helplessly crippled for life. This happened to my fellow student, Yuri Bujnitsky. Yuri was a tall handsome man with a slightly swarthy face and a tender chin, which revealed his kindness. Apparently, this feature of his made him a little bit uncomfortable, because he was the appointed head of the workshop and had more than 200 subordinates working under him.

I met him once at the Lenin State Library in Moscow with his slim and pretty wife. I was truly happy for Yuri, and I thought that they made a beautiful couple. A few years later I found out that Yuri had been seriously poisoned. Treatments in different clinics didn’t help him, and he was completely paralyzed. His wife left him. Serendipitously, a disabled woman, who had managed to start walking, began taking care of Yuri, and a few years later he started moving a little bit.

Poisoning with boranes had terrible consequences. In addition to their immediate effect on the central nervous system, they had a strong residual effect. The product of their decomposition – water insoluble boric acid – accumulates in the blood vessels of the brain and can’t be removed.

My friends and fellow students, Yuri Ermakov and Gena Kolovertnov, who lived and worked in Redkino, were married to Hungarian girls from our group. Soon Yuri and Gena started graduate school at the Karpov Physical Chemical Institute. After graduation, they went to work in the Novosibirsk academic town with their families. Both friends were talented scientists and they made valuable contributions to the theory of catalysis. I remember when their doctoral theses were presented in GOSNIIOKhT in 1976, and the speakers referred to works of Gennady Kolovertnov. By that time, he was no longer alive. He perished in the waters of the Pacific Ocean while scuba diving. After a long flight, he put on an aqualung and dove into the water. Many people now think that long flights and alcohol consumption can lead to dehydration, increasing the chances of decompression sickness, so waiting 12-24 hours after flying before diving is commonly advised. Flying shortly after diving is even more dangerous.

Yuri Ermakov made his career in science very quickly, and he was less than 35 when he defended his doctoral dissertation and became the First Deputy Director of the Catalysis Institute of the Siberian Branch of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences. Yura committed suicide. He couldn’t stand the bullying of party committees at his institute and at the Siberian Branch of the Academy of Sciences. Party members organized persecution for him, as they were not pleased that Yura had an affair with a young research assistant, whom he had unfortunately fallen in love with.