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

CHAPTER 5 My Chemical Career

In the autumn of 1960, I successfully passed my entrance exams and entered graduate school at the Institute of Petrochemical Synthesis at the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences. Still, there was a moment during my exam on the history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union when I made a crucial mistake. There was a question about the agenda of some Bolshevik congress, and the frail docent who was examining me went out of his way to ask me leading questions, so I couldn’t remember what the Bolsheviks were talking about. Offended by my lack of diligence, this dogmatist angrily gave me a “Three” (“C” mark). I feared that a low mark in such an “important” subject would prevent me from entering graduate school, and I would have to go back to my “boranes” for one more year. However, at the institute they were rather sympathetic about my mark. Probably by that time, many people understood that the exam in Marxism-Leninism was useless for a young chemist. Still, a year later, I had to take this exam again. Before that I had to attend some insanely boring seminars at the Academy of Social Sciences, which was located opposite the “Moskva” swimming pool (where the Temple of Christ the Savior has now been built).

The first two years of my studies in graduate school were not very successful. I was sent to work in Professor Vasily Sokolov’s laboratory for the analysis and separation of hydrocarbons. The laboratory consisted of two really cramped rooms. The elderly professor was quite friendly when he welcomed me, but he didn’t suggest a topic for my dissertation research or even a workplace. However, he promised that there would surely be something when the construction of a new building at the institute was completed. This was supposed to take place two years later, but the problem was that I had only three years to study.

All I could do was to doggedly peruse the scientific literature and to try to find a research topic myself. I had already identified the major direction I wanted my research to take. It had to be connected with chromatographic analysis. At that time, this was a relatively new area of science, and it was rapidly progressing in our country thanks to Aleksander Zhukhovitsky and Nisson Turkeltaub.

I had read almost all the available scientific literature in this field, and I was forming some ideas for my future work. However, I couldn’t do anything without instruments and a work area. My scientific supervisor wasn’t at all interested in these problems. At that time, he was carefully sowing the seeds of an idea among influential circles to create a new institute called the “All-Union Research Institute of Nuclear Geophysics and Geochemistry” (VNIIYaGG). Actually, such an institute was soon founded and Sokolov became the deputy director, as he had planned.

At the second All-Russian Scientific Conference on Chromatography, I got acquainted with Turkeltaub and told him my story. He invited me to his laboratory, which had moved to VNIIYaGG from a different institute, by that time. He suggested a topic for my dissertation and promised to introduce me to Zhukhovitsky. By then, I had just barely managed to scrape together my chromatograph and I was given a working area in the new building of the Institute of Petrochemical Synthesis.

Soon I met with Zhukhovitsky and he agreed to supervise my work. Meeting and working with Zhukhovitsky and Turkeltaub made an indelible impression on me. They were truly pioneers in the science of chromatography. I remember with gratitude how generously they helped me and many other young scientists. They gave unstintingly of their time and energy.

Sadly, Turkeltaub died of a heart attack at the young age of 44. I think the reason for his early death was too many tragedies in his life. When he was a student in 1939, he was mobilized into the Polish Army and found himself on the front fighting against the Soviet Union. He was taken prisoner and ended up in a prisoner of war camp near Saratov.

During the Second World War, Sokolov’s laboratory for gas well surveys was evacuated to Saratov, and they continued working there, sending out field expeditions. Geochemists performed their gas well surveys, and the results were used to predict the locations of oil deposits. Their methods involved the analysis of hydrocarbon gases in the air samples taken from shallow boreholes.

Sokolov had suggested this method at the beginning of the 1930s, and it seemed promising, because it didn’t require expensive drilling to discover oil deposits. At that time, there were only two dilapidated oil drilling rigs in the country. The situation in this industry was so desperate that Sergo Ordzhonikidze, the Commissioner for Heavy Industry, even promised to present “his last pair of underwear” to someone who would suggest an alternative solution. Very soon, Sokolov became that person.

The people’s commissar kept his word, but he presented the inventor with a dacha near Moscow and a car, instead of his underwear. However, not a single oil deposit in the country was discovered with this method. The most important thing for the Soviet system was to come up with a new initiative, or to assume the obligations of the so-called “socialist labor competition”. Soon, Sokolov became a Doctor of Sciences and a professor without having to defend any dissertation. The professor dispatched his first scientific expeditions (at the expense of the state, of course) to his dacha in the Moscow suburbs.

One time, when the geochemists were working on a field trip not far from the camp of Polish prisoners of war, a woman who was working in the expedition noticed that one of the captives, a young handsome brunette, was closely observing their work. They soon got acquainted, as the guards didn’t pay much attention to the expedition workers. They had become accustomed to their presence near the camp. It turned out that the captive, Nisson Turkeltaub, was a former student of Krakov University. He knew very well what the scientists were doing there, because he had worked with similar instruments at his university.

Soon Turkeltaub started working with the expedition party, returning to his camp at night. His exceptional talent and diligence impressed the head of the expedition, who asked the higher authorities to release Turkeltaub to his personal custody. However strange as it may seem for that dreadful time, the authorities were lenient, and they met the expedition’s leader’s request halfway. Sokolov’s uncanny ability to find convincing and irresistible arguments played a role in this. He was excellent at that.

After the war, Turkeltaub graduated from Saratov University, and he quickly carved out a brilliant career in science, becoming the favorite scientist of all chromatography specialists in the USSR. His collaboration with the outstanding Russian scientist Zhukhovitsky played a great role in that.

Zhukhovitsky was a world famous scientist who made a serious contribution to the field of molecular structure, adsorption, diffusion, and chromatography. He was awarded a rare international prize for his achievements in the field of chromatography, a gold medal named after Mikhael Tsvet, the founder of chromatography. Zhukhovitsky became a Doctor of Chemical Sciences at the age of 27, which is a rare achievement for a chemist in any country. In his doctoral dissertation, he wasn’t afraid to challenge the authority of Michael Dubinin, the official “master” of this science in the USSR. He remarked that Dubinin’s so-called volumetric theory of adsorption was nothing but the repetition of the famous theory of Polyani. As a result, Zhukhovitsky had to defend his dissertation for a second time, before the Higher Attestation Committee. The official opponent of the young scientist was Dubinin himself. In spite of this, the committee had to approve the talented young man’s work.

But, Dubinin, who was an academician, a lieutenant general, and the head of the Department of Adsorption at the Voroshilov Academy of Chemical Defense, later got his revenge by preventing Zhukhovitsky from being elected a member of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences. Also in 1948, during the campaign against “cosmopolitanism”, Dubinin published a “stinging” article in Proceedings of Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. about Zhukhovitsky, who was by then the First Deputy Director of the Karpov Physical Chemical Institute. Unfortunately, by that time Zhukhovitsky had already published his article on problems of molecular structure, in collaboration with the well-known English scientists Heitler and London in an English journal. At that time, this was considered to be a sign of “cosmopolitanism”, and Dubinin’s article was a direct appeal to the KGB to punish the author.

Zhukhovitsky miraculously escaped the sad fate of many Russian scientists who were sent to the Gulags. During the war and afterwards, he fruitfully served the needs of the military, and that may have made a difference. For example, for many years he studied the questions of adsorption protection from chemical agents, at the Central Military Scientific Research Technical Institute (TsNIIVTI).

Almost 60 years after Dubinin’s provocative article was published, I was holding those very Proceedings of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. in my hands, in the New York Public Library. I can’t tell you how mean-spirited and vile it was for me!

I met with Dubinin only once, and I was struck by his “flexibility”. While I was writing my doctoral dissertation, I had to study the adsorption dynamics of soman and sarin on carbon adsorbents. I was working with a gas chromatography (GC) method for analysis, in order to avoid mistakes in the calculation of equilibrium concentrations. I selected samples from the gas stream coming out of the adsorption tube, with determined concentrations of soman and sarin in them, and then I recorded the so-called adsorption fronts. When I tried to process the same results using Dubinin’s equation, using all the corrections he had suggested, everything was excellent and my data fit this equation, but the final constants were much larger than the author had suggested. Nobody could explain to me what the problem was.

Then I decided to ask Dubinin himself about it. One day, when he was at a meeting of the Science Council of GOSNIIOKhT, I asked him to find some time for me. He agreed and I briefly explained my difficulties. He didn’t suggest anything reasonable in response, but he wisely remarked that sometimes an experiment was worth many theories. Professor Nikolaev from the Academy of Chemical Defense overheard our conversation and hurried to rescue his boss. He explained that I had worked with small concentrations, and the equation was meant for large concentrations.

In fact, I had worked with a wide range of concentrations, from large to micro-concentrations. But this argument had no relevance because I had to defend my doctoral dissertation. I had already gone through so many difficulties, that I decided not to acquire an adversary.

It proved to be no easy task for me to part from my former supervisor, Professor Sokolov. It wasn’t difficult to get a new scientific supervisor, because it seemed that the directorate of the institute understood the situation very well. At that time, Andrei Bashkirov, who was a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R., was very well respected among scientists. He advised me bluntly, “Run away from Sokolov before it is too late!”

For some reason, my youthful enthusiasm often tripped me up at crucial moments in my life, and it nearly nipped my scientific career in the bud. Since I had spent long hours in the library with the scientific literature, I also had the time to study the works of Sokolov. In fact, there were quite a lot of them. He had written more than ten books and other publications.

Nevertheless, the more I read, the deeper my feeling of “Deja vu” became. I had already seen it all before somewhere else. Finally, in R.M. Barrer’s book “Diffusion in and Through Solids” (Cambridge University Press, 1951, in Russian trans.) I found whole pages, with notes from Sokolov, asking his typist to copy out sections without any changes. Sometimes, the professor wrote “let us suppose” above “let us assume” of the original text, or “thus” above the word “consequently”. Then instructions followed to copy “from” and “up to”, so that they could copy from another book without acknowledging the original author. This was the story behind each of my supervisor’s books.

I was shocked and miserable about my discovery, because I knew that I wouldn’t be able to keep quiet, when the facts cried out scandalous plagiarism. This was certain to disrupt my “peaceful” life. I shared my discovery only with a few people, who strongly recommended that I remain completely silent, “so as not to ruin my life”.

Instead, I went to the editorial office of newspaper Izvestia with copies of my “discoveries”. At that time they published critical articles about this kind of thing. After a long wait in the reception area, the editor on duty asked me in. He listened to me, laughed, and explained that these kinds of cases were so numerous that if they published them all, the newspaper would turn into a chronicle of plagiarism in science.

At the same time, the editor promised to send my papers to the plagiarist’s workplace, so that measures could be taken “on the spot”, as he put it.

Some measures were “taken” – an extended attack against me got underway. Sokolov’s friends, who were famous scientists, came to the institute to have “talks” with me. Some tried to persuade me, while others threatened me directly, saying that my career in science would be over if I didn’t withdraw my petition.

Once I was summoned by the academic secretary of the institute, where I was handed a letter from the USSR Ministry of Geology, signed by the Deputy Minister and sent to me via the Directorate of the institute. It said that I was invited to the ministry to discuss my complaint about Professor Vasili Sokolov. This letter was obviously provocative because I hadn’t officially complained about anyone. The fact that it was addressed to the director of the institute, and not to me directly, showed that the authors of the letter wanted to paint me up as a plotter and a scandalmonger. When Minna Khotimskaya, Dean of the Graduate School, handed me this letter, she made it known there was official dissatisfaction with my behavior, and added that Nikolai Nametkin (a deputy director) was very displeased with me.

I decided to see it through, especially since Zhukhovitsky deeply sympathized with me and supported me after my revelation. I went to the Ministry of Geology, though it was clear to me that the authors of the letter were not going to discuss anything with me. They had a different objective – to discredit me in the eyes of the institute leadership.

The head of the Personnel Department at the Ministry received me, praised Sokolov for a long time, and then recommended that I take my petition back. I suggested in response that the Ministry should say in an official statement that Mirzayanov was wrong. “It is up to the minister to decide!” the official countered arrogantly. Evidently, the minister and academician didn’t agree.

In spite of those problems, all obstacles for the appointment of my new scientific supervisor were lifted, and I had the necessary instruments for my experiments, so I went back to work at the laboratory for days on end.

I came to work at 9 A.M., and left no earlier than 11 P.M., in order to get to the metro station before it closed. At that time, graduate students were allowed to work at the laboratory as long as they could. Around 9 P.M., the electrician on duty usually came and warned that he could cut off the power to the whole building. I always had 100 milliliters of ethyl alcohol ready for that occasion. The electrician was quite happy with this arrangement, and allowed me to work on until midnight.

Of course, it was against the rules to work alone late at night, but the circumstances and my youthful enthusiasm made me bend the rules. Fortunately, this never led to any major accidents, but small incidents did occur. During my experiments, I had to prepare gaseous mixtures of hydrogen with admixtures of different compounds such as methane, carbon monoxide, oxygen, nitrogen, etc. in a steel tank. Then, I pumped this mixture into the measuring tank for further experiments.

One evening, when I was quite tired and had decided to finish up the last experiment for the day, a leak materialized at the joint of the valve to the tank. I decided to eliminate it by tightening the connecting nut on the valve. I don’t know why, probably because I was tired, I turned this nut from left to right. But it had to be in the opposite direction on the hydrogen tanks. The result was terrifying. Fire ruptured from the tank with a hiss, fortunately not in my direction, but in the direction of the wall covered with ceramic tiles. I made a great effort not to throw the damned tank down. With the same spanner that had helped me “create the flame”, I turned the valve to the left and the fire went out. I remember I drank up the alcohol that I had kept for the electrician in one gulp, not even diluting it with water, and I quickly left the laboratory.

Later, my guardian angel saved me once more from real trouble. During my work at night, I used cooling fluid from a Dewar vessel. The concentrating adsorption column had valves that closed at both ends, so that concentrated admixtures in ethylene could be quickly cooled and evacuated, after the regeneration that took place when it was purged with helium at a high temperature.

I had carried out hundreds of these experiments by that time, and all my movements were almost automatic. But that night, I made an awkward movement and a hot steel column touched the glass wall of the Dewar vessel. A deafening explosion resounded and I was covered with glass splinters. Fortunately, my eyes were not damaged, and I just got a few scratches on my face. I was very lucky because I wasn’t wearing my safety goggles or a special mask at the time, as the safety measures required.

I finished the experiments for my dissertation on time, and only the writing remained. Zhukhovitsky helped me a lot with that. Following his recommendation, I started working as a senior scientist at the All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Complex Automation of the Oil Industry (VNIIKA NeftGas). Turkeltaub was supposed to move there soon with his laboratory. There were grand plans to create something like a center for chromatographic research, with its design and its experimental and industrial functions based on modern chromatography.

Unfortunately, these plans were never realized. VNIIKA NeftGas still had a Chromatography Department, but only for design purposes. Under these conditions, I had few prospects for work as a specialist in the area of researching and developing modern methods of chromatographic analysis. By the end of 1964, I finished all the technical aspects of my dissertation and submitted it, looking forward to my turn to defend it.

However, fate decided to test my strength again. Alas, this time I failed the ordeal. When I tell my friends about it, they all collectively assured me that I behaved reasonably, because I had no other choice. But I feel otherwise.

The defense of my dissertation was scheduled for the end of May, 1965. Before the meeting of the Science Council, I finished all the technical work and was going to leave the Institute of Petrochemical Synthesis earlier than usual. One day, I suddenly bumped into Professor Sokolov in the corridor. We greeted each other, and the professor said in his squeaky voice that he knew about my defense and had even read the abstract. Then Sokolov added that my work had made a good impression on him and he was ready to support me at a meeting of the Science Council.

I was amazed at his generosity and openhanded attitude. I had caused so much trouble for my former supervisor. But then Sokolov quickly brought me back down to earth, by asking me to sign just one paper. He took a few sheets of paper out of his briefcase. The text read that some time ago, due to lack of experience and poor knowledge of the scientific literature, Vil Sultanovich Mirzayanov had written incorrectly about the use of sources by Professor V.A. Sokolov, the author of numerous large monographs. Now he deeply regretted it and asked that these allegations be dismissed for having no basis in reality.

The application was addressed to the Minister of Geology. I looked at the blackmailer, considering how I could hit him without crippling him. But I managed to control myself and even asked idiotically if that was all. “Yes, yes, of course, you know, Nikolai Sergeevich doesn’t like scandals, and I can arrange this tomorrow if you behave prudently,” he concluded.

Instantly, my whole life passed in front of my eyes. I remembered the enormous difficulties that I had to overcome to approach one of the crucial moments of my scientific career. By that time, I had divorced my wife and lost my family. Everyone who knew anything about the Soviet system, was very well aware that the path to research was closed to any scientist, however talented, without an official scientific degree. Usually, the science councils, where a dissertation is defended, evaluate the quality of work, only by official reviews of specifically appointed opponents and speakers on the topic. Among the members of the Science Council, there can be no more than three or four specialists on the dissertation topic under discussion. The rest rely strictly on their intuition or other external factors. Any negative review or comments can produce an unfavorable result in the secret vote. If a candidate for a degree fails to get two thirds of the votes of the council members present at the meeting, the dissertation “is knocked down”, and the candidate loses the chance to defend his or her work again. The label testifying “low” qualification of the candidate sticks with him forever and only real luck can help him get rid of it.

I displayed some “prudence”, and signed two copies of the appeal. Then I felt smeared with indelible dirt from head to foot. I couldn’t overcome this feeling, either during the defense of my thesis or after it. The speech of Professor Sokolov, who supported my dissertation, caused a sensation.

After the results of the voting were announced, I told my supervisors about my degradation. They comforted me in every possible way, but at heart I cursed myself and swore never to bargain with my conscience again.