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

Deputy Director for Science Aleksander Shchekotikhin

From my very first day on the new job, I shuddered when I thought about the arrangements, because I understood how difficult it would be for me to fit in there.

The important part was to pass the exam on safety technique given by the Deputy Director of Scientific Work, who was also head of one of the divisions at the enterprise.

There were several such divisions. Work connected with the synthesis of new chemicals or physical-chemical and medical-biological research and its associated analytical security work, were all carried out in specialized departments, under the supervision of Deputy Director Aleksander Shchekotikhin. According to the words of several senior scientists, he “committed atrocities” with his exam on safety technique.

When I came to take the exam, I was taken aback by his sad invalid state, which was incongruous with his status as a deputy director. When Shchekotikhin was a colonel working as a senior researcher at TSNIIVTI,[13] they were in the process of synthesizing fluoro-ethers, and the retort flask his reaction was running in exploded. He was missing part of his right arm up to his wrist, and in its place was a shining prosthesis. He was also missing two fingers from his left hand. The expression on his face was haughty and sarcastic. He gave the impression of a man who had already decided that anyone who came to him must know that the way things would turn out would depend on his superior will. He seemed pleased by his ability to give an unsatisfactory grade to someone with a higher scientific rank than his – to a doctor of science or a professor.

Shchekotikhin was not lacking in talent. He had graduated from the Military Academy of Chemical Defense with a gold medal and had a master’s degree in chemistry. All the same, he was not working at a job engaged in real science, and he understood his vulnerability in this respect very well. In the time I got to know him, he turned into some sort of human weathervane, trying to anticipate the orders of the Director of GOSNIIOKhT, Ivan V. Martynov, providing his boss with an ideological screen.

At the meetings and conferences of the Science Council, where he presided with great pleasure when the director was absent, he squandered his previously prepared witticisms, and made a practice of peppering the text of his speeches with satire. Often it was about people who were falling out of favor or candidates for demotion.

Possibly a science bureaucrat needed these qualities to be successful, and Shchekotikhin certainly had more than his fair share of them. In certain circles, he could blurt out remarks to scientists of well-known ethnicity, such as: “They’ve turned the institute into a synagogue, you understand.” But this did not save him from the caustic gossip of other anti-Semitic types like Aleksei Beresnev, Konstantin Karavanov and others, because they said Shchekotikhin was half Jewish himself, and his wife was also Jewish.

It seems to me that Shchekotikhin was a sincere believer in the greatness of Stalin, and he did not conceal his admiration for the man, to his very last day on the job at GOSNIIOKhT. When he invited me for first time into his office for my formal introduction, his first question to me was: “So, Vil Sultanovich. You’re a Tatar. Tell me how you oppressed us all for 400 years under the Tatar yoke!” I was horrified by this taunt. I was educated well enough to know that according to Russian historians Tatars did that,[14] but even if it had happened it was so long ago. Weren’t all nations supposedly equal under Communist friendship in the USSR, enjoying socialist development?

I could only blurt out, “Sorry. The Mongols destroyed our state first – the Bulgar State”. The former colonel was more than satisfied by his offense and my discomfort. He continued, “Right now people began to forget who gave us a great victory and armed us against the imperialists. Surely you know who are responsible for this turmoil. They are pygmies in comparison with our great genius Stalin.” After this introduction he took a magazine down from the bookshelf. It was the March 1953 issue of the journal Proceedings of the Academy of Science of the U.S.S.R., in which a large memorial portrait of Stalin was printed, on the occasion of his death. In this very same issue there was an article by the same Shchekotikhin, which was published when he was a graduate student under the Lieutenant General and Academician, Ivan Knunyantz.[15]

Unfortunately, many of the departmental and laboratory heads I was soon to get acquainted with, thanks to my work in the Department of Analytical Chemistry, possessed equal or lesser qualifications than those of their Deputy Director of Science. Many of them admitted that they were engaged in “politics”, lobbying for new rooms, laboratories, equipment, instruments and increases in staff and bonuses. For this, it was essential to become a “necessary man” to the director of the institute. At that time, Director Martynov had become a genuine gourmand in his choice of executives.

Almost every future chief had to come to his position through membership in the Party Committee, at whatever the cost might be. For this reason, the struggle for a spot on the Party Committee was surprisingly tough at our Post Office Box. It was not enough for a striving would-be director to place the people he needed there. Other department chairmen, secretly dreaming of pushing upward to even higher positions, pressed forward their own people in turn. You could count on your fingers the science-chiefs who did not participate in this loathsome campaign. Evidently, success depended on how up to date you were on all the behind-the-scenes intrigues relating to new appointments and the allocation of bonuses. Your success also depended on your ability to keep track of your rivals, to get deeply involved in the personal affairs of your victims and to make short work of them without pity, all in the name of the party.

There were several who especially distinguished themselves in this respect, bosses who played so well with other people on this disgusting Communist balalaika. They were Professor Vladimir Zoryan – who became Chairman of the Department of Medical and Biological Research (“MB” Department), his protégé Professor Grigory A. Patrushev- who later became the director of the institute, Vsevolod Dobrianski – the head of the laboratory of the “MB” Department, Victor Shulga – the head of another laboratory in the same department, and Vladislav Sheluchenko – head of Department “D” (Degasification). There was also Evgeni Fokin who, thanks to his tainted academician father, became chief of the laboratory for synthesizing chemical agents. Finally, I would like to mention Mikhael M. Fedyachkin, chief of the laboratory in the Analytical Department, and Professor Mikhael A. Englin, head of the laboratory for synthesizing fluoroorganic compounds.

Each of these people possessed exceptional talent in demagoguery, though they were not particularly flourishing in their scientific affairs. The last of them, Englin, without any embarrassment, held the infra-red spectra of research compounds upside down several times, because he hadn’t taken the time to learn about them. Aside from his regular duties, he also served as chairman of the committee that examined and made decisions about the publication of scientific articles in the open press, especially those dedicated exclusively to peaceful problems. Although the decisions of this committee were not definitive and approval by the Central Directorate was also required, the final decision usually depended on this committee.

Under the leadership of Englin, this committee ruined many of my articles, which were dedicated purely to chromatographic problems. The reasoning of this professor was always primitive, and not subject to appeal. Once I brought an article entitled “New Chromatographic Methods for the Separation of Hydrocarbon Gases” to this committee for scrutiny. “An article about gases?” asked the scientist-Chekist. “Well, no. This kind of business won’t work, because you are disclosing the nature of the work of our enterprise. For instance, our laboratory is busy synthesizing gases.” Then he peremptorily shot down my article.

Three months later at the next meeting of Englin’s committee, when I brought a revised article with the title “New Chromatographic Methods for the Separation of Short-Chain Hydrocarbons” for consideration, the vigilant professor again rejected my work, saying this time: “Aha! This means a new method. Then you must take it through the patent application process and only after that come to me. Do you understand?” In truth, the limits of this veteran’s “creativity” were unknown, and it was useless to try to change his mind. He knew very well that he was holding on to his position only by his fervor. At one time Englin had also been “head chemist” on the problems of synthesizing chemical agents capable of breaking through gas mask filters.

Unhappily for Englin, difluoromethylamine was his only “invention”, and luckily it was incapable of breaking through the gas mask filters. It could only burn up instantly in the air. However, this was ample reason to award him with a doctoral degree and the title of professor.

Another person mentioned above, Vladislav Sheluchenko, did not go any further in the service of science than Englin. I frequently collided with him in our discussions of my GC methods of analysis of chemical agents. My arrival at Post Office Box 702 corresponded to a period in time when chromatography was beginning to come into its own as a method of analysis. This indisputably progressive method was already widely used in all industrialized countries and in many areas of science and industry, so I was astonished to find that they were only beginning to apply chromatography at GOSNIIOKhT.

Partially, this situation was due to the difficulties connected with the chromatographic instruments used in the area of defense. During the analyses of highly toxic compounds, the instruments themselves became increasingly dangerous, because probes of deadly compounds were injected and forced through them with inert gas from a tank connected to the gas chromatograph. Any breach of hermeticity, spilling of the probe, breakage of the micro-syringe dosing the probe, or another mishap could give the operator enormous trouble, even severe poisoning. For example, if we introduced a probe of 10 micro liters of Substance 33 into the instrument, and for any reason that probe made contact with someone, the consequences would be extraordinarily severe for him.

The construction of the lab bench and the chromatographic instruments was such that, there were absolutely no guarantees that an accident could not occur to poison people. However, thanks to the enthusiasm of the young scientists at this time, especially Igor A. Revelski and Yuri Novikov, I was able to find solutions to these problems and make progress on chromatographic methods for creating routine analyses of numerous samples.

Since I was the first person to come to the Post Office Box with a science degree granted for research in the field of chromatography, I wanted to develop methods for the detection of micro-concentrations of chemical agents in various media.

Before that, they had used traditional indicator methods for making judgments about the nature and concentrations various chemical agents, by examining the color and intensity of the dyed by-products of the reaction. There was (and still is) a large laboratory at GOSNIIOKhT for researching these methods. In those days Lev Brovkin was the head of this laboratory, and along with Sheluchenko, he blatantly wrestled to keep a monopoly in this important area. Whoever dared to propose an alternative method was treading on their turf and became their personal enemy. They struggled against him in every possible way.

Naturally, my boss warned me about this in advance, when I had proposed researching chromatographic methods for determining the presence of soman and sarin in the air and water.

Receiving the go ahead for this work, I finished the project along with my co-workers relatively quickly and wrote up a report, which had to be approved by the Deputy Director of Scientific Work, Shchekotikhin. He was a clever old hand at this kind of thing, and he decided to avoid the risk of getting drawn into a dispute with Brovkin and his protégé Konstantin A. Guskov, another deputy director in the science area. So, in keeping with the purest tradition of Soviet bureaucracy, he gave my report to Guskov for approval.

Along came the year 1967, and chromatographic methods were universally acknowledged as progressive. They were being widely adapted for solving many problems in industry and scientific research. In our Post Office Box, however, they had decided to arrange a kind of a trial for them, the goal of which was to reject the use of chromatography for all military chemical agents.

Guskov called a meeting in his work office to decide this question. Just in case my boss Beresnev should show up, he sent for his deputy, Vasily Lysenko, who had been schooled for many years by our Party Committee. He had become an expert in these kinds of matters, and always managed to escape from them without defining his position, since he was simply a conformist.

In the course of an hour, I had to explain the fundamentals of chromatographic methods to the deputy, but I saw how they listened to me without any confidence, as though I myself had invented the methods and was trying to foist them off on my audience.

Up to that time I had acquired considerable experience lecturing on the subject of gas chromatography, including a three year period when I taught a course, while trying to increase the qualifications of the engineers and leading staff members of the Ministry of Chemical Industry. I had also taught a few brief courses for interested people at the Post Office Box, since I was trying in every possible way to promote gas chromatographic (GC) methods into areas of analytical chemistry that attracted me.

But in this meeting all my efforts were for nothing, and I saw that they simply didn’t want to understand me. This reminded me of another event that many authors wrote about.

In the beginning of 1930 a lecturer came to talk to some peasants about the tractor, how it was built and how well it ploughed. At the end of the presentation, the lecturer asked the men if they understood everything. One of them responded: “Sure, we understand our comrade very well. Only, we don’t understand… Where do we harness all this to the horses?”

The difference here was that those attending our meeting were literate, and possibly they understood what they were told. But, the workings of the power structure at the closed Post Office Box gave them the ability to reject any new work with impunity, discredit it, and discredit the researcher, while laughing at any attempts to encroach upon their monopoly. If necessary, they could turn down the very scientific method, and the scientist would think “Thank God! At least this didn’t mess up my life.”

“Aha! I understand that as a person, you don’t know the physical chemical properties of sarin. You have to know that sarin disintegrates before it reaches 150 degrees Centigrade, but in the injector of your chromatograph it was 180 degrees Centigrade!” Sheluchenko happily exclaimed.

“How could you use a flame-ionization detector for the registration of sarin, when it had to have been completely burned up there?” inquired the former secretary of the Komsomol Committee of the Post Office Box.

My replies were simple and obvious for specialists, as say a keyboard of a computer would be for any American student these days. I even tried referring to a classified American source on the use of GC methods at a factory producing sarin.

“You know, Vil Sultanovich, for your information, this is a typical example of disinformation, which the imperialists are using so well!” exclaimed Sheluchenko, emphasizing his special closeness to sources of this kind of information. All that was left for me was to shut up and accept my defeat.

I was only sorry that my work was not used for more than a year, since it was being passed along from one expert to another for second opinions, and this gave Guskov the chance to direct it into the closed library of the institute, without his signature.

Actually, I was pleased with this outcome. “It’s good that they can’t destroy anything at all,” I thought at that time.

But now I think that it wasn’t very good for all of us, because this same Sheluchenko became the chief specialist on issues of the destruction of chemical weapons in Russia, and to a considerable degree our safety depended on his level of knowledge. This “chief specialist” has never worked a single day in a laboratory, nor has he ever worked on researching methods of chemical weapons destruction. Instead, he simply became the chief of all those who were working on this problem. If a man in Russia is a boss, then it means he is automatically acknowledged as “smart”. The reason for this is that life there flows with difficulty, mirroring the tradition so well communicated in this old adage: “If I’m the boss – you’re a fool. If you’re the boss, then I’m a fool.”

It seems there were no limits to the imagination of someone who was dreaming of being seated on the Party Committee, to be near to the Director and other chiefs at the weekly meetings and to quietly, unobtrusively come closer to this maniacal feeding trough.

Sergei Vtorigin had been working for many long years as a senior research scientist, but he did not see any prospects for further advancement. So he simply went to the secretary and volunteered to take minutes at the Party Committee meetings, or if necessary, to rewrite them. Up to this point, a girl with a high school education had done this job. Anyway, Sergei easily managed to persuade the new secretary of the Party Committee, that he met the requirements, because you had to have a master’s degree in chemical science for this important party work.

After a year of rewriting the minutes, Sergei Vtorigin’s dream came true, and he became a responsible member of the Party Committee and chief of the laboratory. For this he dispatched a respected and entirely capable specialist, Lev Kaufman, to his retirement and pension.

You should have seen how happy Vtorigin was, sitting in his office, as the head of the laboratory! He didn’t consider it necessary to try to conceal his glee, sitting in an armchair behind a table with three telephones and a switch for a loudspeaker for dealing directly with his subordinates.

The secretary of the Party Committee usually was one of the shift engineers from the experimental plant of GOSNIIOKhT. Those engineers were really obtuse. They were not even thinking about anyone’s scientific career, because they deeply hated people from science. I believe that in their case the “general line” of the Party was properly reflected – support for the working class.

Although the director of the Institute had considerable power over all business, his fate depended considerably on party affairs and the way in which he could be represented to the Raikom (Regional party Committee), by the Moscow City Party Committee and by the secretary of the Institute’s Party Committee.

This secretary had his own direct channel to the Raikom, independent of the director. Additionally, the Institute was supervised by a special representative from the Central Committee of the CPSU, who primarily carried out the party influence through the Party Committee secretary. It was clear that the party organs always had the last word, and the fate of the director and the entire institute depended on them.

In the beginning of the 1970s, Director Martynov’s relations with the Ministry of Chemical Industry were not “approved”, and several times they registered “unsatisfactory” remarks for him in the “Socialist Competition”. This meant that the director could have been entirely swept away from his post. However, his party channels not only protected him from possible dismissal, but also GOSNIIOKhT began to change internally and quickly attained the status of a leading enterprise. Our Institute was given greater funding, in the form of currency, which allowed them to acquire a large consignment of modern instruments from the West, especially those produced in the United States.

Our institute acquired the following instruments – a nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer (NMR) used to study the structure of chemical compounds and to identify them, electro-paramagnetic instruments used for the same purpose, unique x-ray crystallography equipment, infra-red and ultra-violet spectrometers, chromatomass spectrometers, and other chromatographs used for carrying out serial elemental analysis and other tasks.

We knew that these instruments were on the list of equipment prohibited for trade to the U.S.S.R., but native ingenuity, and certainly the generosity of our trade agents in the West (who made deals through intermediary firms organized by the KGB), easily allowed us to circumvent all the trade barriers. Since the Western firms could not have written “to GOSNIIOKhT” on the invoices for the instruments, this work continues at the so-called open institutes. We became familiar with Mircotec chromatographs in Laboratory 25, and with Varian at the Institute of Synthetic Alcohols. I was part of a group that worked together with English engineers, to make adjustments to the chromatographs for the first time.

These renovations at GOSNIIOKhT were the result of the kind of work they were conducting. Our institute was equipped for modern research and nicely supplied with imported instruments, though not as lavishly as would come to pass in 1972.

My work was stimulated to a considerable extent by the receipt of the new chromatographs, since they made it possible to selectively determinate phosphoorganic chemical agents and their precursors.

The GOSNIIOKhT Party Committee and Deputy Director Konstantin Guskov

Let us return to the question of the selection of the Party Committee secretary, since this will help us to understand more about our work.

Yuri Mochalov, who worked on the start-up section crew in the Kazan Plant for Organic Synthesis that produced ethylene oxide, had learned more than everyone else about the Party Committee secretary’s work at GOSNIIOKhT. His only “positive” quality was his naïve and total belief in Communism, which he demonstrated with great expression once during a meeting of his work unit’s party group. During his speech, with a passionate oath of loyalty to the ideals of Lenin, he gestured dramatically, even ripping off part of his shirt.

Yuri spoke very poorly while sharing his thoughts, and for this reason he decided to disguise the defects in his thinking with the drama. It was of no use. After this they noticed him and promoted him to the position of secretary of the Party Committee. All the same, Yuri never, until the end of his days as secretary, learned to articulate. However, that didn’t stand in his way when he wanted to lecture some poor professor from the party meeting rostrum. “This means, Nicolai Aleksandrovich, you understand, the party can’t stand by indifferently….. It means for you, you understand, bedroom business. We, you understand, had to shake out your sheets… it means, you understand…”

Behind this nonsense tirade was the true menacing control of the Communist Party over the lives of the people. The ubiquitous presence and the interference of the Communist Party into the private lives of researchers only intensified the bureaucratic tangles at GOSNIIOKhT. The institute’s Party Committee actively engaged in the “moral upbringing” of its employees, which amounted to nothing more than the petty settling of personal scores between individuals. Veterans of GOSNIIOKhT can recall how the Party Committee wrapped its tentacles around Boris Medvedev, a young physical chemist who fell in love with his research assistant. In meeting after meeting, the Party Committee openly subjected him to insults and mockery. When Medvedev couldn’t stand this persecution anymore, he deliberately exposed himself to Substance 33, the VX analog. He simply entered his workroom, took the ampoule of Substance 33, poured it into a glass with water and drank the mixture. Medvedev’s death was so quick and violent that laboratory colleagues and doctors from GOSNIIOKhT’s Medical Department could do little but helplessly watch him suffer and die.[16] No wonder so many scientists at GOSNIIOKhT, stifled by party control and interference into their lives and bureaucratic lies, simply turned to the bottle for escape.

Nevertheless, Mochalov proved to be ambitious and even finished a party school affiliated with the Moscow City Committee of the CPSU. He was even selected to become a member of this committee, but such high ambitions brought him down. One night he drank himself half to death and was lying in the street. He was picked up by the police and sent to the “sobriety station”. Mochalov decided to scare the official with his membership certificate to such a high organization. Apparently, they were accustomed to clients who were much higher VIPs than Mochalov, so the supervisor of the drunk-tank reported “where he had to”. Shortly after that, our secretary exchanged his party career for a trade union, where he was not able to run away from his swift defeat.

Another Party Committee Secretary, the one who replaced Mochalov, was Nikolai Golosov. He was an incredible colorless dim-wit, but he was able to make his way through the apparatus of the Chemistry Department of the Central Committee of the CPSU. Once more, this showed everyone what kind of person was needed in those days, to work in the higher organs of power in the country.

I remember during the height of the battle by the organization “Democratic Russia”, for further democratization of the country through the destruction of the CPSU’s monopoly of power, that the party bosses came to the institute and Golosov was among them. One of the local members of “Democratic Russia” had said that there were no practical ways for working out alternative decisions and legislation in a one-party system in the country. In response to this comment, Golosov proclaimed “First of all, we prepare several variants for each decision in our department.” As they say, it was useless to comment on this.

The advancement of Deputy Director Konstantin Guskov up the career ladder at Post Office Box 702, serves as a good example of how things worked. All departments and laboratories, which were engaged in researching the technological processes that were to be introduced into existing and new start-up factories, were placed under his command. He was also First Deputy Director of GOSNIIOKhT for a long time, and had right to sign the financial documents.

Guskov completed his master’s degree at the Mendeleev Chemical Technical Institute of Moscow, while he was studying the technology of chemical agents. After that he came to work at Post Office Box 702, as the head of the experimental plant. He did everything that was required of him and became a member of the Party Committee. Then he became the paid secretary, automatically guaranteeing him the ability to get an even higher appointment, with the agreement of the Central Committee of the CPSU.

Shortly thereafter, Guskov became a deputy director. In all fairness, I must say that he was a rather talented engineer, able to quickly grasp the essence of a problem. He was not afraid of making tough decisions, which required considerable responsibility, because of their potential consequences. I was aware of this soon after the beginning of my work at the Post Office Box.

In the beginning of the 1930s, our enterprise had researched methods of developing ethylene oxide from ethylene, and from that step it was easy to get the military blistering agent known as mustard gas. It is well known that ethylene oxide also serves as a wonderful initial reagent for the synthesis of many chemical products (polymers, anti-freeze and others), and currently more than several hundred thousand tons are produced annually by the industrialized countries of the world. You can also produce ethylene sulfide from ethylene oxide. This can be transformed into diethylaminoethyl-mercaptan, which is a precursor for the chemical agent Substance 33. A special department existed in the enterprise, known as Technology of Organic Synthesis (TOS), and its goal was to research the technology of the compounds that carry the title “dual use” agents.

Many attempts were made at Post Office Box 702, to master the production of ethylene oxide from ethylene, but none were successful, including the unfortunate start-up of the factory section in the town of Salavat, Bashkortstan.

In 1967, when the Kazan Plant for Organic Synthesis had yet to master the latest improved technology, the annual worldwide production of ethylene oxide exceeded 60,000 tons.

As the creator of the chromatographic methods for analyzing reaction mixtures, I also participated in the long drawn out set-up of the plant in Kazan. The “Government Commission” on the start-up was under the leadership of Oscar Diment, who was the head of the TOS Department. He had been transferred there from the Ministry of Chemical Industry, where he had worked for a long time as Chief Engineer of the Main Administration “Soyuzorgsynthesis”, which our Post Office Box was directly subordinate to. The Commission was composed of such ordinary members, that it appeared to me that Guskov suffered greatly since he did not serve as its chairman.

At work they explained that the alleged productivity of ethylene oxide fluctuated greatly, showing a tendency to constantly degrade. Guskov decided to investigate the reason for this, by analyzing the registered indices of the constants involved in the process (temperature of the reactor, maintenance of humidity in the reactant gas and others). He chose me to work as his assistant on this matter, and we worked for 15 out of 24 hours, unwinding the graphing tape that was several hundred meters long and plotted productivity graphs, using various parameters. Finally we found the reason for the declining efficiency of the working reactor. (Incidentally it was loaded with more than 10 tons of pure silver, since at that time in the U.S.S.R. it was not possible to manufacture a catalyst which covered the surface of an inert solid. We had 3 reactors filled with this quantity of silver.)

On the morning of the scheduled start-up, after finishing all the necessary preliminary work, a huge crack was found in the cup (the top) of this reactor. This was a terrible disappointment, since it proved that the reactor cover had been manufactured from ordinary steel, known as “steel 3”. Notorious “steel 3” was something between cast iron and simple iron, suitable perhaps for manufacturing our celebrated Soviet tractors, which broke even before they began to plough the fields of the kolkhozes (collective farms).

Someone in the Construction Bureau had decided to “economize” on materials for the reactor cup, although its body was designed and manufactured from high quality stainless steel. In this case, the planning and preparations of the Soviet system meant the loss of almost half a year while waiting for the blunder to be corrected, despite an encouraging speech about the mastery of important matters for “defense” production.

In any case, our group managed to accomplish the production of this important precursor used for manufacturing Substance 33, at the Novocheboksary Chemical Industrial Plant. Guskov learned an important lesson from this: never to give up his place as the chief of a start-up commission, guaranteeing him numerous rewards and a good reputation, which usually rained down on him, purely by luck.

Truly Guskov became more experienced in this kind of business, being able to choose, if a quick victory was in greater doubt, or he could wait a bit if it were more convenient for him. In particular, at the 1971 start-up of the factory division for producing diethylaminoethyl-mercaptan at the Novocheboksary Chemical Plant, he conceded this role to Vladimir Rostunov, Chief Engineer at the Main Administration of the Ministry of Chemical Industry of Russia -”Soyuzorgsynthesis”. Ultimately in 1974 he reached his goal and received this Prize for the “creation of Soviet V-gas”.

Now and then, we were surprised by the realization that Guskov managed his duties pretty well, even though he was strongly devoted to alcohol. Once in a while he went on a real bender at work. Sometimes, when he was barely standing on his feet, after drinking a lot of spirits in Brovkin’s lab, his younger drinking buddies usually would pull him through the check-point, in order to get him into the company “Volga” car and take him home.

I spent about a year working on the 1971 start-up of the Novocheboksary complex, with my assistants Vladimir Forov and Yury Bugrov. Literally all of the equipment was brought to us from GOSNIIOKhT and assembled there by my assistants and some workers from the Department of Analytical Chemistry. My GC methods of analysis of the reaction mixtures of ethylene sulfide and diethylaminoethyl-mercaptan (and of course the products) were successfully applied at the start-up and later utilized by the section. The start-up brigade from our enterprise, at that time bearing the new name of our institute – State Union Scientific Research Institute of Organic Chemistry and Technology (GOSNIIOKhT), was headed by Vadim Makhlin, an acquaintance of mine from our student days at MITKhT.

Our factory section was stunned by the sight of the huge buildings and apparatuses there. This plant had to guarantee the production of 20,000 tons a year of the final product of the chemical agent known as Substance 33. So, this is how we evaluated the politics of détente in the international arena, operating at that time!

Some heated arguments were inevitable, during that start-up time. Once, when my analysis showed that samples of the end product contained significant impurities, the chemical analysis showed a clean end product. When they finally started to show a purity of more than 100%, it became crystal clear that these results from chemical analysis were simply false, since the methods used to obtain them were not selective.

Our Guskov did not give up control of the end product – chemical agent Substance 33, and he reported only to the bosses. Before that, he did not participate at all in this technological research process. All of the technical methods used in the manufacturing process at the Novocheboksary complex were carried out by Department “T”, which was headed up by Professor Semeyon Lvovich Varshavski, who had garnered every imaginable Stalin and Lenin Prize.

Unquestionably he was a talented scientist, but it’s unfortunate that Varshavski dedicated himself to such an ignoble business as researching the technical production of chemical weapons. He introduced highly qualified engineers and successful organizers into his group, capable people who were able to use everything hidden from the eyes of those simpletons who sprouted out of the party machine, in order to organize the massive production of chemical weapons in the U.S.S.R. The production of sarin, soman and Substance 33 were organized directly under his scientific leadership.

However, at the time of the Novocheboksary start-up, it was completely obvious, that the top leadership of GOSNIIOKhT was trying in every possible way to limit Varshavski. There were some simple reasons for this. First of all, he had all of those awards and the leadership thought that it was time for him to stop, since as some of them said “the Moor has finished his business and must go away.” Also, he was vulnerable because of his answer on the celebrated “fifth point” of his questionnaire concerning nationality, namely he was Jewish.

The Start-up of the Novocheboksary Factory and the Downfall of Semeyon Varshavski

Department “T”, which was headed by Varshavski at that time, consisted of two large laboratories. The boss of one of these was Professor Varshavski himself, and the other was run by an energetic and talented man, Igor Sergievski, who died suddenly after the set-up of the Novocheboksary factory. Still, I think the first Soviet industrial-scale production of ethylene sulfide was successful, exclusively thanks to his service. I know he had proposed using potassium rodanide in a reaction with ethylene oxide for the synthesis of ethylene sulfide (a precursor to diethylaminoethyl-mercaptan). The groundwork for the technology of Substance 33 was accomplished by Yury Privezentsev, Igor Sergievski, Veronica Patrikieva and others. I remember how distressed Sergievski was about Guskov. “He’s a good man, but it’s clear that he is hanging around Novocheboksary only for the awards,” he said.

The set-up of this production facility took more than a year. During that time, we lived in apartments in the factory hotel, under highly constrained conditions. Aside from work, there was practically no entertainment other than card games, accompanied by drinking vodka and other strong liquor.

One of the deputies of Varshavski in those days was Yury I. Baranov, who is currently a deputy director of GOSNIIOKHT. He was deeply anti-Semitic, but he was also servile to the point of stupidity. All the same, he did everything he possibly could, in order to dispatch his boss to retirement with a pension, right after the start-up of the Novocheboksary complex.

Varshavski was excluded from membership to the Science Council at GOSNIIOKhT, since Leonid A. Sokolov, the Deputy Director for the Security Regime at that time, had decided that in his opinion, the application which Varshavski had submitted for permission to visit his daughter in Israel, amounted to “insolence.” Up until this time, Varshavski had become rather a senior man, and naturally he wished to see his beloved daughter. No judgment was passed on this matter. Then he had a heart attack, but since he was in deep disgrace, they did not find a place for him at the privileged hospital where he and other leading scientists at GOSNIIOKhT usually went. Instead, they placed him in an overcrowded regional hospital, where he had to lie in the cold corridor. He caught pneumonia there and died several days later.

This is how the Soviet system repaid one of its own principal researchers on chemical weapons, a man who showed just a hint of divergence from the iron rules of totalitarianism.

I am thankful to him for his readiness to help young scientists, including myself. When I had difficulty and couldn’t even get the theme of my doctoral dissertation approved, although the practical work had already been completed, Varshavski organized a seminar in his department with my report. The seminar under his chairmanship issued a very favorable and complimentary decision about my work, which undoubtedly played a very positive role in my scientific career later on.

The success of the start-up in 1973 of the Novocheboksary Factory for producing Substance 33, brought golden days of triumph to GOSNIIOKhT. The Institute’s Director, Ivan Martynov, became a “Hero of Socialist Labor” and Konstantin Guskov received the Lenin Prize. The true author of the technology, Yuri Privezentsev, could have obtained this same prize after a long ordeal, but Martynov “persuaded” him to be satisfied with a medal of Lenin. When the Director asked Yuri which award he would prefer, “the highest award of the Motherland – the Order of Lenin, or simply the Lenin Prize,” Yuri answered modestly, “I prefer to have both.”

He did not pay such a high price for his audacity in the end though. Yuri Privezentsev was excluded from the list of candidates to be recipients. They found some people, who, under Martynov’s leadership, were able to receive the author’s certificate (the Soviet patent) for this technology, which was already operating in the Novocheboksary Factory. All this was done openly and with cynicism, in the hope that Privezentsev, would think about the Regime of Secrecy, would not be able to complain to anyone. But thanks to the success of the start-up with his technology, his work became well known to Leonid A. Kostandov, who was the Minister of Chemical Industry of that time. Yuri was granted an audience with the minister, and this meeting decided the fate of the award in favor of the real author of the technology.

It’s well known that when the list of candidates for receiving the Lenin Prize was brought to the attention of Mstislav Keldish, who was then the President of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences, he was very surprised not to see any academicians on the list. At that point he said that he did not believe that GOSNIIOKhT could resolve this problem.

Word came back quickly, that the academician Mikhael I. Kabachnik, who was from the Institute of Elemental Organic Compounds of the Academy of Sciences, should be included in the list. They were not embarrassed by the fact that he had no relationship to the problem at hand, other than the fact that he presented himself as a member of the Science Council at GOSNIIOKhT and tried to synthesize VX gas without any success.[17]

The Directorate of GOSNIIOKhT

Clearly GOSNIIOKhT reached its pinnacle under the leadership of Ivan Vasilievich Martynov, a retired colonel and a graduate of the Military Academy of Chemical Defense.

Martynov managed to avoid military service during the war in a very original way. In his army unit, he was fortunate enough to fall under a horse and received a disability certificate that kept him from the battlefront. Regardless of such a military service record, his subordinates, with the silent consent of their master, always introduced him as an honored veteran of WWII.

The “horse injury” didn’t prevent Martynov from entering the Military Academy of Chemical Defense, and after graduation, he served at the UNKhV,[18] and was monitoring GOSNIIOKhT. This service determined the future career of this vain “warrior”.

GOSNIIOKhT was one of the main contractors for UNKhV, which formulated the technical tasks and the terms for conducting scientific research. A lot of the funding for GOSNIIOKhT was based accordingly, and UNKhV even had a special department and a Science Council composed of military scientists, chaired by the Deputy Director of Science for the Chemical Troops. This department was responsible for implementing the terms for conducting scientific research.

Apparently, Martynov’s work as a supervisor was rather highly esteemed by this department, and his career was very successful. He successfully defended his master’s thesis, supported by professors Leonid Soborovski and Sergey Ivin. Soon after that, he retired and came to GOSNIIOKhT as the Deputy Director for Science.

In 1961 after he had held this post for some time, he became the institute’s director instead of Dmitri Kutepov, who then became the Deputy Minister for Chemical Industry of the U.S.S.R. The positions of the institute’s Director, several of his deputies, the Director of Scientific Research and his deputies were given only to a very special group of people. This group, which was known as the “nomenklatura,” was the top of the elite ruling class or bureaucrats in the Soviet Union. These people were approved by the Central Committee of the CPSU, and enjoyed the most lavish privileges, including access to special stores, hospitals, resorts and schools for their children. GOSNIIOKhT itself was closely monitored by the Military-Industrial Commission (VPK), which was headed by one of the secretaries of the Central Committee of the CPSU.[19]

As the new director, Martynov was energetic, pushy, and he possessed all the qualities necessary for an autocratic and bureaucratic management style. He did not tolerate any independence on the part of his subordinates. Shortly, he managed to change the fundamental direction of GOSNIIOKhT, from an institute with diversified operations into one specializing almost exclusively in the development and testing of new types of chemical weapons.

He shut down the Dzerzhinsky and Borislavsky branches of the institute in Western Ukraine as incompatible with the main thrust of GOSNIIOKhT’s activities. Under Martynov’s leadership, the Volsk branch in Shikhany was reorganized, and this branch over the course of time became a powerful center for chemical weapons development. Every year, increasing numbers of graduates from colleges and universities in Moscow, Leningrad, Saratov, Volgograd, and other cities came to work there. Many Saratov Military Chemical College graduates came to work at the pilot plant. Industrial products, provisions and goods were supplied directly from Moscow for this branch. The housing situation for employees was decent, and along with the rather privileged salary, it attracted young people.

Martynov rallied practically all of GOSNIIOKhT to help establish and launch the Novocheboksarsk Plant for manufacturing Substance 33 and CS gas. Oddly enough, this coincided with the complete termination of the industrial production of chemical weapons in the United States, and that is unfortunately a typical example of the two-faced policy of the CPSU.

In 1974, every record of every chemical weapons development program and production was purged from the record, even from the secret lists of state secrets. This meant that GOSNIIOKhT and other institutions of the military-industrial complex found themselves operating outside of the law. For Martynov, moral issues have always been, and I am sure still are, of very little importance.

He was a man of a medium height, a bit swarthy, with dark hair and a decisive chin. His features combined to give the impression of a strong-willed face, and he reminded me of our “illustrious” movie actors – playing military leaders who followed our genius Stalin’s instructions on defeating German armies. It seemed that he imitated them, and so his directorate also reminded us of military headquarters. Most of his staffers were former military officers, who played their roles as career military men with marked pleasure.

When any one of the scientists displayed ordinary civilian carelessness or clumsiness, the almighty Martynov did not hesitate to thunder out against him, regardless of who else was present. I am sure that he had practically no sense of humor, and he always took everything too seriously, strictly by the book like soldiers do. This is the reason why people tried to ‘tune’ him in the right way. They used to say that if someone got him to go in one direction, it was almost impossible to turn him back the other way.

Professor Vladimir Kurochkin told me that it was absolutely necessary to be the first person to get to the director’s office and tune him properly. Only those who managed to get to the pompous director first were successful. My classmate from MITKhT, Professor Yuri Zeifman, who worked in Ivan Knunyantz’s laboratory, characterized him as a “superman”. I’m sure he was partially right.

Martynov was warm and fatherly to people in his inner circle, and anyone who succeeded in getting close to him was assured of a successful career. The director never forgot those people and patronized them like a baron. He had an excellent “nose” for new trends in synthetic laboratory work and always gave them the green light. Probably this was the reason why he supported Petr Kirpichev’s team[20] at GOSNIIOKhT’s Volsk branch. As soon as he learned about their work and their preliminary results in 1973, he arranged for them to be given top secret clearance, which meant the status “of the highest importance”.

According to the senior engineer of this group, Vladimir Uglev,[21] the team was provided with first class equipment on Martynov’s directive, and was ordered to submit their reports to Moscow immediately, even in handwritten form. It turned out that the director was farsighted, not only because their work was highly important for the state, but also in the area of his personal interests. After Martynov received the highest award possible in the U.S.S.R., the “Hero of the Socialist Labor” for the successful start-up of the Novocheboksarsk Plant for producing chemical weapons, he felt inspired to become a member of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences. A special vacancy was created for him before the next regular election to the academy, thanks to the Council of Ministers. However, he was not elected a Corresponding Member at first, despite excellent official support.

“This whole damn bunch of academicians and corresponding members! They are not bloody organized at all!” complained retired Colonel Foma Gorelov, Martynov’s first aide and head of the Scientific Technical Department at GOSNIIOKhT, about the “irresponsible” electors.

Colonel Gorelov knew almost nothing about science, but he liked to recall incidents that had taken place during his service as Commander of the Special Battalion for Chemical Defense. “You see, one of my soldiers was bored to death without women and he became violent. And, you see, he screwed one of the local girls, well something like he raped her. So the case went into full swing. The investigator appeared and ordered us to arrange an identification line-up, presenting all the soldiers on the parade ground, without hats. The victim had to look at them and recognize the rapist. I agreed and asked him to come by with the girl the next day. But as soon as he left, I ordered an unscheduled bath-day and haircuts for the soldiers; they had to shave off all their mustaches.

The next day, you see, the investigator and the girl turned up. She made her way along the line and began to cry out from exasperation. “They all look the same!” she sobbed. “The rapist had a thick head of hair and a mustache,” the unmarried girl recalled, in helpless despair.”

So this was Colonel Foma Gorelov’s way to show his quick military wit. He savored telling this story with great pleasure, but he did not understand why people who listened to it turned away in embarrassment….

For nearly a year, Foma was busy trying to help his unlucky master become a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences, and he was very upset about this failure. Apparently he missed the mark, assuming that high-level support would be enough for this undertaking to be successful. As a rule, the Academy of Sciences rubber-stamped the admission of candidates who were governmental people, the directors of the defense-oriented institutes. However, as people say, even a wise man stumbles. Sometimes, even a “superman’s” candidacy was steam-rolled during sessions of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences. Usually though, this kind of outcome was an exception, and it was interpreted as “inadequate work” with the influential members and the leaders of the Academy of Science clans.

At the next election, Martynov became a corresponding member, but this time they worked properly. Frequently you could see Volga cars rolling in, bringing different academicians and corresponding members to a house that was used as a hotel by GOSNIIOKhT. There they gathered for friendly, but lavish, dinner parties, with cognac and caviar, so that the guests had no cause to doubt the director’s scientific merits.

The governmental decree, which established an institute at the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences for fundamental research of new chemical weapons principles, made it possible for Martynov to take a critical step towards getting a “high” scientific rank. According to the code accepted in the military-chemical complex, the term “physiologically active compounds” (FAV) was used as a screen for the forbidden term “chemical agents”. So the new institute was called the Institute for Physiologically Active Compounds (IFAV), and Martynov was appointed its director (It is located in Chernogolovka, in the Moscow Region).

We know that the scope of the superman’s authority was much too low there, unlike his reign at GOSNIIOKhT. He was unhappy, because he could not order people to accept his authoritarian rule. The young scientists there practically ignored their director for his “backwardness”, and they imposed a secret boycott on him.

As soon as the Vice President of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences, Yuri Ovchinnikov, saw that Martynov didn’t keep up with his workload, he had a “serious conversation” with him. After that our hero began declining very rapidly and was replaced by a truly prominent scientist, the academician Nikolai Zefirov.

After the GOSNIIOKhT director Grigori A. Patrushev died, Martynov tried to get back into his “native easy chair” – the director’s position, but it was already too late. I am not writing about this with malicious intent. I am simply satisfied that Martynov’s plan to make the Institute of Physiologically Active Compounds, which belonged to the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences, into something similar to GOSNIIOKhT, failed. His lack of talent wasn’t the only reason for it. It also happened because young scientists were disgusted with the “special themes” he had proposed.

Some well-known scientists were contacted by my lawyer Aleksander Asnis to become experts in my “case” after the Moscow City Court sent it back for further investigation in 1994. Their reactions showed how strong this disgust and their devotion to democratic ideals were. Academician Nikolai Zefirov, Director of IFAV at the Russian Academy of Sciences, and Oleg Nefedov, Vice-President of the Russian Academy of Sciences, were among those who agreed to participate in the expertise.

The retirement of Martynov unleashed a furious competition for the director’s post. Although the Ministry of Chemical Industry backed another candidate, Grigory Patrushev enjoyed the Central Committee’s favor and became director of GOSNIIOKhT in 1979. The appointment astonished many people since few had ever noticed that Patrushev had such mighty contacts within the party. He didn’t flaunt his connections, but for anyone paying close attention, the signs had always been there. Patrushev headed the Biomedical Department, and he managed to win funds for a new building to house his laboratories. His fiefdom grew so large that people began to speculate that it might separate from GOSNIIOKhT and become its own entity. Such growth does not happen on its own.

GOSNIIOKhT was populated mostly by chemists, and most of the department chiefs resented the appointment of a medical professional to lead GOSNIIOKhT. They had hoped the rival candidate Guskov would get the post, and they regarded Patrushev’s appointment as an alarming sign for their careers. I did not feel that way though. I knew Patrushev as a highly cultured person and an excellent specialist, so I was originally pleased when he became director.

The pressures of the job must have weighed on him though. Within just a year, Patrushev was transformed into a short-tempered and impatient administrator. Aside from that, Patrushev had a tendency to be mean-spirited. If he disliked someone he could not resist the temptation to victimize that person using the harshest ploys of Soviet bureaucracy. Patrushev’s other shortcoming was his blind faith in Communist ideals. Like many others, I did not share his passion for Stalin, since Khrushchev had by that time revealed the despicable toll that Stalin’s autocratic policies had taken on the country.

Personally, I think Patrushev became so unbalanced because his position was tenuous, in part due to his extremely frosty relations with the young Deputy Minister of the Chemical Industry, Sergei Golubkov, who had objected to his friend Konstantin Guskov not becoming the new director. Golubkov never missed a chance to wound Patrushev’s pride, so Patrushev had to be careful not to offend the overconfident and capricious deputy minister. Patrushev’s attempts to gratify Golubkov damned him. At the end of 1983, Patrushev came down with the flu that was raging through Moscow. Despite his illness and soaring temperature, Patrushev felt obligated to work so as not to incur Golubkov’s wrath. His illness became much more dire, and despite intensive treatment, Patrushev died in 1984.

After his death, everyone expected Guskov to fill Patrushev’s vacancy since he had powerful Golubkov’s backing. On the day that the Board of the Ministry of Chemical Industry was to give its formal approval to Guskov’s appointment, the GOSNIIOKhT staff was so confident of the outcome that banquet tables were laid out to toast to Guskov. When a rumor swirled around the institute that Victor Petrunin, the former director of the Volsk branch, was a dark horse candidate, nobody took it seriously. Before the board meeting began, however, the former First Secretary of the Saratov Regional Party Committee and acting Deputy Prime Minister of USSR, Vladimir Gusev, called Vladimir Listov, the Minister of Chemical Industry, on Petrunin’s behalf. Listov announced Petrunin’s appointment, surprising all members of the Board, demonstrating once again party’s control of key decisions.

Petrunin became “wiser” over the years, working for a long time in the provinces in GOSNIIOKhT’s Shikhany branch. There he learned the art of managing people Soviet style. Relatively quickly, he understood that his career depended on how well he was able to meet and greet his bosses visiting from Moscow. He had to do his best to indulge his guests in every possible way, arranging trips to the Volga, where they could rollick on the estate of the late Count Orlov.[22] This lifestyle strongly attracted him, because he liked to drink and to please his guests with his singing. Petrunin loved playing the role of a magnanimous baron. And why not celebrate, when hundreds of people from his institute were forced to work on the estate, for a few months out of each year without pay?

Once Petrunin became Director of the Volsk branch, you could often see him riding in a troika (the traditional Russian carriage with three horses) on the neighboring collective farm. Tipsy, happy and rosy-cheeked from the fresh steppe air, he was sitting in the sleigh singing popular Russian folk songs, while he accompanied himself on the Russian accordion.

Once, during one of those trips to the Volga River, the hospitable Petrunin gave his guests a big scare. After toasting to his “dear guests” many times, and after singing numerous Russian romance solos, the not entirely sober host of the party, “Vityusha”, disappeared. The guests from Moscow didn’t seem to take any notice. It was a beautiful romantic night, with bright stars in the sky. An enormous bonfire was surrounded by tables decked out with salmon, caviar and other scarce gourmet foods from the institute’s storage room. No one had any gloomy premonitions, and so nobody began looking for the singer, as the need for folk songs and dances reached its peak. As usual, no one remembered the end of the party. They found themselves in their cozy beds, but their host was not among them.

In the morning, suddenly one of the Muscovites saw something that looked like a human body under the steep precipice of the riverbank, near the estate. He cried out desperately in fear, and the guests immediately understood that this body could only belong to Victor Petrunin. The fearful guests made their way down the steps on the hill, barely dragging their feet, because no one had fully recovered from his hangover.

As they tried to reach their poor “Vityusha”, it became clear that this was a silly and absurd death. The steep slope and height of the cliff did not leave any doubts about the tragic outcome. That was why all of the people who were running were amazed to see that one of the guests, who had already reached the high thin grass with the sprawling body, was laughing so loudly and merrily. Those who approached him soon understood that the “body” really did belong to “dear Vityusha”, but he was just in a deep sleep. Even the happy cries of the overexcited guests could not disturb his snoring. Suddenly, Vityusha reacted to the suggestion to “have a shot of alcohol”, and he sprang to his feet as if nothing had happened. You could see his face quiver only slightly, when he looked up at the steep cliff. Possibly, he remembered his flight off the cliff, the night before.

One of the prudent guests had brought a half-empty bottle of cognac with him (perhaps for the forthcoming commemoration or just from the need to have his precious drink with him at all times). He took it out and gave “Vityusha” a full glass, clinking his glass to the bottle to show that he too would like to have a sip.

Soon everybody was talking merrily and singing the praises of their host for his heroic deed and the strength of his body and spirit. Probably these qualities were not at all important for surviving a fall from such a height. Only the completely relaxed, yet strangely elastic body of a drunk could somehow deflect the shock of all the blows he took in his tumble flight off that cliff, while snagging tree branches, or banging into the compressed red clay protrusions sticking out of the wall. Also, since he was drunk, he never went into shock from the fear. Probably “Vityusha” just passed out and fell into a dream.

To his credit, this episode did not frighten Petrunin, nor did he stop trying to please his visitors from Moscow. He enjoyed meeting and seeing off his guests, until that happy day when he was appointed Director of GOSNIIOKhT. He understood that they held the key to his transfer out of this Hell-hole and into the capital. Until that moment, he had to work under a lot of other directors and continue as the Deputy Director for Science of the Shikhany branch of GOSNIIOKhT.