CHAPTER 8 Science and Scientists in GOSNIIOKhT
Russian VX gas – Substance 33 and the Basics of the Russian Binary Weapons
The true author of Substance 33, Sergei Zotovich Ivin and the first person to synthesize it, his graduate assistant Iya Danilovna Shelakova, received only a few minor prizes of little significance for the successful start-up of the Novocheboksary pilot plant which produced it.
I am confident that this was a demonstration of “love” on the part of the Director Martynov, since Ivin was a talented scientist. Military specialists universally recognized his authorship of Substance 33 (O-iso-butyl-S-2 – diethylaminoethyl-methylphosphonothiolate).
Ivin repeatedly claimed that he had laid out the investigation of thiocholine ethers (which was used for creating the chemical agent VX), even before the well-known publication by the Swedish scientist Tammelin (O-ethyl-S-2-di-iso-propylaminoethyl-metylphosphonothiolate).[23]
After this publication about the high toxicity of thiocholine ethers, orders were issued in the U.S.S.R. for large-scale synthesis of this group of compounds at four different locations: TSNIVTI[24] (under S.Z. Ivin and I.D. Shelakova), GOSNIIOKhT (under Gladstein who lagged considerably behind Ivin – apparently this explained his jealousy), the Voroshilov Military Academy of Chemical Defense (in the department headed by Ivan Knunyants, who repeatedly declared his skepticism within his closed circle since he considered thiocholine to be a mistake made by Americans and Soviet specialists), and the Institute of Elemental Organic Compounds of the Academy of Science of the U.S.S.R. (under the leadership of Mikhail I. Kabachnik, though apparently Professor Sergey Godovikov ran the business.) This last group worked without any success, and it was completely dependent on Gladshtein, since the synthesis model was tested in GOSNIIOKhT (then known as Post Office Box 702).
At that time, the leadership of TSNIVTI, under the command of General Knunyants, refused to confirm Ivin’s claim about his independent research on thiocholine ethers. The pretext of their argument was that if such a compound had any toxicity, it would have a high boiling point or be a jelly-like product, making it unsuitable for practical applications.
Furthermore, the choice of Substance 33 was an unfortunate one. In summary, the physical chemical properties (compared with VX it had far too low a volatility), the chemical properties (compared with VX it was much too unstable for long term storage), and the toxicity (in contact with air it absorbed moisture like a vacuum pump and quickly lost its active properties, though the toxicity fell only negligibly since the decomposition products were also highly toxic), all made its use practical only for intravenous and intramuscular applications.
The situation was further aggravated by its production technology, which would not permit an active product yield of more than 90%. Therefore, the technical production of Substance 33 in the Novocheboksary chemical plant, was marked by the number 87%, and to a significant extent it was predetermined that its stability in long term storage would be poor.
At the end of 1980, the laboratory of Georgi Drozd was the first to pay attention to these problems. For a long time prior to that, the lab had researched various methods of synthesizing Substance 33, and had compared the characteristics they found to the properties of VX. This comparison looked very unfavorable for Substance 33, as VX could be stored without any appreciable change in its original level of activity for more than 20 years.
A panic literally set in when the results of Drozd’s research were formally registered in a scientific report, which was circulated to Guskov and the military representatives for GOSNIIOKhT. Still, they did not forget to give Drozd orders forbidding him to research this problem further.
My good friend, Professor Igor Revelski, was instructed to verify the disturbing facts. He corroborated the sudden change in the chemical composition of Substance 33 and its declining activity in storage. The scientific report of Igor Revelski met exactly the same fate as the report prepared by Drozd. Frequently in the Soviet system of science, researched facts were sacrificed for the sake of the financial and personal interests of the bosses who were in charge of science in the country. Unfortunately, this kind of thing can happen just about anywhere, even in a democratic country like the U.S.A.
In Drozd’s opinion, the American scientists had a theoretical blowout in their research program, when trying to use the last stages of their technology of the production of VX gas for its binary version.[25]
According to the results of the kinetic research carried out by Valeri Lebedev, a senior researcher at GOSNIIOKhT, VX gas produced by mixing semi-product QL[26] with sulfur, should disintegrate within 10-15 seconds, since the temperature in the binary reactor would exceed more 300 degrees Celsius in this time interval. This is exactly why the American military chemists, after fifteen years of unsuccessful efforts and expenditures of more than $15 million on this project, were forced to “create holes” in the bodies of their binary reactors for the chemical weapon (CW) “Blue-8”. These holes opened with special explosives 10-11 seconds after the startup of the mechanical mixer and at the beginning of the reaction between QL and the powdered sulfur. Clearly the key question became how to store this sulfur in a reactor for a long period of time without developing lumps and caking, so that it could be used effectively.
Ivin was in charge of a large laboratory in GOSNIIOKhT, for the synthesis of newly perspective chemical agents. He was a talented scientist who distinguished himself by his amicable relations with everyone whom he worked with, and he profited from universal respect at the institute and its branches.
The original idea for a binary chemical weapon was proposed and realized in Ivin’s laboratory between 1971-1972, on the basis of the thiol ethers (Substance 33 and others of this sort) as well as on the basis of the fluoro ethers (soman, sarin and others). At first it was proposed as a new technological approach for production of sarin and soman.
As would be expected, it looked like a most attractive and simple system for producing sarin. Felix Ponomarenko, who was a graduate student at the time, definitely achieved success in this area. His idea was based on the reaction between the cyanide ether of methylfluorophosphonic acid and iso-propyl alcohol. The rate of the reaction was amazingly high and the yield of final product was more than 80 %. His results became known to some military people from the Directorate of the Chief of the Chemical Troops (UNKhV), who joined with some chemists from Military Unit 61469 in Shikhany, stole his work, and quickly filed for a patent for his invention. Of course this was done entirely without Ivin’s or Ponomarenko’s participation.
A really scandalous standoff developed, since Ponomarenko had already included the results of his research in his dissertation, and the fate of the dissertation depended to a considerable extent on UNKhV’s judgment of his work. The military specialists came forth with a “compromise”. They did not back away from their “invention”, but they gave Ponomarenko’s dissertation a favorable judgment, and he safely defended it.
Deputy Director Konstantin Guskov was impassioned at that time by this highly promising theme, which was given the code name “Khoryok” (translates as ferret) in different indices. He conducted this work in the Volgograd and Shikhany branches of GOSNIIOKhT. To tell the truth I didn’t have any knowledge about this “Khoryok” business until 1977.
One winter day in 1977, Guskov called and asked me to come to him for an urgent discussion. He told me that the binary bomb would be tested in Shikhany, and he personally asked me to help with the analyses of the field samples. Since I had already developed gas chromatographic (GC) methods of analysis for different purposes, including for conducting various tests in Department “RP” (which was in charge of preparation and conducting field tests), my methods could easily be adjusted for analyzing the field tested samples at Shikhany. So, I agreed to go and participate in the testing.
Intermediate non-toxic variants of the binary bomb were being tested. One of the compounds selected was the cyan ether of O-isobutylmethylphosphonic acid, and the other was N, N-diethylaminoethyl alcohol. The resulting reaction produced a non-toxic oxide analogue of Substance 33, O-isobutyl-O-2 – diethylaminoethyl-methylphosphonate according to:
O-i-C4H9 O-i-C4H9 D DCH3-P=O + HO-CH2-CH2-N(C2H5)2 ’ CH3-P=O \ \ CN O-CH2-CH2-N(C2H5)2I was told that laboratory studies proved that the reaction between these reagents was going at a high rate and the yield of final product was also more than satisfactory, and so the outcome was not in doubt.
On the appointed day, we drove to the polygon (test site), where we could observe the air and the field from one of the shelters. We waited for an airplane to appear. The military airport was located 15 kilometers away in the town of Beketovka, and we saw the airplane take off, and then rise to gain the necessary altitude. The soldiers accompanying us were ordered to go to the basement so they could not observe the experiment that was about to take place. Then I saw that the transport airplane was practically right over us at a low altitude. Something blasted out just below the plane, and a white mist appeared which turned red, reminding me of holiday fireworks. I knew that dye was added to the mixture in order to make the reaction visible.
They set up little squares in a strict order on the testing field, with metallic trays on which they placed strips of filter paper for adsorption of the drops of the binary chemical agent analog they were testing. The paper strips should have had stains from the red dye that was added to one of the reagents. Specially trained soldiers collected the trays with the filter papers and delivered them to the analytical laboratory. Chemical compounds were extracted from the strips with a solvent. Then my assistant Boris Dubin and I analyzed those samples using a Varian 1800 Gas Chromatograph with a thermionic detector, for the selective determination of the final product, which was the O-analog of Substance 33.
Our analysis showed a very low level of efficiency for the binary bomb, with the yield of the final product being only about 7%. This poor result was disappointing, but no one tried to cast doubt on my results, because there were very few red stains on the filter paper strips, which would have been direct evidence that they had been exposed to a small quantity of the final reaction product. For me it was clear that this was the result of faulty construction design work and a short reaction time between the binary components.
I believe Guskov also understood this and decided not to test a second bomb. To his dismay he was facing huge opposition to this project. Since there were no miraculous results, his bosses lost all interest in it on every level. However, just in case an urgent need should arise, the subject was handed over to (or rather forced upon) Drozd.
This situation clearly reflected the negative mind-set held by the Construction Bureau “Basalt”, the Military-Industrial Commission of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the leadership of the army, toward researching binary weapons.
An interdepartmental commission under the leadership of Vladimir Listov, who was then the Minister of Chemical Industry, decided that “the Army doesn’t need less effective wares than the mono-variant.” The mono-variant was clearly understood as a chemical agent. After this decision, the topic of binary weapons was shelved and existed in practicality, thanks only to the enthusiasm of individual researchers. This very idea seemed intriguing to me.
Ivin was instrumental in helping the synthesis laboratories in Volsk (Shikhany) and in Volgograd get started. I suppose that the appearance of such a talented scientist as Petr Kirpichev, the author of the new and highly effective chemical agent in Shikhany, was a result of his fruitful activities.
After Ivin’s premature death at the end of 1980, his laboratory fell under the leadership of Evgeny Fokin, a man who lacked any kind of specialization. Partially, it was also supervised by the director of the institute, since he had to participate in meaningful scientific work in a laboratory in order to become a corresponding member of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences. Later, Evgeny Fokin had to turn over part of his laboratory to Yuri Kondratiev.
Kondratiev willingly worked for a long time at the Shikhany branch of GOSNIIOKhT, where he was able to defend his doctoral dissertation, with the help of Ivin. Thanks to his ties of kinship with one of the members of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Kondratiev quickly became director of a prominent newly organized scientific institute – the All Union Scientific Research Institute for the Chemical Defense of Plant Life (VNIISKhZR) in Moscow.
Since he did not have any kind of specialization in organizational work and was amazingly inarticulate, this scientist from Shikhany, who was promoted to an administrative post, quickly botched his job at the institute. After that, they transferred him to GOSNIIOKhT, where he resides to this day, because there, as nowhere else, he began to feel at home in the world of secrecy, with his lack of talent and his terrifying conservatism.
A more talented student of Ivin’s, Yury Gololobov, was forced out of GOSNIIOKhT by the envious director, who didn’t want to have anything to do with him. There was another large-scale laboratory at GOSNIIOKhT for the synthesis of new chemical agents headed up by Professor Boris M. Gladstein, a man who I respected professionally and developed a highly positive impression of. In the past some of my colleagues frequently hinted that Professor Gladstein had more than a close relationship with the GRU.
I developed a series of GC procedures for the study of the so-called thion-thiol isomerization (it formed the basis for the American binary weapon), which the workers in Gladstein’s laboratory used intensively. It seems to me that this lab did not achieve any particular success, although the staff was comprised of highly talented scientists.
Gladstein used all of his promotional talents to push ahead with “Substance 100-A” and “Substance 100-B”, which were analogues of Substance 33. The difference lay in the substitution of O-iso-butyl radicals by O-cyclopentyl and O-methylcyclopentyl radicals accordingly. The patent for these compounds belongs to the prominent military chemist, Abram Bruker. The technology of the production of cyclopentyl and methylcyclopentyl alcohols was developed by my longtime friend Professor Yevgeny Yevzirikhin.
Bruker and another scientist of this laboratory Leonid Soborovski developed a method of oxidizing phosphorylization, which was used to easily obtain the precursors needed for the synthesis of phosphoorganic chemical agents on an industrial scale.
Under the energetic support of GOSNIIOKhT Director Ivan Martynov, Substances 100-A and 100-B went through extensive testing. The results of this testing can be found in the text of the doctoral dissertation of Grigory Patrushev, who was then chief of the Department of Medical Biological Research and later became a director of GOSNIIOKhT.
Nevertheless, these compounds appeared to have little promise, considering that the industrial technology for manufacturing Substance 33 had already been mastered at the Novocheboksary Factory, and a new wave of research had begun on the binary weapons. For this reason, the subject of “Substances 100-A and 100-B” became a closed one. There is a real possibility that this theme was originally planted by the American agent Joseph Cassidy, who fed information about a relatively useless chemical agent to General Mikhael Danilin, who was the chief spy for the GRU (General Intelligence Directorate of the Soviet Army).[27]
The laboratory for the synthesis and research of the psychotropic compounds was under the leadership of Professor Nikolai Yarovenko, who came to GOSNIIOKHT from TSNIVTI along with Ivin.
Psychotropic compounds are strong agents affecting the human psyche, based on chinuclidine ethers (one analogue known in the West is BZ).[28] According to Yarovenko’s account, such a compound would cause a soldier to smile happily and have beautiful dreams, setting aside his weapon. Yarovenko drew a detailed picture of such hallucinations, after coming from Leningrad, where several students in the Military Medical Academy had voluntarily tested this preparation on themselves.
The activities of this laboratory were considered very successful, since BZ, under the code name of “Substance 78”, successfully passed through testing, and its production was achieved on an industrial scale at the Volsk branch (Shikhany) of GOSNIIOKhT. Our own Laboratory 25 participated in this work in a big way during the time of the start-up of the pilot plant.
Also, one of the analogues of BZ was determined to be a good anesthetic (by Doctors of Chemical Science Felix Dukhovich and Elena Gorbatova.) For that reason, the analogue was produced at the experimental plant of GOSNIIOKhT, and sent to the Burdenko Military Hospital in Moscow.
After Yarovenko’s death in early 1980, Victor Komarov, a retired colonel and former professor at the Military Academy of Chemical Defense, replaced him. It seems that you can’t call his activities successful, since bit by bit the laboratory plunged into a routine, researching basic compounds of a less significant nature. For example, for a long time they seriously researched a compound which stimulated nausea. It was thought that once it had worked its effect on a soldier, he would tear off his gas mask, because the nausea was intolerable, and after that the real chemical agent could kill him. What a nightmare!
What could we Soviets do if double agent Cassidy did a brilliant job, and we spent a lot of resources, without getting any positive results? Nevertheless, I was forced to participate in this work, researching methods for determination of micro-concentrations of this preparation.
Another prominent laboratory, headed by Professor Vsevolod Ginsburg, was devoted for a long time to searching for specialized natural compounds that could kill people. It seems to me that they succeeded in isolating and purifying the strong and naturally poisonous protein of ricin, found in plants of the castor bean family. As far as I know, a large volume of work was performed there by Doctor of Chemical Science Natalya Merzabekova, who studied the amino acid sequence of the protein, after the purification of raw materials and so forth. The technological research, for the completion of an experimental reactor, was authored by my good friend and neighbor, Evgeni Chizhov, who said he had worked closely with Natalia Merzabekova and Valeri Demidyuk. The later had defended his master’s dissertation on the theme of the chromatographic isolation of pure ricin.
Demidyuk was notable for his “creeper vine-like” character, being a model orthodox Communist. This trait evidently became crucial in his appointment to the post of Chief Consultant to a new journal pretentiously titled Chemical Weapons and Problems of Their Destruction, which came out of Russia, thanks to different sources of American funds.
Under Chizhov’s leadership in the beginning of 1970, a pilot plant was opened at the Volsk branch of GOSNIIOKhT, in order to produce the quantity of ricin necessary for field testing.
Ricin is the strongest poison, surpassing all phosphoorganic chemical agents in toxicity. It does not leave any traces in the organism of the victim, making forensic work practically impossible. On the other hand, most specialists know that it possesses almost insurmountable shortcomings in its application, which would prevent it from meeting the standards needed for broad field testing. In particular, ricin loses all its toxic characteristics at only 50 degrees Celsius. Also, it has practically no vapor pressure at the normal temperatures at which its aerosol form would be dangerous for people, since it is a compound with a high molecular weight. For this reason, in order to poison someone with ricin, it is necessary to introduce the poison by injection or by another manner, for example by ingestion.
In the end, a senior scientist in Ginsburg’s laboratory, Pavel Gitel, began to intensively research methods for using hollow needles filled with ricin, which could be packed into a bomb or missile. With the explosion of the bomb, thousands of these needles would be thrown around, piercing people’s bodies. Such tests were carried out; however, it seems that no particular success was achieved. Yet, there is every reason to suppose that exactly this ricin, produced at GOSNIIOKhT, was used by KGB agents to try to kill Aleksander Solzhenitsyn. Fortunately they were not successful. According to the testimony of General Oleg Kalugin, the Bulgarian Special Services which were trained by the KGB killed the famous Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov, in London in 1973, with ricin which was injected into him by a special umbrella.[29]
Nevertheless, aside from producing ricin for the Science Research Institute of the KGB, Ginsburg’s laboratory could not fulfill its principal task – the creation of a chemical weapon based on ricin, thanks to the physical properties of the protein. Up until the middle of the 1970’s, variants of CW based on phosphoorganic compounds turned out to be more promising. It’s possible that this artificial problem also was implanted, thanks to American double agent Cassidy.
This scientific division was busy synthesizing and researching fluoro-organic compounds up until the mid 1960’s. Sergey Makarov, one of the foremost specialists in the world in this field, worked there. He was the scientist who first synthesized and researched many of the basic fluoro-organic compounds, including trifluoronitroso methane, trifluoromethyl amine and a series of stable phosphoorganic radicals. However, because of the closed secret nature of GOSNIIOKhT, Makarov published very little of his work. The leaders of his department (Ginsburg’s future lab) were busy with the problems of rocket fuel and heavy inert fluids for spacecraft and other specialized technology.
In the end, the laboratory of Vsevolod Ginsburg was reorganized. The new head man, Professor Yuri Kosarev, arrived from the Military Academy of Chemical Defense. He was a specialist on the degasification of chemical agents and was distinguished by his meticulous attention to triviality.
If Yuri Kosarev attended any meeting, it was fully guaranteed that the meeting could last an additional hour or two, because of his nitpicking and faultfinding with each phrase or letter of the most trivial project decision.
Ginsburg was transferred to the laboratory of Mikhael Englin, where his efforts to resolve the problem of penetrating gas mask filters were very unsuccessful. Also, this laboratory made the most unprofessional efforts to study the dynamics of adsorption of a series of fluoro-containing poisonous agents to gas mask filters. Aside from that, they were busy searching for lachrymators, using information picked up from foreign sources. You can already guess which foreign sources they were getting their information from.
At one point, I began to work with one of the developments of this lab, and I developed GC methods of analysis of the air in white lab rats’ cells, as part of the medical and biological testing. For a long time I analyzed the air in experimental animals’ cells.
The results of this testing were lamentable for Englin, since the agent under investigation was very unstable and a weak irritant. The professor in charge of these experiments didn’t seem to be accusing me of developing poor methods, just of underestimating the results. My analyses showed that the animals only reacted to the irritant if it were given in large “horse size” doses.
When faced with unsuccessful results, every developer of a new technology or agent blamed the person who created the analytical method that was used for its evaluation, and these accusations always found support from the Deputy Director of Science.
In this case, Deputy Director Aleksander Shchekotikhin, who absolutely trusted GRU information, organized a “conference” in his office, inviting those who had malevolent intentions towards the author of the method (me), and as usual he revealed his obstructionism. The “conference” prepared for me was analogous to an execution. They invited people from the Laboratory of Indication, which was under the leadership of the aforementioned Lev Brovkin and Vladislav Sheluchenko, to fill in as my opponents. These people did not have even a rudimentary understanding of chromatography, yet they were ready to lend a hand to their bosses. Their help consisted of exclamations like “Aha! Your analysis showed that at some time there was a low concentration in the chamber, but the animals reacted strongly, judging from the instruments used to measure breathing frequency!” This is exactly what Shchekotikhin cleverly asked me, saying, “You should answer this…” It was clear that they were trying to draw me into an argument in an area that was outside of my expertise.
Englin was obstinate and penetrating, and he arranged for field testing of the substance on the Shikhany military test site. (At the institute we joked that if you used Misha (Englin) instead of a chemical agent in a test, he certainly would succeed in breaking through the gas mask filter.) Up to this point I was hearing “happy talk” at a meeting in the Directorate of the Chief of Chemical Troops (UNKhV) on Frunze Naberejnaya (Moscow), about the “perfect irritant of Englin”, from the representative of the Institute of Toxicology in Kiev, where they were conducting some experiments.
In the fall of 1979, I went to the Shikhany Polygon (which was located 120 km south of Saratov)[30] with Rudolph Naberezhnich, a senior scientist from Department “RP”, and we began to adjust the gas chromatographs for conducting field testing. At that time, I already felt like one of the group, since I had repeatedly been there on business trips to Shikhany-2, where the military-chemical institute and polygon were situated.
For a very long time Major General Anatoly Kuntsevich was the commander of this entire complex, including the chemical defense battalion which went under the common name of Military Unit 61469. His deputy for scientific work was Colonel Igor Evstafeev, who had once been in charge of the field testing department.
Before this trip, I was generally communicating with the military who were working in the Physical Chemistry Department, where they conducted analyses of all the samples they picked up from the testing on the polygon. This department was under the leadership of Yuri Gorbunov (who had a M.S. in Chemical Science), for a long time. He was a gentle and benevolent man with a pleasant appearance, who had spent several years in Cuba on a business trip, but I never managed to ask him about that. Evidently, our military chemists had found some kind of business at this “outpost” of Communism, butting up to the flank of the United States, which was called “the Citadel of World Imperialism.”
From 1966 on, I traveled regularly to this department, and helped them in every possible way to achieve mastery over the chromatographic methods of analysis. Prior to 1973, this department acquired only low-quality U.S.S.R. produced chromatographic instruments, with the help of GOSNIIOKhT. Then in the beginning of 1974, the most modern American scientific equipment began to appear there.
Sergey Pichidze, who was still a young senior lieutenant at the time and a graduate of the Military Academy of Chemical Defense, was the one who organized all of this. Wonderfully cunning and a keen natural psychologist, he could use all the possible channels in Moscow to get a large sum of currency appropriated for massive purchases of laboratory equipment from the West.
I was curious about how he accomplished all of this. Pichidze explained to me that it was necessary to buy two or three boxes of chocolates for this, and to go to Vneshtorg (the Ministry of Foreign Trade) located on Smolenski Naberejnaya in Moscow. Then you needed to appeal to the woman in charge of or working on the purchase of imported instruments. At first, he said, you asked what the procedures were for purchasing foreign instruments and anything else. Then, with the manners of a gentleman you thanked her kindly and handed over a box of chocolate candy, as a tip for the consultation. After this, you confidentially try to find out if there was any hard currency remaining that had been spared during the process of purchasing instruments.
Indeed, while filling the orders for instruments, there often is a difference between the sum of currency budgeted for some organization and the real amount spent on the purchase. This money must, of course, be returned to the customer, and they did this – in Soviet rubles, not in hard currency like American dollars. At this time the hard currency equivalent for rubles was a laughable value: one dollar was equal to 70 kopecks. But just try to get currency appropriated in this ratio! For this reason, the apportionment of currency for any foreign purchasing was tantamount to an act of charity or a present.
Money could always be saved in this way on the numerous purchases made in hard currency. What was left over could be combined again with other sums and saved, to purchase instruments for someone else, let’s say for a handsome gentleman like Sergey Pichidze. Naturally, Military Unit 61469 had to pay for this, but only in Soviet rubles. This did not present a particular hardship, since the sum in rubles was ridiculously low. As you can see in this case, this scheme was based on honesty. No crime was committed, and there was no cheating, since money didn’t go into anyone’s pocket.
The imaginative antics of Pichidze sometimes reminded me of the escapades of Klestakov, from Nikolai Gogol’s comedy The Inspector. One day in 1986, Pichidze showed up with a friend at the car dealership in the Kujbishevski Military District, where people from Military Unit 61469 shopped for their cars.
Anyone who was familiar with the automobile trade in the U.S.S.R., knew that in order to purchase an automobile, you first had to get on a waiting list at work, and then if you were lucky you could get one 5-8 years later. The cars they “gave” us in this way were models that were becoming obsolete and poor in their technical performance. Good automobiles went to satisfy the demands of the Soviet bureaucracy. They had their own list for that, and the cars that they were “given” were more fashionable, if such a word can be used to describe Soviet automobile construction.
Dropping by the showroom, Pichidze declared to the manager: “I’m here from General Razuvanov.”
This statement was not particularly suspicious, if you take into consideration the fact that the military did not name their division number, for reasons of secrecy. The manager of the dealership, who was a colonel himself, knew this military unit, where General Razuvanov was the commander. Right away he understood that Pichidze was someone who came to personally pick up a car for the military commander of Unit 61469.
“Just today we received a car, a Zhiguli-luxe, and you can take that car,” answered the colonel-manager of the shop.
Calmly and with a bit of a haughty attitude, Pichidze asked what was required for that. The manager replied “Nothing other than formal confirmation from the military unit that you are working there.”
This was already customary business for Sergey and he quickly brought the manager a certified telegram from the office of the commander saying that Pichidze was employed in Military Unit 61469.
“Pay and take your beauty,” came the answer. Pichidze and his friend had brought a sum of money with them sufficient to pay for the luxury car.
In the evening of that long June day, as the military people were leaving work, they watched Pichidze with undisguised envy, moving slowly along the main street (there were only two streets) of the Shikhany-2 settlement. Pichidze was smiling happily, proudly seated behind the wheel of the beautiful new Zhiguli-luxe. There were no such automobiles to be found in the settlement, even belonging to the general himself.
Naturally the general decided to check on why he did not “get” the car first. However, when he phoned the manager of the Kujbishev shop to inquire about it, he was told that he had already sent him the car.
A scandal broke out in Shikhany-2, but no matter how the assistants of the military commander tried, they were not able to find any official fault. All of the sales documents were written up in the name S. Pichidze, and he was legally the owner of the automobile.
At one time there were even so many imported physical chemical instruments in the Military Unit 61469, that they could not all be fully put to use. I won’t hide the fact that the base was in very short supply of detectors, and some equipment was assigned to me out of friendship, essentially to help me fulfill my doctoral dissertation.
The equipment acquired by Pichidze (mostly American), helped elevate the testing on the Polygon to a new level. It became possible to use these instruments to analyze probes of compounds on the test site, which had been practically impossible to analyze before. Even the analyses of probes with phosphoorganic chemical agents were now speeded up by several times, by using the American on-line cholinesterase equipment. This considerably shortened the work that was done by hand, which had required numerous employees.
Rudolph Naberezhnich came with me to Shikhany-2, and like the majority of the people in Department RP at GOSNIIOKhT, he had been one of the longtime regulars, in the department run by Igor Evstafeev. For this reason we were greeted with great good will and a promise to help us in our work.
At that time, there were many obstacles which complicated our testing. All military bases prepared some kind of exhibition and some kind of sanitary cleaning was conducted at the test site on the base, etc. The chief problem, however, was an American satellite which appeared on fixed days of the month to survey the Shikhany Polygon, and naturally, everything had to wait until it cleared out of the observation zone.
Finally, on one day in September, taking all the proper precautionary measures, we put several kilograms of Englin’s substance out on the polygon.
Dressing ourselves in full chemical defense suits with thick rubber gloves and gas masks, we took some of the powdered preparation out of a container and scattered it on an area of a defined size.
We completed all operations according to the instructions for conducting these tests, and were finishing up a ways off from the square, changing into our casual clothes. For some reason I felt I was pulled back closer to the square. I wanted to smell the test preparation. Since I had been developing methods of analyses of different irritants like CS and CR, I had become familiar with some of their functions. This was practically unavoidable since laboratory equipment is very vulnerable and there is no absolute guarantee against leaks of the chemical compounds being tested.
I had not detected any irritating scent on my gloves when I removed them (without my gas mask on), and it was surprising that I did not smell anything on the area closest to the square, where they were still misting the rest of the chemical into the air.
When I went right up to the square, the result was the same. There was no smell, even when I practically inhaled the air right over the preparation. This shook me up, and I asked Rudolph to confirm my discovery. He did the same and satisfied himself that there was no smell.
We were hoodwinked. It was annoying that Englin, Shchekotikhin and the other science bureaucrats had fooled us for so long, subjecting us to insults and all sorts of abuse!
The Deputy Commander of the base, Igor Evstafeev, found out about the results and our experiences from his subordinates, who had been participating in the testing. I think that he was thrilled, because military chemists were always happy when civilian chemists suffered defeat. They believe that only military chemists can do something reasonable in the field of military chemistry.
Soon after this Professor Georgi Sokalski, a retired colonel from the Military Academy of Chemical Defense, replaced Englin, and he was also far removed from the area he had worked in.
I remember how he loved to tell how he had worked as an expert for the Soviet delegation in Geneva, at the negotiations for the Convention for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (CWC). I am not convinced that he was capable of inventing “trouble”, and later he was replaced by Sergey Maleykin, who was considered a long-time favorite of Ivan Martynov, the Director of GOSNIIOKhT.
One of the more talented scientists working at GOSNIIOKhT was undoubtedly Professor Georgi Drozd, a student of Sergey Ivin. Drozd graduated from the Military Academy of Chemical Defense and served in the army for several years before coming to work at GOSNIIOKhT. He quickly defended his masters’ thesis, then his doctoral dissertation in 1972.
As often happens with talented people, the leadership of the institute was not able to find any kind of worthy use for Drozd. It was not profitable for the director of the institute to assign him people and working space for synthesizing new compounds. Georgi was too willful and at times too independent.
I think that to some extent the Deputy Director of the Security Regime, Colonel Sokolov, saved him from his uncertain situation. When a scientist-erudite was needed for the censorship of dissertation work on a subject, in accordance with the system of secrecy symbols (there were three degrees of secrecy), the choice fell to Drozd, who headed up the corresponding commission at the institute.
The symbol of secrecy and the name of the problem that any dissertation deals with, sometimes play a role in its future fate. If the dissertation was written on the topic of “Foliant” (appearing as “F”), then there would be an order for secrecy and instructions for its discussion within a circle of organized specialists. “Foliant” meant the problem of the search for new chemical agents, in accordance with a special directive by resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU.
Even if someone had additional clearance for other secret work, this did not mean that he could be allowed to become familiar with the material of this subject. A special request must be made by the chief of the department or laboratory, and it had to be signed by the Deputy Director of the Security Regime and the director of the institute himself, agreeing that this “person” was permitted to work on the problem at hand. Even within the area of the problem of “Foliant”, there were individual themes that required even more restricted access. All of this was strictly controlled by officers in the First Department, which had corresponding records permitting people access to different themes.
The membership of the Science Council of GOSNIIOKhT that was discussing the theme of “Foliant” was intentionally composed of a narrower group of people than usual. There were even more restrictions in discussing sub-sectional problems of this topic, for example, as in the case of “Novichok” and others.
Only a very few people in the institute had clearance to all information there. Certainly the Director of GOSNIIOKhT and the Deputy Director for the Security Regime had this kind of access. We had 6 deputy directors and as many as 40 chiefs of various laboratories, but almost of all them had only limited access to classified materials, as was needed for their work.
Drozd also played a very central role in helping some people prepare their dissertations. They were officers from the Special Forces of the KGB, who were working to ensure food safety within the Kremlin. He was their scientific leader.
Some of the work carried out under Drozd’s leadership was the research of metabolites (the products of destruction or breakdown) of phosphoorganic chemical agents within living organisms, with the help of “tracer” atoms.
On several occasions, a number his assistants grossly violated the rules of fire protection and prevention. The first time, a fire completely burned up all of the equipment in one of the laboratory rooms. The second time, a short circuit started the fire, and around 800 grams of Substance 33 was “lost”.
This fire started at night, and it was noticed for the first time by passengers on the tramway, which crossed the bridge on the Highway of Enthusiasts, overlooking a good part of the institute’s territory. Passengers from this tram reported the fire to the Moscow City Fire Brigade.
On another day, when I came to work, I saw a security cordon and the institute’s fire brigade at the GLK. My boss Beresnev got permission for me to go into my room and organize an analysis of the water on all the floors, where water had spilled out while the fire was being extinguished. At this time, it became known that during the fire, some part of the total store of Substance 33, which was being stored in the thermostatically controlled flask in the burning room, had either burned up or spilled out.
Luckily, I did not detect any residue of Substance 33 in the water probes. At that time, my ability to determinate properly was not yet particularly high (I had an American chromatograph with a flame-photometric detector), and I did not have enough time to make the preliminary selective concentrations which I had developed.
I do not believe, even up to this time, that Substance 33 was missing from the probe. We had to conclude that during the fire, the chemical agent burned up, evaporated or decomposed completely. Part of the chemical agent must have been carried away in the steam or with the smoke of the fire, into the Moscow air.[31]
In 1981 Drozd was instructed to tackle the problem of creating a binary weapon, and as far as I remember he tried to reproduce the scheme of the American version. Apparently, due to his overly critical opinion of the American invention, he abandoned this idea and went back to his old work of searching for new perspective compounds and the isolation of pure chemical samples.
During the whole time I worked with Drozd at GOSNIIOKhT, we were on friendly terms. He tried to support me in every possible way, though my situation was not simple because of my doctoral dissertation. Georgi agreed right away to help me in a concrete way, whenever I needed his help, for example when I asked him to be my official opponent on my dissertation. He wrote a very good review of my dissertation, and this really helped me with a successful defense.
In 1987, the decision was made to work intensively on binary chemical weapons, and Drozd was entrusted to head up that sector. Drozd took Igor Vasiliev as his assistant, and Drozd had helped him defend his long-suffering thesis, so he could become a Doctor of Chemical Science. So much for gratitude! When Drozd’s department was shaping up quite successfully, Victor Petrunin, the Director of GOSNIIOKhT decided that it would be better if he headed that department himself. So, Vasiliev ran to get under the wing of the Director, betraying his former protector.
When I was arrested and locked up in notorious Lefortovo Prison, Capitan Victor Shkarin, the investigator, showed me the resolution of the Permanent Technical Commission of GOSNIIOKhT.[32] This body decided that the article “A Poisoned Policy”, which was co-authored by Lev Fedorov and me, amounted to the disclosure of state secrets.
At that time though, I was really surprised that the name Drozd was not listed among the members of this commission, who signed the report. He was one of the key figures on this commission. Later I found that he categorically refused to sign this document.
As Drozd was making headway in the development of a new version of Novichok, he became embroiled in a scandal involving improper collaboration with the Syrian government. In 1992, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Vladimir F. Shumeiko and Syrian President Hafez Assad signed a memorandum pledging cooperation to create a “Center for Environmental Protection”. Lieutenant General Anatoly Kuntsevich, the scientific deputy in the Directorate of the Chief of the Chemical Troops, used this agreement as a cover to help the Syrians with their chemical weapons program. Russian President Boris Yeltsin later appointed Kuntsevich to be his point man on chemical and biological disarmament matters, a job that came with the odd title of “Assistant on the Conventional Problems of Chemical and Biological Weapons”. Kuntsevich was well known as a heavy drinker and a man who was looking for any monetary advantage he could find as Russia’s economy hit rock bottom in the early 1990s. The Syrians reportedly asked Russia for certain equipment for an “environmental chemistry laboratory,” such as laboratory hoods, compressors, and vacuum machines as well as scientific information about nerve agents.
At Kuntsevich’s request, Drozd was defining the physico-chemical characteristics of soman and sarin so that this data could be shared with the Syrians. This activity would have brought in badly needed funds for GOSNIIOKhT, if not for Drozd himself. Victor Polyakov, Petrunin’s first deputy, pulled the plug on this illicit collaboration by accusing Drozd of stashing a few hundred kilograms of dichloranhydride of methylphosphonic acid, a key precursor for sarin, soman, and Substance 33 that is prohibited from export, amidst boxes of equipment bound for Syria. Even Drozd’s former wife, who was a pilot plant engineer, told the KGB he was culpable.
I know that equipment was being shipped, but I do not know whether Drozd was involved in smuggling this key precursor chemical. Anyone could have dipped into the unguarded tank car that usually sat on the grounds of GOSNIIOKhT. It contained several tons of dichloranhydride of methylphosphonic acid, made at Shikhany. As a result of the investigation, GOSNIIOKhT fired Drozd in 1993 and Kuntsevich got the axe in 1994, for “mismanagement.”[33] In 2001, the Russian authorities dropped all these allegations because of lack of evidence.
Another remarkable scientist from GOSNIIOKhT was Professor Andrei Tomilov. His laboratory was working with the electro-synthesis of organic compounds. In addition to the technological process for manufacturing pinacolyl alcohol, which is a necessary precursor for soman production, Tomilov successfully developed the original methods for producing tetraethyl lead, adipodinitrile, and others. Tomilov was awarded with the Lenin prize for his work on pinacolyl alcohol.[34]
My group worked with this laboratory for a long time, developing different GC analytical methods for them. Tomilov is one of those talented people, fanatically devoted to science. When I met him, I had the impression that he was hardly interested in anything that did not directly concern his research. Kind and well disposed to everyone, he was always ready to help anyone who wanted to contribute to the field of science. Tomilov had always sympathized with me, and I am still grateful to him for his friendly support in helping me prepare and defend my doctoral thesis.
The GOSNIIOKhT directorate always regarded him as some kind of an alien body, mean-spiritedly victimizing him in every possible situation. It seemed that all these little jabs didn’t even touch Tomilov, and he continued his research as if nothing had happened, and was the productive author of numerous monographs and textbooks on the problems of the electrochemical synthesis of organic compounds.
It is not surprising that when it became necessary, Andrei Petrovich created an original method for the electrochemical synthesis of highly pure arsenic from arsenic oxides, the products of the alkaline hydrolysis of lewisite.
A New Class of Chemical Agents “Novichok” and Binary Weapons
From 1971 to 1973, Petr Kirpichev, a senior scientist from the Shikhany branch of GOSNIIOKhT, and his assistants developed a new class of chemical agents which later became known as Novichok agents, and all problems connected with them received this codename. The word “Novichok” translates as “newcomer”. At first, Substance A-230 was synthesized and tested, which stands for
F /CH3-P=O \ N=C(CH3)-N(C2H5)2or N-2-diethylaminomethylacetoamidido-methylphosphonofluoridate (Codename A-230 or Substance 84). For the first time, the acetoamydin-radical (C2H5)2N-C(CH3)=N- (creating P-N–bound) was introduced into the molecular skeleton of sarin or soman, instead of the O-alkyl radical. This was fantastic from standpoint of military chemists, because the toxicity of the new substance was up to 5-8 times higher than was the toxicity of Substance 33. The result depended on whether the skin-resorptive or the intravenous test was used.
According to senior engineer Vladimir Uglev, who was the assistant of Kirpichev, the long time military chemists in Military Unit 61469 didn’t believe it. They only started to take this agent more seriously when they conducted their own laboratory tests with animals. Old jealousies didn’t allow them to recognize the importance of this discovery. However, Director Ivan Martynov immediately sensed the perspectives of this agent and took measures to support Kirpichev’s work, showing his personal interest. With his persistency he prompted the Central Committee of CPSU to take a decision to promote such agents.[35]
This work was granted top priority and a few people were given clearance to become familiarized with it. This of course didn’t stop the military specialists from trying in every possible way to compromise it or break it. Things became more complicated in the winter of 1977 when they found that this agent was crystallizing in containers at temperatures below -10 Celsius. The problem was solved by adding some N,N-dimethylformamid to the pure agent. Even though this agent was diluted a bit by this solvent, its toxicity was extremely high, and GOSNIIOKhT tried to push it through the standard military field tests, with the goals of developing the technology of its production and getting it formally accepted as a chemical agent of Soviet Army.
Petr Kirpichev’s group then synthesized and tested analogs of agent A-230:
F DCH3O-P=O Agent A-232 \ N=C(CH3)-N(C2H5)2 F DC2H5O-P=O Agent A-234 \ N=C(CH3)-N(C2H5)2 The agent A-232 has the same toxicity as Substance 33, though it is much more volatile than Substance 33 and agent A-230. Its stability against moisture is lower than both these agents. Kirpichev synthesized and tested the ethoxy-analog of agent A-234 and ultra highly toxic solid derivatives of agent A-230 and A-232 where the amidin radical was replaced by a guanidine radical. Their codenames are A-242 and A-262, respectively:
F DCH3-P=O Agent A-242 \ N=C-N(R)2, where R – diethyl radical \ N(R)2 F DCH3O-P=O Agent A-262 \ N=C-N(R)2, where R – diethyl radical \ N(R)2At this point jealous Director Martynov decided that enough was enough, and he deprived Petr Kirpichev of the authorship for agent A-232. At that time Petr had to send all materials directly to GOSNIIOKhT, without leaving any copies in the local secret archives or library, so Martynov and his crooks did what they wanted with them. Superman Martynov “presented” this agent to his son Boris Martynov, who had already become chief of Gladshtein’s former laboratory. Boris was dreaming about his PhD. Up to that time Ivan Martynov was a Corresponding member of Academy of Sciences of the USSR, and Victor Petrunin the new director of GOSNIIOKhT was keeping an eye on him, hoping that his former boss would help him also become a member of Academy.
For that reason Director Victor Petrunin became enraged in 1987, when Petr Kirpichev had the audacity to submit his proposal about his doctoral dissertation, based on his work to the Science Council at GOSNIIOKhT. Petrunin told him that no single person in Russia would allow him to write such a secret dissertation. (This was a pure lie). “You’d better ask for my advice first” concluded the director. Ironically, this was Kirpichev’s ultimate reward by his country, for inventing a principal new class of chemical agents. Not one of the so called leading scientists of GOSNIIOKhT raised his voice in support of this really talented scientist.
It wasn’t a matter of dissidence or politics which could endanger their lives. This was a clear demonstration of the real moral cores of these people. They were interested only in their own careers and nothing more. To tell the truth, practically all of them were no longer real scientists. They were simply survivors.
At this time I met Petr near my office in the corridor of 6th floor of the Administrative Building, when he came out of meeting with Petrunin. He told me that he was officially pressured to give up his authorship in favor of Martynov’s son but he had refused. This was followed by Petrunin’s tirade. Petr was smoking cigarette after cigarette and said: “They are miserable people! They think that a PhD is the ultimate goal of life. They do not understand that there is also human pride and honor. I cannot sell my honor for a PhD.”
Theft of professional work by a person or group of people was not entirely uncommon and sometimes routine behind the scenes maneuvers were going on between GOSNIIOKhT and UNKhV.
In the late 1970s, in order move the effort forward, GOSNIIOKhT Director Grigory Patrushev established an interagency commission to oversee the final medical-biological and laboratory tests of A-230. In addition to GOSNIIOKhT personnel, officials from the Directorate of the Chief of Chemical Troops, the Military Academy of Chemical Defense, and Military Unit 61469 observed these tests, which were conducted in the fall of 1981. I was working in the Physical Chemistry Department at that time. Samples were delivered from the test chambers to my laboratory, where I used GC methods to analyze the laboratory tests which explored the fundamental properties of A-230. I did the same type of analysis for the animal testing of A-230. These observers were literally breathing down my neck as I processed the samples through my equipment and calculated the concentration of A-230 present in each sample. The test results showed that A-230 was 5 to 8 times more lethal than Substance 33 and would be an effective chemical agent.
All signs pointed to a success in the making until the initial field tests of A-230 were conducted at Nukus in Kara-Kalpakia, Uzbekistan, since they were not so impressive.[36] At that point, a decision was made to conduct field tests on A-230 under joint GOSNIIOKhT-Army supervision. A special laboratory headed by Yevgeni Bogomazov[37] from Department RP was created to perform GC analysis of the field test samples. The analysis was done at Nukus, running between 300 and 500 samples over the period of a few days. Some of my laboratory assistants participated in this work, and one of my graduate students, Valerij Djuzhev-Maltsev, developed the GC method of analysis that was employed.
The results were so good that the military dropped their objections. Bogomazov also staged a round of live agent field tests with A-230 at Nukus in 1986 and 1987 using bombs and rockets.[38] The successful completion of these tests led to two important events. The first was a victory celebration at a 1987 party meeting in our institute. There, Director Victor Petrunin announced that GOSNIIOKhT had achieved the type of sensational accomplishment that only happened once every forty years, namely the discovery of an entirely new weapon, A-230. The second hallmark event came with the Soviet Army’s official approval in 1990 of A-230 as an agent that could be used in all types of munitions. After that, the production of experimental quantities of agent A-230 began at GOSNIIOKhT’s Volsk and Volgograd branches, and plans were drawn up for the full-scale production of A-230. Designs were prepared, and the ground was cleared for construction to begin on a huge new chemical weapons production factory in Pavlodar, Kazakhstan. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the funding for a dedicated A-230 production facility evaporated, and Kazakhstan became an independent nation.[39]
Since my graduate students and I had developed the GC analysis, my graduate students were also involved with conducting the toxicity and medical biological tests at both locations. Our analytical methods were also employed during the field tests of A-232 at the Shikhany test site. Though the A-232 research was by no means a central focus of my research at that time, I occasionally saw reports that kept me abreast of this agent’s development. A-232 was developed and tested in parallel with, though a little later than, A-230.
Chemical agent A-232’s major advantages were its ability to withstand cold temperatures and its ability to circumvent the list of chemical agents to be controlled by forthcoming Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). According to the projected list of controlled chemical agents and precursors listed in the schedules of the CWC, there were no agents or precursors included which were from class of phosphates with the CH3-O-P – radical, because the majority of agricultural phosphoorganic chemicals (such as pesticides and herbicides) have this radical. Known phosphoorganic chemical agents are phosphonates (with the CH3-P radical). Since agents A-232 and A-234 were phosphates, they were ideal agents for concealing and cheating the inspectors supervising the implementation of and compliance with the CWC.
In order to accomplish the field testing at Nukus, GOSNIIOKhT constructed pilot plants which made hundreds of kilograms of A-232 for testing. GOSNIIOKhT’s Volsk and Volgograd branches performed the scale-up of the production technology and made “experimental” quantities “a few tons” of this agent. Field testing for agent A-232 was just as successful as it was for agent A-230, and the Soviet Army also approved it as a warfare agent.
It was impossible for the Soviet military-chemical complex to hold out against the temptation to create a binary weapon on the basis of agent A-232. Luckily for them, the theme of “Khoryok” was a proper fit for the realization of their dreams.
To that end, an independent scientific sector was organized in 1987, headed up by Dr. Igor Vasiliev, under the direct supervision of Director Petrunin. The basic model of the reaction between cyanide of methoxyflurophosphonic acid and amidin was chosen:
F DCH3O-P=O + H-N=C(CH3)-N(C2H5)2’ \ CN F D CH3O-P=O / N=C(CH3)-N(C2H5)2Certainly there were many unresolved problems connected with the choice of temperature, the rate of supply of reagents, the mixing regime, the choice of promoters of the reaction and the chemicals for the elimination of hydrocyanide as a by-product of reaction, etc.
Everything was rolling along very well, until a disastrous accident occurred, which delayed development of this version of Soviet binary weapon almost for one full year. During laboratory experiments, part of a rubber tube, through which exhaust gases of the reaction were traveling from the reactor to the on-line IR-spectrometer, ruptured and began leaking poisonous agent A-232 into the laboratory air. This happened right next to the hood where my good friend and research engineer Andrei Zheleznyakov was working. Andrei started to feel dizzy, and he immediately reported to Vasiliev that he was experiencing blurred vision consistent with chemical poisoning. However, Vasiliev couldn’t find a better solution than offering him a glass of alcohol. Andrei collapsed next to the Metro station when he left GOSNIIOKhT. He was taken to Skilofosovskaya Emergency Hospital where the doctors had no idea how to treat him.[40]
When the KGB started prosecuting me, Andrei was the first to support me. His interviews with the Baltimore Sun and the Russian magazine Novoe Vremya were critical in helping the world learn about the Novichok binaries. We never saw each other again after I was jailed in Lefortovo, but we often spoke on the phone, which we both knew was bugged by the KGB. Andrei was a jovial fellow, a good scientist and an extremely talented wood carver. Before the laboratory accident, a few prominent artists invited him to work in their studios, but the poisoning robbed Andrei of his concentration, his regular job, and his creativity. Journalists who regularly approached him for interviews treated him with indifference, and Andrei gradually stopped communicating. Andrei Zheleznyakov was an honest and thoroughly decent person. It was tragic that he lost his life to the very weapon he helped to create and revealed to the world. Most of those who knew of his poisoning never did anything to help save his life.
Though this accident delayed the completion of the binary weapons project on the basis of agent A-232, it didn’t stop it entirely. This theme showed so much potential that the Central Committee of Soviet Union under its First Secretary, future Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mikhail Gorbachev, and the Council of Ministers of the USSR secretly issued a formal resolution[41] for the implementation of the project. Gorbachev signed this document almost immediately after the US and USSR governments signed the Wyoming Memorandum, a special “memorandum of understanding” about chemical disarmament,[42] on September 23 1989.
Despite of all the complications caused by the Democratic Movement in Russia and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the military-chemical complex of Russia still managed to accomplish its mission and successfully test a binary chemical weapon based on deceitful agent A-232.
A Successful Binary Weapon Based on Substance 33
The prominent Engineering Department of GOSNIIOKhT was an important place for the development of CW production technology. The main tasks of this department were to maximize the automation of the production of chemical agents and to research and test equipment in order to regulate the technological process. This included the automation of the sampling process and the analysis of probe samples which were collected. I collaborated extensively with the associated lab department on this job, and I often took business trips with the employees I worked with. I worked with Leonid Vishnevski, who was head of the laboratory in 1967, on introducing chromatographic methods of analysis to the Kazan plant “Orgsynthesis”, which produced ethylene oxide.
This department was very strong throughout. I think that the well-known scientist and professor Nikolai Bogatkov-Korsakov was to a large extent responsible for this.
Unfortunately, he had a very erratic and independent nature, often clashing with Director Ivan V. Martynov. In 1975, Martynov responded to this behavior with a hotly worded statement, and he fired Professor Bogatkov-Korsakov with great pleasure. In his place, Martynov inserted Henri Kazhdan, who was the son in law of the aforementioned Aleksander Smirnov, chief of the Chemistry Department of the Central Committee of the CPSU.
I remember him only for two scandals, one which almost landed him in criminal court for stealing equipment from the institute.
As a member of the Soviet ruling elite, Kazhdan had access to closed stores with fine imported goods. He decided to grab the attention of the women in his department with the direct delivery of bras and panties, which were in short supply then. He carried all of this across the carefully guarded checkpoint of the institute in his briefcase. Departmental and laboratory heads, who had special permission from the Deputy Director of the Security Regime, could carry their briefcases through the checkpoints at the guard station without being searched.
Apparently, someone who was not happy with Henri reported his activities to the special bodies at the institute, and one day his briefcase was searched without ceremony. Inside they discovered a quantity of women’s panties and bras, but the strong backbone of this supplier of women’s underwear helped him remain in his post without any consequences.
Another scandal developed after the death of his high-ranking father in law, and that time he had some real problems. Kazhdan had a perfectly equipped workshop with good lathes and metal fitting and tooling equipment, and he secretly organized the production of precision miniature woodworking machines, which surpassed even the well known Japanese ones in quality.
It’s not clear to me if he sold them or was getting ready to sell them, but apparently Henri presented some of them to Deputy Director of Science Guskov, to Professor Kurochkin, and others. Workers from his department wrote a series of complaints, and the wheels of justice began to turn. The experienced investigator obtained a confession from Henri, but the case which was brought by the special prosecutor was dropped and did not go to court, because further development of his case would have threatened the regime of secrecy. In all fairness, I must say that these crazy activities of the department chairman did not have much of an impact on the work of the department. He had very good executives and laboratory chiefs, and many experienced and gifted people were working with them, including Natalia Godzhello, Vladimir Goncharov and Mark Stepanski.
Natalia Godzhello (who had a M.S. in Chemical Science) was a veteran in the field of research and production of chemical agents in the U.S.S.R. We lived in the same neighborhood, and she remained my friend, even during the time of my persecution by the KGB. This challenge provoked a reaction by the investigators and the Director of GOSNIIOKhT, in spite of the fact that Godzhello had already retired with a pension at this time. She was summoned to give testimony about my case to the KGB. I learned from our conversations that Godzhello came from a family of chemical engineers, who ran one of the first CW test sites for the Red Army in Kuzminki (this is now a densely populated region of Moscow.)
Her family lived close to this site where CW were tested, and sometimes destroyed. This Polygon continued to operate there until 1960, when its ownership was transferred to Shikhany from TSNIVTI. Godzhello graduated from the Chemistry Department of Moscow State University (MGU) before World War I, and was sent to work at the plant in Chapaevsk, which produced mustard gas and lewisite. After a period of time working there, Natalia Mikhailovna was sent by her boss, against her wishes, to work in the Technical Production Department, where she only had to deal with documentation. Quite possibly this saved her life.
The organized technological production of chemical agents was terrible from the standpoint of technical safety. In Natalia’s own words, faces and hands were burned in the mustard gas-producing section. When workers removed their gas masks or gloves, their skin was burned by mustard gas vapors. Also, they unfortunately did not know that the mustard gas vapor in the air percolated through rubber. When the artillery shells were missing some mustard gas and needed topping off, it was customary to refill them from a tea kettle.
There were many victims in such a system. The number of catastrophes multiplied during the war years when work on CW production was intensified, though the technology and the low level of safety standards remained unchanged. In order to make up for the shortage of workers in the plant, they once brought in soldiers from Uzbekistan. Those soldiers had no idea whatsoever about chemical technology, and they were completely unsuitable for work in the factory. Since their only experience was in their kishlaks (small villages in Central Asia), almost all of them without exception became victims of this horrible production process.
Finally Moscow was forced to respond in some way, so they sent a commission to investigate, which was chaired by the Deputy Minister of Chemical Industry, according to Natalia. As usual, they adopted some organizational measures to bring about changes to the leadership. However, they could not bring about the essential changes needed.
Another large laboratory existed in GOSNIIOKhT for the development of the production technology of tearing agents (lachrymators), which was headed up for a long time by Arkady Gribov (M.S. in Chemical Science), who later replaced Sergei Smirnov. I collaborated with this laboratory during almost all of the 26 years I worked at GOSNIIOKhT.
I worked with my assistants Boris Dubin and Olga Golubeva, developing methods for the determination of micro-concentrations of the agents CS and CR in different media. This included analysis of the air and water that had supplied the start-up of the corresponding experimental pilot plants for the production of these agents. We also researched methods of analysis of the precursors of the developed irritants.
Gribov was a good organizer and distinguished himself by his purposefulness, though apparently he was not a researcher in the full sense of the word. He was able to use the specialties of his subordinates to his advantage. Among them, Sergei Smirnov undoubtedly excelled. He specialized in working out the technology of the nitrile derivatives of a series of organic compounds. He started with the development of the technology of obtaining an allyl cyanide monomer for producing highly stable rubber. Later, he successful developed the technology for producing malonodinitrile, one of the principal precursors of ortho-chlorbenzyledene-malonodinitrile, which is known as the chemical agent CS.
A pilot plant for researching the technical production of CS operated on the institute territory for 5 years. Later an analogous pilot plant was opened at the Volsk branch of GOSNIIOKhT. In spite of huge efforts they made there, the technology for producing malonodinitrile was mastered only with great difficulty.
The year 1978 came and the time for the start-up of a large-scale division for the production of agent CS was approaching in earnest, at the Novocheboksary chemical complex. A quantity of malonodinitrile was necessary for this, but it had not been produced by the branch. I believe the reasons for this were the inadequate qualifications of the plant personnel and the absence of appropriate equipment. Though the matter of ortho-chlorbenzaldehyde and other precursors of agent CS was temporarily resolved by purchasing French chemicals through Turkey, the problem of malonodinitrile hung in the air.
Victor Petrunin was the director of this branch at the time, and he resolved the problem quite simply. Petrunin ordered all research labs to stop their activities for several months, and all scientists were ordered to synthesize the ill-fated precursor in glass retorts. Considering the availability of cheap human labor, such a “solution” was not original, though it was effective. When the time came for the start up the Novocheboksary plant, the malonodinitrile supply was ready.
Just a year earlier, the division for producing agent CS had been set up in a local chemical plant in Slavgorod. I was not able to participate in this opening, because I became ill in December of 1976. I had to give away my plane ticket, so my assistants Yuri Bugrov and Boris Dubin went there to introduce the methods and analytical procedures that were needed. Unfortunately, even though I had an official release from a doctor, the director of GOSNIIOKhT, my immediate supervisor Aleksei Beresnev and the aforementioned Sergei Smirnov considered that my illness was not sufficient reason for my refusal to go on this trip. I was given an “official reprimand”.
I participated fully in the start-up of the Novocheboksary pilot plant, and my GC method of determination of micro-concentrations of agent CS in the air (at the minimum permissible level of concentration) was adopted, practically unaltered. The reason for this was that the other method proposed by Brovkin’s laboratory was extremely unselective and disorienting. However, the successful introduction of my methods required a stable working GC with an electron-capturing detector.
Up to this time, the domestically produced Tsvet-100 chromatograph had proven to be a pretty good piece of equipment, but it was running in a very unstable way, with its sensitivity constantly changing. Through my work experience at GOSNIIOKhT, I already knew that this task could only be resolved with the help of an American Varian 1800 chromatograph. So, I ordered this instrument for the job, and I defended my choice, in spite of strong pressure from Guskov and the Volgograd institute “Giprosynthesis”, which was designing the pilot plant. They worked in every possible way to dissuade me from my proposal, arguing for a long time that I should use only “domestically produced equipment for the defense industry”. I would have been happy to comply, if I had not known about the unstable characteristics of domestic equipment. I insisted on my own way in this case, since I was the author of the procedures. I had the exclusive right to guarantee the trustworthiness of the analysis only with the equipment that I had chosen.
Leonid Kostikin, Deputy Director for Science and Igor Gabov, Deputy Chairman of Main Administration “Soyuzorgsynthesis” of the Ministry of Chemical Industry ran the pilot plant start-up. My American instrument could not be reproached for the way it worked, and we had practically no problems with the analyses of the air probes. Air was sampled from the room where we worked and also from under the roof of the plant.
It was impossible to avoid heated arguments about the concentrations of air that was analyzed. Generally, the results showed us that the concentration of agent CS in the work room exceeded the limit of permissible concentrations (LPC). The boss did not agree with this. However, when we discovered a substantial concentration in the corridor leading from his laboratory in the plant, he was very displeased. This was because these rooms were considered to be located outside the range of the agent’s influence. “This cannot be!” exclaimed my opponent.
Such obstructionism was already familiar to me, because I had already collided forcefully with the chief engineer of the experimental plant at GOSNIIOKhT, Victor Zhakov, during the testing of the technology of agent CS production. The levels in the workroom at that time frequently exceeded the LPC. Zhakov was more than happy to try to discredit my methods of analysis, but it turned out that he was a bit ignorant about the adsorption basics.
He tried to compromise my procedures (which the workers were using to check the air) by ordering that the air sampling be taken after a day had passed during which the ventilation in the workroom had been shut down. At this point, we made a surprising discovery: the concentration of agent CS in the still air without ventilation was greater than it was on working days with the ventilation running. This result was simple to explain. Once it had adsorbed on the surfaces in the room – the walls, the equipment and so forth – the irritant, which had a relatively low volatility, was then slowly desorbing. Naturally during intensive ventilation, the concentration of agent CS was diluted by a large volume of air. This concentration of CS was less than that which came from the relatively low volume of practically static air. We were even successful in modeling this phenomenon on the lab bench, demonstrating that our explanation was correct.
Surprisingly, when we made our methods and procedures for analysis of the air more accurate, the ill-will of the top leadership became stronger. This reminds me of an incident connected with the discussion in a section of the Science Council of my patent claim on the GC method of determination of micro-concentrations of agent CS in the air.
At this meeting, Deputy Director Guskov unexpectedly came out against my invention. Without having any knowledge of the essence of the problem, he peremptorily declared that my proposal for concentrating the adsorbent, using small glass beads, could not work because the vapor of CS could not adsorb. I repeatedly had proven the validity of my proposal with positive experimental results. The Deputy Director used his great power, and I found myself in a very delicate situation. However, without any fear, I decided to defend my invention and brought forth a brief report about the basics of the dynamics of adsorption.
After this, the section defended my proposal in an open vote, and a year later I received a patent on my invention. All my documents, including the actual patent carried the code “Top secret”, “Series F”.
According to U.S.S.R. patent law at that time, the inventor was supposed to be rewarded for his method of analysis. The size of the remuneration was calculated by a complicated method, with numerous correction factors, and was fixed by a special commission. The author of the patent had to demonstrate the validity of the correction factors to this commission, and naturally this is where all the battles developed. Usually the author valued his work on a high level according to the scale of factors, while the rank and file of the science commission, most of whom had never invented anything in their entire lives, often envied the success of the author and came out against him.
In the end, everyone had to compromise and the remuneration was fixed, but it didn’t end there. The commission’s decision had to be approved by the First Deputy Director, who signed the financial documents. Here he was guided by his own considerations which were clear only to him, and by the amount of money which came in yearly from the Ministry of Chemical Industry specifically for inventions and proposals and for improving production.
After I received an award for the appropriate sum by the commission, I set out for Guskov’s office. I was surprised that he approved the commission’s decision without any discussion. Now and then you can misunderstand someone you already considered in a negative way. How can you so simply judge someone after that?
In Novocheboksary, we were able to demonstrate experimentally that the poisoning of the corridor was caused by the transport of agent CS on the clothing of people who were working in gas masks in the reaction chamber area, where the concentrations of the agent were extremely high.
My work experience at Post Office Box 4019 on the production of poisonous boranes helped me resolve this complicated problem. We had discovered traces of CS in the snow on the roof of the plant, and also on the ground close to the plant. It was said that complete isolation of the production of chemical agents from the environment was practically an impossible task.
Unfortunately, I must say, that Sergei Smirnov, who was the author of the technology in the plant in Novocheboksary, was most memorable for his negative character traits, such as the tendency to inform on his colleagues for no reason at all. (This was not his worst feature.) Practically no one was really sure that he was not exaggerating a hundredfold when he was informing. His allegations could be brought to a higher boss, or even the Deputy Director of the Security Regime.
Even now, I do not understand why he did this, because he was successful enough and even a talented scientist. Maybe such a character flaw is a sign of some kind of mental illness. Though he was able to act like this with impunity among his scientific colleagues, this practice caused him to be fired from a new position he had been promoted to, the chief of an important scientific-technical department. In his new department, practically each scientist had his own direct access to the top leadership, including the special service of the KGB, so Smirnov simply could not stand up to the competition. Still, he was quite effective in his role in developing the pilot plant for malonodinitrile production in Polotsk, Belarus.
For a long time, a special department, the Department of Ammunition Development, known as “RP”, existed in GOSNIIOKhT, and it worked with radiation chemistry and the processing of radioactive waste. It allegedly turned out to be at odds with the principal themes of the institute, but its chief, Nikolai Bogdanov, was a scientist who enjoyed the support of some well known atomic physicists. This practically guaranteed autonomy for his department. He even went to the appropriate international conferences on his own initiative. For us this was a stunning development.
We were baffled by the report that not long before this, Bogdanov had been employed as a military representative of UNKhV at the Volgograd CW pilot plant. Then retired Colonel Bogdanov became a Lenin Prize laureate for the development and introduction of the methods of vitrification (encasing radioactive material in borosilicate glass for storage) into industry.
Two scientists who had worked with Bogdanov for a long time, Oleg Plyushch and Victor Dmitriev (each who had a M.S. in Technical Science), told me how the recipient of such a prestigious prize accomplished this. Scientists from the “RP” Department and their boss were engaged in a collaborative effort with the enterprises of Minatom (Ministry of Atomic Energy) stationed in the Urals. On one of their business trip to the atomic enterprise, the locals told the Muscovites about their research, which could not be realized. Sneaky Bogdanov understood right away that a big catch could be made there, so he offered his help in getting the Lenin Prize for this work, in exchange for listing him among the researchers of the method. Nothing could be done, but to agree to such a “business proposition”. Thanks to his connections, the Lenin Prize was not a very difficult achievement for Bogdanov. That is how the former military representative became a famous scientist.
After Bogdanov’s sudden death in 1973, Director Martynov secured the breakup of the department. It was transformed into a new department, with a theme that was unfamiliar up to that time, the development of field testing for perspective chemical agents and the conducting of these tests. I think that this was a reasonable step to take, since GOSNIIOKhT depended completely on the military for this important business. Since the military had a monopoly on the situation in those days, they could easily fake the test results, at their discretion. Maybe this didn’t happen frequently, but let’s just say that scientists at the institute who had participated in field-testing, had confirmed such incidents. The former Deputy Director, Mikhail Kulikov, who had been supervising matters connected with the development of the GOSNIIOKhT branches, was appointed the head of the new “RP” department.
In his previous office, Kulikov had excelled in his very original style of leadership and administration of the branch offices. For example, one of his favorite activities when he was visiting the Volsk branch was to lead the scientists in a fire drill. He declared an alarm in all the offices and settlements where the workers lived, and all day people stopped work for a “fire drill”.
During the time of World War II, Kulikov had been a deputy director and the chief engineer of an experimental plant. He loved to tell the circle of people accompanying him on business trips stories about his life, which was rich with events.
“You know, I even cheated Beria,” he began his story. This episode was connected with his institute’s fulfillment of an important government job, that of researching the organic glass for the armored canopies of airplanes. The canopy produced at the technological institute proved to not be durable and the bullets of German fighters easily pierced it.
One day it was reported that the KGB Chief Marshal, Laverentii Beria, was coming to the institute for “discussions” with the leadership there. An order was given for all samples of aircraft canopies, including American and German ones, to be placed in a special location.
On the appointed day, Beria arrived at the institute and arranged for the testing of these canopies. On the Marshal’s order, an officer accompanying him pulled his pistol out of his holster and began to shoot at each of the samples displayed. The German and American samples remained undamaged, but ours were riddled with bullet holes throughout. “How much time do you need to correct your defective product?” the KGB Chief asked in a threatening manner.
Kulikov answered that the institute would rectify the situation in half a year. “I will be here exactly three months from now,” announced Beria. It was clear to everyone what the inevitable consequences of the follow-up visit would be: everyone who had any relationship to those who were responsible for this problem would be shot.
It was also clear at that time that any kind of serious study of the problem could hardly succeed in three months. Kulikov decided to gain some time in order to survive, and he took a desperate step. Indeed Beria arrived at the institute exactly on the day promised and dispatched the glass to the location known on the map from the first testing, and the test was repeated. The results this time were amazing: all samples, including the ones made by the institute were bulletproof.
Beria showed no outward reaction and only asked in a somewhat softened tone “How much time do you need to begin the production of these samples in the factory?” Kulikov answered that six months was sufficient for this. He was given a period of 4 months, and everyone felt that the threat had passed. No one would be shot for carrying out their job.
Still, none of those present, including the high-ranking bosses from the Ministry, failed to guess how Kulikov had “corrected” the situation. He simply set up an American glass sample for the test, after having removed all its trademarks. Later on this business became much easier. Quickly a regular supply of American glass was established, on the scale needed for aircraft construction. The production of durable bulletproof glass was achieved in a Soviet factory, but only after a year had passed. Meanwhile, Kulikov’s wits saved his life and the lives of many “responsible” people.
In fairness to Kulikov, I must note that he found the people necessary in a short period of time to organize the work in his department. His most important decision in the beginning was to invite Professor Mikhael Baranaev, a strong specialist in CW applications, from the Military Academy of Chemical Defense, to head up the conversion training.
Baranaev was a general who was notable for his in-depth studies of the mass transfer process of chemicals in the atmosphere, under the influence of different factors. Over a period of 30 years he developed mathematical methods of modeling these processes. I repeatedly used his equations and formulas for measuring the concentrations of vapors of chemical agents, after injecting them into air flowing at different speeds, with different temperatures and humidity. There were no cases in which my experimental results did not agree with the theoretical figures obtained by Baranaev’s methods.
General Baranaev was wonderfully modest and accessible. He could explain practically all difficulties, which arose in the course of physical chemical research. A legend grew up around him in the 1930s, when the slightest suspicions of political unreliability from anywhere caused senior scientists to be exiled. Baranaev did not hide the fact that he believed in God and continued to attend church. Probably, Baranaev’s brilliant talent and his idealistic “head in the clouds” character, forced his boss to protect him in every possible way, since he really was indispensable.
Unfortunately Kulikov was not always so lucky in his selection of employees. One example was the case of Victor Promonenkov, who was appointed chief of the Laboratory for Field Testing. Promonenkov had no understanding whatsoever of the sector of work he was in charge of, having worked on CW synthesis his entire working career, and he compromised GOSNIIOKhT considerably with his incompetence. Perhaps his only positive contribution, from my point of view, was his research work on the synthesis of the cyan ethers of methylphosphonic acid, which was accomplished in the laboratory of Sergei Ivin.
Ivin patronized Promonenkov, since he had married his niece. Later, Promonenkov was transferred to the All-Union Science Research for the Chemical Defense of Plants (VNIISKhZR), as a deputy to the “talented” director Kondratiev, who was mentioned before. There he organized a new secret department on the problem of “FT”, which was connected with research on the chemical defoliation of trees, along the lines of the American defoliant “agent orange”, which was used to destroy the forest in Vietnam.[43]
I remember Promonenkov as someone who could easily promise unattainable results for his projects, and he was someone who could easily pass himself off as a specialist in any area of chemistry.
When Promonenkov left GOSNIIOKhT, his post was filled by Gennady Kostenko, a retired colonel and World War II veteran, who was once the chief of a department in Military Unit 61469. Kostenko (who had a M.S. in Technical Science) was a sober realist who kept a healthy supply of self-criticism and some skepticism toward all the branches of military chemistry. He did not hide his nihilism or his cynical outlook towards his own prospects. Honestly, Gennady Ivanovich was the man who compelled me for the first time to take a fresh look at the whole problem of research and testing of chemical agents in the U.S.S.R. and in our complex.
During the course of numerous business trips to the Shikhany test site, we spent a lot of time traveling together on the train to Saratov, and on the steamboat on the Volga River that went to the town of Volsk. Sometimes we traveled on a cutter-launch that had underwater wings. During these trips, Kostenko gradually told me the “secrets” of chemical weapons in the U.S.S.R.
Once, during the summer of 1978 we were traveling on an old steamboat named “Azin” after one of the Civil war heroes. We stood on the top deck, and under the protection of the noise of the paddlewheel and the puffing engine of the steamboat, Gennady Ivanovich patiently explained to me that chemical arms were an absolute anachronism in the military business. He corroborated the “news” I had heard from Drozd, that these arms were not tested in maneuvers by scientists or even by a single military corps. Not a single concrete question of their practical application had been worked out, and you could not even speak about their medical aspects, since there were no specialized doctors or hospitals for curing potential poisoning by chemical agents.
I was shaken up by what I heard, and I asked why all this was being done and why were we wasting vast resources on CW research, testing and production. I was curious to know if the highest ranking military people in the U.S.S.R. knew about this. “Of course they know, and they hold the military chemists in contempt,” was the answer.
Then he told me how Colonel General Vladimir Pikalov, head of the Chemical Troops, was pestering the Defense Minister asking to award him with the title Marshal of the Chemical Troops. The highest officer answered them with a smile and said that he could do that, but “Where are all these chemical troops?” Indeed this prominent military formation actually consists of some numbers of independent chemical battalions and regiments.
“Chemical agents and their problems in the U.S.S.R…. this is a gigantic feeding trough for the military and civilian generals,” concluded Kostenko. Be that as it may, he continued to do his job well. Since Kostenko had a wide network of connections with his former colleagues, he easily settled organizational matters, connected with the typical ordeals that resulted from the regular research at GOSNIIOKhT. Even during the start-up time at Shikhany, he continued to travel there. This was not such a bad place. You could gather mushrooms in nearby fields, or try your luck at fishing on the Volga River.
On one of these furloughs, Gennady Ivanovich injured his hand and the cut became inflamed. He turned to a military hospital known to him from a job in the past at Shikhany, but his appeal was too late and the cure was too unprofessional. The inflammation turned to gangrene and in several days he died.
I worked for a long period of time with Kostenko’s laboratory, developing chromatographic methods of analysis of the samples from the test site. Since the preliminary testing of chemical agents was conducted in the laboratory, my methods were also used in those experiments. I was working closely with Oleg Plyushch, who was one of his deputies and his assistant.
Oleg Pavlovich (who had a M.S. in Chemical Science) was an exceptionally polite and highly cultured man. He was a strong specialist at his job, even though he had been studying issues of radioactive chemistry and the burial of radioactive waste for a long time.
Unfortunately, Oleg, like many talented people, was too principled for his own good at times. He sometimes brought down the fire of envious people on himself, people who were simply untalented and not professional scientists. Once, during a departmental party meeting, he came out against accepting Adolph Zaozerov into the party. Zaozerov was someone who was being promoted intensively by Professor Evgenia Volkova, the head of another laboratory in the department.
Evgenia, being a great lover of art, was charmed by Zaozerov, who was really a wonderful baritone, practically on a professional level. Apparently, the senior scientist’s vocal talent was unequaled, but it was absolutely useless for the leadership of scientists and for the area of work that needed to be developed.
Although Plyushch and several other people were warned in advance about the possible unfavorable consequences of such a hasty step, Zaozerov was accepted into the party and soon became a departmental head. When he finished the energetic reconstruction of his office, the new chief strangely began to force Plyushch out. At the time, I watched more with horror than anything else, how GOSNIIOKhT could drive problematic people out of their positions. There was not one conference, departmental meeting, or meeting in Shchekotikhin’s office, where Plyushch’s name was not mentioned without mocking comments.
Oleg Pavlovich was forced to leave GOSNIIOKhT, because he did not hold up well under such psychological assault. I met him again twelve years later, in 1995, at a conference on ecological problems in the Moscow City Duma. I was very happy to learn that Oleg Pavlovich had successfully defended his doctoral dissertation and had become the director of an important scientific research institute for biological problems of interest to the Ministry of Health. Right away he invited me to come to work for him, promising to give me good terms of employment. Unfortunately, at this time I understood completely that it was unsafe for my children and me to remain in Russia any longer.
Adolph Zaozerov did not put down roots as the new chief of Department “RP”. He was not able to adjust to relations with the military, and he understood very little about the direction which his department must be developed in. Having a handsome appearance and a wonderful vocal gift, he was still very far away from science. His success did not progress further than the reconstruction of his office into a luxury chamber.
In 1984, Zaozerov was replaced by Nikolai Kuznetsov, from the enterprise (NPO) “Basalt” – the leading contractor for scientific manufacturing. Basalt was the main designer in the U.S.S.R. of ammunition that contained chemical agents.
Kuznetsov was invited to work by the former director of GOSNIIOKhT, Patrushev and his deputy Guskov, who intended to give the department a more goal-oriented character. Also, it was nice to have someone who could promote the research of the institute directly to NPO “Basalt”, and have it realized.
The new director, Petrunin, quickly promoted him to his deputy. In 1991 he was sent by GOSNIIOKhT to the Volsk affiliate, to try to work on an old idea that Guskov’s collective had failed to accomplish in 1978. It became Kuznetsov’s contribution to successfully complete the testing of a binary weapon there. He understood that the previous failure with testing the binary variant on the idea of the reaction according to
O-i-C4H9 DCH3-P=O + HS-CH2-CH2-N(C2H5)2 ’ \ CN O-i-C4H9 / CH3-P=O / S-CH2-CH2-N(C2H5)2was due to the fact that they used an aviation bomb which was dropped from a low altitude. There was not enough time for the components of the binary weapon to mix thoroughly.
All that remained was to design a shell, or better yet a rocket, that intensified the mixing process. This is much easier to describe than to accomplish. But, thanks to their connections with military contractors, the Kuibyshevski Special Design Bureau had already completed all of this work by the end of 1990, and positive results followed.
Engineering a binary rocket is a delicate task. The burster charge used to break the barrier separating the two precursor chemicals has to be sufficient to initiate rapid mixing yet not destroy the precursor chemicals or disturb the ballistic trajectory of the rocket. Kuznetsov’s engineers worked to design this mini-reactor in flight, and it underwent preliminary testing at Basalt’s facilities in Samara (formerly known as Kuibyshev). A decision was taken to hold the tests at Nukus instead of Shikhany because prevailing opinion held that the US intelligence community did not know about the Nukus test site. The success of field tests of the Substance 33 binary rocket led the Soviet Army to adopt the first binary device as a chemical weapon in 1990.
The Soviet Army’s approval of the Substance 33 binary weapon triggered efforts to produce these weapons for the Soviet arsenal. Scaled-up studies and pilot plant production took place at Novocheboksary and probably also at Shikhany. In military circles, being able to produce a few grams of an agent was not significant. Waging war required tons of chemical agent, so figuring out how to produce large quantities of a specified agent was a crucial accomplishment. In the case of Substance 33, proving the ability to mass produce this new binary would qualify this agent’s developers to apply for the USSR’s highest awards.
As it turned out, this achievement merited the 1990 Lenin Prize, the Soviet equivalent of the Nobel Prize. Protocols for the Lenin Prize specified that it is awarded only for a great new development and that the Secretary General of the Communist Party approve of each one bestowed.[44] Lenin Prizes are given out personally by the First Secretary of the Central Committee on April 21st, the anniversary of Lenin’s birthday. In 1990, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who in 1987 had told the international community that the Soviet Union was no longer making chemical weapons,[45] signed off on the Lenin Prize given to Petrunin and a host of generals for the Substance 33 binary.[46] According to tradition, GosNIIOKhT also hosted parties celebrating this achievement.
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