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

CHAPTER 9 Fight Without End and Evgeny Bogomazov’s “Discovery”

During my first years at GOSNIIOKhT, I wasn’t completely deprived of contact with my scientific colleagues on the outside, and it was even possible to participate in scientific conferences. I could still publish my articles in scientific journals, but only rarely and with great difficulty. Over the course of time, all of this was systematically blocked in such a way so that there was no longer any opportunity to contact the outside scientific world.

There was the Science Council at the institute, which regularly discussed the topics of both master’s and doctoral theses to be defended there. Soon this area became fully autonomous.

Before 1977, all theses defended at GOSNIIOKhT were sent to the Higher Attestation Commission (VAK) of the Government of the USSR for further approval, but after that an expert commission was created at the institute for considering all theses related to the ‘Foliant’ theme. This made the lives of the candidates for degrees much easier, but it also led to the isolation of all the scientists. The most important part was that it created the possibility to turn “useful” people into scientists, because the number of potential opponents and people making decisions was reduced. Mainly the fate of any thesis was determined in the court of public opinion, which was created by the board of directors and other bosses close to them.

Certainly I was not willing to give up my ambitions of a career as a scientist, and I tried my best to achieve that. The topic of my scientific research was related to the development of chromatographic methods for the determination of small concentrations of chemical agents and their precursors in different media. The methods I developed could be used both for chemical agents and for ordinary compounds. This comforted me to a great extent, because I could consider myself a researcher who was solving problems of general scientific importance. I was tormented by great doubts about the utility of all our work, after conversations with my friends Kostenko, Drozd, and other military specialists, so I tried to solve principle problems.

Prior to my research at GOSNIIOKhT and in the military-chemical complex in general, only the cholinesterase method was used for the determination of concentrations of phosphoorganic chemical agents (POCA). This method was based on using a biochemical substrate, extracted from horse’s blood. The horses they used for this were raised in special conditions, making sure that their feed was free of any traces of pesticides. This method was considered universal and was officially used to estimate concentrations of POCA everywhere throughout the military-chemical complex. Nevertheless, even though the method was very sensitive, it was not at all selective. The presence of many pesticides and other chemicals in the samples led to gross errors in the results of the analyses.

I worked with my assistants, Tamara Beregova and Valery Djuzhev-Maltsev, to develop a whole group of chromatographic methods for the determination of low concentrations of POCA. These methods could completely replace the old cholinesterase method, as they were selective and provided objective analytical data. They also cut the cost of the analysis by a factor of ten. At the same time, we developed chromatographic methods for the analysis of micro-concentrations of CS (ortho-chlorbenzyledene-dimalononitrile) and CR (dibenz-b,f-oxidiazepine) in different media.

Eventually, my boss began to interpret my success in his own funny way. He believed it posed a threat to his own status and became very unfriendly towards me. I must say that administrative work never did attract me. It only distracts scientists from their real work – the business of doing science, and it wastes a lot of time with numerous meetings and conferences.

Certainly I did everything I could to make my attitude toward becoming a boss and a bureaucrat clear to everybody. But there was a glitch I hadn’t anticipated.

The board of directors of the institute drew up a secret list of all the potential candidates for replacing department heads, just in case they retired. Beresnev told me that he accidentally found out that I was on this list, as a possible candidate. This also came as a surprise to me, but I considered this list to be a pure formality. I did not pay much attention to it, and I did not even try to put my boss’s mind at ease.

But I should have! After that day I became an unwelcome rival in his eyes, and he openly started to show his disapproval of me in every possible situation. His hostile attitude manifested itself in the worst way possible. It became very difficult for my graduate students to defend their theses.

The Higher Attestation Commission had ground rules that governed the thesis process, along every step of the way. First, every thesis was discussed at the leading laboratory in the specialty area involved, before it was defended at the Science Council. The head of that laboratory had to familiarize himself with the thesis in advance and then make a decision to call an expanded seminar, in which the thesis was discussed. If he decided not to call for that seminar, it would block the progression of the thesis. He also completely controlled the list of people who had the right to participate in this expanded scientific seminar. Then a resolution was passed at the end of the seminar, regarding the compliance of the thesis with the requirements formulated by the Higher Attestation Commission.

This is where my boss created obstacles in every possible case, showing all of his punitive knowledge. Beresnev was a veteran, the former lieutenant of a special “barragefire” detachment, during World War II.

His unit had a very special job. Their orders were to wait well behind the front line, and if our troops were forced to retreat, their job was to shoot them. There was no limit to his resourcefulness at blocking us, but at the end of the day we managed to overcome all his obstacles, though only through a great waste of time and effort. Still, I found it was much easier to support and intercede for others, even if they were my students, than to get help for myself.

Our boss was also battling against my colleague and our senior researcher Igor Revelsky and his graduate students in the same way. Fortunately, Beresnev’s scientific ability was not held in high esteem, and GOSNIIOKhT scientists did not support him. Their presence at the expanded seminars, somewhat curbed our boss’ irrepressible fantasies.

It was clear that some KGB people supported Beresnev, and we were even sure that Director Patrushev was rather afraid of him.

My graduate student, V.L. Djuzhev-Maltsev was defending his thesis at the Science Council in 1979, and despite Beresnev’s attempts to obstruct the process, Djuzhev-Maltsev’s defense was rather successful. He answered all the questions thoroughly, showing deep knowledge of the problem. He had good references and recommendations from different institutes and organizations within the military-chemical complex concerning the work he had done and how useful it was. All the scientists who spoke afterwards unanimously approved of the thesis.

Then the time came for the secret voting. According to the Higher Attestation Commission rules, there had to be a quorum (minimum number of the Science Council members present). Although the number of members had exceeded the quorum at the beginning of the session, one person was missing when the voting time came. Deputy Director of Science Guskov, who was also a Science Council member, was urgently called to the Ministry during this session.

Normally, when someone left the Science Council, they signed a register to get a ballot, recorded their vote and put it into the ballot box. And this is exactly how everything was done in this case. But the chairman of the Science Council and director of the institute Patrushev knew what my boss was capable of, so he decided to wait for his deputy to return in order to repeat the whole procedure. When I asked him about it, he dryly reminded me that I knew very well why it was necessary.

After the lunch break, we had to wait three more hours and then repeat everything. Although all the members of the Science Council voted positively, everyone had a nasty aftertaste from this compulsory procedure.

I wrote my doctoral thesis in 1975 with great difficulty, having practically no time for that. In order to do it, I had to stay overtime in a special room of the First Department at GOSNIIOKhT practically every evening and write my thesis. I also understood that I had no chance of breaking through the barricade created by my boss. Still, I always wanted to do my best, and I decided to see it through to the end. I was also inspired by Revelsky’s successful defense of his doctoral thesis in 1974. Revelsky succeeded because of his good relations with military specialists and influential people on the Board of Directors, who had arranged for a preliminary discussion of his thesis in the expanded seminar, in the absence of our boss. At the end of the day, Beresnev just refused to go there, and the defense was a success as expected.

Soon after that Beresnev called me to his room, and he asked me in all seriousness, if he could become a candidate for a doctoral degree in chromatography. I answered that he could not, because he was not a specialist in the field.

In this way, I burned my last bridges behind me. The former “barrage fire detachment” lieutenant informed me that this time he wouldn’t repeat the mistake he had made in Revelsky’s case.

Indeed, he was very inventive. He organized my work in such a way that it yielded only practical results, without any detailed research. I had to do the theoretical part of my work covertly. Like all the other groups, we worked according to approved annual and quarterly plans, so it wasn’t that difficult to conceal additional research. When our boss asked a question “What are you doing?” each of my research assistants answered monotonically: “We are developing this analytical procedure.”

We had a difficult time though with internal publications, that is with writing reports on our additional research. The boss simply turned them down. No secret document was supposed to be published at the institute’s typing bureau without his permission. Sometimes we succeeded in doing that anyway, but our boss did everything he could to correct these “blunders.” He had a strong ally, Leonid Kostikin, the Deputy Director for Science who helped him with that.

Kostikin was a consummate Soviet bureaucrat, who saw everything through the prism of “self-serving”. To the end he was extremely slippery and unscrupulous. Following the principle “birds of feather flock together,” he quickly found a common language with Beresnev and became the next (and the worst) supervisor of the Analytical Department.

One day he called me in with Beresnev and declared that on the recommendation of my boss, he couldn’t approve a large scientific report of mine. The reason was that my work was outside the scope of the laboratory’s annual plan.

At that moment, I was overcome by a bold desire to disgrace this schemer. I put on an innocent face, and asked him if he had any other objections to my report, possibly connected with insufficient research work that had been done. Or could it be that the material was badly presented or carelessly arranged?

“What are you talking about, Vil Sultanovich? There are no remarks like that and there is no way there can be any, because everything is great in that respect,” exclaimed Kostikin. “The only problem is that I can’t let the report, which contains subject matter that is different from that of your department, pass to the scientific and technical library”, he added in an apologizing tone.

“Well, if my report had been stipulated in the annual plan, would you have submitted it?” I asked, pretending to be a babe in the woods.

“Without any doubt,” the deputy stated categorically.

“Can you give me your word on that?” I urged him on.

“If you want to, of course, I can,” he agreed in a patronizing manner.

“Then could you please give the order to have the laboratory’s annual plan brought here from storage in the First Department,” I insisted.

To my astonishment, Kostikin immediately called the Scientific and Technical Department (NTO) at the institute and asked them to send over the plan. A few minutes later, the supervisor of our NTO Department, Antonina Vitchenko, brought the department’s file, with the required documents. Immediately I found a clause in the plan, which spelled out this topic for future work in black and white, with a remark attached that it should be completed by submitting a scientific and technical report.

A profound silence set into the office. A few minutes passed, and Kostikin’s face dissolved into a foolish smile. He was at his wit’s end, and had no idea what to do next.

“Leonid Ivanovich. You know, a few years ago Vil Sultanovich was planning on leaving the party,” the lieutenant of the “barrage fire detachment” said, rushing to his buddy’s aid. Kostikin forgot to wipe the stupid smile from his face and tried to feign indignation, “You don’t say so! Really?”

It is true that I was suffering deeply from discontent, in 1973, both with my “discovery” that people’s money was being squandered on our activities, and with the general situation in the country. Political persecutions were becoming rampant. Once we were celebrating someone’s successful defense of their thesis in a restaurant, and I mentioned that I wanted to drop out of the party. But it went no further than that, as I decided against this desperate move.

Of course, Beresnev’s remark was not by chance, though I was sure that a serious investigation of any charges based on a conversation in a restaurant was not in the best interests of the institute’s top management.

“Exposing” a dissident at an institute like GOSNIIOKhT would damage the reputation of the director and other “responsible” people. That is why I indignantly asked to continue this conversation at a Party Committee meeting. No, Kostikin didn’t want that! Immediately he found a way out, and suggested that my report should be submitted to our secret library, without his or my boss’s signature.

“If you don’t agree to that, I will immediately call Leonid Aleksandrovich Sokolov (Deputy Director for the Security Regime) and ask him to destroy the report,” he added. There was nothing left, but to agree.

Beresnev also invented a fail-proof system for not letting me defend my own thesis. According to the regulations of the Higher Attestation Commission, candidates for both doctoral and master’s of science degrees were required to have positive references, signed by the institute’s power triangle – the director, the chairman of the trade union committee, and the secretary of the Party Committee. Also, in order to receive these recommendations, each candidate had to get signatures of the corresponding people at his or her departmental level. This could only be done when the applicant had no administrative or party reprimands.

They started hanging these reprimands on me for every possible reason. For example, my junior assistant Boris Dubin once went to join the civilian militia squad after work. He got drunk, and got into a fight with someone.

“Vil Mirzayanov is to blame,” they decided at the departmental party meeting, on the recommendation of its head, Beresnev. I received a party reprimand “for poor emphasis on personal upbringing”. Consequently, I could receive no positive character references during the half year period after that.

The reprimands continued for the next five years, until one day I publicly announced that I never, under any circumstances, intended to defend any thesis. It seemed to me that this slightly placated my tormenter. However, just to make sure that I had given up on this idea completely, he decided to deprive me of my group and all my equipment.

This is when I unexpectedly received support from two people who had long sympathized with me, Professor Semeyon Dubov, the head of the Physical Chemistry Department, and Professor Vladimir Kurochkin, the head of the laboratory within Dubov’s department.

Dubov graduated from Moscow State University, and before the war began he was sent to one of defense plants producing tetraethyl lead, a highly poisonous compound which increases the quality of gasoline. Professor Dubov didn’t like to talk about that terrible plant. People often died there from poisoning, and the number of deaths was comparable to casualties on the battlefront.

Thanks to his good health and more than a bit of luck, Dubov survived in that Hell. When he returned to Moscow, he started working in the military-chemical complex. In the early 1950s, when Jews were persecuted in the USSR, Dubov had to go to Dzerzhinsk and work at the branch there of Post Office Box 702 (GOSNIIOKhT).

In the early 1960s, he was allowed to return to work at the headquarters in Moscow, where he soon became head of the Physical Chemistry Department.

I believe that Professor Dubov, like no one else, was the right person for his job –the head of a scientific division. Amazingly lively and in good shape with handsome features, he was always polite and attentive. He quickly won the sympathy of anyone he was talking with. Although sometimes Dubov could get carried away by some unrealistic ideas, he was very pragmatic for the most part, and always very careful.

Once he confessed to me that sometimes he was mainly concerned with running the trade union, party, and numerous other meetings for our team. These meetings were considered important elements of the so called “personal upbringing work”, which was used as a tool to dupe the entire population of our country, in the spirit of totalitarianism.

“While I’ve been working at GOSNIIOKhT,” Dubov continued, “I’ve never heard that anyone was punished for negligence or any shortcomings in scientific research, but a lot of people were punished for underestimating personal upbringing within the team.”

Since Dubov was a good organizer, he quickly attracted many talented young scientists, and made sure his department was supplied with modern scientific equipment. He created a notable team of scientists with the widest possible variety of interests, given the situation at that time. There was not one area of physical-chemical research that did not fall within the domain of his department’s development. They conducted fundamental research on the newly synthesized compounds, using methods of nuclear magnetic resonance and electromagnetic resonance, infrared and ultra-violet spectroscopy, X-ray structural analysis, mass spectroscopy, and chromatomass-spectroscopy. They studied the kinetics of reactions between physiologically active compounds and biochemical substrates, and the methods of quantum chemistry were applied to develop the preliminary forecasting of perspective chemical compounds. The results of these studies were applied to different works, on a modern level. Since there was such a wide range of research, they had to divide up the responsibilities of the team leaders and more than 160 people who worked under them.

Professor Dubov asked Vladimir Kurochkin to be his aide. Kurochkin came to GOSNIIOKhT from the Science Research Institute at the General Intelligence Directorate (GRU) of the Soviet Army. In early 1960s, this institute was reorganized and many employees from there came to work at GOSNIIOKhT.

When the war began, Kurochkin volunteered to go to the front, where he was badly wounded. I accidentally learned that he had received a lot of awards, which were evidence of his bravery on the battlefront. Kurochkin was gentle by nature, always friendly and quite talented. When he was talking with someone, he quickly grasped the essence of any problem, and did everything he could to make sure that person he was conversing with felt comfortable, and did not fear being misunderstood. He had excellent skills as an organizer but, he was also a man of his times. He didn’t mind wasting his time and energy at the endless meetings of the Party Committee, the trade union committee, and the board of directors of the institute. Kurochkin understood that if he avoided these meetings, he wouldn’t be able to provide his team with state-of-the-art equipment, to raise their wages, or to promote talented young people. Dubov and Kurochkin made a good partnership, campaigning for the development of the Physical Chemistry Department.

At first Director Patrushev ignored my requests and wouldn’t let me move to another laboratory. However, Kurochkin’s diplomatic talents worked wonders and the issue of my transfer was settled quickly. Of course, there were good reasons for that. Shortly before my arrival at the Physical Chemistry Department, a senior staff scientist there, Yevgeny Bogomazov, began research aimed at identifying chemical agents which could break through the filter of a gas-mask.

Bogomazov was a graduate of and then a candidate for a master’s degree at the Military Academy of Chemical Defense (MACD).[47] He had just completed his dissertation work in General Mikhael Dubinin’s department, and his topic was developing GC methods for evaluating gas-mask reliability. Yevgeny was a typical product of his military educational establishment.

I hope that many of my good friends will forgive me for saying this, but I think that the majority of the MACD graduates are notable for their adventurous and easy approach to all types of problem solving. However, when they use this approach for solving scientific problems, the matter often goes belly-up. Most of them force their way into key positions using all their efforts, and they have no scruples, using people, using bootlicking, hypocrisy and betrayal of their former friends, to achieve their goals. My words may seem harsh and judgmental, but my encounters with people from the MACD have brought me to this sad conclusion. I would advise everyone who has anything to do with MACD graduates (with a few exceptions) to check all of their proposals and research results ten times over, before accepting them as truth.

I don’t mean to imply by this description that Yevgeny Bogomazov did not have any talent. Mostly he excelled in his self-aggrandizement, which tainted everything he did. After Bogomazov received his master’s degree, he got a job in Englin’s laboratory, but he saw no career prospects there, so he quickly moved on to the Physical Chemistry Department.

In a short time, Bogomazov managed to captivate the head of the department with his ideas. Very soon, Bogomazov and two of his junior colleagues, Dmitri Zalepugin and Aleksander Dmitriev[48] (both MACD graduates), made a discovery that all the military chemists of the world could only dream of.

They discovered that the thionic analogs of soman and sarin, CH₃P=S(F)-OR, where R is the alcoxy radical – could break through an army gas-mask filter. Then these compounds, which have a comparatively low toxicity, would turn back into their oxygen analogs, CH3P=O(F)-OR (chemical agents) once they had passed through the filter.

Additionally, according to their results, the same was true for the thionic analog of the neopentyl ether of methylfluorophosphonic acid. The oxygen analog of this ether has toxic features identical to soman. That was a sensational discovery, but it could not be trumpeted to the public – to the deep regret of ambitious Bogomazov. Naturally, Bogomazov’s discovery was immediately reported to the headquarters of the Chemical Troops at the Ministry of Defense, and the Central Committee of the CPSU. In the eyes of those organizations, Bogomazov became one of the leading scientists, a man who made a revolution in military science.

With his usual grandeur, he returned to his research, and decided to attract large-scale resources to his discovery. A number of GOSNIIOKhT’s subdivisions began working under his scientific leadership.

A special group was organized under the supervision of Aleksander Yakovlev at the Engineering Department, to develop an automated device for the analysis of the adsorption properties of the newly synthesized compounds. According to the project, these new compounds should be brought on line by two groups of chemists who were specializing in synthesizing compounds.

Also, the Physical Chemistry Department started a broad-based study for the deeper understanding of the adsorption processes, which caused the breakthrough of chemical agents mentioned above.

A young graduate student, Aleksander Klochkov, from the X-ray Structure Analysis Group headed by Doctor of Chemistry Efim Galperin, began working on his masters’ thesis about the adsorption properties of the thionic analogs. Another graduate student from the group for determining physical-chemical constants, Valery Belikov, discovered that there was a great difference between the compounds that broke through the filter and those compounds which irreversibly adsorbed to the filter, in terms of the thermal effects on adsorption.

A real scientific fever was ignited, which also caused some new discoveries to be made. For example, one of Dubov’s favorite graduate students, Aleksander Tarasov, invented an inhibitor, which blocked the spontaneous ignition of the thionic analogs in the air. Tarasov also found the optimal concentration for the inhibitor, which secured retention of the so-called field or combat concentration of chemical agents in the air. However, everything was being done very incorrectly, because analyses of the mixtures were faulty.

The overwhelming power of the secret regime allows scientific schemers to work miracles, and to pay no attention whatsoever to any analysis. So, Tarasov successfully defended his thesis for his master’s degree before the Science Council.

I learned about all this work only two years after it began, when I transferred into the Physical Chemistry Department, to further research the adsorption processes connected with the breakthrough. True, I had seen Bogomazov before I came to the department. Several of my friends had pointed out a tall and heavy young blond man with blue eyes and a plump white face, and whispered in my ear that he was the author of a stupendous discovery.

Following GOSNIIOKhT’s principle: never ask about things that do not directly concern you, I did not ask anything about the nature of Bogomazov’s discovery then.

After so many years of frustration connected with my doctoral thesis, and simply longing for a team of true scientists, which I believed the Physical Chemistry Department to be, I came to Dubov’s office. Kurochkin and Bogomazov were also present.

Dubov, as head of the department, briefly told me about the importance of Bogomazov’s project, not only for the institute, but also for the “Foliant” program. Overall, my task was to provide compelling theoretical scientific grounds for Bogomazov’s discovery. I believe it was probably some kind of “landscaping job”, to give such a magnificent discovery additional grandeur.

Of course I was literally shaken when I heard about Bogomazov’s research results for the first time. His discovery would render any person helpless – whether he was a soldier or an innocent civilian. Being sensitive by nature, I was tormented at that moment by the vision of children meeting their painful deaths in gas masks, which became absolutely useless against a chemical weapons attack, thanks to Bogomazov’s discovery.

We discussed the details of my transfer into the department, and talked about my American instruments, which Dubov had managed to wangle away from Beresnev for my work. We also talked about the possibility that I would finally be able to defend my doctoral thesis, but I could not recover from the shock of what I had heard.

Sometime later, I went to lunch with the young genius and some of his colleagues, and I couldn’t help asking Yevgeny how he felt about it. What if his discovery was ever used against peaceful civilians?

He replied he realized that he might be prosecuted by an international tribunal, as the Nazi war criminals at the Nuremberg trials had been. However, he said, he was only a scientist who had had a great bit of luck. I noticed an undisguised smugness and some kind of bragging on his plump face, probably caused by the presence of Galina Beletskaya, a pretty young laboratory assistant.

By that time, I had almost grown accustomed to shocking talk in some of the seminars run by my colleagues. For example, if they described the lethal properties of some newly synthesized compound as LD 50 (50-percent lethal intravenous dose), that meant that no less than 50 percent of the laboratory animals had to die during tests. I saw rabbits in their agonizing death throes in the test chambers at Department MB. Even after all of that, this young man’s obvious cynicism truly stunned me. I understood at once that we would never be on good terms.

However, despite my feelings and my private suffering over this, I had to do the work that I was assigned. I almost never had any assistants in my new department, so I had to do absolutely everything with my own hands. That was according to the wishes of the young genius. Certainly, that meant a lot of routine and unskilled work, but I didn’t have any choice. I patiently set up my chromatographs and assembled an experimental dynamic set for adsorption analysis.

By the winter of 1982, I already completely understood the uselessness of chemical weapons for our national defense. Even worse, I was convinced that they were directed at the helpless civilian population in the first place. I knew from the press that there were ongoing discussions and negotiations in Geneva for a treaty that would ban the development and production of chemical weapons. But wasn’t it strange that the new project we were developing would mean a new and dramatic turn for the worse in the chemical weapons race?

Since our military-chemical complex had big plans for developing new methods of breaking through the gas-mask filter, a special interdepartmental council was created for discussions and for coordinating the research related to that. Academician Lieutenant General Ivan Knunyants, a well-known military chemist, was appointed the head of this group.

Once I happened to be present at one of the meetings of that council. I was listening to the reports and papers delivered that morning, and I realized that they weren’t up to the job. They seemed like a bunch of dilettantes. I told Bogomazov about my misgivings, and as a result they stopped inviting me to the meetings.

While I was busy setting up my equipment, I was able to observe Bogomazov’s colleagues at work. Zalepugin and Dmitriev toiled selflessly, testing everything new and every new chemical compound that came in from the synthesis laboratories.

Soon they discovered that the selenium analogs of soman and sarin, synthesized by Dr. Evgeni Greenshtein’s group, could also break through the gas-mask filter. It looked like we would soon be able to meet the demand of the Directorate of the Chief of the Chemical Troops (UNKhV) to reduce the initial concentrations of aerosolized chemical agents to less than a few hundredths of a milligram per liter of air. For some reason the military authorities were stuck on the idea that this concentration of chemical agents would be economically “efficient” for killing soldiers on the battlefield, and those in the command stations and gas-protection chambers.

Meanwhile, I began modeling all the stages of the experiment to study the “breakthrough” effect, as Bogomazov had requested. From my previous experience, I knew only too well that technologists often underestimate the importance of choosing the right analytical method, and of using highly skilled personnel for tests. I decided to look into the analytical process control in much more detail.

At first glance, it looked like everything was being done well enough. Gas samples were taken from the adsorption tube outlet that modeled a gas-mask filter, with a special gas-tight syringe. Then, the samples were analyzed in a Tsvet-100 chromatograph with a flame-ionization detector. There was an instrument that recorded the chromatograms, and the results showed a number of so-called peaks corresponding to different compounds. The distance of the interval from the start point of the chromatogram to the peak is a characteristic parameter of each compound. So once you have measured this interval for each compound (in its pure form or mixed with an inert gas), it can be used for the identification of peaks in chromatograms of unknown mixtures, in order to determine the composition of the mixture.

This is the theory and it’s a good one, but in practice everything is much more complicated. Very often a sample contains some additional compounds, which can give the same or nearly identical peak intervals in the chromatogram. When a chromatographic analysis is being conducted using a nonselective flame-ionization detector, the probability of error is rather high, due to several overlapping chromatographic peaks of the organic compounds. It should be said that really experienced specialists almost never used these intervals, because the recorders couldn’t move the paper tape at a constant rate. Instead, real specialists used a stop-watch to time the emerging chromatographic peaks (measurement was taken at the maximum value), and they got much more precise and reliable measurements. Modern devices now take highly precise measurements automatically, with the help of computers.

Once I suggested to Aleksander Dmitriev that we use a stop-watch during the experiments. The first result showed chromatograms with registered peak times for various samples of soman. Then, for comparison, we took the same measurements on the same chromatogram using a mixture of inert nitrogen and the thionic analog of soman.

It turned out that the peak time of the compound emerging from the dynamic adsorption set, which Sasha believed to be the peak of the thionic analog, did not coincide with the peak of the same analog in nitrogen. The difference was very significant and it left no doubt that these peaks belonged to different organic molecules.

It quickly became clear to me that we were dealing with a fundamental error. However, my discovery didn’t make any impression on the MACD graduate, because he was coached to trust only his boss.

I didn’t know whether or not he reported our results to his scientific boss, but I was preparing to analyze the same samples in a Perkin Elmer GC with a flame photometric detector. Deep down inside, I was already sure that all those folks who had made this sensational discovery were in for a huge disappointment. Even though this could adversely affect my career and complicate my doctoral dissertation work, I was thrilled to realize that this terrible menace to people was not real.

On the outside, it seemed that nothing had happened. I continued preparing my experiments and began my own research in the comparative analysis of the kinetics of the adsorption of chemical agents on active carbon and other adsorbents used for concentrating admixtures and the necessary follow-up, along with further chromatographic analysis. Additionally, I was studying the kinetic performance of the catalytic adsorbents used in modern gas masks.

I worked practically alone (only rarely did Bogomazov give me a laboratory assistant for help), and I got tired of the long drawn-out experiments in which I had to take gas samples every 5 minutes and analyze them over a 3-4 hour period. However, some kind of inspiration was pushing me forward and I was getting a lot of satisfaction from my work. I obtained unique data that allowed me to understand what processes were taking place in the concentrating columns and to choose the right adsorbent for them.

The research on the kinetic performance of gas-mask filters also produced very interesting results. For the first time ever, we obtained adsorption fronts for chemical agents on the gas masks used by the Soviet Army.

During the course of that research, I developed a series of methods for concentrating small quantities of chemical agents in the air and in liquids. My developments were registered and I received patents for them.

By that time, I understood that I would not be able to defend my doctoral thesis as it was. I would have to revise and rewrite it. I knew that would be tremendous work, but I was not afraid of it. I began writing my thesis again – at home, in my apartment. For that purpose, I invented a special system of codes for all the chemical agents mentioned in the work. That way, the theoretical calculations, diagrams, and charts did not contain any secret information, and I did not violate confidentiality. I could write late at night and on my days off, without running to the institute’s First Department for special permits to work at GOSNIIOKhT in the evenings.

It was time for a more thorough examination of the results showing breakthrough for the thionic analogs of soman and sarin.

To the great regret of the authors of the discovery, and to my greatest joy, the analysis of the samples, carried out with the help of my chromatograph with a selective detector, showed no breakthrough effect for a 10 minute period after the air with the chemical agents began flowing through the filter. Repeating the tests always gave the same result.

By the middle of the summer of 1983, Bogomazov finally acknowledged his mistake, but he continued to play the role of a great inventor saying that it was possible there could have been some experimental error in my work. But there was no error.

You had to give Bogomazov credit for his initiative and enterprising abilities. He soon established good relationships with other research institutes that were working on the “Foliant program” and developing individual means of protection.

Along with Bogomazov, I visited the Elektrostal Technological Research Institute (ENITI) for the first time. It was the leading scientific institution that was developing gas masks and filters for military equipment and installations (command posts, air-raid shelters, and so forth).

ENITI’s director, Vladimir Smirnov impressed me favorably with his proficiency in very different areas of the adsorption processes, chromatography, and adsorption material production technology. All the research fellows at ENITI who I later worked with were very well informed. I’m very grateful to them for their help with my research. Although science in Russia is going through very tough times now, I am sure that ENITI will survive and continue doing science, because it makes peaceful products for people’s protection.

In 1985, I asked Smirnov to be one of my official opponents, at the defense of my doctoral thesis, and he agreed at once. He wrote a very favorable review, which played a great part in my successful defense.

Dubov and Bogomazov got out of their thorny situation, by putting a positive spin on the failure of the “breakthrough”. From what I know, they asked the UNKhV to relax the requirements for the initial concentration of chemical agents, and naturally their request was rejected. This made it look as though GOSNIIOKhT had developed a method for breaking through the gas mask filter, but they could not meet the requirements of the capricious military.

In fact, even if the initial concentration of chemical agents had been 10 times higher, it would not have created the required breakthrough effect. But nobody dared to say anything about that. With his usual brilliance, Dubov substantiated the need to expand in-depth research of adsorption of aerosolized chemical agents in the gas-mask filter.

Anyway, that work was not useless or wasted. Many new facts were discovered in the course of the research. In particular, it was discovered that the vapor of chemical agents remains unchanged on an adsorbent catalyst for a long time. I think this is a rather dangerous discovery for reasons of health protection. Somebody might try to develop a method of displacing toxic agents from the adsorptive catalyst and drive them into the lungs. On the other hand, this discovery creates a number of other disturbing questions about how gas masks can possibly be used again after they have been used for filtering contaminated air, for example at a factory for destroying chemical weapons.

What is the legal status of a contaminated gas mask? Can every used mask be regarded as a carrier of potentially hazardous chemical agents, even in small quantities? I am not ruling out the possibility of using gas-mask filters for the purposes of intelligence and industrial espionage.

Under the circumstances, it is interesting that the aforementioned graduate student, Valery Belikov, “discovered” a peculiar thermal effect in activated carbon, which allegedly took place when a chemical agent was breaking through the gas-mask filter. Of course, that was sheer juggling of the data, because, as my experiments convincingly proved, not one of the tested substances could break through the filter. However, none of this bothered Belikov, or prevented him from completing his work and defending his master’s thesis without a trace of embarrassment. I regret that I didn’t dare talk about this openly at the preliminary defense of Belikov’s thesis. At that time, I really did not want to enter into conflict with my new bosses, who certainly knew about everything.

After he received his degree, Belikov joined the Communist Party. He had to wait for his party membership for several years because of the notorious enrollment quotas set by the Central Committee of the CPSU: three workers to one intellectual.

It’s worth mentioning that Belikov was the last secretary of the Party Committee at GOSNIIOKhT. He was elected when the party had already fallen to pieces and only the department heads and Director Petrunin remained. President Yeltsin issued a decree after crushing the coup attempt in August of 1991, and it banned all political parties at enterprises.

Despite all the problems connected with his failed discovery, Bogomazov managed to get the maximum benefit from our collaboration.

Bogomazov was watching me at work with the Varian 3700, an American gas chromatograph, and he noticed that I was using the special tips filled with rubidium sulfate for the thermionic detector very thriftily and carefully. The tips were packaged together with the new chromatograph in small quantities, and when they were used up it was extremely difficult to buy new ones. My friend Sergey Pichidze from Shikhany used to supply me with them occasionally. At that time, however, I only had a very small stock of new ones.

Hard currency at that time was always in short supply in GOSNIIOKhT, and if we ran out of the detector tips, it could have stopped our experiments. Our repeated attempts to refill the used heads by pressing fine rubidium sulfate powder into them did not give us positive results. Maybe we were not persistent enough.

In the early 1980s, the Dzerzhinsk branch of the Special Design Bureau began making rather good gas chromatographs with a wide range of detectors including the one we needed – the thermionic detector with a rubidium sulfate tip. Unfortunately, it was very unstable in work, and its performance was changing all the time, making it practically useless for quantitative analysis of phosphorous-containing compounds.

Once, Bogomazov asked me for a used detector tip, so I gave it to him. I watched as he manipulated the head in some way, with the help of a solution, but I was rather skeptical about his attempts.

The next day, Bogomazov returned the old detector tip to me, but now it was restored and looked like a new one. I was intrigued and both of us stayed to work into the evening to test it out. Our tests showed splendid results. The detector showed a stable zero background and high sensitivity – no worse than the sensitivity guaranteed by Varian. We kept testing the detector for a whole week and results were always good. Our inventor soon restored all of my used detector tips, and solved the problem of purchasing new ones from the American manufacturer.

However, Bogomazov was not content with what had been achieved – his nature longed for grand-scale achievements. On the basis of this success he decided to remodel the thermionic detector of the Tsvet-110 gas chromatograph.

After he had made some changes, the domestic thermionic detector had practically the same sensitivity, selectivity, and stability characteristics as its American counterpart. Bogomazov immediately suggested starting up a plant at GOSNIIOKhT for manufacturing thermionic detectors for sale.

Although Director Patrushev supported Bogomazov’s idea, this plan was never realized. The market for these detectors was very limited, and the artificially low prices for chromatographs, fixed by Price Commission of the U.S.S.R. Council of Ministers, did not allow them to sell detectors at a price that would even cover the costs.

Bogomazov would not have been himself, if he allowed that to stop him. He always tried to get the maximum benefit from all his achievements, although that sometimes brought him bitter disappointment. He realized that he would never make a successful career searching for toxic agents capable of breaching the gas-mask filter, so he decided to switch over to thermionic tips.

At that time, Bogomazov’s stepbrother was the director of a large precious stone factory in Moscow. Leonid Brezhnev’s daughter often visited that factory, and she liked to fill up her handbag with diamond jewelry made there.

Bogomazov made contacts there with some people who provided services to powerful people. In this way, he met the future mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov, who was then the director of the NPO Khimavtomatika. At that time, Luzhkov enjoyed the personal confidence of the Minister of Chemical Industry, Leonid Kostandov, and ran errands for him.

Khimavtomatika also had a section that participated in the Foliant program. In particular, it designed an automatic line for taking samples of Substance 33, and it arranged for their delivery to a laboratory at the chemical plant in Novocheboksary. Luzhkov was Director of Khimavtomatika and in charge of Khimavtomatika’s branch in Dzerzhinsk, so he was directly interested in improving the quality of Tsvet-110 chromatographs.

Evgeni Bogomazov with his innovative ideas came in very handy, and Luzhkov provided him with a laboratory and equipment at Khimavtomatika. Bogomazov began working there without pay, in the evenings and on his days off, mounting thermionic detector tips on new chromatographs.

It wasn’t at all difficult for the MACD graduate to arrange to have the new director of GOSNIIOKhT, Petrunin, visit Khimavtomatika. He went along with Luzhkov and “accidentally” visited the room where Bogomazov and his assistant were working. Luzhkov then told Petrunin about Bogomazov and his achievements, and he added that Bogomazov had to work at Khimavtomatika in the evenings because he probably couldn’t find understanding at GOSNIIOKhT.

Soon after that, Petrunin sent for Bogomazov and appointed him head of a new laboratory for the analysis of field test samples. That was the hour of Bogomazov’s shining glory.

It should be said here that as the head of the field test laboratory, Bogomazov greatly helped GOSNIIOKhT to add a new substance, chemical agent A-230, to the Soviet Army’s chemical warfare arsenal.

Actually, the ongoing tests of A-230 on the new test site in Nukus (in Kara-Kalpakia, Uzbekistan) were not particularly encouraging. Possibly it was because the test site, which was built in 1983, had low-skilled personnel and the set-up and technical support were poor. Or maybe there were some other reasons.

At Nukus, the old cholinesterase method was used, and the faulty analysis it gave could well have been the main cause of failure. However, you can’t exclude the possibility that the military authorities were opposed to promoting A-230 as a chemical agent.

Before that I was already aware of a number of cases in which the military had some field analysis results adjusted downwards. This information came from a number of sources, including GOSNIIOKhT employees.

The situation dramatically improved in 1986, when Bogomazov was appointed Research Director in charge of all testing carried out by GOSNIIOKhT on the Nukus site. At that time he began working there on a regular basis. With his characteristic energy, Bogomazov had the test site provided with all the necessary equipment and instruments. It was staffed with the best specialists in analytical control, who were using chromatography for the analysis of samples on the highest scale. Sometimes the number of samples reached one thousand. The specialists who were sent to work in Nukus from GOSNIIOKhT and its branches saw their salaries raised.

Bogomazov quickly found a common language with the military people, as he had known many of them since his student days at MACD.

Possibly he could manipulate test results himself and adjust them upwards. However, I knew that the fate of the tests would not be decided by Bogomazov’s ability to manipulate the facts, but by more practical considerations. The military-chemical complex was badly in need of a stimulating factor, as Mikhail Gorbachev declared under perestroika.

If some sensational result was achieved by the military-chemical complex, this could engender such a stimulating factor, but that was possible only through close cooperation between civilian and the military leaders of the military-chemical complex.

In 1987, Petrunin announced at a party meeting that GOSNIIOKhT had achieved such a sensational success, one which only could happen once in every 40 years. He said the success could be called ground-breaking without any exaggeration.

At that meeting Bogomazov was sitting solemnly at the presidium, literally shining with happiness. He was so overcome with emotion that he occasionally closed his eyes for a long time. Almost everyone present at the meeting assumed that Petrunin was talking about the successful completion of tests on the new chemical agent A-230.

Still, I think that more than a few of the people present wondered: Why do we need all of that, when our country is suffering from acute shortages and everything is on the slippery slope down to Hell?

My story about Bogomazov would not be complete, if I didn’t tell you about his downfall.

Bogomazov achieved the height of his success in those days, but his active nature would not let him rest on his laurels. Time was working against him at GOSNIIOKhT, and his envious colleagues, and especially his boss Nikolai Kuznetsov, could not bear their lucky colleague’s success any more. Little by little, Bogomazov was pushed away from other promising research projects, in particular from testing the new binary weapons.

At that time, according to the media reports, the first joint ventures with foreign firms began sprouting up in Russia (though more on paper, than in reality). These joint ventures were developing various business projects for environmental protection, analytical instrument making, etc. Bogomazov was getting ready to work for one of them. This time, his vanity defeated him. By believing strongly in his indispensability and his privileged position at GOSNIIOKhT, Bogomazov completely lost his caution and his orientation.

Once, he came to work, and with obvious pride he began showing off his new business ID card written in English. For GOSNIIOKhT, this was like waving a red cape in front of a bull. He was immediately dismissed from his position as the head of the laboratory, and he was demoted to the position of junior researcher.

Humbled and insulted to his core, Bogomazov soon resigned from GOSNIIOKhT altogether and went into private business. According to the rumors, this did not work out either. Finally in 1994, he suffered a stroke and turned into a helpless invalid. At the age of 40-something, he was all alone. Everyone including his wife had deserted him. After a while Bogomazov recovered a little from his stroke, and decided to return to GOSNIIOKhT, but his days there were numbered and he died as a rank and file employee.

Fortunately, my debunking of Bogomazov’s discovery and the disappointment it caused my bosses did not reflect unfavorably on my own work. I continued my research and wrote my doctoral dissertation – “Development and Study of New Methods of Frontal and Elution Chromatography for the Determination of Micro-Concentrations of Chemical Agents.”

By the beginning of 1985, I had submitted my thesis work to the Science Council for defense. Most doctoral candidates have problems choosing official opponents for their theses, due to the limited number of institutions and people that can be asked to review their work, but I did not have any problems with that at all.

Long before Petrunin was appointed Director of GOSNIIOKhT, he agreed to be my official opponent. I think he agreed because he appreciated my work that had benefited the Volsk branch of GOSNIIOKhT, which he headed at that time. I gave all the assistance I could to the branch’s Physical Chemistry Department and acted as a scientific advisor to the graduate students who worked there. Two talented scientists, Valery Djuzhev-Maltsev and Nadezhda Steklenyova, wrote their master’s theses in chemistry under my guidance.

Two other people agreed to be my official opponents, Georgi Drozd and Vladimir Smirnov, and they also gave my work favorable reviews. Additionally, my work was received favorably by a number of interested scientific institutions that I had sent my dissertation and abstract to. Among those organizations was a department of UNKhV.

I successfully defended my dissertation in June of 1985, and all members of the Science Council unanimously voted “in favor” of it. During the defense, only Sheluchenko, made an attempt to question the validity of my results. He made some kind of a statement, saying that the results presented in the dissertation were obtained only from experimental research conducted in the laboratory, while in practice some of them might not be confirmed. Still, he acknowledged that the regularities revealed were of great importance.

Martynov, the former director of GOSNIIOKhT, was sitting in the front row, and he retorted immediately: “It’s great that this work opens up new prospects – as a doctoral thesis should!”

Sheluchenko pulled himself up short, seeing that the seeds of doubt he was trying to sow did not fall on fertile ground as expected. He continued “Despite my remarks, I think that the work meets the demands of a dissertation for a doctoral degree.”

Oh my God! People’s hearts are so mysterious! I still had a vivid recollection of a serious conversation with Martynov in his director’s office, back in 1976. It was immediately following a staff meeting, at which Beresnev blamed Revelsky and me for his own failures in the department, making us the scapegoats responsible. Martynov was infuriated, and after that meeting he openly threatened me with reprisals, saying he could do whatever he wanted with me. He also said then that I would hardly ever be able to defend a doctoral dissertation. After that incident my life became very hard, as Martynov actually gave out carte blanche for any actions against me. I don’t know whether Beresnev was telling the truth when he once confessed to me that if it hadn’t been for my talent and my ability to get results at work, he would have “handled” me as I deserved a long time ago.