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

Prosecutor Pankratov and the Judges

My day in court began on January 24, 1994 at 10.30 A.M. Nobody accompanied me this time, and I reached the courthouse alone. There was a lively group of Russian and foreign correspondents and television reporters milling about outside the courthouse, and my lawyer Asnis was already answering their questions. Valeria Novodvorskaya was there with her lads from the Democratic Union movement. We warmly greeted each other and posed for the photojournalists. I told the reporters that this day was a test for the new Russian Constitution, which had been developed with such difficulty. A great number of people in Russia and the rest of the world placed their hopes on this document.

Two policemen were standing by the doors of the courtroom, and we went inside and took our seats. I sat down on the defendants’ bench and Asnis took a seat in the lawyer’s section, not far from me. The prosecutor’s place was occupied by an elderly man of retirement age, with sparse gray hair, who was missing his left arm. He was dressed in a prosecutor’s uniform, and as you could tell from his medals and ribbons that he was clearly a disabled veteran of the Great Patriotic war (WW II). Soon we heard: “Rise. Court is in order!” Judge Nikolai Sazonov appeared, followed by a light-haired woman, and a tall powerful man, stooped over under the weight of seven thick volumes which he carried under his arm. I was surprised and wondered why there were seven volumes, instead of the five that I had read.

Quickly, I got it. The investigator was trying to make the case seem more weighty and significant, by adding two more volumes. Judge Sazonov proclaimed the opening of the hearing of my criminal case, which would be heard before a judicial panel consisting of Nikolai Sazonov, Valentina V. Laricheva, and Victor G. Yudin, Court Secretary T.V. Pankratova, and with the participation of Prosecutor Leonid S. Pankratov and lawyer Aleksander Ya. Asnis.

When the judge asked if I had any questions or petitions, I stood up and delivered a prepared speech listing my petitions. I declared that the investigation was putting an accusatory spin on my case, and it was obviously biased with the clear goal of putting me – the defendant – in jail at any cost, and in this way frightening possible future opponents of the leaders of the military-chemical complex. Departmental lists of information of state secrecy were being used for that, as well as the so-called List of Major Information of State Secrecy. I added that these are classified documents and were not attached to my case, so my lawyer and I didn’t have any way to dispute them. However, the major point was that these normative acts had not been published. This is a direct violation of the Paragraph 3 of Article 15 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, which gives the precise definition, “Any normative legal acts that touch upon the rights, freedom, and responsibilities of a person and a citizen, cannot be applied unless they have officially been openly published for everybody’s inspection.”

In my first petition I asked the court to recognize these normative acts and the secret lists of state secrecy as null and void on constitutional grounds. Additionally, I asked the court to cancel the closed hearing of my case, because it contradicted Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Articles 9-10 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. My lawyer Alexander Asnis and I filed numerous petitions, including one in which we asked the prosecution to show us the “special purpose program” in the interests of the defense of the country and its results, which I had allegedly disclosed information about. Up to that time, it had not been done, so I asked the court to comply with my second request to show me that program, so that I could finally find out what it was that I had disclosed. Also, since a majority of members of the expert commission formed by “the investigation” were representatives of an interested party, I asked the court to appoint a new, and this time independent, commission.

As a long-time lecturer, I usually tried to observe the reaction of the audience while I was delivering my speech. The face of Judge Sazonov expressed a mixture of deep indifference, along with a dash of undisguised disgust. He obviously thought that I was speaking for the sake of propaganda, like a demagogue who was accustomed to rattling on, no matter who was listening. Judge Yudin tried hard to show the magnanimity and condescension of a prominent individual toward some feeble man. The face of Judge Laricheva openly expressed disapproval, as if she wanted to say, “We’ll see what tune you’ll sing when we throw the whole book at you.” The face of the prosecutor was the most animated one. It clearly expressed exasperation that in this hall of justice, and what was even worse, in his – the prosecutor’s – presence, someone dared to challenge the system, that pursued only one objective, that of protecting his sacred State from criminal actions. “We are the bosses here, and you will be very sorry about your eloquence!” Pankratov’s expression cried out.

The judge gave the floor to my defense attorney. Aleksander Asnis insisted that a new expert commission be appointed because the current one, in his opinion, hadn’t researched the technical aspects of the case. Since the findings of this commission were the basis for the indictment, Asnis asked the court to send the case back to the Attorney General’s Office for additional research. He also submitted a petition to summon General Smirnitsky and Colonel Chugunov as witnesses for the defense.

My lawyer’s speech was precisely well reasoned, with references to various articles of the Russian Criminal and Procedural Code and to explanations and elaborations that we received from the Scientific Research Institute for Legal Expertise, in response to a request from my lawyer.

The judges and the prosecutor listened to Aleksander Asnis’s speech with open scorn, taking advantage of the fact that there were no auditors in the room. However, my lawyer was used to scenes like that, and he wasn’t confused by it. The prosecutor took the floor. In contrast with Asnis’ speech, there was no logic at all in his words. It was perfectly clear that he hadn’t read the case, and he had no clue about the laws protecting state secrecy or the lists of secrets, etc. You can judge for yourself.

“Dear comrades,” began Pankratov. “The main point of the petition of the defendant and his lawyer appears to be a request to return the present criminal case for additional investigation. In the name of evaluating all of the materials of the investigation, they have focused their attention on the findings of the expert commission. They say, this is not good, that is not good. Why isn’t it a subject for discussion?” grumbled the war veteran sullenly as if he were actually quoting us. “The prosecution believes that this is a flawed approach,” he whined. “We are only in the preliminary stage of the trial process. We can’t produce objective evidence. Our task is to evaluate everything in the process.”

In the words of the prosecutor, all our petitions about compliance with principles of constitutionality and about “the experts” were none of my damn business. Then he recited his ritual mantra, which had nothing to do with my case, but which probably had always served him well in the past. “The defendant and the lawyer are ahead of the schedule. We haven’t heard from the expert commission. Have we invited the experts? No, we haven’t. How can we go ahead of the schedule? How can we talk about it?” the prosecutor kept grumbling incoherently. “I don’t see any reasons to claim that the preliminary investigation has violated any fundamental principles of preliminary investigation. Let us go further!” Our arguments didn’t exist for him. “Special purpose programs and Mirzayanov!” the prosecutor was terrified. “This is at least immodest.”

I realized then that a simple loud-mouthed bossy soldier stood before me, poorly educated and, therefore dangerous. Then, he touched upon a subject that was much closer to his heart. This had to do with the numerous correspondents and the public, who had assembled in the hallway in front of the courtroom. He didn’t like that at all. “How can it be possible that they take pictures so freely and without any permission, and they even express their indignation?” questioned the prosecutor. Still, his train of thought was as clear as could be. He presumed and implied that the defendant was obviously under some “alien” influence, if he jabbered on so freely about the Constitution, democracy, and the UN.

That is why Pankratov stubbornly decided to cut short any of Aleksander Asnis’ or my attempts to call into question the actions of the Ministry of Security, the Attorney General’s Office, and the court. “I understand what caused this – in the press, outside in the hall. I observed the press people – democrats who are always going everywhere and looking for violations of the law in the Prosecutor’s Office, in the Ministry of Security, and in the court. Well there are none – period! We are fighting crime and protecting the State.”

Then he started giving out directives, “The President must approve the lists as required by the “law on state secrets.” These are the President’s functions according to the law. He must also determine the list of officials who must think about this. However, I can say that this law practically repeated everything that existed before October of 1992.” These were orders for the judges, so they didn’t have to rack their brains over some questions concerning legality. He finished his incoherent speech with the categorical pronouncement, “Russia exists, not the Soviet Union. The President said that secrets are also important for Russia, as they were for the U.S.S.R. I mean his decree of 1992. So we proceed from that; we dance to that. Not one of the petitions can succeed, except for [the one about] the two witnesses. I don’t see.”

Nothing unexpected took place. Everything was completely familiar, as if I had stood trial and listened to the prosecutor for my whole life. I felt something welling up inside of me, stifling me, and tearing my heart to pieces. The judge announced a recess and we went out into the hallway. A lot of correspondents met us and swamped us with their questions, which my lawyer answered. I had probably spent too much of my energy in the courtroom and couldn’t answer their questions adequately. I was only thinking about how to respond properly to everything that had taken place in the courtroom.

For that reason I wasn’t attentive to the journalists or to Valeria Novodvorskaya, who came up to me. It was a different matter for Asnis who, with his usual merciless and precise manner, was spewing out acid and sarcastic commentary about everything that was going on. However, when Vladimir Uglev appeared in front of me with a pale face, and said in a nervous voice that he was ready to disclose the formulas of the chemical agents A-230 and A-232, if “these beasts” didn’t cancel the trial, I quickly recovered myself. No. I had never disclosed state secrets, and I did my best in every way to avoid being accused of that. Could secret information really be disclosed? No, this was absolutely unacceptable to me. I immediately told Uglev that I would never agree with such an action. From the very beginning I always tried to show that it was possible to talk about the issues without disclosing the essence of the matter. However, I saw that I didn’t convince Uglev. His mind was made up, and so I asked that he not refer to me or involve me in any such actions, not because I was afraid of the consequences, but because in my opinion, it would be a dishonest move, in my efforts to get my point across.[299]

I tried going outside to get a bit of fresh air and privacy, and to think about what I could do that day to stop the tank of the Soviet “justice” system that was about to roll over me. But I heard the voice of the court secretary again, announcing that the break was over and the trial session would resume. As we were entering the courtroom, I heard Valeria Novodvorskaya exclaim, “Look, prosecutor! How many people have you sent to their execution?” Probably this was the most terrible question for prosecutors and she knew it. I was certain that the court would reject all our petitions, and I wasn’t mistaken. Everything played out exactly as the prosecutor expected. The court secretary started reading the indictment in a woeful tone. Although I had studied this document many times before, I heard it quite differently this time, with some threatening intonations.

The prosecutor was perched at his post with an inert expression. From time to time, when he was turning over the pages of my case with his right hand, the empty left sleeve of his service jacket quivered. Judge Nikolai Sazonov personified absolute indifference during the reading. Judge Yudin was attentively reading the newspaper Moscow News with my article. However, Judge Laricheva couldn’t restrain her emotions. From time to time she shook her head, which evidently meant, “Aye, aye, aye! How could he stoop to such a low level in life?” When the indictment had been read, Sazonov announced a lunch break until 2.30 P.M.

There were few people in the hallway outside the courtroom. Almost all the journalists had left, as they no longer expected a sensation. I was asked to give an interview for the Youth Channel radio, and for some foreign newspaper. I talked with the journalists and then went outside with Asnis to see where we could have a bite to eat.

I didn’t really want to eat, so I contented myself with a glass of tomato juice in the nearest grocery store. Suddenly I realized that my decision had crystallized and I would act without hesitation because I had no illusions left. The judges and the prosecutor shouldn’t hope that I would submissively wait for their decision, which they had already prepared ahead of time. I decided that I would not willingly participate in their shameful game, while they demonstratively trampled on the Constitution of the country. In essence, they were criminals themselves if they openly ripped apart the fundamental law of Russia, for which a lot of blood had already been spilled, in Moscow’s streets during the October 1993 events.

I had to put an end to the overt contempt for the law in the courtroom. Sure, the U.S.S.R. Constitution was a demagogic document, and everybody in our country knew that it was all empty words. But now, when we began creating new laws to live by, for life itself, not for propaganda purposes, they were making a scapegoat out of me – a scientist and a confirmed democrat. They used my case to mock everything that I was fighting for, and I could not tolerate that. I had two small sons, and there was no one besides me who could feed them and raise them. When I thought about it, tears welled up in my eyes, and I stopped and tried to calm my disobedient heart which was pounding violently. Still, I managed to keep it all under control and soothe my pain by pressing the little finger on my left hand, as experienced doctors recommended.

I was already calm when I met Asnis, who was hurrying back to the courthouse after his lunch. I thought that he would try to talk me out of my decision, though I would be steadfast. I told him about my decision and added that it was final. Asnis saw that I was really suffering, and he didn’t bother me with any unnecessary questions. He was amazingly sensitive and probably realized that I was adamant. He only told me that he respected my position, although he didn’t share it. He added that of course it was my decision and his duty was to act in accordance with my wishes. I found myself in total solitude. Possibly my decision was a bit crazy. I felt totally detached from the outside world. Fortunately, my strength hadn’t left me, and I even tried to smile when I entered the courtroom.

The judges showed up and returned me to reality. Judge Sazonov asked if anyone had questions regarding the court proceedings, and I stood up and asked to be allowed to make a statement. “Please!” replied Sazonov condescendingly.

I hadn’t prepared a written statement. I decided that I could manage without that. I will remember my brief speech and statement for the rest of my life. I was in total control of myself while I was speaking, and I managed to hold the emotions that were surging inside of me in check. This is what I said:

The expression of Judge Laricheva showed that she was about to explode from the anger that was overwhelming her. The prosecutor was full of hatred towards me. If he could have had his way, he would have had me shot on the spot. Sazonov was unflappable. However, he summoned his strength and asked sarcastically, “Is that all?” I answered that it was. Then he announced that he was cutting short the session and asked me to sign a notice. The secretary immediately filled out the form of the notice and I signed for its receipt.

Everything became very clear. If I didn’t show up for court the next day (on January 25, 1994), then I would be arrested and brought there by force. That is, of course, if I didn’t take off. But such a thought didn’t even occur to me. My statement proved to be a sensation for the journalists. A few of them were still waiting around for the session to finish. They asked me if I knew what the consequences of my decision would be. Asnis was a bit upset, and it seemed to me that he still thought that my non-participation could take a different form. For example, I could simply refuse to answer any questions. No, I was firmly resolved not to come to the courtroom of my own free will, and I told the reporters about it. At home that evening, I answered the telephone calls from journalists of various publications, explaining my position. I stressed that I wasn’t showing disrespect to the court as an institution of justice. My decision was forced upon me, because I had no other means at my disposal to defend myself as a citizen, in facing people who openly flouted the fundamental law of the country – its Constitution. I tried to explain this by referring to the decision of the U.S. judge who had immediately thrown out Dan Ellsberg’s case, when he discovered that the Constitution had been violated. The U.S. judges respect the fundamental law of their country, and so must it be in our country, in Russia, which is building a democratic society.

That evening Asnis called to tell me that a press conference would take place on January 26^th, with our participation in the building that housed the Russian American Information Press-Center on Khlebny Pereulok. I called Nim Naum, the assistant of Aleksei Simonov, who had to be the chairman, to learn the details of the upcoming meeting. I realized that it could be my last meeting with the press, and I decided that I shouldn’t be arrested before that time.

My Second Arrest

I spent that evening and the night at home. On the morning of January 25th I got up early and hurried to the kiosk for the latest newspapers. Unfortunately, I didn’t find any articles in them about the beginning of my trial. However, I found out later that Fred Hiatt had responded to my case with an article in The Washington Post on January 25, 1994.[300] The journalist informed the American public about the beginning of my closed trial and briefly stated the underlying reasons for it, including my claim that the court was violating Russia’s Constitution, by using unpublished and therefore not legally valid laws, to prosecute me. He also said the case had already awakened concern in the U.S. about the regression of democracy in Russia. He told that according to my lawyer, I had refused to answer questions, after the judge rejected my appeal about the court’s violation of the Constitution of Russia. Hiatt said that Prosecutor Leonid Pankratov surprised many people when he appeared in court in a “military-style three-star uniform” and declined to answer reporters’ questions. When human rights activists who waited for him in the hallway of the courthouse asked him questions, Pankratov, according to the journalist, replied, “Get out of my way. Keep your stupidities to yourself.”

Fred Hiatt also reported that members of the US legislature, including Senator Daniel Moynihan and Congressman John Conyers, had appealed to the Clinton administration seeking to raise a discussion of this case in the bilateral negotiations. He reported that my lawyer Aleksander Asnis had stressed that he was refused access to some relevant documents in the case, though he was shown others for only a short time, without being allowed to take notes. “‘This violates Mr. Mirzayanov’s right of defense and significantly impinges on my ability to defend him,’ Asnis said.”

After breakfast I went for a walk near the house with my younger son Sultan. He was a little sick and didn’t go to kindergarten that day. Asnis called and told me about the court session, which had been brief because I hadn’t appeared. The judge passed a resolution requiring me to be brought to the court by force. Then Asnis and I agreed to meet that evening in the legal advice office where he worked.

However, our meeting never took place. Around 5 P.M., when I was getting ready to go meet with my lawyer, the doorbell rang again. I looked through the peephole and saw two OMON (a SWAT-like police squad) officers armed with automatic weapons. The policemen said that they were from Moscow Police Department 139. I opened the door without further question, because the futility of the situation was clear, and I was prepared for this outcome. They entered the apartment and one of those large men said that I should get ready to proceed to the police department, and showed me the order of the Moscow City Court, which said that I should be brought by force to the Courtroom #30 at 10:30 A.M. on January 26, 1994. I started to get dressed, but then my wife Nuria intervened. She demanded to see the paper and exclaimed, “It says here that he should be brought to the courtroom by 10.30 A.M. on January 26, and not to the police department. What is the date today and what time is it now? This is an obvious violation of the order and willfulness!”

Then I also realized that I would have to pass the night in the police department, in some stinking, filthy and overcrowded cage, without food or drinking water. This is why I immediately exclaimed, “Guys! They will expose you and everybody will ask you how legal your actions were. Besides, I doubt you are the ones you pretend to be. Why don’t you have written instructions from your boss?” A shadow of doubt immediately crept into the ruddy, round and mustachioed face of the OMON officer. He went to the telephone in the kitchen, called his boss, and explained our arguments. He also added that I had demanded written orders from the head of the police department. Probably the boss had also started doubting his actions and backed off. The OMON officer nodded to his cohort, “Let’s go!” I got a reprieve to think about the situation that was developing. I realized that I would be arrested in any case. However, I had promised to go to the press conference and I didn’t have the heart to ruin it. I decided to leave the house immediately and go see my lawyer. Everything would become clear after that. Sergei Mostovshchikov colorfully described this in the January 26, 1994 evening edition of the newspaper Izvestia. According to Sergei, the police came to my apartment at 6.15 A.M. and at 8 A.M. the next day, but failed to find me at home.[301]

So I went to the legal advice office at 6 P.M., but Asnis wasn’t there. His secretary asked me to wait. Finally, my lawyer came back at about 7 P.M. and told me the news. First, the court was literally shocked by my decision. Second, Asnis had met with Aleksei Kazannik, the Attorney General, who had warned my lawyer that a meeting of the Attorney General with the defense counselor during the trial was extraordinary. This is why Alexander Asnis asked me to tell no one about this meeting. I kept my word about it for many years. Asnis said that he saw my case on the Attorney General’s desk. Kazannik was concerned about my case, which he hadn’t yet read. He promised to read it quickly in order to be able to say something specific about it.

When Asnis was leaving Kazannik’s office, he saw Prosecutor Pankratov, who in his opinion wasn’t there by chance. All of that was reassuring, but there was nothing specific there to encourage me. I made up my mind to be firm and consistent with my decision. I had to act in such a way so as not to disgrace myself, but to intensify pressure on the powers that be of this world, in order to have my case thrown out. Asnis asked me to reconsider and think everything over again. However, I had made my decision and I wasn’t going to deviate from my course. We agreed to meet at the press conference, if I hadn’t yet been arrested by that time.

Then I called my daughter Elena from the law office, and said that I would go to her place, which was on Leninski Prospect, and spend the night in her apartment. Just in case, I gave her phone number to my lawyer, so that he could give it to any interested journalists and other people I knew well. Of course I knew that the office telephone was tapped by the Chekists, but I was sure that they would cooperate with the local police only in exceptional cases – for instance in an escape attempt or something like that.

Early the next morning reporters started calling and asking for interviews, and soon some of them showed up at my daughter’s apartment. The American journalist Kathleen Hunt asked how I was feeling before being arrested. I said that it reminded me of the wait before a surgical procedure.

I went to Khlebny Pereulok with my son-in-law, businessman Oleg Orlov and his two sturdy associates. We had to be very vigilant about possible provocations in that situation. I arrived an hour before the appointed time and met Asnis. He told me about his trip earlier that day to the court, which had made a decision regarding my behavior. Sergei Mostovshchikov wrote about it in Izvestia.[302] According to the journalist, it was clear that significant positive changes had taken place. In particular, when the question of my arrest was discussed, and some felt that I should be brought to the courtroom by force, but Prosecutor Pankratov, who had long ago insisted on this measure, abruptly changed his mind and no longer supported this idea. Referring to the Moscow human rights activist, Andrei Mironov, Mostovshchikov wrote that this metamorphosis in the prosecutor was a result of the fact that Attorney General Aleksei Kazannik had been informed about the trial in detail. The journalist thought that information concerning the dubious quality of the compromising material found by the former Ministry of Security, hadn’t made it through to Kazannik, and had been blocked by his subordinates. It is difficult to say, Sergei Mostovshchikov ironically continued, how one could be ignorant of a case which was reported in all the newspapers of the country. Still, it was so and even the court was in a state of confusion. The next court session was scheduled only for February 3^rd, providing support for Mostovshchikov’s theory. I must add that Nikolai Sazonov, as an experienced judge, reckoned the defendant would become “prudent” after he had spent more than a week in jail.

There were many people at the Russian American Information Press Center for the press conference, and there were no vacant places in the hall. Representatives of various information agencies, radio, and television, as well as numerous newspapers, constantly asked questions and took pictures. Aleksei Simonov presided over the meeting. Everything seemed extremely clear: my closed trial was a challenge to the new Constitution of Russia and a test of the emerging democratic society as well. My lawyer reported that earlier in the day Judge Sazonov had decided to have me arrested for contempt of court, and this made the press conference more dramatic. Asnis also thought it was possible that I could be arrested right at the doors of this building, though I thought that was unlikely, because OMON officers really don’t like having their pictures taken by the press.

I went home after the press conference. I had decided to let them take me from my home. My son-in-law and his lads accompanied me to 4 Stalevarov Street, to the porch of my apartment.

“Matrosskaya Tishina”

At home, I had a good night’s sleep and was calm the following morning. Nuria was suffering from her usual migraine attack, so I had to content myself with tea instead of breakfast. My elder son Iskander went to school early in the morning, and young Sultan stayed at home. Out of the habit I went to the kiosk, read the newspapers on a bench near our apartment building, and then I came back to the apartment, planning to call some people. As time dragged on, the wait was extremely aggravating, but nobody came to arrest me. I read children’s fairy-tales to Sultan, and then he started drawing his race cars and space ships… Nuria was prostrate with a white kerchief binding up her head.

Around midday, we heard the doorbell ring, and this time everything was routine: an arrest warrant was produced, with an order to prepare for the trip to jail. The policemen didn’t know which jail. They only knew that they had to take me to bedraggled Police Department 139, which had certainly seen better days. It was very close to my apartment block. I was very ashamed in front of Sultan, because he had watched plenty of movies in which various criminals and bandits were arrested. If his father was arrested, there was something wrong. As we say in Russia, they don’t throw people in jail for good deeds. Thanks to television every child knows that, and of course my son was no exception. He watched with horror as finely muscled young men with automatic weapons came to take his father away.

It would be a good idea to take some underwear and clothes, I thought mechanically. However, I realized that I was causing my child psychological trauma, so it would have been an inexcusable cruelty to prolong the scene he had to witness. I quickly put on a ski sweater, a light overcoat, a ski cap, and old winter boots that had already lost their original lining a long time ago.

“Hands!” ordered the OMON officer. I didn’t understand. However, when he barked the word out again, I saw the unmistakable threat and the resolve in his eyes to knock me down with a shattering blow. Then it dawned on me – he wanted to handcuff me. I dutifully obeyed. My son’s eyes were wide open and full of terror. Tears were running down his cheeks. He cried without a sound like old men do.[303]

Finally, Nuria got a bit of control over her migraine and got up to close the door after us. I purposefully went to the door, trying not to look back at Sultan any more. I didn’t even have any strength left to tell him, “I’m sorry.” Probably I cried, too, but without tears or sobbing. When we were descending the stairs, one policeman with an automatic weapon went ahead of me and the other behind me.

A small paddy wagon was waiting for us in the street. Mechanically, involuntarily, my gaze went up to the kitchen window of my apartment on the fourth floor. I saw my Sultan’s little face and quickly turned away. I wasn’t able to wave good-bye to him. A lot of residents of my apartment building were watching all this from a distance.

I was glad that the policemen didn’t bow my head down, while I was getting into the car as police in the U.S. sometimes do in the movies.

The car stopped in the yard of the Police Department 139, and I was ordered to get out. I was taken through a first floor corridor, which reeked of rats and urine, to the officer on duty, who was sitting behind a barred window. The OMON officer who had escorted me gave the duty officer some paperwork and opened the door to a room screened off from the corridor by glass squares covered with white oil paint.

A drunken middle aged man was crying in the room there, saying that he was the former hockey player “K”. I could hardly recognize the famous sportsman who used to play so well on the trade union team. After that he was a hockey referee for a long time. However, the cruel twists of fate in this sportsman’s life finally broke him. He had become an inveterate alcoholic, although something remained of his appearance that showed he wasn’t an ordinary citizen. His clothes were clearly made abroad and were of a very high quality. You couldn’t just go into a store and buy them in Russia. Also, he smoked Camel cigarettes. Soon one of the sportsman’s relatives came and took him away. I was left alone.

I could hear the duty officer calling someone and asking what he should do with “this Mirzayanov.” However, the jail mechanism worked slowly, and nobody was in a hurry to “place” me anywhere. The wait was long and agonizing, and no one offered me anything to drink or a chance to use the restroom. About five hours passed. Finally, the officer opened the cell door and commanded, “Hands!” They handcuffed me, which meant that they would take me to a prison. I didn’t even ask which jail. What was the difference, as it no longer depended on me? We drove around Moscow for a long time and, the car finally stopped near a red building. One of the guards went up to the building and soon he came back and explained something to the driver. I realized that neither the driver nor the guard knew their way.

Eventually, the car stopped near an arch with large iron-clad gates. We drove a few dozen meters further, stopped again and I was ordered to get out. Somewhere people were loudly and constantly shouting, like at a construction site. However, here the voices were anxious. They were taking some kind of a roll call, calling out names. Construction debris and some other trash was scattered about near the walls of the building. The OMON officer opened the iron door and showed a paper to the sentry inside. We went a few meters down the corridor, and I saw many men dressed in dirty military uniforms sitting behind a poorly illuminated wooden barrier. The room was full of gray tobacco smoke and the stench was a mixture of foul odors and vodka.

The ceiling was of an uncertain color, with some hints that it could have once been white. The walls were once painted green, but there was almost no paint left, and you could see the yellowish lime of peeling plaster. On the remaining surfaces there were huge patches of mold. Drunken eyes were glittering in the dim light, and I realized that I was in the famous jail with the lyrical name, Matrosskaya Tishina. This prison was probably originally constructed as a rest home for sailors, and the name translates as “Sailors’ Silence”, though its official name is “Investigation Isolator IZ-48/1.” Isolators are special prisons constructed during Soviet times, which were used mainly for detaining political prisoners and espionage suspects. This maximum security prison in recent years has also held its share of chronic and extremely violent criminals.

The OMON officer gave my papers to the officer on duty and took off my handcuffs. I was ordered to follow a guard along the corridor. He took me to a cell where there were already a few people, and ordered me to take off all my clothes and to give them to the security guards who were sitting behind a window. I understood that they wanted to make a search. I had few clothes on and hadn’t taken anything with me. This was a great blunder. Quickly I removed my clothes and handed them through the window, with my boots. Soon they gave me everything back except my scarf, belt, a little money and the keys to my apartment. I got dressed. It was cold and reeking of sweat and sewage.

Soon I was taken to a different cell which was about 30 square meters. Almost all the window panes behind the iron bars were broken, and a few benches stood near the walls, firmly fastened to the concrete floor, which was black with coagulated dirt. The toilet was near the door on a small platform. A few people were sitting on the floor of the cell enjoying a lively conversation. They paid no attention to my “hello.” I sat down on one of the benches and waited to be taken to a different cell. Officers from Police Department 139 had kept my watch, so it was difficult to say what time it was.

More and more people were brought into the cell. Soon it grew warmer, and it became incredibly stuffy. After a while, the cell was completely full of people! A small Chinese man, who didn’t know a word of Russian, was sitting on the floor near me, yet a fidgety snub-nosed fellow was loudly trying to explain something to him, by mispronouncing Russian words, so that they sounded like Chinese. A young Korean was lying not far from me, and a young man from the Caucasus Region, with a swollen hand, was continuously rushing around. Groaning with pain, he was squeezing between the other prisoners, who were standing, sitting, and lying around. Judging by appearances, all the prisoners were young, mostly in the 20-35 year age range.

Soon three people made themselves comfortable on the floor near my seat and animatedly discussed their stories of murders, which they asserted they were not guilty of. “Of course, I did them in, those assholes. What else could I do?” one was saying to another. “And it is not the first time, either. So what? I did my time for the last one. OK, let me do my time now. You know, I didn’t do it on purpose, it just happened. Something is wrong with my nerves and my head.”

Another fellow spoke in turn, about his murders, which were a mere trifle, in comparison with what Stepa had done.

“You know who I am talking about,” he added. Then he concluded with a hint of envy, “And Stepa got off, escaped a death sentence because they recognized he was crazy.”

I tried not to listen to these heart-rending confessions, but there was no place to disappear to. I realized that if I got up from my seat I would lose it forever.

Soon it became so crowded in the cell that it was no longer physically possible to walk or lie down. I understood that a lot of prisoners among us were brought to Moscow for forensic psychiatric examinations. These people were sharing their experience, about how to pass those exams successfully, in order to avoid execution.

Despite the lack of space, a group of young people formed a circle on the floor, pulled a few tea packages out of their large bags, and put the tea into a large mug. One of them moved between the human bodies, making his way to the toilet. There was no waste tank there, and water was just pouring continuously from the pipeline into the toilet. The young prisoner wasn’t bothered by that at all. He put his tin mug to the outlet of the pipe and scooped up dirty water with a habitual movement. Meanwhile, another man was tearing his towel into strips and braiding long wisps from the shreds. They poured the water from the toilet into the mug with the tea and set fire to the wick. The cell filled with terrible smoke which was extremely irritating to my eyes. It became impossible to breathe at all in the cell. “Thank goodness, the window glass is broken,” I thought.

Soon the water started crackling and gurgling. It was leaping up, over the brim of the mug, burning the hand of the prisoner who was holding it. They exclaimed in excitement, “That’s it! Oh, Baby!” Through the smoke and burning, I smelled an unusual odor that reminded me of strong tea. They wrapped the mug in the towel, let it stand for a while, and then started drinking. They were slowly taking tiny sips, holding the liquid in their mouths for a long time. This was the famous “chefir” (a very strong brew of tea used as a drug).

Soon the eyes of these chefir drinkers started to sparkle, and they started laughing and talking, interrupting each other, telling about their conquests of sluts. It was clear that they didn’t care about this jail, the incredibly stuffy and cramped cell, or the strange people around them. One of them turned in my direction and exclaimed, “My goodness! What are you doing here, Father? People of your age don’t go to jail!”

Apologetically I tried to explain the essence of my case. They got interested. Probably they remembered something. One of them muttered that he had heard about some chemist.

“Well, then it is all wrong!” he concluded. Our cell door opened and a stocky elderly bald man appeared. The prisoners immediately gave him a spot on the bench and were very attentive to him. My neighbor saw my surprise and explained that this was famous Nikolai K., who had spent 29 years in jail. Now he “had come back” to jail after a few years “on the outside”, because he failed to adapt to a life of freedom. He had killed his mistress with a knife in a drunken brawl. She had also served a few terms in prison. When Nikolai looked at me with almost reptilian indifference, I closed my eyes unable to turn away from his experienced glance. It seemed to me that he understood who I was, and his practiced eye had determined that I was a first-timer and an intellectual. He didn’t need to disguise his disdain. I had heard a lot of stories about fierce criminals who bullied intellectuals in jail, and I was expecting something horrible. Maybe they would test me, then beat me. Time stretched out forever, and I was terribly thirsty. I didn’t move from my place. My feet had become numb a long time ago, and I tried to rub them. I had to get up and try to stomp them. It helped a bit, but my place was immediately occupied. I thought that, after all, other people were standing around and nobody had fallen down yet, so somehow I would get through this ordeal.

One guy had managed to keep his watch and told his neighbor that it was 3 A.M. I was appalled that it was so early and that we would have to wait so long before we could be moved to our cells, get a bed, and get a little rest. Most of the prisoners around me were sleeping. Some slept sitting or stretched out on the floor, and some slept standing up. The electric light wasn’t dimmed at night, so it was very difficult to determine the passage of time. The only difference was that at night the voices in the yard were more audible. The prisoners explained to me that the cells exchanged the latest prison news with each other – about who was placed in which cell, when, and whether there were untrustworthy people or “authorities” around. Later Aleksei Kostin explained it to me in detail. During his preliminary four-year confinement in Matrosskaya Tishina, Aleksei had become familiar with the full details of prison life.

Finally, the door opened and security guards appeared. They looked very sinister and were holding batons and handcuffs in their hands. The eyes of the first guard who entered were red, and along with his unshaved mug this was evidence that he hadn’t yet recovered from a drinking spree the day before.

“Stand up!” he bawled out, although without exception we were all on our feet as soon as we heard the door with the iron bars opening. The man from Caucasus Region, whose hand was wracked with pain, was closer to the door than everyone else. He was just getting ready to ask something when the baton came crashing down on his head with crippling strength. The man crashed to the concrete floor without a sound. “Bastards! Damned bandits! Fuck you all! I will shoot you all. Lie down!” the guard shouted, flying into a rage and grasping at his automatic pistol. I had no doubt that he would open fire upon us. We instantly lay down, sometimes on top of each other, because there wasn’t enough floor space for everybody. “Mongrels! Live for the time being!” the red-eyed one finally relented, enjoying our implicit obedience. He paused for a few minutes, then turned and opened the door. The other security guards left with him, and the door closed. The storm had blown over for the time being, and the morning rounds were over. The slumped-over man was groaning near the door. One of the prisoners tried to stop the blood that was trickling from a dark spot under the wretched fellow’s shiny black hair.

An hour later the door opened again, and some people dressed in dirty white overalls appeared, accompanied by a guard. One of them announced, “Breakfast!” They started scooping pearl-barley porridge onto the tin plates. They had also brought water. When my turn came, I drank some water and got a plate of porridge, but there was no spoon. Probably they supposed that a decent prisoner should have brought his own. One of the other prisoners saw that I was at a loss and offered me his own. I accepted it with gratitude and tried to eat something. The porridge was utterly loathsome, disgusting, and it was absolutely impossible to eat it. I saw that many people took margarine or some seasoning out of their bags and put it into the food, trying to turn the mash into something edible. Since I had nothing of the kind, I quickly gave it back to the men who were dishing it out, after a few spoonfuls of porridge. I wanted to use the toilet, but I was warned that no one, not even a sick man, was allowed to go there until the last man in the cell had finished his breakfast. So I waited patiently. I went only after one of the murderers had finished his meal with gusto. He was the last obstacle on my way to the toilet. This time I wasn’t nearly as ashamed as I had been in Cell 81 of Lefortovo Prison, in October 1992. “I am making progress!” I thought bitterly.

The people in the cell revived, started talking, and drinking more chefir. However, it didn’t last long. The cell had to be cleared for the arrival of new prisoners. There were about 50 of us (in 30 square meters!) They divided us into groups of 10 prisoners and sent us for medical examinations, one group at a time. I was in the third group. We moved along the filthy corridor in the direction of the passage I came through the day before. Then we entered a side corridor where someone in white overalls was sitting at a table. Near him a security guard was sprawled in a chair, with a gun round his neck and a baton in his right hand. However, we were told to continue on farther, to a dark room where we had to remove our clothes and go through an examination, one by one. It was damp and cold. We had to go when we heard the order, “Next!” Finally, it was my turn. I came up to a man in white overalls. Another man in white was bustling about. He looked less important, and I understood that he was a low level medic or an orderly.

“Well, bandit, how are you feeling?” the doctor addressed me.

“I am not any kind of bandit. I am a scientist and a chemist,” I answered as politely as I could.

“Wha-a-a-a-a-a-at? Shut up, you mangy dog!” the command rang out and I felt a jab in my back with the baton. It didn’t hurt that much, but it was enough for me to instantly “grow wiser.” People talked to you here only to make you understand that henceforth you were nobody and your duty was to obey and agree with servility, so as not to get a crushing blow from the baton on your head. I turned to the security guard whose eyes were sparkling with anger.

“Remember, mongrel, once and for all. Decent people don’t come here. This is why you are a bandit to me, just like all the rest, you damned bastard!” my jailer lectured me.

Yes, after such a lesson it made no sense to react in a human way to anything that happened. So when the medic stuck a needle from a suspiciously unclean syringe into my vein to withdraw blood (apparently they were checking us for HIV), I was terrified but said nothing. The doctor asked with a smirk: “Any complaints?”

I nodded, “No.”

“Next!” shouted the orderly.

We were sent to be fingerprinted and photographed. I was one of the last to go through this procedure. I thought I knew what to expect from my experience at Lefortovo Prison, but there was a big difference between the large empty rooms of the KGB jail and the cramped cell for fingerprinting at Matrosskaya Tishina.

It was already about 2 P.M. when they gathered us together in the holding cell again. From there we were taken through a dirty corridor and upstairs to the baths on the second floor. Newspapers, wrapping paper, potato peels, and pieces of plaster mixed with broken glass were strewn about everywhere. It was damp and chilly on the second floor. Steam seeped out from somewhere, and women’s voices could be heard. The “veterans” immediately explained that we were waiting for the women to finish their baths.

Finally, we all got undressed. Most of the men displayed unique jail tattoos. I forced myself not to gawk at this artwork. I was very curious, but I was sure it wasn’t safe to stare.

The concrete floor was horribly cold. You could stand only in your shoes. We had to jump around quite a bit, not to become totally numb and frozen.

The bath was a spacious cell with lots of pipes running along the ceiling. Water was continuously trickling from the pipes. First they gave each of us each a piece of dark disinfectant soap, but no wash cloths. There were no towels, either. It reminded me of my childhood, when as boys we quivered terribly and couldn’t stop our teeth from chattering, after swimming in the almost frozen Belaya River in early spring. After a little time had passed, we got right back into the water, so we could boast to the other boys about how many times we had been in after the breakup of the ice.

Many prisoners were standing on newspapers that they had brought with them. It proved that experience was a great thing, and there was always a way out of any situation. After the bath, we pulled our clothes back on our wet bodies and were ready for whatever came next. We were escorted back to the first floor and found ourselves in a winding corridor. We were taken to a woman sitting behind a window. She asked a few questions – the year of my birth and other personal details such as my educational background, which article of the Criminal Code I had been arrested under, etc. When I told her I was a Doctor of Chemical Science, she looked at me attentively and marked something on her papers. Then we went to a crowded stockroom on the second floor, where all of our so-called bedding and dishware was being dispensed through two windows. The line near the windows was long and didn’t move. Most of the prisoners had already made friends, and they stuck together in groups by cell, like a collective. One of the prisoners took a place in line, and didn’t let anyone get to the window before the other members of his collective. I stood and waited patiently until everyone received their mattresses, blankets, mugs, spoons, and plates. Then I realized that I had made a serious blunder. I was given only an aluminum plate and a spoon. There were no pillows, mattresses or blankets left…

I was one of the last to be taken to a cell on the third floor. When the door opened, I saw a few people standing around, (the rule was – prisoners had to stand up every time the doors opened and the supervisor came in), and they looked me over with curiosity. A small television set was standing on a long table in the middle of the cell. It was switched on. A set of iron bunk beds stood on one side of the cell and another was near the washbasin. I quickly counted that I was the eighth person, but there were only four beds. It was strange that one mattress was on the floor, lying almost in the door, opposite the toilet. I saw a young blond man with blue eyes standing near that mattress, and I understood that it was his place. I was surprised but didn’t ask about it, because I had realized by then that excessive curiosity wasn’t welcome here. Later, when I was transferred to the other half of the jail with better conditions, I found out that the blond guy was an outcast who was turned into a passive homosexual by his cellmates. They had sent him to sleep on the floor near the door. All seven prisoners recognized me.

“Wow, so, it is you, Vil Mirzayanov! What a surprise for us. We already heard about you several times on television. We even knew that you had been arrested. We thought you would be sent to Lefortovo or somewhere, but here you are with us, common criminals,”[304] said a man over forty, with an unnaturally black face and dark eyes with reddish-yellow circles. We became acquainted, and everybody asked me to relax and speak up if I needed anything. They would try to do anything to help me. Since I had nothing with me, they suggested I use their toothpaste, soap, and a safety razor. They had food that their relatives had sent them, and they offered to share it with me. Right after my arrival, food was brought to the cell, consisting of porridge mixed with leftovers of some incredibly fetid fish, bread, and muddy hot water that was supposed to be tea. My cellmates had some dry seasoning, and after we added it the disgusting porridge didn’t reek quite so much.

After dinner I had no strength left at all and could day dream only about sleep. My cellmates suggested I lie down on a bed with a mattress, but I was uncomfortable about depriving someone of his turn to sleep, and so I refused. I thought I would put my old light overcoat on the bed as padding and it would be quite enough, but I couldn’t get to sleep for a long time because I was suffering from extreme fatigue. The bed was an iron rectangle with thick woven strips of iron sheeting, welded crosswise, and it was extremely uncomfortable to sleep on. The strips were far apart, so they stuck into my body and it hurt. My coat didn’t save me from this torture. My cellmates were constantly smoking and the ventilation window was always open, so it was chilly and noisy. There was a constant buzz from the exchange of words between the cells. The “jail mail” was working tirelessly.

Soon I watched my neighbors write something; then they rolled and wrapped their letter in polyethylene film. They sealed the edges of the roll together with the flame from a match, making a capsule. This was tied it to a string, and the other end was attached to something in the cell. Then Victor N., the prisoner with the swarthy face, thrust his hand out through the bars of the ventilation window, shouted out an address. Then he threw the letter-capsule upward. We heard a cry of approval, which meant that the message reached its destination, or one of the transfer points of the jail mail system. All this was new to me and very different from Lefortovo Prison.

Finally I fell asleep, but only for a short while. I woke up because it was cold and my whole body ached from those damned iron strips. My cellmates noticed my suffering and encouraged me to take a bed with a mattress. I did so, but only later. It was time to get up and have breakfast. It smelt of thick tea. It turned out that my cellmates had prepared a generous portion of chefir, which they immediately offered to me. Curiosity got the better of me, and I tried this concoction. However, I didn’t feel the euphoria that you might feel after a glass of wine or vodka. Still, there was something about the chefir. My heart was beating faster and my head cleared up, but drinking normal tea had the same effect.

I thought that this prison drink had no effect on me, as for example diethyl ether, because the longtime exposure to chemicals weakens the body’s reactions to these substances. Still, to keep company, I joined my cellmates from time to time when they were drinking chefir. When they sipped this drink, they got very excited and began ardently discussing their stories, coming up with various theories about their upcoming prosecutions and trials.

My cellmates treated me with respect. The rumors that “first-timers” were always subjected to humiliating trials proved to be completely wrong.

My cellmates also told me that when the jail regime was toughened and the security guards started beating prisoners half to death for no reason, they had made a collective decision that under no circumstances should any prisoners fall for these provocations by coming to the defense of someone who was being beaten. The security guards were only waiting for such an excuse to start shooting, and to shift the blame for their outrageous treatment of the prisoners. However, the prisoners explained to me that the only ones who returned to jail were those who hadn’t learned to be smart and rich enough to avoid further arrest and investigation. Even if someone found himself back in jail, the money made his life there less onerous, and possibly quite tolerable. He always had something to drink and good food to eat. He even had women…

I thought this sounded like thieves’ bragging and doubted their words, but they assured me that in jail, just like in the world outside everything could be bought and sold, only it cost much more inside, because the people who provided “all this” charged for the increased risk. They even described some ways of obtaining this “heavenly” life, which I won’t go into. It has nothing to do with my emotions; the point is that it is true. Criminals in the armchairs of power joined with criminals who supervise the thieves’ world. This is completely logical, because the nature of the criminal Communist regime cannot operate differently.

After lunch the door to the cell opened and the security guard who appeared commanded, “Mirzayanov, get ready to exit!” This meant that I was being summoned to meet with my lawyer. We took a winding route through many corridors, and finally, the guard led me into a room with a table and two chairs that were welded to the floor. Aleksander Asnis was sitting at the table. He couldn’t hide his agitation when he saw how worn out and exhausted I was. I must admit I was also excited to see my lawyer. I was very glad that he had found me in this terrible prison. I made an effort to suppress a brazen attitude that was beginning to rise up in me, and I started to answer his questions. Naturally, Asnis asked about my present situation and was deeply disenchanted that they kept me under such terrible conditions. I comforted him, by saying that these conditions were not the worst, although I didn’t have a mattress. I had left home as an inexperienced “first-timer” without warm clothes, soap, tooth paste, tea, and other necessities.

I told Asnis about the prison cells where, according to my cellmates, they packed 70-120 people into 30 square meters. Despite the ventilation window and the window in the door which were always open, there simply wasn’t enough air to breathe. People went to the door vent to light a cigarette, since it was the only place where the match didn’t snuff out because of lack of oxygen… Regardless of the season, those prisoners stripped down to their underwear, because their clothes were always wet from constantly oozing sweat and the high humidity. The heat made the situation worse in the summer, and most people would just lie around on the concrete floor in a state of prostration. Sometimes a towel hanging on the wall would ripple, because the prisoners finally gave up struggling with the lice which propagated so quickly. Prisoners in those cells slept in four shifts, because of the shortage of space, mattresses, and pillows.

It turned out that my lawyer knew all about it, because he often dealt with prisoners from such cells. I felt that I was probably in a relatively “privileged” cell and we could suppose that I was lucky.

My lawyer told me about what was going on in the world “at large.” My arrest had created a storm of protest in our country and abroad. Gale Colby and Irene Goldman had called a few times to tell what measures different people had taken in the U.S. to try to help secure my release. Asnis had brought along two issues of the newspaper Izvestia with articles about my case. He had also called my wife to learn that everything was fine and the children were healthy.

The next court session was scheduled for February 4, 1994. Asnis asked if he should petition the judges to release me from prison, but I replied that I wasn’t going to ask anybody about it, especially not the judge who was an inveterate hypocrite.

Our meeting finished with that, and we said good-bye to each other until the next court session. The guard took me back to my cell by a different route. Jailers had their own original, though naive, tactics.

I arrived and told my cellmates about our meeting. Soon porridge and bread were brought and we started our dinner. On the NTV channel, Tatiana Mitkova reported that Vil Mirzayanov had finally been found in Matrosskaya Tishina Prison, in a cell with criminals and murderers. I was horrified. I had told my lawyer about my first night in the cramped holding cell with such people. Evidently my story had evolved a bit, before it reached the NTV anchorwoman.

My cellmates were not offended and didn’t demand any explanations from me, though they certainly guessed that I was the source of the information in this report. I was ashamed and told my cellmates that I was very sorry about Mitkova’s words. They began to comfort me, and said that surely I would be transferred the next day to the other half of Matrosskaya Tishina, where they kept the “political prisoners.”

The next day was Sunday and it would have been naive to hope that anyone would arrange for my transfer. That proved to be the case. Meanwhile, nothing had changed in our typical prisoners’ life: we spent long hours lying around on the bed, in deep and endless speculation, interrupted by sad outpourings of the heart.

I was fortunate that the press responded with significant and unrelenting pressure after my arrest. The wire services Reuters, Agencé France Presse (AFP), Associated Press, and others published reports about my arrest on January 27th. They stressed that the underpinnings of my case were political, which provoked a wide protest in the public and scientific circles of different countries. The U.S. administration reacted immediately. While answering a correspondent’s question at a press conference in the Russian-American Center on January 28, 1994, Thomas Pickering, the U.S. Ambassador in Moscow, summed up the official American position:

The New York Times gave a brief history of my case on January 28, 1994 and the arrest that followed.[306]

On January 29, 1994 Izvestia published two articles[307]^, [308] about my case: an editorial and an article about the conditions I was treated to in prison. The editorial piece was an attempt to evaluate my case from the point of view of the general socio-political developments in Russia. It stressed that everyone had long understood that the case was absolutely groundless. The judges must have understood the whole absurdity of their actions and of “the Mirzayanov case” as such.

Then the newspaper analyzed possible reasons for why the case was continuing, and it came to the conclusion that a despotic regime and despotism in general were becoming established on the absurdity of the Mirzayanov case. Despite the alarms that the press was sounding, the authorities didn’t hear the warnings and continued with my “case,” throwing out a challenge to the whole society. So the press would have to find out who was behind all this. However, the newspaper doubted that any such person could be found. Izvestia further wrote,³⁰⁷ that

Another article by Sergei Mostovshchikov³⁰⁸ on February 1^st precisely reflects the impressions of my lawyer came away with from our meeting:

My meeting with Asnis probably didn’t put him in a cheerful mood. He had to brief foreign journalists about my sad predicament. An article by Carey Scott, in the February 1, 1994 issue of The Moscow Times, discusses this.[310] The journalist reported that, according to the human rights activist Andrei Mironov, I was being kept under cruel conditions deliberately, especially to humiliate me. Scott also quoted a statement made by “Russia’s Choice” at a press conference which took place on Monday, January 31, regarding my case. The statement read that the party “hoped the Moscow court will finish hearing the Mirzayanov case in the shortest time possible in strict accordance with the Constitution and the law.”

Then Scott remarked that Nikolai Vorontsov,[311] a spokesman for “Russia’s Choice” who read the statement, said that I was charged based on a law that “didn’t exist before and does not exist now.” The article also noted that the human rights organization Helsinki Watch had published a statement, which said my case qualified as “fundamentally unjust” and stated that the case itself was violating “not only the Constitution of Russia, but also basic human rights.” Many western papers informed the public about my arrest.[312]^, [313]^-315

One opinion which probably reflected the sentiments of a large part of the American public was expressed more eloquently in an editorial of The Wall Street Journal Europe and an article by J. Michael Waller there.[314]^, [315] He writes:

My arrest literally caused a firestorm of protest from numerous scientific and human rights organizations. The German scientific society “International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility” (INES) made a sharp protest against my arrest on January 28, 1994, in which it accused the Russian authorities of reverting to the old practices of the totalitarian regime, and it called for a quick end to the practice of persecuting scientists who listened to the voices of their consciences and acted for the sake of all people of the Earth.

The late Dr. Joshua Lederberg, President of the New York Academy of Sciences, sent a fax addressed to Yuri Baturin, the Presidential Assistant for National Security, on January 31, 1994. He called on the Russian government to drop the charges against me, because they were in clear violation of the Russian Constitution.

Additionally, the following organizations expressed their strong protest against the actions of the Russian authorities towards me in numerous letters addressed to President Boris Yeltsin, Attorney General Alexei Kazannik, and Yuri Baturin, the Presidential Advisor for National Security and others: the U.S. Committee of Concerned Scientists, the American Association for Advancement of Science, the Union of Councils of Soviet Jewry, the international human rights organization Helsinki Watch, the National Academy of Sciences, the Federation of American Scientists, the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, the American Physical Society, the American Chemical Society and others.

Many of these organizations also sent letters addressed to U.S. Ambassador to Russia Thomas Pickering asking him to intervene personally in this case. On February 1, 1994, Senator Bill Bradley addressed Baturin in a special fax, asking him to take measures to stop the closed trial. On January 29, 1994, the International Science Foundation founded by Mr. George Soros, published a statement in my support.

On February 2, 1994, Agencé France Presse reported (with a reference to ITAR-TASS) that the widow of Andrei Sakharov had urged the authorities to open up the Mirzayanov trial. Elena Bonner said that the closed trial violated my legal rights, and she also denounced the so-called “non-intervention” of the Russian Academy of Sciences and its inertia in not defending me. She said that she had called the president of the Academy twice and asked him to intervene, but she got the impression that the organization “had adopted the same position… that the Soviet Academy of Sciences took when Andrei Sakharov was persecuted.”

January 30th was Sunday, and nobody was in a hurry to transfer me anywhere. Time passed in endless conversations, sprinkled with the television news. This time I agreed to take my turn sleeping on the mattress, and it seems to me it was a very wise decision. Finally, I managed to have a good sleep, and on the morning of January 31st life in jail didn’t seem so unbearable to me. After breakfast the window in the door opened and I heard the command, “Mirzayanov, take your stuff and head for the exit!” This meant that I had a total of five minutes to get ready. All my cellmates decided that I would be transferred to the other half of Matrosskaya Tishina. Soon the doors of the cell opened and the guard ordered me to follow him.

We spent a lot of time trying to find our way through various corridors and underpasses. Finally, we arrived in a completely different building, where the guard handed me over to the local security guards. One of them ordered me to follow him. We went up to the third floor of the building where there were some small holding cells. He left me there and ordered me to take off all my clothes. The security guard was examining all my clothes carefully, especially the seams.

They kept me there for more than an hour and then took me to the shower. I washed myself with pleasure using my undershirt as a washcloth. So I washed it at the same time. After this I was taken back to the cold holding cell.

Finally, the door opened and I was ordered to enter a room that smelt of some chemicals. They would photograph me and take my fingerprints again. Then I was taken to the fifth floor. I found myself in a short corridor with cells on each side. We stopped at one of them, and the security guard opened the door. A tall and likeable young man with an intelligent face was standing in the cell.

His face was a little yellowish, which showed that the prisoner hadn’t been in the sun or in the fresh air for a long time.

There were four beds in the cell and three of them were empty. We got acquainted, and I found out his name was Aleksei Kostin.

I took a place near the barred window opposite Aleksei’s bed. Between our beds there was a table with benches firmly attached to the concrete floor. The cell was freshly painted and clean, and the walls were roughly finished with coarse concrete for noise reduction. There was a toilet and a washbasin near the door, behind a short concrete barrier. In the middle of the cell there was a refrigerator with a small television set on it. There was a small nightstand next to each bed for underwear and toilet articles, and we had mattresses and small black pillows. In fact, the conditions here were much better than in my previous cell.

I mentally thanked my lawyer that for having me transferred there. Soon Aleksei told me about his case. He had already been waiting for his trial for almost four years. He had been in almost all the cells of Matrosskaya Tishina, both in this part and in the other half of the jail. Aleksei had been the head of the personnel department of the U.S.S.R.’s first Soviet-American joint venture in St. Petersburg. He had been in this cell with Anatoli Lukiyanov, former Chairman of the U.S.S.R. Supreme Soviet, Yuri Plekhanov, head of security for the U.S.S.R. President Mikhail Gorbachev, and former U.S.S.R. Prime Minister Valentin Pavlov, whose bed I was going to occupy. I was curious about how the coup supporters were treated. Alexei said that ringleaders of the Committee for Emergency Situations were kept under good conditions and under constant medical supervision. Food was brought in for them from a neighboring café, and of course, Alexei enjoyed these privileges, too.

Former Prime Minister Pavlov, who was dead drunk even when he was arrested, enjoyed his favorite pastime here as well. His lawyer brought him vodka and cognac, and prisoner Pavlov hid the bottles under his clothes and brought them to the cell. I think that the guards simply turned a blind eye to this. On someone’s order, of course.

Aleksei said that from time to time heated political discussions flared up in the cell, for example, about the true face of the Communist leader Lenin. Plekhanov, the former senior bodyguard for Mikhail Gorbachev, worked himself into such a state of excitement, that he cried and asked them not to offend the memory of the “leader.” Nowadays where could a person with such orthodox thinking appear from? Plekhanov was relatively young. When he was a young Pioneer on one of Moscow’s streets, Plekhanov saw a camera dangling from under the unbuttoned coat of some foreigner. The young Leninist immediately ran to the policeman on duty. There was a secret institute in the vicinity, and the foreigner was arrested. Nobody knows what happened to him; however, the Chekist career of the future bodyguard of our last Soviet General Secretary started at that moment. First, Plekhanov went to the school for young Chekists where he studied his favorite subject – radio engineering and other subjects important for his future profession. Then he was lucky enough to catch the eye of Vladimir Kryuchkov, the future head of the KGB, who later became his mentor and promoted him in a career that finally led to his important position near the body of Gorbachev. It wasn’t surprising that at a critical moment he betrayed him, since he had been trained to serve his master Kryuchkov, not Gorbachev.

As for the origins of the refrigerator, Aleksei said that his enterprise had delivered 15 refrigerators free of charge to the jail, so he was allowed to keep one in his cell. Aleksei mostly ate what his relatives had been bringing for him. Parcels were allowed once a month, but they couldn’t exceed seven kilograms, so experienced Aleksei asked his relatives to bring mostly dry products and food concentrates. They were not very tasty, but they were a hundred times better than the food they served in jail.

There was other good news that day too. In the evening I received a parcel from my wife and my daughter Elena, who had stood the whole day in the line so they could hand it through the cherished window just before the service closed. This was great luck because, as Aleksei explained to me, next month I had the right to receive another parcel, but not earlier than 15 days after the previous one. The security guard who had brought the parcel explained that he would give me only one disposable safety razor, and he would give me the new ones as I returned the used ones. I had to submit a written application addressed to the head of the jail for this. Things turned out to be not so bad. I had a good cellmate, there was enough air in the room, and I had my own bed and could sleep. I also had a refrigerator, a television set, and the newspaper Izvestia. All this lifted my spirits somewhat.

There were no negotiations through vent window panes in this part of Matrosskaya Tishina, and nobody sent jail mail. I decided that obviously there must be other channels for communication here. My cellmate said that the local authorities often pressured prisoners by threatening to send them to the first half of the jail, to the cells with a hundred or more prisoners. Yes, such threats will surely make you unwilling to establish open contact with other cells. However, from time to time I heard someone knocking on the radiator, and my cellmate sometimes answered. Unfortunately I didn’t have a clue about how this alphabet worked.

Another pleasant change was the morning walk. We went up to the roof of the jail accompanied by a security guard. There were isolated walking areas on the roof. We could see roads through the crack between the concrete slabs, so we could figure out where the jail was located.

On February 2^nd my lawyer came to see me. He understood from my appearance that my situation had improved, and I expressed my warm gratitude for all his efforts on my behalf. We talked about the court session that was scheduled for the next day. Asnis again asked my permission to petition for my release from jail. Natalia Gevorkyan, the famous journalist from Moscow News, told him confidentially that Zoya Korneva, Chair of the Moscow City Court, was completely puzzled by my reluctance to file this petition and exclaimed, “Just what is he doing?”

According to my defense attorney, many journalists and democratically-minded lawyers disapproved of my actions and thought of them as showing overt disrespect for the court. This is why he asked me to consider everything and to make a reasonable decision, especially since he thought I had achieved the effect I had wanted.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t do that. The judges needn’t feel that I was beginning to cave in and had changed my opinion of them. It was difficult in jail, but it would be much worse later, when they hid me away in a prison camp for many years. We parted, expecting to meet in court on February 3^rd. However, something happened that changed our plans.

In the Dungeon

Right after breakfast on February 3^rd, I was ordered to prepare for the trip to court. After the search and a long wait I was put into a vehicle which greatly resembled a bakery delivery van. Inside there were iron cages on both sides divided by a narrow walkway. I was put into one of them. I’m not a large man, but I could barely squeeze into it, back-end first. There was an iron seat. It was terribly cold and I could only stand up bent over half way, because my head touched the top of the cage. As we left the prison, I felt that the day was exceptionally cold. Later I was told that the temperature outside was minus 28 Celsius (about minus 18.5 Fahrenheit). The van remained there for about 20 minutes, and then it moved out. By that time I had become completely frozen. The whole cage was made of iron sheeting and a killing cold was seeping in through the walls and the floor, penetrating and percolating throughout my body. The knitted woolen socks I brought with me didn’t help at all. I tried to move in some way and it helped a little, but not for long. In such a predicament only valenki (felt boots), a sheepskin coat, and fur-lined mittens could help. That is how the security guard, who was sitting with his gun near the door, was dressed.

Our van stopped in at some places along the way, and we collected new prisoners from various Moscow jails to transport them to the courts.

Finally, it was our turn and we approached Kalanchevskaya Street, not far from Kazan Train Station, where the Moscow City Court was then located. By that time I had only one wish left. I wanted to find myself anywhere where it was warm, and as fast as possible, because I had grown entirely numb. The van made a sharp turn to the left and stopped. I heard a lot of voices. People were shouting, “Mirzayanov – the pride of Russia! Shame on the Communist tyrants! Free Mirzayanov!” I could see people through the van door holding placards.

I couldn’t read them, but I did see my last name on one of the placards. One of the security guards cried hysterically at the top of his voice, “Get your cameras out of here! Take them away, I am telling you, or I will break them!” Judging by the outcries, there were a lot of people there and nobody was going to give in. Apparently many security guards kept their workplace a secret and didn’t want to be recognized in pictures published in newspapers or in television broadcasts. There were also some more serious reasons, which I will write about a bit later.

About five minutes passed and the guard didn’t allow me to be taken out. Finally, the senior guard commanded, “Close the door. Let’s go!” I understood that they were supposed to take me back to prison. The car drove around somewhere for a while, and then it turned back sharply. I realized that the security guard had decided to trick the people who were waiting for me, and we were going back to the court again. In fact, we soon entered through the back courtyard of the building. No voices could be heard this time. The security guards’ trick had worked.

I was told to leave the cage, and they immediately handcuffed me. There were no steps to get down to the ground. With handcuffs on and feet that I could hardly control because they were completely frozen, it was incredibly difficult to descend from a height of about a meter to the slippery ice that covered the yard near the court. I fell, hitting my right side and my head. When I stood up, they immediately dragged me to the door, which led to the basement of the building. A guard with an automatic rifle was standing at the place where the staircase made a bend, and he examined me fiercely. I walked along the corridor past the guardroom, and through an open door I could see the captain in a dirty uniform with a red armband on his sleeve talking on the phone. A few military men sat smoking on the sofa. I was ordered to turn to the wall and stand there. The officer came up to me and bawled, “Last name?” I answered. A guard took off my handcuffs and commanded, “Let’s go!”

We went along a corridor with a lot of shabby gray doors, and I found myself in the little holding cell of the Moscow City Court. It was freezing there too, but not so dreadfully cold as in the iron cage of the van. I took off my shoes and started jumping to get my feet warm. Soon they were burning hot and started hurting terribly. In my student days in Moscow, I used to travel back and forth every day between my institute and the dormitory on the trams which were really cold in the winter. From those times I remembered that the burning pain was a good sign. It meant my feet were not frostbitten.

It got a bit better and I was no longer shivering. My teeth stopped clattering. Someone looked through the peephole and said something. I saw that it was a young soldier who was asking, “Need some weed?” I didn’t understand, but just in case, I answered “No.” I also added that I wanted to go to the toilet. But the soldier moved away and I heard him asking someone else his strange question. Soon he returned, opened the door, and told me to follow him. The guard was standing in front of some open doors. I could smell the peculiar stench of a public toilet. The guard gave me a sign that I should go inside this dark and unspeakably dirty room. When I came out of the toilet, he took me to the headquarters where an officer told me to stand with my face to the wall as he handcuffed me. Then I was taken somewhere upwards accompanied by four guards. Two young soldiers were holding my hands by the handcuffs, while the other guards were in front of and behind me.

We moved along the corridor on the first floor, and when we reached the spacious front stairway leading to the second floor, I saw a large crowd of people with placards, photo journalists, television crews, and reporters. I had met some of them several times before. People were shouting, “Shame! Free Mirzayanov!” “Mirzayanov, we are with you!” “Why don’t you struggle with the bandits?” The guards stopped in the middle of the stairs, bewildered by the deafening cries of the demonstrators and blinded by endless photoflashes. Both young soldiers grabbed my hands with all their might, and it hurt like hell. I couldn’t control myself and said to one of them, “Whimperer, stop squeezing my hand or you will get a smack in the face!” Of course I would never be able to do that.

A few more military men showed up, who had apparently been summoned to help out. I was dragged back down the staircase to the basement, and they locked me in the same cell. For a long time I heard the guards cursing the demonstrators. I also received my share of abuse. I could only sit and wait for whatever would happen next. But nothing happened, and I just sat on the cold stone floor because there was nothing else in the cell to sit on. From time to time I stood up and tried to stretch my numb and swollen feet. Time dragged on very slowly and I finally lost track of it completely. I was thirsty, but I forced myself to be patient and bear it. I tried not to think about food, because I knew that there was no water or food there. From time to time it grew quiet in the basement, and I heard a radio somewhere far away. I understood by its signals that it was 4 P.M. It meant I had already been in the cell for more than four hours.

Finally, I heard a voice from the opposite cell, “Where are you from? What jail and according to which code [were you arrested]?” I started answering, but we immediately heard the order, “Silence!” The guard opened the door of my cell and ordered, “To the exit!” He took me along the same corridor as before to the wall opposite the headquarters where more than ten people were already standing around. We were handcuffed in pairs and then joined to form a single chain. In chains we went along the corridor and then up to the courtyard where the same prison van was waiting for us. It was past 6 P.M.

It turned out that the transport van came only after the last trial was over. All prisoners had to wait for this moment.

Before putting us into the van, they took off our handcuffs, and one by one we awkwardly clambered onto the high platform of the van. Then we were locked in the cages again. In the evening it was even chillier, and I started freezing again right away. After prisoners were taken to numerous Moscow jails, it became very quiet in the van. When we stopped near some gates and entered a yard, I guessed that it was Matrosskaya Tishina and that I soon would be in a warm place. I saw through a crack in the door that a young solder in sheepskin coat, black valenki, and fur-lined cap with ear-flaps turned down was sitting in the van. His hands in large fur-lined mittens rested on his machine gun. Time dragged on dreadfully slowly. It seemed that everybody had just forgotten about me. The damned frost had penetrated my heart. I was enveloped in panic. It would be so easy to come to such an absurd end! I started knocking on the door to remind them of my existence. The soldier roared, “You there, shut up! Or you will suffer in solitary confinement!” However, even this nightmare ended. I heard voices, and the van doors opened, as did the doors of my cage. I was semi-conscious when I got out of the van and walked along the prison corridors in a state of exhaustion.

When we finally stopped I couldn’t recognize the old place where they searched me. It was also cold there, and I didn’t stop shivering. My teeth were chattering and hurt so much it wasn’t funny. My gums always became inflamed when I caught a cold. The guard ordered me to disrobe, and I tried to be quick, hoping I would be taken to my cell faster. However, the jailer deliberately felt all the seams of my clothes very slowly. I stood on my boots that time trying to hold out in that “deep-freezer.” It seems to me I got dressed quickly, although I had almost completely lost control over my arms and legs. Only after that when I found myself in a cramped holding cell, where there was a warm radiator, did I remember the prisoner who said during my first night in Matrosskaya Tishina that jail was the wrong place for someone my age. Probably he was right. Even some young prisoners couldn’t stand such cruel trials. So it was no wonder that some prisoners cooperated with their jailers, became informers, or even provocateurs in exchange for lightening the burden a bit. But very often they were unmasked. Then the jailers hid them in the solitary cells. After their trials and verdicts for a certain term in jail, “the stoolies” refused to go to labor camps (where the conditions were better), because they could be killed even during the transfer. Then jailers turned them into servants for dirty work in the kitchen, delivering food to the cells, etc.

When I was finally taken to my cell, it was about 9 P.M. Aleksei saw how I felt, immediately understood what the problem was. He quickly made tea with an immersion coil. After a few cups, I recovered. My neighbor saw nothing unusual in my treatment. It turned out this was one of the psychological methods for treating prisoners. He advised me to take newspapers with me next time and spread them out under my feet.

Next day the Moscow and the Western press reported about my court saga with a lot of attention to the details.[316]^, [317]^, [318]^, [319]^, [320]^, [321]^, [322]^, [323]^, [324]^, [325] The Bashkir and Tatar papers published articles in which they blamed the government for a biased trial, expressing admiration for my actions.[326]^, [327]^, [328]

It seems to me that many observers abroad, particularly in the U.S., correctly understood the essence of my case and the underlying reasons for the closed trial.[329] Reflecting on it, the American edition of The Wall Street Journal also published an insightful editorial, where it pointed out:

U.S. government officials were also concerned about my fate. On February 1, 1994 Senator De Concini took the floor in the Senate and expressed deep concern about my trial, because it involved more than the fate of one man. He rhetorically asked

It seems that the Russian authorities, under the weight of international pressure, started to consider the possible negative consequences of my trial. On February 4, 1994, Reuters reported (with a reference to ITAR-TASS) that the Russian authorities were allegedly ready to drop my case. Similar information appeared in The Moscow Times.[332] The newspaper reported that Baturin had briefed Boris Yeltsin in detail about the Mirzayanov trial process. The President reacted properly and said that the investigation appeared to be unconstitutional.

Back to the Courtroom

On February 5, 1994, after breakfast, I was again taken to the place where I was searched following the usual route, and waited to be taken to the Moscow City Court. This time I had taken Aleksei’s newspapers with me to put under my feet in the cage of the jail van. They came in handy because the morning was once more frigid.

This time they unloaded me almost without incident. When I was out of the van I saw a few photo-correspondents hanging on the fence. The guards hurried to drive them away, but these experienced and clever fellows were constantly snapping off shots, and they only jumped down from the fence after the guards threatened them with their batons.

Once more they kept me for a long time in the same holding cell, in the basement of the Moscow City Court. Then six guards, accompanied by two huge German shepherds, handcuffed me and took me upstairs. When we reached the ground floor I saw many people at the end of the corridor behind the iron bars taking pictures and shooting film footage for television. The dogs began to bark loudly. I raised my shackled hands and tried to greet the journalists, but the guards immediately dragged me to the nearest door trying to hide their faces from the cameras.

We entered a large cold hall with heavily frosted windows. At the side, there was a cage for dangerous criminals, which made the gloomy view of the hall even more menacing.

In the front, on the platform, there were seats for the judges. Not far from them my defender Asnis was sitting in his coat, and Prosecutor Pankratov was sitting on the left. His cold blue face matched his usual blue uniform with the epaulettes. The guards put me into the cage, took off my handcuffs and bolted the door with a crash. Only two soldiers and an officer, who sat near the doors, were left in the hall. Asnis came up to me and told me about my family and what efforts he was making to help me. The judge wouldn’t allow my wife a meeting. This was his way of retaliating. Once more I flatly refused to petition the court to release me from prison, but I agreed to the suggestion of my lawyer that we file two petitions, one about rejecting the current composition of the court (three judges), and the other asking to hold an open trial.

Soon the court secretary commanded, “Rise. Court is in order!” The judges appeared in the doorway behind the platform, with Judge Sazonov at the head. Everyone was dressed in coats.

Nikolai Sazonov, the chairman, asked everybody to sit down and shouted indignantly to the guard, “Why have you locked him in there? Set him free immediately!”

They let me out of the cage and I sat in the first row facing the judges. Two young soldiers sat close to me, one on each side.

The judge asked me sympathetically if I had any complaints about the conditions under which I was being kept. I answered cheerfully that everything was just great, but I still refused to cooperate with the court that didn’t respect the Constitution established by our country.

Prosecutor Pankratov started to whine about how unfair it was that he had to wear just his uniform in that cold room, where the temperature hardly reached 10 degrees Celsius (about 50 degrees Fahrenheit), while everyone else was sitting in their coats…

Asnis took the floor and read his petitions, and then Judge Sazonov announced that the court would adjourn for a meeting. I almost burst out laughing when I saw how Judge Yudin bent over carrying all seven volumes of my case back with him. Apparently he had been told that he should not leave my case materials unattended for a moment, since they carried the sinister “top secret” stamp.

It probably never occurred to the judge that my lawyer was sitting just a few meters from him, with almost a full copy of my case materials on his desk. For the rest of my trial I struggled with the temptation to make a statement and request that Judge Yudin needn’t strain himself carrying such a heavy load, because a copy of my case was available for everyone who wanted it. One copy was on the lawyer’s table, and the other was in the U.S., because I sent it to Gale Colby. I don’t know why, but I felt it was a pity to disappoint these people. I am certain that my case hasn’t been declassified to this day. It is still a state secret…

After a short break the judges took their places again, and Sazonov read the decision of the court to reject my lawyer’s petitions. Then he announced that the hearing of the case would continue, and started reading transcripts of my interrogations, droning on for a long time in a boring voice. Steam puffed out from his mouth, creating the impression that there was a cooking pot inside of the judge, and something was boiling in there.

Time dragged on slowly. Sometimes I tried to observe the reactions of the judges, the prosecutor, and my lawyer. However, it was routine business for them and no one listened to Sazonov. Both my soldiers clung closely to me like kittens to their mother and slept peacefully. The one on the right with his head on my shoulder started snoring a little. The officer at the door slept too, but he opened his eyes from time to time to glance at his soldiers. They were sitting with their side to their commander and a little bit ahead of him, so he contented himself that they were there, next to me. It seemed that military men, like cats, spent most of their lives sleeping. Suddenly I asked myself, “How many days will I have to listen to this bullshit?” As if in response, Judge Sazonov failed to pronounce some very simple chemical term in the transcript of an interrogation. I raised my hand and corrected him. At once the judge asked me, “Maybe you will help us speed up the hearing? After all, we are all in a difficult situation.”

“All right,” I answered. “But first I must make a statement about why I addressed the press and published my articles about chemical weapons.”

The judge agreed. In a period of about six minutes I presented my statement, explaining the motives behind my actions, and I warned the judges that they, like all citizens, as well as their children, were equally helpless before weapons of mass destruction. In the international situation that had developed, chemical weapons were very dangerous for our country because their development, production, and testing caused harm to people’s health, and posed the threat of unpredictable consequences for future generations.

The judges didn’t display any emotions. They were deeply indifferent to everything I said. Then they started asking me questions about separate episodes of my case. I answered truthfully, without worrying that my testimony could later be used against me. After a while, Judge Sazonov announced a break.

I was taken to the basement again, and I sat there until the lunch break was over (food for me was out of the question). Then I was escorted along the usual route back into the cold and gloomy courtroom.

Witnesses Ruin the Case

It turned out that some witnesses had been summoned on that day to give their testimony: my former subordinate Anatoly Ryskal, whose low qualifications and laziness had disappointed me, and Leonard Nikishin, from Moscow News. However, Ryskal wasn’t in Moscow, and even his relatives didn’t know when he was coming back. I am certain that he simply got cold feet. His absence disrupted the plans of those people who were counting on an “accusatory” testimony from my former employee.

Nikishin, on the other hand, had arrived and was prepared to give his testimony to the court. Leonard suffered from his excessive weight and was very short winded. He tried to be calm, but he was anxious from time to time and it showed.

He spoke about his acquaintance with Lev Fedorov and how he had obtained the manuscript of the article that was called “A Poisoned Policy.” His testimony completely concurred with the transcript of his interrogation in Lefortovo, and he was clear on the point that I hadn’t read the final text. The day before the article’s publication, Leonard read me the text prepared for publication over the phone, and I agreed with it. Nikishin stated that he hadn’t seen any state secrets in this article when he worked on it in 1992, and he didn’t see any now. The prosecutor and judges asked him a few more formal questions, and the journalist was dismissed.

Finally, Judge Sazonov announced that the day’s session was over. Poor Judge Yudin, looking like a martyr, struggled to lug the heavy volumes out of the courtroom again. I was taken back to my cell in the basement, which I was becoming accustomed to, and from there I was driven back to prison.

News awaited me there. There was a new prisoner in our cell. He was a stocky middle-aged man, with a slightly swarthy and tired, but pleasant, face. It was clear from his black hair and his black eyebrows above black eyes that he wasn’t a Russian. We got acquainted, and it turned out he was a Tatar named Ravil Sitdikov. He told us how he ended up there, and I remembered a report in one of Moscow Newspapers about the arrest of a high-ranking employee of the Bank of Russia. Sitdikov was charged with unlawful operations associated with falsified letters of credit.

Between our conversations, I saw a report on the NTV channel from the Moscow City Court about the events surrounding my case. Television crews managed to film me through the bars on my way to the courtroom, surrounded by the guards and the dogs. The correspondent Mitkova also reported on President Yeltsin’s statement that they had “carried the Mirzayanov case too far.” However, the President thought that he shouldn’t intervene or pressure the court. Then the telegenic Asnis appeared on the screen and spoke about some details of the trial process. In particular he stated that I had started giving testimony.

I spent Saturday and Sunday in front of the television screen. It was good at the time that we had two television sets. Ravil had brought his portable one. The Saturday newspapers published materials about the trial, based on information that Asnis had presented in between court sessions.[333]^, [334]

The next court session took place on February 8^th. General Smirnitsky and Colonel Chugunov, who was a longtime member of the Russian delegation at the CWC negotiations in Geneva, were summoned to the court as witnesses for the defense. As I mentioned before, they had both refused to sign the findings of the commission prepared by the MB RF’s Investigation Department and GOSNIIOKhT, and they had expressed their opinions independently. They clearly pointed out that my articles didn’t disclose any information of state secrecy, and in their opinions I hadn’t disclosed any chemical or technical information about the new weapons, showing once again that the charges against me were absurd. Both experts spoke lucidly and persuasively.

The judge asked if someone could reproduce the new chemical weapons based on information I had presented in the press. Both experts answered that it was impossible. The prosecutor wanted very badly to hear something negative from the experts, so he even asked if my article could motivate foreign intelligence to look for this information. Smirnitsky calmly answered to Pankratov that this question was outside the area of competence of a specialist on chemical weapons. Pankratov also wondered what damage the information I published had caused to the defense capability of the country. The general was laconic again, “It couldn’t cause any damage.”

“Do you think that publishing conventional names and codes of new chemical agents openly in the press means disclosing information of state secrecy?” continued the prosecutor. The general said that it was certainly intolerable.

I should note that I had never used any terms defining codes or codes of scientific and research topics or chemical compounds. However, I decided against clarifying this question because it seemed to me that such action would be misinterpreted as an attempt to justify myself. When Colonel Chugunov was asked how he rated the information that I had published, he answered that there were grounds for resorting to administrative sanctions for violating work instruction manuals, but no more than this. He thought that the whole problem of the information disclosed in my articles no longer made any sense, including the violation of the above mentioned work instruction manuals, because of the signing of the Chemical Weapons Convention.

The truth is that I saw Chugunov and Smirnitsky for the first time in that courtroom. I hadn’t known them before, but each man left a great impression on me, both by the level of his knowledge and his ability to properly present his point of view. Apparently not only orthodox-minded people studied at the Academy of Chemical Defense, but also some people who could think independently…

Their testimony was in complete contrast to that of Boris Kuznetsov, who was summoned by the prosecutor. He had memorized and rehearsed his testimony, which was written down by Captain Shkarin in the transcript of his interrogation at Lefortovo. Then he reproduced it almost exactly word for word in the courtroom. I had a suspicion that the transcript had been prepared in advance at GOSNIIOKhT by better-educated people, because Kuznetsov’s level of knowledge and his amazingly confused articulation gave serious grounds for such doubts. His answers to the questions were straightforward and terribly obtuse, as if he were one of the sergeants on special duty at Matrosskaya Tishina Prison. When he finished with his testimony Kuznetsov asked Sazonov, “Comrade Judge, do you have a latrine here?” Sazonov didn’t understand at first, but then he asked him, “Do you mean the toilet? Well then, please ask the sergeant at the door,” and happy Kuznetsov bolted for the bathroom.

Will Englund from the Baltimore Sun was also summoned on the same day. However, according to Judge Sazonov, he hadn’t come to the trial because he was on an extended business trip. This wasn’t quite correct, to put it mildly. Alexander Gordeyev[335] quoted Englund as saying that he wasn’t inclined “to testify unless he could do so in an open session.” Additionally, Englund who had been interrogated at the Ministry of Security in April of 1994 said, ‘“The essence of a free press is to maintain an atmosphere of trust, and I feel that if I attended a closed trial, it would be a betrayal of that trust.”‘ Referring to his experience of interrogations in the Lefortovo Investigation Department, the American said that he would abstain from giving testimony because his words could be distorted. “I emphasized repeatedly that Mirzayanov had given me no formulas of the chemicals, but that was deleted from the charging papers,”‘ the American journalist said to Gordeyev. Unfortunately it was the usual practice of the KGB. Amy Knight wrote a good article[336] about that called “Back to the Old Bad Days in Moscow?” A similar question was raised in The Moscow Times.[337]

The court cut short its work until February 10th. When the guard in the basement ordered us to stand up with our faces to the wall, so they could handcuff and lock us in pairs, a prisoner of about forty with an intelligent face happened to be near me. He was constantly scratching himself and killing lice under the collar of his shirt. He greeted me and said he was Nikolai Koltsov, the former chairman of one of the first cooperatives in the north of the U.S.S.R. He was arrested back in 1989, but the trial of Koltsov and his colleagues had only just started when I was in court. He had no time to tell me about his case. But I learned that he was in one of those cells meant for 35 in Matrosskaya Tishina, where they kept 120 people. I was appalled when I saw a louse on him – a sad symbol of the notorious Matrosskaya Tishina cells. I met Koltsov a few days later and we were able to talk about his case.

In the evening I read an article by Valery Rudnev in Izvestia.[338] He was both a lawyer and a journalist, and I had met with him several times. After I read his publications I was convinced of his highly professional erudition. That is why his article was extremely valuable for me. Rudnev started his article by saying that my trial could end without a verdict because Article 6 of the Criminal and Procedural Code could be applied. It stipulated that even if the defendant were guilty, circumstances could bring the case to a close. This decision was ambiguous according Rudnev, and he insisted that the court pass its verdict.

However, I didn’t trust the court, which pushed with all its strength to reach an unjust verdict in my case. For that reason, I hoped that the Attorney General’s Office would drop the case as being illegally instituted.

On February 10, 1994 the court session started with a surprise that Prosecutor Pankratov had prepared for me. He said that Victor Petrunin, Director of GOSNIIOKhT, had been summoned to the trial. The judge also reported that he had summoned Lev Fedorov and Andrei Mironov as witnesses.

Petrunin was the first to testify. When he entered the courtroom and saw the conditions I was sitting in there, he couldn’t conceal his embarrassment. Then he regained his composure and even greeted me before he was about to give his testimony. I don’t know whether it was his confusion or his usual hypocrisy, but Petrunin started his testimony… with a complimentary tirade directed at me. He said that he had known me for more than 25 years as a gifted scientist, and that he had always helped me as much as he could. He was my official opponent at the defense of my doctoral dissertation, and had given it a positive review. Then he had appointed me as the head of the Department for Foreign Technical Counterintelligence. Petrunin told the court that he had never had a personal grudge against me, if you didn’t take into account the articles in which I had disclosed so many secrets which had caused irreparable damage to the defense capabilities of the country. Petrunin complained that enormous expenses and the labor of many thousands of scientists, engineers, and workers were wasted because of my articles.

When he was answering the prosecutor’s question about what the consequences of my articles were for the regime of keeping state secrets, Petrunin exclaimed pathetically, “Comrade Prosecutor! Before Mirzayanov’s articles we didn’t have any big worries about security, and everything was calm and quiet. Nobody was interested in our institute. But now we don’t know what to do: we are literally besieged by the intelligence services of foreign states! You yourself understand how dangerous it will be for everybody if our new research ends up in the hands of people like Hussein!”

I immediately envisioned the picture that Petrunin was painting for the judges: tall concrete walls with barbed wire and roguish spies with binoculars, climbing these fences to penetrate a building stuffed with various test-tubes and fluorescent electronic instruments, wanting to steal the secrets of our beloved motherland… Just like in a Soviet movie with our glorious intelligence officers and the impudent spies from imperialist countries.

Petrunin broke out into a sweat as he finished giving his testimony, and his face became red, although it was freezing cold in the courtroom. He answered questions obsequiously, demonstrating his full loyalty with endless bows in the direction of the judge. Obviously he was afraid that he would also be ordered to sit on the defendant’s bench near me. It seemed that his zeal made him shrink a bit, even though he wasn’t very tall to begin with. I felt really sorry for him.

Judge Sazonov probably wasn’t able to stand the shock he had experienced and declared a break before the witness Fedorov arrived. Asnis came up to me during the break. He was vexed. “I don’t understand why the prosecutor is procrastinating,” said my lawyer. “He was given instructions to terminate the trial.”

Of course this news greatly excited me, but I tried not to kindle any hopes ahead of time (who knows, they could change their minds!), and I answered that if this campaigner was given “instructions”, then he was certain to implement them.[339]

My co-author Lev Fedorov was the next to testify. Before his turn, I asked my lawyer not to react to his testimony and not to ask him any questions. I thought: “Let him say whatever he wants for as long as he wants, until they stop him.”

There were an extraordinary number of lies and a swagger to Fedorov’s speech. To begin with, he decided for some reason to share the details of his glorious biography, how he had graduated from Moscow State University with honors, how he quickly had defended his master’s thesis, and then had successfully contended with his doctoral dissertation. Fedorov said defiantly that he had written all the articles, and that Vil Mirzayanov had only signed them. Then, in a very arrogant tone, he started talking about his work on a book about chemical weapons. He mentioned that this process was very difficult and added casually, “Of course, you can’t imagine it.” At these words Sazonov couldn’t restrain himself any longer and burst out from the indignation that overwhelmed him, “Good God! Perhaps I can imagine a little. I write books, too.”

Later I learned that Sazonov had published a few law books.

When Lev Fedorov was asked how he had received such detailed information about the new chemical weapons and binary weapons, he said without any embarrassment that he had read about all this in the foreign press, although he had never worked in the area of chemical weapons! The mouths of the judges and the prosecutor, who had had plenty of life experience, twisted sarcastically because his assertion was so ridiculous. It meant that Fedorov considered them to be complete fools. Judge Sazonov finally decided to put the witness in his place, “Witness Fedorov, could you tell us where and when this information was published? Then we could read all that, too.”

No. Fedorov couldn’t quite say now precisely, but it seemed to him that such information had been published in many sources, for example, in the proceedings of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).[340] However, there was no way to calm down Judge Sazonov, because Fedorov had toyed with the self-esteem of this author of published works. “Tell us, exactly in what year was the edition published with such information? However, I am again warning you in advance, that according to Article 181 of the RSFSR Criminal Code, perjury by a witness is punishable by up to 2 years of imprisonment.”

These words took Lev down a notch, and he wilted. Jail just wasn’t a part of his grandiose plan. He started explaining pitifully that he couldn’t remember, and you know it wasn’t so very important. He said it was easy to guess anyway, because, for example Americans openly wrote that they had developed binary weapons. And our country always responded to such things with a mirrored reaction, and reproduced the same kinds of weapons.

Sazonov decided to strike Fedorov a final blow and asked acidly why he hadn’t answered in the same way to the investigator during his interrogation in the Investigation Department.

“Here is the transcript of your interrogation from October 22 1992, according to which you claim that the defendant had provided all the information about the development of chemical weapons and you only edited it, giving it a literary treatment,” the judge pressed on. “What is more, you testified that Mirzayanov had given information about the new chemical weapons when you and the defendant met with the American correspondent Will Englund.”

Fedorov faded out completely and answered that he renounced his former testimony. The judge immediately asked the reason for this decision. Lev obscured the issue and explained that he had been inexperienced, and he was frightened when the Chekists had burst into his apartment early that morning.

After these words I felt squeamish about Fedorov who had perjured himself for the second time. I knew the real reason why he renounced his testimony. He did it only after I had distributed a copy of the transcript of his interrogation, which exposed his own behavior! However, I don’t think that my former co-author could justify his words. Lev wanted to make everybody doubt me. He did his best to convince everybody (but the judges, of course!) that I wasn’t the person I pretended to be. Later he probably wanted to impart substance to his testimony and share it with the public, so they would admire how bravely and selflessly he had assumed the entire responsibility of “protecting” me. While thinking about this, I probably unwittingly winced and shook my head. The judge noticed it and asked me, “What’s the matter with you, defendant? Do you feel bad?”

I answered, “No, I’m all right, but this is totally repulsive. I would be grateful if you could spare me this extremely disgusting spectacle.”

“Do you have comments, remarks, or additions?” he asked readily. He obviously wanted Fedorov and me to enter into a verbal battle. But that was even more loathsome for me. I answered that I didn’t wish to argue with the witness, and this was why neither my lawyer nor I had any questions for him.

Strange as it may seem, the judge showed leniency toward me and stopped the interrogation of Lev Fedorov.

When Fedorov left the courtroom, he told the correspondents, as if nothing had happened, that he had given testimony which could break open the whole hearing…

Andrei Mironov was the next to testify. He had been the interpreter during the interview I gave to Will Englund that was published in the newspaper the Baltimore Sun on September 16, 1992. Mironov also accompanied Englund as an interpreter when he was interrogated in the Investigation Department of the RF Ministry of Security. So, Mironov was well informed about all the events. However, the experienced former dissident who had spent many years in a Soviet prison had made a blunder after the interrogation of Will Englund. The American had refused to sign the transcript of the interrogation, but thuggish Shkarin managed to get Andrei Mironov to sign it. That signature confirmed that the testimony of his American friend was translated in exact correspondence with the original. This allowed the investigation to do without the signature of Will Englund, because he didn’t have to sign a transcript in a language that he didn’t know.

Evidently this is why Mironov said that he denounced his signature, which had presumably made Englund’s refusal to sign the transcript worthless at the very beginning of his testimony. Mironov persistently stressed that I hadn’t given Englund any technical or any other detailed information when I made a statement about the new weapons during the interview. Then Andrei said that the American journalist knew about the development of new chemical weapons from other sources as well. He didn’t specify these sources, referring to a law about Russian mass media practices. When he was talking about “other sources”, I am certain that he meant the interview with Andrei Zheleznyakov.[341]

At that time I noticed that Prosecutor Pankratov was furiously writing something down. Andrei then argued a little with the judges, answered their questions, and finally said that he thought that my prosecution and the closed trial were illegal. I could see by the faces of the judges that they were not well disposed towards Mironov. However, their faces also expressed some confusion. Something hadn’t gone as they had planned.

Prosecutor Pankratov Rejects the Work of the Chekists Judges Cancel the Trial

After Andrei Mironov left, the prosecutor took the floor. He said that the trial had gone on for a long time, but new circumstances had been brought to light in the case. The experts clearly had a difference of opinion, so it was impossible to depend on their conclusions. This is why it was becoming more doubtful that the court could resolve all these contradictions objectively and impartially, based solely on material provided by the investigation. With pathos, the prosecutor further concluded that in his opinion the preliminary investigation was insufficient. Therefore, he had to ask the court to stop investigating the case and to send it back for repeated investigation, with a newly appointed expert commission. New witnesses should be called, especially regarding the allegation by witness Andrei Mironov.

That old veteran nicely and effectively performed the task assigned to him by Attorney General Aleksei Kazannik. It turned out that when he received an order from above, he could be objective after all and use all the bungling and blunders that Investigator Shkarin had made while he was fabricating my case.

I closely observed the reactions of the judges while I was listening to the speech of the prosecutor. Not one of them concealed their bewilderment. They were shocked by the prosecutor’s statement. I also saw how my lawyer reacted to Pankratov’s speech. It seemed to me that Asnis was triumphant, although he was usually imperturbable and didn’t show his emotions. He smiled slightly and cast glances in my direction. Of course I understood what colossal efforts Asnis had made leading up to this prosecutor’s speech. I admired the talent of my lawyer. Alexander managed to put everything that had been expressed in the numerous public campaigns for my defense, into legal order so that such an opinion had formed. He gave numerous interviews to foreign and Russian reporters, sparing no effort or time. My friends Gale Colby and Irene Goldman – organizers and coordinators of the U.S. movement in my defense – constantly called on him at any time of the day to get information about my case and to ask advice about further action. Asnis was always clear and concise. And he worked for only a token fee from Moscow News.

As soon as the prosecutor finished his stunning speech, the judge announced that the hearing was closed. The next court session was scheduled for February 11^th. My lawyer came up to me before the guard took me away, and said that he would file his motion to have me released from jail, along with the prosecutor’s written appeal to send the case for additional investigation. I agreed.

It wasn’t so cold on my way to jail. I even started imagining that I would be released the next day. I would come out to meet with a lot of journalists who had been writing about my case and people who had come to support me, and I would express my warm gratitude to them. However, my life experience as a scientist and experimenter has taught me not to prepare myself for victory ahead of time. Often disappointments are caused by unpredictable circumstances. I returned to the cell and told my cellmates about the events in court without any special excitement, and it wasn’t due to any artificial restraint.

The February 10^th issue of Izvestia, which had been brought to our cell, contained an article published by Valery Yakov.[342] He gave a review of readers’ letters supporting me. Among them, was a letter by a group of Russian scientists (20 professors, PhD’s, and master’s of science) that was also categorical in its judgment. Although it wasn’t addressed to President Yeltsin, they signed a statement which reads, “We consider the prosecution of V. Mirzayanov to be an illegal attempt on the part of the military-industrial complex to hide their inhumane actions.”

Three renowned academicians of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Sergei Zalygin, Victor Maslov, and Boris Sokolov, presented concise, logical and convincing arguments for their protest. First of all, they asserted that secrets of any technical problem are specific formulas and blueprints, diagrams, and other technical indices. I hadn’t disclosed anything like this. Second, by considering the case about disclosing state secrets, the court confirmed that I told the truth, and that the information I disclosed had truly been concealed from the public. Third, when scientists and specialists sign a non-disclosure agreement they assume definite obligations, but they must be relieved of them, if such fundamental issues as ecological violations connected with life and human health are at stake. In this way, the games played with state secrets during the Chernobyl tragedy led to irreparable calamity for many thousands of innocent citizens, and nobody was held responsible for this.³⁴²

Killer Koshelev and Biological Weapons

On the morning of February 11^th, I was taken to the basement of the court as usual. However, after I arrived in the courtroom, Alexander Asnis said that the hearing would not take place that day. Judge Sazonov was either ill or busy with more important business. The next hearing was scheduled for Monday, February 14, 1994. I was very upset, but I tried to comfort myself.

When I was taken back to the basement and my handcuffs were removed, they asked me which cell I was from, and I pointed to the nearest one where the voices of prisoners were coming from. This wasn’t my cell, but I was a little curious and wanted to see some inmates. I entered a long narrow cell where a few young people under 25 were smoking and animatedly discussing prisoners’ issues. I understood from their conversation that one of them was a member of the Lyuberetskaya gang which had defiantly murdered a few people. There was also a Muscovite there, a recently discharged soldier who had shot a few policemen while resisting arrest. I just listened and didn’t ask any questions. Finally, one of the young prisoners got interested in me and asked, “What’s your name, Father, and how did you get here?”

I briefly tried to explain it to him, but my story didn’t move him at all.

He said condescendingly, “Well, you are a Doctor of Sciences. How much did you make? I suppose 500-600 rubles,” he answered right away instead of me. I confirmed that his answer was very close.

“You know I dished out much more for one night in a restaurant with my chicks than you were paid for several months,” he boasted. “Don’t worry, I worked, too. Only you were sitting in your laboratory and I was a janitor. I cleansed the society of those who rob people blind,” philosophized the young prisoner. However, it was obvious he didn’t believe what he was saying.

I noticed that all the prisoners were adamant about their innocence, and all of them justified their crimes in every way possible, by some self-invented theories.

How simple everything in the world is! And it is the same everywhere. Everybody behaves in this way, from Fascists and Communists to God-seekers and murderers. But what could I say, for example, to this young and healthy fellow with eyes drowsy, as if he were drunk? He was saying indignantly that everyone in court was lying, including the victims.

“Just imagine, the victim says that I took his money and valuables without his consent. But these are just lies. He gave all of this to me willingly,” complained the bandit. Then he added with a grin, “How could he not, if I kept him hanging upside down from the ceiling for half an hour?”

Then a soldier came up to the doors of the cell and the young people rushed over to him. I heard them bargaining for “weed”, and it turned out that it was a name for marijuana. They swore terribly, saying that these bastards had no conscience and they were robbing them blind. However, they did come up with the money and bought the stuff. The weed was packed in matchboxes. A prisoner, who didn’t have enough money for it, quickly scribbled a note and asked the guard to give it to a woman who he described in the courtroom. She was to hand over the money. Strange but true! A while later another soldier came up to our cell and gave the prisoner his weed and the change. It was clear that the soldiers were just carrying out the job, but it was the officers and guards, who desperately want to avoid being photographed by journalists, who managed this “business.” As soon as the soldier went away, everyone started smoking. The young cop-killer was also offered a smoke. Before this he had stared at a spot on the ceiling, obstinately silent and deep in his thoughts. Finally, the marijuana made him relax, and he started telling me his horrible story.

His name was Alexander Koshelev. He was born in Moscow and lived near Taganka before serving in the Army. When he was 18, he was drafted into military service and was sent to one of the top-secret units that worked with biological weapons on the island of Vozrozhdenie in the Aral Sea. As I understood it, the production and testing sites for biological weapons were located there. Colonel Zaritovsky was the commander of this unit, and Koshelev served there from 1990 to 1992. Along with his friends, he guarded some strange warehouses with a lot of monkey cages, located behind a high barbed wire installation.

Experiments were conducted on these animals on the island. They were given injections of some liquid substance, and the people who did this were dressed in protective rubber suits and gas masks, despite the terrible heat.

The working conditions were extreme. They were isolated, far from the mainland, far from people, and it was terribly hot, which made life unbearably tough on the soldiers. In addition, the sergeants and soldiers who had spent some time on the island cruelly abused the new recruits. They beat them up for anything that seemed like disobedience or lack of respect for their whims.

Once during the summer 1992 an alarm went off in the unit. A few monkeys had escaped from their cages. The bosses were at a loss about how it could have happened. Everybody was sent to search for them and shoot them, because the animals were infected with an unknown disease, which made them very dangerous. Koshelev said in a trembling voice that these monkeys strongly resembled people who were hunted-down, and he felt terrible when he had to shoot a poor stray devil that had hidden among the reeds.

He was discharged from his service two years before that, but he didn’t take to life.

“I don’t understand how I could get to be so cruel. I never suspected that I could be like that,” he lamented. The police took revenge for the inhumane killing of their police colleagues and beat him especially hard. Despite that he still seemed quite strong, as he was only 23.

I advised him to tell his lawyer about his tough service at the test site for biological weapons. Probably one of the reasons for his crimes was the irreparable psychological damage that he had suffered during that damned service.

Having heard Koshelev’s story, I realized again that I was right not to trust military men who, despite repeated oaths that our country had discontinued the production and testing of biological weapons, continued with their dirty business, deceiving not only the people of the world, but the President of Russia as well. So, I told myself, it was my duty to carry through with what I had started, so that chemical weapons were no longer either produced or developed.

Meanwhile, the other prisoners hid their marijuana cigarettes in a special way so that the prison security wouldn’t find the drugs during their search. However, only one trick guaranteed that the weed they had bought would safely make it through all the checks. One of the prisoners wrapped the marijuana in polyethylene film, and then he sealed all the edges with a match flame, making a capsule. I didn’t want to irritate the inmates who were “getting high”, so I observed their manipulations from the corner of my eye. Then I saw that the owner of the homemade capsule stuffed it into his rear end. I was quite shocked at such wildness. Probably the young man noticed that and said that a “buddy” in their cell had a birthday that day, and they had to celebrate it. And how could they celebrate anything without weed?

Soon we were taken to the jail transport van that shuttles prisoners to Moscow jails. I was in high spirits because by Monday I could be free, but the tales of the young prisoners in the van made me grow sad again. “Seri, I was given only 8 years. I just wrapped those judges around my little finger. And you?” I could hear a voice from the cage. Seri answered that probably he would be put on probation. “They have no evidence to pin on me,” he boasted.

The one sentenced to eight years remarked that his sister would be 18 and she would probably be married by the time of his release. “And I will be 30,” he concluded sadly. Seri started comforting him by saying that the most important thing was to make it to “the zone” (labor camp). They say the people there and life are “good.”

The weekend dragged by excruciatingly slowly. Even continuous television coverage of the winter Olympic Games didn’t help. Although I was almost certain that I would be released on Monday, as my cellmates were telling me, I admitted that the judges would probably still try to take revenge on me and keep me in jail until the second trial. The fact that Judge Sazonov didn’t allow my wife to have a meeting with me was a bad omen. He didn’t even consider it necessary to explain the reason for his decision.

On the morning of February 14, 1994, when the court session began, Prosecutor Pankratov took the floor as expected. He read his statement, which repeated his speech from the previous session almost word for word. I could clearly see that the judges were nervous, because the decision to drop the charges clearly meant that they had failed to make their actions seem impartial and objective. Now, following the instructions of their former ally the Attorney General, the state prosecutor claimed that their charges were groundless, but camouflaged it by saying that the case should be sent for additional investigation. The judges were obviously not ready for such a somersault on his part and found themselves in a rather delicate position.

After the prosecutor spoke, my lawyer submitted a petition, requesting my release from prison. Then the judges announced a break so the court could compose a resolution.

Forty minutes later the judges returned and Sazonov read the decision of the court, which said that my case should be sent for additional investigation, but I had to stay in jail. It was only unclear for how long. I was disappointed and couldn’t think straight. However, I tried to convince myself that we had won a really huge, though not a final, victory. I believed the additional investigation, which the Attorney General’s Office had to conduct, not the KGB, would establish the full groundlessness of the charges.

Of course, I was upset that I would have to remain in jail. But, at the same time I believed that the pressure of the international community wouldn’t let them keep me incarcerated for long without any grounds.

Outwardly I was perfectly calm and I even tried to comfort my lawyer who couldn’t conceal his disappointment this time. Obviously, the tension of the few last days showed. He had worked tirelessly and had made all possible efforts to ensure the positive outcome of my case. We had no chance to talk because the guard was putting handcuffs on me to take me out of the courtroom.

On the way out, Asnis ran into Associated Press reporter Sergei Shargorodsky, who quoted him the February 15^th issue of The Moscow Tribune as saying: “I am amazed. I simply cannot find the words to express my disappointment with this decision.”[343] Vladimir Nazarov wrote about it also in Kuranty.[344] The New York Times,[345] The Baltimore Sun[346] and Chemical and Engineering News[347] posted information about latest events connected with my case.Wendy Sloane of The Christian Science Monitor symbolically titled her article with Andrey Mironov’s words “Mirzayanov’s case is the first test of the new Constitution”.[348] A more detailed analysis of the legal aspects of my case was perfectly showcased in an article by Valeri Rudnev.[349]

Two days later Asnis came to visit me once more in jail. He told me about my status. It turned out that until the resolution of the court was properly recorded and sent to the Attorney General’s Office by special mail, I would remain at the disposal of the court. In other words, I was still a captive prisoner of vengeful Judge Nikolai Sazonov.

When my case and the court’s resolution arrived at the Attorney General’s Office and the jail received notification of it, I would become the ward of the Attorney General’s Office, which would be free to decide my fate. I had only to wait. I was very pleased, because both Asnis and I believed that Aleksei Kazannik would immediately release me. I felt fine when I said good-bye to my lawyer, and I carried back a pile of newspapers with materials about my case.

I prepared myself for the possibility that I would be released only by the end of the following week. Fortunately, it happened earlier. On Tuesday, February 22, when we were boiling food from concentrates for lunch, the head appeared in the door of the cell, and in keeping with the established rules, asked “Who is Mirzayanov?”

“I am Mirzayanov!” I shouted.

The head snapped, “Quiet! Get your stuff ready to head for the exit!”

I got ready quickly and said farewell to my cellmates. I was glad that I was leaving this damned jail but a little sad that my cellmates remained there.

Fifteen minutes later the cell door opened and the guard ordered me to follow him. We followed the usual route to the place where they searched me. Then I was locked in a solitary cell, and I waited for what seemed like an eternity for the guard to come back.

He returned a few hours later and ordered me to undress. Then he started carefully examining all my belongings and all the folds of my body. There was nothing suspicious there. In my notebook I had the telephone numbers of my cellmates, but it was written as part of a mathematical equation. He didn’t notice my trick. However, the guard kept me in the solitary cell for yet another hour.

Finally, he came back and said that he had not been able to get some of my things from the jail storeroom because the keeper had finished his work and left for the day. Then he took me to the prison warden, A. Podrez.

A young and energetic man was sitting in a spacious office behind a long table. According to the inmates, he had inherited his job from his father, and he treasured his position a lot. I immediately decided that he looked like a typical secretary of the Komsomol Raikom. He was so well groomed, well nourished, and pleased with himself because his prospects for the future were simple and bright. If he didn’t become a party boss, he would be a VIP in trade or education. Or maybe he would even represent the country abroad, and “stand up for the interests of the proletariat” all over the world, while his efforts would be compensated in foreign currency.

Podrez showed me the resolution of the Attorney General about my release and asked me to sign that I had read it. I did so immediately. Then the warden asked me if I had any complaints or requests. I answered that I couldn’t get my stuff from the storeroom, and I didn’t have the fare to get home. I asked him to lend me 50 rubles for the metro ticket. Podrez gave me this money and I promised to return it the next day.

I kept my word and I handed 50 rubles through the window for parcels with a note “to be handed to the prison warden.” However strange it may seem, the money was received without any questions.

My family was waiting for me at home, because Aleksander Asnis had told my wife about my arrival in advance.

Later I found out that he had practically launched a ground support operation to release me. As soon as my case arrived at the Attorney General’s Office along with the official court decision, my lawyer sent a special courier to take the court resolution regarding my release to Aleksei Kazannik’s summer house, because he didn’t feel well and wasn’t at work. He signed a resolution and immediately sent it to the prison.

The first thing I did after my release was to call various organizations and tell them about the terrible conditions in which the prisoners of Matrosskaya Tishina were kept. I got in touch with the Red Cross office in Moscow, and some of their employees came to see me. I told them in detail about this prison, but it turned out that they had heard all of this before. Furthermore, they had even visited the prison, but so far their efforts hadn’t been rewarded with any positive results.

I also called Lord N. Bethel who was a very active member of the Commission for Human Rights in the European Parliament. Finally, I decided to send a detailed letter about inhuman conditions in Matrosskaya Tishina to Mr. Sammaruga, president of the Red Cross organization in Geneva.

The newspapers published an interview with me on this topic.[350]^, [351]^, [352]^, [353]^, [354] They also posted reports about my release from jail and gave comments on some possible solutions of my case.[355]^, [356]^, [357]^, [358]^, [359]