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

Can Your Russian Language Take You Everywhere?

Before I had this first contact with the KGB, I had studied for three years in Tatar High School N 1, in Djirtjuli. I am very proud of my school and I remember the names of all my teachers. I am sure that they were really highly professional people. They devoted their whole lives to bringing up students who came from the surrounding villages for their education. That was a very difficult time, when even a single piece of bread was precious.

My favorite subject was mathematics, taught by Gali Zilyaev, a graduate of Kazan University, but the other subjects were not a burden for me. I think this was mostly because of our teachers. When I was sitting in my Tatar literature classes taught by Sag’dat Aglyamova, who masterfully read the verses of Gabdulla Tukay, Khadi Taktash, and other Tatar poets, I even found myself dreaming that I wanted to become a writer.

My Russian literature classes taught by Maria Grigorievna Filippova with the poems of Pushkin, Lermontov, and other famous Russian poets were no less thrilling! She was a brilliant, democratic, and beautiful young lady from Ufa, and an idol for all the boys. Many of us were simply in love with her. Unfortunately, most of us were not at all skilled at writing essays in the Russian language, which was foreign to us and not related to Tatar, which falls into the Turkic group of languages. Still, it didn’t discourage anyone from taking Maria Grigorievna’s classes. I am grateful to her, because she introduced me to classical music, by encouraging me to listen to concerts that were broadcast on the radio, and tenderly cultivating in me such a love of music as she had herself. At that time, I didn’t have a record player, or even records, so the loudspeaker of the local relay system was my only source of this music.

Now, when I listen to masterpieces of opera, artfully performed by the world-renowned singers Anna Netrebko, Ildar Abdrazakov, Placido Domingo, and others, at the New York Metropolitan Opera House, I always remember my teacher with gratitude and admiration.

My other teachers were also very talented, and I owe them a lot. I was especially fond of the headmistress of our school, Gaishagar Gabbasovna Sharipova, who took me under her wing like a mother hen, though she was very young at that time. She protected me from many troubles that I faced, at times when my success made me dizzy.

For a long time, Faina Lvovna Levina, who had been evacuated from besieged Leningrad, was our thoughtful class supervisor. She worked hard so that we country villagers could develop polite manners and receive a good education. When the war was over, Faina Lvovna remained in remote Djirtjuli forever, never returning to her native Leningrad.

I have kept in touch with my school over the years, visiting it on vacations, sending different letters on many occasions. Over the course of time, this connection weakened slightly, but fortunately, it never broke, even though a few generations of teachers have changed over.

As for my promise to the regional KGB chief to keep the secret about their efforts to get me to enroll as a student for their school, I am writing about it in my book for the first time, for reasons that will become clear a bit later. Lieutenant Colonel Nasirov decided to take revenge for my lack of respect towards his “company”. I finished high school in 1953 with a silver medal, and that allowed me to enter any institution for higher education without taking the entrance exams. But there was a holdup, as it took me more than a month to get my draft card (a document allowing me to transfer my enlistment to another military office) from the regional military department. The regional commissioner insisted that I should enroll in the Orenburg Artillery School. But I was obstinate.

Every morning in July of 1953, I walked from my village to the military department, and every evening I returned home on foot, since there was no transportation between the village and the regional center in those days. There was no result. Many of my fellow students had already submitted documents to different institutions and I still haunted the doorstep of the military department.

Finally one day, after I had been sitting for the whole day by the door of the military commissioner’s office, I declared that I wouldn’t leave the building, and I would stay there for the night. It was the end of the workday and the employees looked at me as if I had gone mad. They didn’t like my resolute look at all, and threatened to call the police. At the same time, they realized that no threats could stop me now. At that moment, the military commander, Major Bezrukov, came out of his office and with a tone of disgust in his voice, ordered them to give a draft card to “this young whippersnapper”. I was so happy! I crossed the Belaya River and I ran the whole way to my house without stopping once.

At home, I announced that I was going to study in Moscow. My parents didn’t object, though my departure would cost them a lot of money. I got the money for my travel and for a month of living expenses in the capital. After that I was supposed to live on my scholarship and get a part-time job, so I could buy clothes and other necessities.

The delay with my draft card, which allowed me to enter a university, had its effect. With all the hardships characteristic of any journey at that time, I managed to reach Moscow only on Saturday, July 26. I was traveling in an overcrowded fourth-class train car, where passengers were sleeping on the floor. This journey took two full days and nights, and it was agonizing for me, even though I was a strong young man.

My ordeals were not over at that point. I was planning to enter the Bauman Higher Technical School in Moscow, and I wanted to major in “optical instruments” there. I arrived too late to go to the admission office there, and so I couldn’t get a place in the dormitory. I had nowhere to sleep even a little bit. I decided to return to the Kazan train station where I had left my luggage in the office.

I didn’t know Moscow at all, and it was difficult finding my way around on the metro. No matter how hard I tried to find the Kazan train station, for some reason I always ended up at the Kiev Station. Probably I didn’t have enough practice speaking Russian, since the subjects in our high school were taught in the Tatar. I was always speaking Tatar with other students.

By that time, I had suffered a lot because of my poor Russian language skills. I think it is the main reason why the first love of my youth ended in failure.

Once, when I was passing by the regional photographer’s studio, I saw a portrait displayed there of a wonderful young lady in a school uniform. Her large and thoughtful eyes and amazingly beautiful oval face struck me. Her long thick braids made her look like a movie star. This portrait was beautiful and surreal. Then I saw this girl in the street!

At that time and for a long time afterwards, I was extraordinarily shy, and I had to make an incredible effort just to speak to girls. That is why I couldn’t even dream of just coming up to a beautiful girl and speaking with her. I felt an insurmountable longing that I did not understand. Soon I learned that she was studying in the Russian school, though I am sure she was a Tatar or a Bashkir, not a Russian.

In those days, it was fashionable among the Soviet and local party officials to send their children to Russian schools, while the children who came from villages usually entered a Tatar high school. Certainly, this reflected the social stratification of the times.

Several months later, I made friends with Rishat Muratov, a decent and kind boy my age from the Russian school, who spoke the Tatar language mixed with Russian words. His father was the Second Secretary of the Raikom of the C.P.S.U. Soon I learned that my mysterious young lady lived in the same house as my new friend. Rishat explained that his neighbor was named Irene, and her father Bainazarov was the chairman of the Regional Council of People’s Deputies.

I was completely distressed by this news, because it meant we had absolutely nothing in common. The only thing I could do was to steal secret glances at Irene, when she dropped by Rishat’s place for some reason. For a long time, I never managed to utter a single word in her presence. They always spoke Russian there, and even the colloquial version of Russian was beyond me at that time, and for years afterwards.

I rented a flat from a Russian landlady and I tried to master this difficult language by speaking with her. I asked her, and she agreed to correct my mistakes. But speaking Russian with such a young beauty, whose looks deprived me of any ability to think, was out of the question. I frankly envied my friend who could speak so freely and naturally with Irene, as if she were his sister. Meanwhile, I cursed my shyness, and I was perfectly sure that I would never be able to overcome it. There was only one thing left for me to do. I had to make sure that Irene would know me as the top student and sportsman.

I tried really hard, and as I had a serious incentive, my efforts produced results. By winter, I became the top student among the eighth-graders and I was elected to every possible school and Komsomol committee.[7] It was surprising that I was elected secretary of the Komsomol school committee, which was the highest acknowledgement of my new position, although I was only sixteen and we had eighteen-year-olds on the committee.

When our physics teacher was ill (she was the only one in our school who taught her subject in Russian), another teacher from the Russian school replaced her. I knew from Rishat that the teacher spoke very well about me when he went back to his Russian school. According to Rishat, students of my age from that school were intrigued. Probably my friend’s news prompted me to take a desperate step. I summoned all my courage and wrote a letter in Russian to the object of my affections. Rishat handed Irene this note with my confessions of love and a proposal to be friends. Soon I received Irene’s answer, and she wrote that she had heard a lot about me and she even doubted that she deserved to be my friend. My joy was boundless when I received her reply to my second letter, and she offered to meet me.

We had to meet late at night at the end of one of the central streets of the town. That frosty February evening, Irene and I strolled along the street, and she told me about herself and her girl friends. I understood everything but, unfortunately, I was thinking too slowly to keep the conversation going in Russian. Of course, I could have recited poems in Tatar, or I could have told her about the books I had read; plenty of them were in Russian, but it seemed to me that some heavy weight was hanging on my tongue. I tried to murmur something, but I couldn’t say anything sensible. Horrified, I realized that I wasn’t making a very good impression. The embarrassment that overwhelmed me at that moment stopped me from even looking at Irene, but at the same time, I was infinitely happy that such a beautiful and bright girl was walking beside me and talking with me.

We met a few more times, but I still behaved as though I were paralyzed. I understood that it was time to declare my love, to hug and kiss Ira, but all of this was beyond me.

My greatest happiness came from an episode connected with my performance at the regional cross-country ski championship. I couldn’t participate in the 15-kilometer race because I had broken my skis. Only the gym teacher had a spare pair of good skis, but for some reason he had decided to take part in the race himself, without any training. It was a great pity for me because I was in good shape by then and I had already taken the first place in the 10-kilometer race. But then unexpectedly I got the chance to show what I was made of. My teacher dropped out of the race after the first circle and the judges allowed me to start the race on his skis. Then a snowstorm broke out over us and it was practically impossible to see the ski-track. All the participants stopped racing. But I was inexorable and continued the race because I knew that Irene was among the few spectators.

I finished the race alone and became the champion, but I was happy for a different reason. Right then Rishat handed me a note from Ira with her words of admiration and an invitation for a date.

That date was our last one. Probably my mumbling and unintelligible murmuring in bad Russian dampened her enthusiasm. I failed to turn our budding friendship into love. After all, we were only 16, and at that time there were heated debates in the Komsomol newspapers about whether someone could experience love at such a young age. The answer was always certainly negative. According to the Komsomol directives, love at such an early age distracted young people from their studies.

I met Irene a few more times under different circumstances, but there were no more dates. During the summer following 9^th grade, we both worked as counselors in a pioneer camp. Though we had a lot of different opportunities for meeting privately there, I never dared to speak to her. She was silent, too. Still, I was extraordinarily happy to be next to her.

As the years passed, my feeling turned into permanent pain. Though there was no love in the generally accepted meaning of the word, the image of Irene haunted me for a long time, overshadowing my further infatuations with women. There were moments when I cursed her for this and I tried to hate her, but it was beyond me.

We never saw each other again. I remembered her always as I saw her in that portrait on the stand in the photographer’s studio.

In Moscow

The Russian language problem haunted me in Moscow as well. Finally, I spent my first night in the Kiev Railway Station. Policemen drove out every suspicious looking character from the overcrowded waiting room. I think my looks didn’t really appeal to the police, because I was dressed in my ski tracksuit – which looked like coveralls. On my feet I had worn out old boots. At that time, Moscow was full of internal troops, and the police were struggling with criminals who had been released from the jail and labor camps, through amnesty after Stalin’s death. Practically all the released prisoners rushed to the large cities and started terrorizing people.

The people of Moscow hadn’t yet recovered from the shock caused by the appearance of the troops and tanks, which were there to prevent a coup organized by Beria and to arrest this omnipotent head of the KGB. I had to spend another day and night near Kiev Station. Fortunately, the nights were relatively warm then.

Early on Monday morning, I was already in the reception of Bauman High Technical School (MVTU) in Moscow. The admissions secretary listened to me and explained that the admission of medal winners was finished, and he had no right to admit me, a medal winner, to the entrance exams on general terms.

Needless to say, I was deeply disappointed because I hoped that I would be admitted and would receive a place in the dormitory. I desperately wanted to sleep, I could hardly stand up, and I couldn’t think straight. However, the instinct of self-preservation prevailed. I asked a university entrant to give me a reference book on Moscow institutions for higher education and I started making phone calls. The third Institute I called was the Lomonosov Institute of Fine Chemical Technology (MITKhT) in Moscow. I asked if I could come right away and get a place in the dormitory. The answer was positive, and this settled my fate for many years to come.

I immediately went to 1 Malaya Pirogovskaya Street, and submitted my documents as if I were in a dream. I could hardly understand which department and major I should choose to list in the application. I coped with this task intuitively and made no mistakes. I asked to enroll in the Department of Organic Synthesis, with a major of “artificial gas and liquid fuels”, where the scholarship was the biggest in the institute. Even today, I can firmly say that I was never sorry about my choice.

Studies in the college and the life in the dormitory were combined with my constant struggle for survival, because my parents couldn’t help me at all financially. My income consisted solely of the scholarship, and it was hardly enough to cover poor meals and pay for a place in the dormitory. Very often, I went to the Kiev Station to find work unloading train cars. Unfortunately, this job wasn’t always available. Sometimes, like some of my fellow students, I managed to get hired for a night shift at the Dorogomilovsky chemical plant.

The work there was hard and hazardous to the health, because safety measures were very primitive. When I was in my fourth year I found a very profitable job. I delivered bottles of distilled water to the laboratories of the institute, and I almost became a prosperous student. I could even dress more decently and buy the first pair of winter shoes I had in my life.

With great difficulty, I managed to scrape together a little money from my poor scholarship to buy tickets to the Bolshoi Theatre. The tickets were the cheapest ones, for the upper circle of the theatre. Even to buy those, I had to go to the Bolshoi Theatre the evening before the tickets went on sale and cue up with other poor opera lovers. Most of us were students, spending a cold winter night together on the street.

They made frequent roll calls in the line, and those who were late were ruthlessly crossed off the waiting list for the tickets. When the ticket offices opened at 10 A.M., the first two hundred names on the list had the best chance of buying tickets for the next ten days of the month. It was cold, and I desperately wanted to sleep and to drink something hot, but this couldn’t stop me. Cold nights in lines became a peculiar musical school for me. Among the students there were great connoisseurs of opera music who shared their knowledge with grateful listeners. Since I came from a remote village and I had never listened to live music before, this was always wonderful and enchanting. Soon the following operas became my favorites – “Aida” by Giuseppe Verdi, “Pikovaya Dama” by Petr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and “Demon” by Anton Rubinshtein.

At that time, everybody loved the singers Nelepp, Lisitsian, and Ivanov. I remember “Aida” performed by Georgi Nelepp (Radames), Irina Arkhipova (Amneris), and Galina Vishnevskaya (Aida), as if I heard it only yesterday. Aleksander Melik-Pashaev conducted the orchestra brilliantly.

By that time, famous the singers Ivan Kozlovsky and Sergei Lemeshev had already stopped performing on the stage of the Bolshoi Theatre, and I didn’t have a chance to enjoy their beautiful voices. But I remember very well the debut of ballerina Maya Plisetskaya in “Walpurgis Night” of “Faust”. Of course it was a remarkable show, featuring the wonderfully staged dances of a corps de ballet in a witches’ sabbath!

I never expected that my studies in the institute would turn out to be a process, which mainly consisted of performing certain duties. There was little captivating there that could ignite a spark in young minds. Unfortunately, practically everything was a burdensome compulsory routine.

From the first years of my studies, I retained the impression that the teachers deeply distrusted the students. They thought that we were lazy and only trying to cheat them. Most lecturers were completely unable to explain anything and the poor students couldn’t force themselves to listen, despite all threats. For example, one time the famous academician Ivan Nazarov was giving a lecture on the basics of organic chemistry. In a monotonous and boring voice, he was trying to explain this subject, which we badly needed. The material was supposed to be interesting and we understood that he was a prominent scientist, but there was no lecture as such. It simply wasn’t working out. Fifteen minutes after the beginning of the lecture, the academician started resorting to sanctions. “The third row from the back, the student in glasses! Would you be so kind as to leave the auditorium?” he ordered. “The young man from the second row on the left – this refers to you as well. You, the girl next to him, you are free to go, too. All of you! Come to my office after the lecture to explain yourselves!”

After the lecture, 15-20 students lined up near his office door. Those who were dismissed from the lecture had to answer to Nazarov himself at the exam. It was almost impossible to cope with that ordeal, and many students flunked out because of their poor performance in organic chemistry.

Unfortunately, even though famous scientists were terrible at giving lectures, it wasn’t perceived as their flaw. On the contrary, the fault was attributed solely to lack of diligence on the part of students. Sometimes really strange things happened. The famous physicist and chemist Yakov Syrkin was also a poor lecturer. Finally, he was so upset with his students’ lack of understanding, that he made a big show of leaving the lecture hall, never to return.

I also remember another curious incident connected with him. At that time, it was rumored that the Americans had developed or would soon develop a thermonuclear bomb. A student asked a corresponding member of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences (who later became an academician) if such a weapon was possible. This scientist replied categorically that it was impossible, even theoretically. You can only imagine our disillusionment when, half a year later, the U.S.S.R. announced that the test of the H-bomb had been successful. For the first time, I realized that even corresponding members and academicians could be mistaken. Much later, I learned that in most cases membership to the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences had nothing to do with a scientist’s talent. It was mostly determined by someone’s contacts and his or her devotion to some clan within this organization. The heads of these clans usually arrange deals between themselves and decide who will be “elected” this year, and who would have to wait until the next year.

Many academicians and corresponding members were elected by direct order of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U., which as “the guiding organization” in the country, fostered certain people connected with science. It artificially provided them with goods unavailable to average hardworking selfless scientists, and it provided career growth for their bosses, the would-be scientists.

My last remark does not reflect in any way on the respected reputation of the late Yakov Kivovich Syrkin, who undoubtedly was a prominent scientist. He made a valuable contribution to the theory of molecular structure.

I won’t dwell on the lecturers who were not up to the mark. They were in the majority at MITKhT. At the same time, I want to speak well of such outstanding professionals as Olga Zuberbiller, who was a professor of Calculus and Professor Nisson Gelperin, the chairman of the “Processes and Apparatus” Department. Students who were not required to attend, teachers, and outsiders simply interested in the subject matter regularly attended their lectures, which were thrilling and amazingly easy to understand.

Unfortunately, interesting lectures and seminars didn’t constitute a significant part of the overall student schedule. There was an abundance of subjects that literally sucked our souls dry, making our prime years a misery. I am sure that we wasted about 70 percent of our academic time during the first three years for nothing.

Almost every day, there were lectures and seminars on the history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which were followed by the so-called “principles of Marxism-Leninism” course and philosophy. “Military” classes were just as frequent. There was a military department at the institute, which was composed of elderly colonels and lieutenant colonels, graduates of the Voroshilov Academy of Chemical Defense. These old campaigners had snugly settled into the capital, and they took special pleasure in mocking the students. They thought that students should work for the privilege of avoiding military service, by being diligent in their meaningless classes.

There was something sad and at the same time funny about the column of girls and boys in civilian clothing, marching along the embankment of the Moscow River. When a colonel called them up in front of the line, some students had difficulties with the reports that they had to deliver. Either they forgot things and mixed up the word order, or they saluted with their left hand like the German soldiers in war movies. Colonels especially enjoyed themselves when “student K” had to suffer through this procedure. He couldn’t coordinate his arms and legs while marching, and that is why this student was considered a persistent slacker in military science and had serious academic problems.

Classes in chemical defense were total dogma. We had to remember all the physical and chemical constants (melting and boiling points, vapor pressure, density, etc.), as well as the chemical and physiological properties of all the chemical agents. God forbid that you attempt to express something in your own words or to elaborate on the definition or answer provided by the textbook. This was considered to be an unforgivable mistake.

“Well, what is the distinguishing effect of nitrogenic mustard gas, compared with the effect of ordinary mustard gas?” asked Lieutenant Colonel Xenia Knyazeva. I explained that the difference is that the poisoning was evident only after a period of time, not immediately.

“Wrong!” she exulted. “This property is called the… c..u..m..u..l..a..t..i..v..e effect. You should read the instructions, young man!”

At that time, it wasn’t a laughing matter for me, because I had the highest grades in all my subjects and I was counting on receiving a higher scholarship. In a heartbeat, I had lost this chance by not using the favorite word of a pretty woman in military uniform.

Later, it felt like I got my revenge when I was taking an oral exam in Colonel Aleksander Shvarts’ class. He was a great boaster, and he liked to tell us tall tales about his war experience. Although according to his colleagues, Shvarts had spent the whole war in the smoke screens divisions and wasn’t in any real battles, he was the classical example of a petty nitpicker. Mostly he taught us how to darn the respirator haversack, while he explained why the gas mask filter held back the fumes of chemical agents. Then he checked on our mastery of the subject.

“Now tell me – thanks to what force does the filter of the gas mask keep back the fumes of various chemical agents?” asked the colonel. Each student explained this quite correctly, describing in his or her own way the adsorption of molecules to the surface of activated charcoal. But the colonel was implacable and dismissed them for failing to properly grasp the academic material. Finally, it was my turn for this torture.

“Well, what keeps the molecules of chemical agents on the filter after all?” he repeated his question.

Something enlightened me at that moment and I solemnly and slowly uttered, “Cohesion forces”.

The colonel jumped up with joy, and he almost kissed me. He was beside himself with happiness, because a student had remembered his favorite phrase. He even forgave all the other unlucky students and announced that everyone had passed his test.

Every year, our studies at the Military Department became more and more difficult. We had to study numerous machines for degassing military equipment and military uniforms, including clothes and gas masks. It was downright impossible to remember their characteristics. These machines were absolutely useless because the uniforms were completely spoiled after the neutralization treatment. In the military camps we made sure many times that this was so.

In the summer after our second year, we were taken to the military camps in Florichi, which is not far from Nizhny Novgorod (the city was called Gorky then). This place was very swampy and sandy with a pine forest. We lived in tents – one unit in each. We were dressed in terribly uncomfortable soldier uniforms and had tarpaulin boots, our feet being covered in fabric foot wraps. Sometimes it was more than 35 degrees Celsius, and our feet became swollen.

Young soldiers, who had just finished the regimental school that trained sergeants and lance corporals, gave us the orders. Marshal Zhukov was then the Soviet Minister of Defense. He was notorious for his cruelty and his loud mouth. Soldiers were punished for the smallest offence. Then they were put into the guardhouse, or even sent to the penal battalion. The time that a soldier spent in these “establishments” wasn’t included in his term of military service. If he lost some piece of his uniform or equipment, or if it was stolen, he had to pay for that loss. It was his own business where he would find the money. Usually the soldier who was robbed made up for the loss by stealing from others, especially from the rookies.

Soon I experienced firsthand the consequences of this kind of discipline in the glorious Soviet Army.

I entered the soldier’s toilet where 8-10 people were doing what they had to at the same time. I took off my belt, hung it on the nail on the wall, and squatted. When I raised my head, I saw that my belt was no longer on the nail. The situation was terrible and I immediately reported the incident to my unit commander, a guy with a vacant herpetic face and foolish blue eyes. He ordered me to pay and promised to give me the new belt after that. I had just enough money for this fine and for a whole month I had no money left to buy cigarettes or any sweets. In the cafeteria, we received only two tiny pieces of sugar for tea.

This kind of discipline was applied to us, the students, with special refinement. The sergeants didn’t hide their hatred for those who opted for higher education, and whenever the opportunity arose they demonstrated savage cruelty, so that the students would always remember their pettiness. We were marched to the cafeteria, singing a compulsory song. As soon as we sat down at the table, Sergeant Korytko ordered, “Finish-sh!” For some reason, he pronounced the “sh” sound with a wheeze. I thought I could eat very fast, but I didn’t even have time to deal with the soup. Feverishly, and already on the move, I swallowed my millet porridge with a piece of fat pork. The moment we sat down at the table we stuffed two pieces of black bread into our pockets, and this saved us from constant hunger, which we felt as soon as we left the cafeteria.

Thanks to the commander of our unit, one more shocking memory was added to my inventory of impressions of my experience with our “glorious and invincible” army.

Near our tents, there were other tents housing former soldiers who were summoned for re-training. Again, the sergeant made us march near those tents. “Sing!” he ordered. We didn’t want to sing. Then he ordered, “Double quick march!” We ran for some time turning back and forth on command. “Quick march!” the next command followed. Then, this dumb-faced commander ordered again, “Sing!” One of the soldiers who had been observing us from his tent, couldn’t control himself and said bluntly, “Son of a bitch!” I don’t know how this happened, but I reacted automatically, “Even more than that!”

We sighed and at that very instant, a frantic yell startled us, “Stop!!!” The man was pale, and his face quivered with indescribable rage. He didn’t dismiss us but rushed to the officers’ quarters to complain. We all understood what could follow, but no one sympathized with me. Everyone was glad that it hadn’t happen to him.

Soon the commander of the platoon, a young lieutenant, came out. He called me solemnly in front of the line and announced an “emergency event”, which had never happened before in their glorious unit. He explained that an insult to a Soviet Army commander might entail up to two years of penalty work. However, he said that taking into consideration the young age and insufficient political and moral awareness of student Mirzayanov, the commander of the battalion decided to limit my punishment to an extra detail in the cafeteria and to washing the floors in the Lenin Room.

Of course, I did all of this without asking any questions. But that was only the beginning. When it was boiling hot, more than 35 degrees Celsius outside, we were ordered to put on rubber overalls, boots, and gas masks. We had to deactivate “the site” contaminated with mustard gas. In order to do this, we had to dig up and turn over the ground, then mix it with bleach, and there was a time limit for all of this. We did everything ahead of schedule, and with satisfied faces we overturned our boots to pour out the sweat. They thanked everybody, but then I heard, “Mirzayanov, go to the commander!”

I ran until I reached the commander’s center to see the head of our military department, General Khandozhko. He was sent to MITKhT from the Main Political Directorate of the Soviet Army, where he had received his “training”. He was an aide to Lev Mekhlis who, together with Lavrentii Beria exterminated more Red generals than the whole fascist army.

The man was short, with a round face and a black moustache, and somehow he reminded us of our “dear” Iosif Stalin. He openly imitated the leader’s manner of putting on an air of importance and majesty. He even spoke with a slight Caucasian accent, though he was Russian.

In a harsh voice, Khandozhko started speaking about the blemish on all students, which presumably was created by my error, and he threatened me with a military tribunal, dismissal from the institute, and other penalties. Oddly, for some reason I felt no fear.

Not everyone found our life in camp so hard. Some guys even liked the meaningless drills, and by the end of our stay there they became aides to platoon commanders, and gave us orders like the sergeants. Later, after graduating from the institute, they soon rose to the top of the administrative ranks.

There was nothing remarkable about my second tour of duty in the military camp, right after my graduation from the institute. In the summer of 1958, we were sent to the chemical battalion in Jykhvi, Estonia. Hardly anyone took any interest in us, and we spent our time paying cards or chess, and missing Moscow.

Another monster that gobbled up students’ precious academic time at MITKhT was our exhaustive study of Marxism-Leninism. Lectures were given by former party bosses and “scientists”, and this was a very lucrative occupation at that time. Those classes were incredibly boring. We could miss lectures in other subjects without any serious punishment, but the attendance was taken strictly in those classes. Skipping three lectures for an “invalid” reason could result in dismissal from the institute. So, fooling around with party matters was extremely dangerous. There was nothing left but to learn everything by heart, all the dates of endless Bolshevik congresses and conferences, their agendas, Lenin’s speeches, and how he struggled with the hateful Mensheviks, etc. There was no guarantee that you wouldn’t get confused by all this heresy, so students prepared simple crib sheets.

Once, a man who resembled a human being appeared in this Communist kingdom of almost medieval ignorance. That was Rem Belousov who came to us from Moscow State University. Rumor had it that he was a secretary of the Komsomol committee there, but had been removed because his views were incompatible with the party doctrine.

Soon we learned about the views of Belousov. First of all, he said that not a single one of Stalin’s five-year plans for the economic development of the country had been implemented. It was even more terrible to hear that the party’s plan, according to Lenin’s appeal, to have 100,000 tractors which would secure the victory of socialism, was never fulfilled. “How come?” we asked in a great outburst. Rem Aleksandrovich explained this very simply. In all the reports on implementing the plan, hundreds of thousands of manufactured tractors were mentioned as, “translated into a 15 horse-power tractor”. So, each 60 horse-power tractor was counted as four tractors, though it couldn’t work in the place of four machines. All this was very strange. Although the views of our new lecturer were very progressive at the time, he didn’t aim to go beyond “going back to Lenin’s principles”.

For a long time after his lectures, we joked whenever we saw a tractor in the street. One student asked another how many tractors he saw. The latter answered that he saw one. “No, dear friend, you are opposed to the party line. There are four tractors there, not one. You should study the history of the party, young man!” added the joker.

The party paid close attention to the institute. Ekaterina Furtseva was a former weaver, who studied at our institute for a year or two. Later she became a member of the Politbureau at the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U. I saw her in 1955. I remembered her resolute, attractive face, her red hair braided on the nape, and her energetic step tap-dancing on the marble floor of the second floor landing, which students traditionally called the “hole” because of the glass dome above it.

The institute’s rector, Myshko, was a stout dumpy guy with short legs, who could hardly keep up with the leader of Moscow Communists (at that time Furtseva was the First Secretary of the Moscow City Committee of the C.P.S.U). For a long time, Myshko held “important posts in the Soviet state apparatus”, including that of Deputy Chairman of the Moscow City Council. But afterwards he was demoted to rector of MITKhT. We remembered him, because he quoted Sergei Esenin in his speeches. Esenin was proclaimed a bourgeois poet by the official propaganda, and it was forbidden to publish his poetry.

However, Myshko combined Esenin’s romanticism with his own roguish habits, which were very far from poetry. For instance, he hired his son-in-law to design the Marxist-Leninist rooms, for which large amounts of money were budgeted. In fact, professional artists did this job for peanuts, while Myshko and his son-in-law divided the money between themselves. At that time, the mischief of the Soviet elite knew no limits.

A storm broke out when it turned out that Myshko had borrowed large amounts of money from some elderly professors, with no intention of repaying them, hoping that these old creditors would soon pass away, departing for a better world where they wouldn’t need any money. But the wife of one old man proved to be quite brave. She stirred up such a scandal that Myshko even agreed to be transferred to some department and to write a doctoral dissertation. But this job was too hard for him. The question was settled simply: Myshko was transferred to another “important position in the Soviet administration”. After all, it was impossible to cast a shadow on the “pure reputation of a Communist”.

A friend of Furtseva’s was Lecturer Khokhlova, who was a permanent secretary of the institute’s party committee. She was especially noted for keeping up appearances.

When the next rector of the Institute, Professor Xenzenko, divorced his wife and married a student (oh, what a scandal!), Khokhlova organized a crusade for “the purity of Communist morals”. As a result, Xenzenko was removed from his position as rector and later, he was driven out of the institute. After this great shock, the scientist fell seriously ill and died.

Lecturer Aleksander Smirnov was another “prominent party leader” who worked at the institute during my studies. I don’t know why, but as the Vice Chairman of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Industry of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U., he frequently visited the Department of “Artificial Gas and Liquid Fuel” to supervise our group. In class he would just stand there silently, while we carried out experiments on the synthesis of organic compounds or performed differential distillations of the heavy residues of resin pyrolysis. Nothing could bring him out of this inert state. Even the time when I once made the mistake of short circuiting the power grid and plunging the whole laboratory into darkness for a while, seemed to have no effect on him. I think the prospect of a scientific degree attracted Smirnov. In the evenings, he tried to work in Andrei Bashkirov’s Laboratory at the Institute of Petrochemical Synthesis, at the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences. However, Smirnov’s attempts were doomed. In one of the laboratories, he assembled an experimental unit for synthesis based on carbon monoxide (an extremely poisonous gas) and hydrogen. Either he forgot that the gases flowing out from the reactor should be directed into the exhaust hood, or the rubber hose that served this purpose came off, and the whole thing nearly ended in catastrophe. An employee who happened to enter the room found the unconscious Aleksander Sergeevich on the floor and immediately carried him out into the street. The people summoned by the alarm just barely managed to save the unlucky researcher.

None of this prevented him from becoming the chairman of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Industry of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U. The fate of six to eight Soviet ministers, who were in one way or another connected with chemistry, depended on him. Additionally, through his department, he managed issues of chemical weapons and often visited the State Scientific Research Institute for Organic Chemistry and Technology (GOSNIIOKhT) — the premiere institute that developed chemical agents in the country, where I later worked for 26 years. His son-in-law, Henri Kazhdan, also worked in this institute and though he wasn’t a specialist, he still held a high position there.

Eventually, Smirnov achieved his ambition and became a “famous scientist”. Smirnov and Vladimir Gryaznov, a former party administrator at the Institute of Petrochemical Synthesis at the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences, received a patent some very dubious discovery (pure Soviet classification).

I still remember quite well a number of other meaningless subjects which students were forced to study, such as the theory of machines and mechanisms, heating engineering, and construction, etc. Sometimes we asked our teachers why a chemist should try to calculate and design thermal boilers that produce steam and electrical energy, if electricity has been transmitted for a long time from electric power stations. There were mechanical engineers who worked there, specialists in this field. The machines and components were also designed by specialists and machinists. There were other institutes in Moscow that trained plenty of engineers, majoring in that area. We didn’t receive any answers to our questions. I fear that the same thing still goes on and students have no time to study their major subject areas, for which they entered their institutions of higher learning in the first place.

Each head of every department thought that their area of specialty was the most important one. Even in the Athletic Department, teachers practically terrorized the students who failed to meet the regulation standards for jumping or distance running. It didn’t matter if you were good at skiing, for example, or if you played volleyball very well. Our overweight PE teacher, Victoria Naumovna, was concerned only with her test.

In our second year, my fellow sportsmen and I failed the test in physical training, even though we achieved good results in different city competitions. This was because we had problems with an idiotic set of exercises called “GTO” (“Ready for Labor and Defense”), which required bizarre exercises such as standing on your head.

Two days before our exams, I had to train one whole night, learning how to stand on my head. The next day, I took the damn test with an open wound on my forehead, and since I had trained the whole night, there was no time to prepare for my exam. However, the women from the Athletic Department were not interested in that. Our trainers who were also teachers couldn’t help, as they couldn’t go against the instructions “sent down from above.”

After my third year, the student life at MITKhT became merrier. Apart from Marxism and military science, practically all the unnecessary subjects were behind us, and we could focus on our major subjects. The teachers and professors in our favorite subject areas were not so diabolical, and they didn’t hate the students. Many students never made it this far, because they couldn’t cope with the meaningless drills.

My introduction to the manufacture of chemical products came through my internships at some operating plants. Unfortunately, they were more like excursions, though perhaps a bit more specialized. They didn’t help us much in acquiring the skills of a technological engineer.

I was most impressed by my internship at the Novocherkassk Chemical Plant. At that time, it was a huge plant for producing synthetic fuel from carbon monoxide and hydrogen, using captured German technology and equipment. This plant received state subsidies, but it was unprofitable because the gasoline it produced was of such low quality, that it wasn’t even good enough to refuel the factory buses. During the war, the Germans solved this problem by using additives such as tetraethyl lead. But this additive, which is also a strongly toxic compound, was produced in small quantities and so the products of the plant were of little use. The situation was the same at the two other large factories that were relocated from Germany to Salavat (Bashkortstan) and Angarsk.[8] By that time, the U.S.S.R. had started developing the rich deposits of natural oil from Bashkortstan and Tatarstan, which produced much better gasoline.

Some time later, a team of scientists led by Andrei Bashkirov, the head of our department, found a better application for the saturated hydrocarbons produced from carbon monoxide and hydrogen.

At that time, the U.S.S.R. had the largest whaling fleet in the world, and it practically wiped Antarctic whales off the face of the earth. Fat was cut off the carcasses of these huge mammals and sent to chemical plants (for example to the Kazan plant), where it was processed and used to produce heavy primary alcohols. These in turn were used to make the synthetic detergent “Novost”. Even at that time it was clear that this madness would have to stop some day. Bashkirov proposed a method for oxidizing the product of the Novocherkassk plant, called “synthine”, in the presence of boric acid into heavy primary alcohols. This was a revolutionary solution, and we were very proud of our professor.

When Docent Gilyarovskaya suggested that I should conduct experiments researching the process of synthine oxidation in my fourth year of studies, I happily agreed. Before that I had hardly dreamed about the career of a scientist. At the time, I thought it was better to work at a plant in the field of chemical engineering; however, I quickly realized that my place was in the research laboratory. You are practically alone there, face to face with the unknown, and it is up to you alone whether something new and unexplored is created or not.

This became even clearer to me when I was a fifth-year student during an internship at the Shebekino Chemical Plant, not far from Belgorod, where the first industrial technology for producing primary alcohols was under development. A few students from our department studied the operation of this future plant, with a prototype unit. The performance of this unit was dynamic and full of surprises, but generally I felt it was terribly boring, routine and repetitive from day to day. The few night shifts that I spent with the unit finally and for all time convinced me that there was nothing remarkable about the job of a shift engineer, except the monotony of the technological process. The work is exhausting and it is not compensated by any creative satisfaction.

By that time, I had seriously fallen in love with my fellow student, Rita Skibko, who returned my feelings. She worked diligently at the department for the synthesis and technology of vitamins and drugs, headed by the famous scientist Nikolai Preobrazhensky. Soon we got married, dreaming about a family scientific career.

Bashkirov suggested that I do the work for my degree thesis in his laboratory, and I was very inspired by this opportunity.

Soon I was introduced to my supervisors – Yuli Kagan, a senior scientist, and Nikolai Morozov, a graduate student. When Kagan and Bashkirov went on an extended business trip to China, Morozov became my actual supervisor. We studied the role of proposed carbon complexes with an iron catalyst while different organic hydroxyl compounds were synthesized on it.

Nikolai was a kindhearted person who did everything possible to make me feel free to devote myself to the work. We conducted almost all experiments together and I certainly trusted him completely. I quickly mastered the experimental techniques, and I carried out the kinetic experiments with pleasure, drawing gas samples into adsorption tubes and weighing them. You literally kilometers run, for hours on end, rushing from the laboratory to the weighing room and back again.

Unfortunately, our early work was unproductive. We failed to get reproducible experimental data. All the time, we got different results, which were beyond any logical explanation. Sometimes, we made odd “discoveries”, when the catalyst we tested showed more than a 100% conversion of the carbon monoxide. Later it turned out that when we were cleaning the reactor, we had left a few threads of a worn-out cleaning rag behind.

We didn’t know what to do. The day when course papers had to be defended was approaching with a disastrous speed, but still we had no reproducible results. As if sensing that we were having problems, Kagan wrote a letter from China, though naturally he couldn’t help us from there.

Fortunately, Bashkirov returned from China earlier than planned. Though he didn’t know our work in detail, he taught us a valuable lesson. Bashkirov listened to Nikolai, who was just starting his career in science, and rebuked us properly. He demanded that we repeat all the experimental operations with the maximum possible accuracy and observe intervals between selecting the samples and the weighing. After this, things went smoothly, and I managed to finish my work on time.