Luckily, it turned out that he wasn’t poisoned at all and was quite healthy. But this served as a good lesson for me, for my whole life. After that, I tried to be guided by common sense, not just by feelings of sympathy or pity.
My work at Post Office Box 4019 exhausted me. It was especially difficult during the night shifts, because I couldn’t sleep properly when I came home. We were living in one room with Rita’s parents then, and it was so cramped when our daughter Lena was born that you couldn’t even turn around. I quickly came to the realization that the work of a shift engineer required practically no initiative or elements of creativity. This was a real impasse for me. So, despite all the obstacles, I started to prepare to enter graduate school. That was the only way for me to leave my work, because I was obliged to work for three years at the place of my assignment, irrespective of my wishes. Only two years of work experience were required to enter graduate school.
Hard work and bad living conditions had an adverse impact on my health. At my medical exam, the doctors recommended that I start getting treatment immediately, warning that I could be sent to a hospital. Soon my health improved and our living conditions changed for the better.
I wanted to study at the graduate school of the Institute of Petrochemical Synthesis of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences, which I knew well. But when my documents had to be submitted, I discovered a very important paper was missing: the character references from my workplace, signed by the director of the institute, the chairman of the trade union committee, and the secretary of the Party Committee. I quickly collected signatures from the director and the chairman, but there were problems with Sorokin, secretary of the Party Committee. He said that the party thought that young specialists were necessary right there at this important production site, and if I wanted to study I had to do it there. I almost cried from resentment and profound disappointment. However, I decided that I would return to him 10 days later. Probably he would relent and give in.
But the party boss didn’t change his mind then either. Instead, he rebuked me as a persistent slacker who was trying to shun his duty to the party and to the people. They had let me study and had fostered me, but apparently it wasn’t a success.
When I came on my shift that evening, I was upset and unable to hide my feelings. Of course my workers asked what had happened, so I told them. Then Dima, who became a professor of law in the future, said “Give me that paper!” I gave it to him and was surprised to see that Dima calmly signed it in place of the secretary of the “mind, honor, and conscience of our era”. He said that I would be a fool if I let “that idiot Sorokin” stop me.
I had to agree with this dubious method because there was no other choice. I am still sure that nobody ever read this paper – it was simply a formality. After all, I was going to study at my own risk and lose half of my salary. I wasn’t looking for some kind of government award or career advancement.
Probably I left Post Office Box 4019 just in time. These days, it no longer has a secret name. It is called the Institute of Organic Silicone Compounds Technology and is close to GOSNIIOKhT, where I would work 26 years…
In 1959, our “Post Office Box” designed a large plant for producing boranes (diborane, pentaborane, decaborane, etc.), which was built in the Redkino settlement, located halfway between the cities Klin and Tver.
Later, my boss and I visited this plant to evaluate its readiness for operation. We found significant defects in the assembly of the gas mains and the layout of equipment, which we reported to Vladimir Rostunov, the chief engineer. He was an energetic and resolute looking middle-aged man.
Twenty years later I met him again at the Novocheboksary Chemical Plant, which produced the chemical agent Substance 33, an analog to the well-known VX nerve gas. By that time, Rostunov had become the chief engineer of the Main Administration “Soyuzorgsynthesis” at the U.S.S.R. Ministry of Chemical Industry, which supervised the production of chemical weapons. He and other bosses were awarded the Lenin Prize, as well as other honors and regalia of the Soviet era, for launching the Novocheboksary Plant. He was a talented engineer and probably would have gone on to achieve more, except for his fondness of alcohol, which hindered his further career advancement.
In the early days, during my business trip to Redkino, I met many of my fellow students who had been “assigned” to this plant, where a branch of our “Post Office Box” was soon organized.
Many years later, I learned that a lot of the people who had worked there got poisoned with boranes. Some of them died, and some remained helplessly crippled for life. This happened to my fellow student, Yuri Bujnitsky. Yuri was a tall handsome man with a slightly swarthy face and a tender chin, which revealed his kindness. Apparently, this feature of his made him a little bit uncomfortable, because he was the appointed head of the workshop and had more than 200 subordinates working under him.
I met him once at the Lenin State Library in Moscow with his slim and pretty wife. I was truly happy for Yuri, and I thought that they made a beautiful couple. A few years later I found out that Yuri had been seriously poisoned. Treatments in different clinics didn’t help him, and he was completely paralyzed. His wife left him. Serendipitously, a disabled woman, who had managed to start walking, began taking care of Yuri, and a few years later he started moving a little bit.
Poisoning with boranes had terrible consequences. In addition to their immediate effect on the central nervous system, they had a strong residual effect. The product of their decomposition – water insoluble boric acid – accumulates in the blood vessels of the brain and can’t be removed.
My friends and fellow students, Yuri Ermakov and Gena Kolovertnov, who lived and worked in Redkino, were married to Hungarian girls from our group. Soon Yuri and Gena started graduate school at the Karpov Physical Chemical Institute. After graduation, they went to work in the Novosibirsk academic town with their families. Both friends were talented scientists and they made valuable contributions to the theory of catalysis. I remember when their doctoral theses were presented in GOSNIIOKhT in 1976, and the speakers referred to works of Gennady Kolovertnov. By that time, he was no longer alive. He perished in the waters of the Pacific Ocean while scuba diving. After a long flight, he put on an aqualung and dove into the water. Many people now think that long flights and alcohol consumption can lead to dehydration, increasing the chances of decompression sickness, so waiting 12-24 hours after flying before diving is commonly advised. Flying shortly after diving is even more dangerous.
Yuri Ermakov made his career in science very quickly, and he was less than 35 when he defended his doctoral dissertation and became the First Deputy Director of the Catalysis Institute of the Siberian Branch of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences. Yura committed suicide. He couldn’t stand the bullying of party committees at his institute and at the Siberian Branch of the Academy of Sciences. Party members organized persecution for him, as they were not pleased that Yura had an affair with a young research assistant, whom he had unfortunately fallen in love with.
CHAPTER 5
My Chemical Career