Certainly there were many unresolved problems connected with the choice of temperature, the rate of supply of reagents, the mixing regime, the choice of promoters of the reaction and the chemicals for the elimination of hydrocyanide as a by-product of reaction, etc.
Everything was rolling along very well, until a disastrous accident occurred, which delayed development of this version of Soviet binary weapon almost for one full year. During laboratory experiments, part of a rubber tube, through which exhaust gases of the reaction were traveling from the reactor to the on-line IR-spectrometer, ruptured and began leaking poisonous agent A-232 into the laboratory air. This happened right next to the hood where my good friend and research engineer Andrei Zheleznyakov was working. Andrei started to feel dizzy, and he immediately reported to Vasiliev that he was experiencing blurred vision consistent with chemical poisoning. However, Vasiliev couldn’t find a better solution than offering him a glass of alcohol. Andrei collapsed next to the Metro station when he left GOSNIIOKhT. He was taken to Skilofosovskaya Emergency Hospital where the doctors had no idea how to treat him.[40]
When the KGB started prosecuting me, Andrei was the first to support me. His interviews with the Baltimore Sun and the Russian magazine Novoe Vremya were critical in helping the world learn about the Novichok binaries. We never saw each other again after I was jailed in Lefortovo, but we often spoke on the phone, which we both knew was bugged by the KGB. Andrei was a jovial fellow, a good scientist and an extremely talented wood carver. Before the laboratory accident, a few prominent artists invited him to work in their studios, but the poisoning robbed Andrei of his concentration, his regular job, and his creativity. Journalists who regularly approached him for interviews treated him with indifference, and Andrei gradually stopped communicating. Andrei Zheleznyakov was an honest and thoroughly decent person. It was tragic that he lost his life to the very weapon he helped to create and revealed to the world. Most of those who knew of his poisoning never did anything to help save his life.
Though this accident delayed the completion of the binary weapons project on the basis of agent A-232, it didn’t stop it entirely. This theme showed so much potential that the Central Committee of Soviet Union under its First Secretary, future Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mikhail Gorbachev, and the Council of Ministers of the USSR secretly issued a formal resolution[41] for the implementation of the project. Gorbachev signed this document almost immediately after the US and USSR governments signed the Wyoming Memorandum, a special “memorandum of understanding” about chemical disarmament,[42] on September 23 1989.
Despite of all the complications caused by the Democratic Movement in Russia and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the military-chemical complex of Russia still managed to accomplish its mission and successfully test a binary chemical weapon based on deceitful agent A-232.
A Successful Binary Weapon Based on Substance 33
The prominent Engineering Department of GOSNIIOKhT was an important place for the development of CW production technology. The main tasks of this department were to maximize the automation of the production of chemical agents and to research and test equipment in order to regulate the technological process. This included the automation of the sampling process and the analysis of probe samples which were collected. I collaborated extensively with the associated lab department on this job, and I often took business trips with the employees I worked with. I worked with Leonid Vishnevski, who was head of the laboratory in 1967, on introducing chromatographic methods of analysis to the Kazan plant “Orgsynthesis”, which produced ethylene oxide.
This department was very strong throughout. I think that the well-known scientist and professor Nikolai Bogatkov-Korsakov was to a large extent responsible for this.
Unfortunately, he had a very erratic and independent nature, often clashing with Director Ivan V. Martynov. In 1975, Martynov responded to this behavior with a hotly worded statement, and he fired Professor Bogatkov-Korsakov with great pleasure. In his place, Martynov inserted Henri Kazhdan, who was the son in law of the aforementioned Aleksander Smirnov, chief of the Chemistry Department of the Central Committee of the CPSU.
I remember him only for two scandals, one which almost landed him in criminal court for stealing equipment from the institute.
As a member of the Soviet ruling elite, Kazhdan had access to closed stores with fine imported goods. He decided to grab the attention of the women in his department with the direct delivery of bras and panties, which were in short supply then. He carried all of this across the carefully guarded checkpoint of the institute in his briefcase. Departmental and laboratory heads, who had special permission from the Deputy Director of the Security Regime, could carry their briefcases through the checkpoints at the guard station without being searched.
Apparently, someone who was not happy with Henri reported his activities to the special bodies at the institute, and one day his briefcase was searched without ceremony. Inside they discovered a quantity of women’s panties and bras, but the strong backbone of this supplier of women’s underwear helped him remain in his post without any consequences.
Another scandal developed after the death of his high-ranking father in law, and that time he had some real problems. Kazhdan had a perfectly equipped workshop with good lathes and metal fitting and tooling equipment, and he secretly organized the production of precision miniature woodworking machines, which surpassed even the well known Japanese ones in quality.
It’s not clear to me if he sold them or was getting ready to sell them, but apparently Henri presented some of them to Deputy Director of Science Guskov, to Professor Kurochkin, and others. Workers from his department wrote a series of complaints, and the wheels of justice began to turn. The experienced investigator obtained a confession from Henri, but the case which was brought by the special prosecutor was dropped and did not go to court, because further development of his case would have threatened the regime of secrecy. In all fairness, I must say that these crazy activities of the department chairman did not have much of an impact on the work of the department. He had very good executives and laboratory chiefs, and many experienced and gifted people were working with them, including Natalia Godzhello, Vladimir Goncharov and Mark Stepanski.
Natalia Godzhello (who had a M.S. in Chemical Science) was a veteran in the field of research and production of chemical agents in the U.S.S.R. We lived in the same neighborhood, and she remained my friend, even during the time of my persecution by the KGB. This challenge provoked a reaction by the investigators and the Director of GOSNIIOKhT, in spite of the fact that Godzhello had already retired with a pension at this time. She was summoned to give testimony about my case to the KGB. I learned from our conversations that Godzhello came from a family of chemical engineers, who ran one of the first CW test sites for the Red Army in Kuzminki (this is now a densely populated region of Moscow.)
Her family lived close to this site where CW were tested, and sometimes destroyed. This Polygon continued to operate there until 1960, when its ownership was transferred to Shikhany from TSNIVTI. Godzhello graduated from the Chemistry Department of Moscow State University (MGU) before World War I, and was sent to work at the plant in Chapaevsk, which produced mustard gas and lewisite. After a period of time working there, Natalia Mikhailovna was sent by her boss, against her wishes, to work in the Technical Production Department, where she only had to deal with documentation. Quite possibly this saved her life.
40
For more on this accident, Will Englund, “Russia still doing work on chemical arms”,
41
The work was done under the Central Committee and the Council of Ministers Resolution no. 844-186, 6 October 1989 and Ministry of Industry Decree no. 22-2, 9 December 1989. In Annex 21, see Top Secret Letter no. 1846 ss from Martynov to Shabunin, 24 November 1992; in Annex 31 see also “The Technical Order for the Compound Part of the Experimental Design Work of ‘Substance A-232’ On the Basis of the System of Components; The Code ‘Novichok-5,’” Top Secret Document 2187 ss/khf, signed on 4 May 1990 by GOSNIIOKhT Director V.A. Petrunin, on 27 April 1990 by Chief of 4984 VP MO E.A. Umbliya, on 16 May 1990 by Chief of 458 VP MO N.G. Ragulin, and on 16 May 1990 by NPO Basalt Director A. S. Obukhov. (Moscow: Russian State Scientific Research Institute for Organic Chemistry and Technology, 4 April 1990).
42