Surprisingly, when we made our methods and procedures for analysis of the air more accurate, the ill-will of the top leadership became stronger. This reminds me of an incident connected with the discussion in a section of the Science Council of my patent claim on the GC method of determination of micro-concentrations of agent CS in the air.
At this meeting, Deputy Director Guskov unexpectedly came out against my invention. Without having any knowledge of the essence of the problem, he peremptorily declared that my proposal for concentrating the adsorbent, using small glass beads, could not work because the vapor of CS could not adsorb. I repeatedly had proven the validity of my proposal with positive experimental results. The Deputy Director used his great power, and I found myself in a very delicate situation. However, without any fear, I decided to defend my invention and brought forth a brief report about the basics of the dynamics of adsorption.
After this, the section defended my proposal in an open vote, and a year later I received a patent on my invention. All my documents, including the actual patent carried the code “Top secret”, “Series F”.
According to U.S.S.R. patent law at that time, the inventor was supposed to be rewarded for his method of analysis. The size of the remuneration was calculated by a complicated method, with numerous correction factors, and was fixed by a special commission. The author of the patent had to demonstrate the validity of the correction factors to this commission, and naturally this is where all the battles developed. Usually the author valued his work on a high level according to the scale of factors, while the rank and file of the science commission, most of whom had never invented anything in their entire lives, often envied the success of the author and came out against him.
In the end, everyone had to compromise and the remuneration was fixed, but it didn’t end there. The commission’s decision had to be approved by the First Deputy Director, who signed the financial documents. Here he was guided by his own considerations which were clear only to him, and by the amount of money which came in yearly from the Ministry of Chemical Industry specifically for inventions and proposals and for improving production.
After I received an award for the appropriate sum by the commission, I set out for Guskov’s office. I was surprised that he approved the commission’s decision without any discussion. Now and then you can misunderstand someone you already considered in a negative way. How can you so simply judge someone after that?
In Novocheboksary, we were able to demonstrate experimentally that the poisoning of the corridor was caused by the transport of agent CS on the clothing of people who were working in gas masks in the reaction chamber area, where the concentrations of the agent were extremely high.
My work experience at Post Office Box 4019 on the production of poisonous boranes helped me resolve this complicated problem. We had discovered traces of CS in the snow on the roof of the plant, and also on the ground close to the plant. It was said that complete isolation of the production of chemical agents from the environment was practically an impossible task.
Unfortunately, I must say, that Sergei Smirnov, who was the author of the technology in the plant in Novocheboksary, was most memorable for his negative character traits, such as the tendency to inform on his colleagues for no reason at all. (This was not his worst feature.) Practically no one was really sure that he was not exaggerating a hundredfold when he was informing. His allegations could be brought to a higher boss, or even the Deputy Director of the Security Regime.
Even now, I do not understand why he did this, because he was successful enough and even a talented scientist. Maybe such a character flaw is a sign of some kind of mental illness. Though he was able to act like this with impunity among his scientific colleagues, this practice caused him to be fired from a new position he had been promoted to, the chief of an important scientific-technical department. In his new department, practically each scientist had his own direct access to the top leadership, including the special service of the KGB, so Smirnov simply could not stand up to the competition. Still, he was quite effective in his role in developing the pilot plant for malonodinitrile production in Polotsk, Belarus.
For a long time, a special department, the Department of Ammunition Development, known as “RP”, existed in GOSNIIOKhT, and it worked with radiation chemistry and the processing of radioactive waste. It allegedly turned out to be at odds with the principal themes of the institute, but its chief, Nikolai Bogdanov, was a scientist who enjoyed the support of some well known atomic physicists. This practically guaranteed autonomy for his department. He even went to the appropriate international conferences on his own initiative. For us this was a stunning development.
We were baffled by the report that not long before this, Bogdanov had been employed as a military representative of UNKhV at the Volgograd CW pilot plant. Then retired Colonel Bogdanov became a Lenin Prize laureate for the development and introduction of the methods of vitrification (encasing radioactive material in borosilicate glass for storage) into industry.
Two scientists who had worked with Bogdanov for a long time, Oleg Plyushch and Victor Dmitriev (each who had a M.S. in Technical Science), told me how the recipient of such a prestigious prize accomplished this. Scientists from the “RP” Department and their boss were engaged in a collaborative effort with the enterprises of Minatom (Ministry of Atomic Energy) stationed in the Urals. On one of their business trip to the atomic enterprise, the locals told the Muscovites about their research, which could not be realized. Sneaky Bogdanov understood right away that a big catch could be made there, so he offered his help in getting the Lenin Prize for this work, in exchange for listing him among the researchers of the method. Nothing could be done, but to agree to such a “business proposition”. Thanks to his connections, the Lenin Prize was not a very difficult achievement for Bogdanov. That is how the former military representative became a famous scientist.
After Bogdanov’s sudden death in 1973, Director Martynov secured the breakup of the department. It was transformed into a new department, with a theme that was unfamiliar up to that time, the development of field testing for perspective chemical agents and the conducting of these tests. I think that this was a reasonable step to take, since GOSNIIOKhT depended completely on the military for this important business. Since the military had a monopoly on the situation in those days, they could easily fake the test results, at their discretion. Maybe this didn’t happen frequently, but let’s just say that scientists at the institute who had participated in field-testing, had confirmed such incidents. The former Deputy Director, Mikhail Kulikov, who had been supervising matters connected with the development of the GOSNIIOKhT branches, was appointed the head of the new “RP” department.
In his previous office, Kulikov had excelled in his very original style of leadership and administration of the branch offices. For example, one of his favorite activities when he was visiting the Volsk branch was to lead the scientists in a fire drill. He declared an alarm in all the offices and settlements where the workers lived, and all day people stopped work for a “fire drill”.