During the time of World War II, Kulikov had been a deputy director and the chief engineer of an experimental plant. He loved to tell the circle of people accompanying him on business trips stories about his life, which was rich with events.
“You know, I even cheated Beria,” he began his story. This episode was connected with his institute’s fulfillment of an important government job, that of researching the organic glass for the armored canopies of airplanes. The canopy produced at the technological institute proved to not be durable and the bullets of German fighters easily pierced it.
One day it was reported that the KGB Chief Marshal, Laverentii Beria, was coming to the institute for “discussions” with the leadership there. An order was given for all samples of aircraft canopies, including American and German ones, to be placed in a special location.
On the appointed day, Beria arrived at the institute and arranged for the testing of these canopies. On the Marshal’s order, an officer accompanying him pulled his pistol out of his holster and began to shoot at each of the samples displayed. The German and American samples remained undamaged, but ours were riddled with bullet holes throughout. “How much time do you need to correct your defective product?” the KGB Chief asked in a threatening manner.
Kulikov answered that the institute would rectify the situation in half a year. “I will be here exactly three months from now,” announced Beria. It was clear to everyone what the inevitable consequences of the follow-up visit would be: everyone who had any relationship to those who were responsible for this problem would be shot.
It was also clear at that time that any kind of serious study of the problem could hardly succeed in three months. Kulikov decided to gain some time in order to survive, and he took a desperate step. Indeed Beria arrived at the institute exactly on the day promised and dispatched the glass to the location known on the map from the first testing, and the test was repeated. The results this time were amazing: all samples, including the ones made by the institute were bulletproof.
Beria showed no outward reaction and only asked in a somewhat softened tone “How much time do you need to begin the production of these samples in the factory?” Kulikov answered that six months was sufficient for this. He was given a period of 4 months, and everyone felt that the threat had passed. No one would be shot for carrying out their job.
Still, none of those present, including the high-ranking bosses from the Ministry, failed to guess how Kulikov had “corrected” the situation. He simply set up an American glass sample for the test, after having removed all its trademarks. Later on this business became much easier. Quickly a regular supply of American glass was established, on the scale needed for aircraft construction. The production of durable bulletproof glass was achieved in a Soviet factory, but only after a year had passed. Meanwhile, Kulikov’s wits saved his life and the lives of many “responsible” people.
In fairness to Kulikov, I must note that he found the people necessary in a short period of time to organize the work in his department. His most important decision in the beginning was to invite Professor Mikhael Baranaev, a strong specialist in CW applications, from the Military Academy of Chemical Defense, to head up the conversion training.
Baranaev was a general who was notable for his in-depth studies of the mass transfer process of chemicals in the atmosphere, under the influence of different factors. Over a period of 30 years he developed mathematical methods of modeling these processes. I repeatedly used his equations and formulas for measuring the concentrations of vapors of chemical agents, after injecting them into air flowing at different speeds, with different temperatures and humidity. There were no cases in which my experimental results did not agree with the theoretical figures obtained by Baranaev’s methods.
General Baranaev was wonderfully modest and accessible. He could explain practically all difficulties, which arose in the course of physical chemical research. A legend grew up around him in the 1930s, when the slightest suspicions of political unreliability from anywhere caused senior scientists to be exiled. Baranaev did not hide the fact that he believed in God and continued to attend church. Probably, Baranaev’s brilliant talent and his idealistic “head in the clouds” character, forced his boss to protect him in every possible way, since he really was indispensable.
Unfortunately Kulikov was not always so lucky in his selection of employees. One example was the case of Victor Promonenkov, who was appointed chief of the Laboratory for Field Testing. Promonenkov had no understanding whatsoever of the sector of work he was in charge of, having worked on CW synthesis his entire working career, and he compromised GOSNIIOKhT considerably with his incompetence. Perhaps his only positive contribution, from my point of view, was his research work on the synthesis of the cyan ethers of methylphosphonic acid, which was accomplished in the laboratory of Sergei Ivin.
Ivin patronized Promonenkov, since he had married his niece. Later, Promonenkov was transferred to the All-Union Science Research for the Chemical Defense of Plants (VNIISKhZR), as a deputy to the “talented” director Kondratiev, who was mentioned before. There he organized a new secret department on the problem of “FT”, which was connected with research on the chemical defoliation of trees, along the lines of the American defoliant “agent orange”, which was used to destroy the forest in Vietnam.[43]
I remember Promonenkov as someone who could easily promise unattainable results for his projects, and he was someone who could easily pass himself off as a specialist in any area of chemistry.
When Promonenkov left GOSNIIOKhT, his post was filled by Gennady Kostenko, a retired colonel and World War II veteran, who was once the chief of a department in Military Unit 61469. Kostenko (who had a M.S. in Technical Science) was a sober realist who kept a healthy supply of self-criticism and some skepticism toward all the branches of military chemistry. He did not hide his nihilism or his cynical outlook towards his own prospects. Honestly, Gennady Ivanovich was the man who compelled me for the first time to take a fresh look at the whole problem of research and testing of chemical agents in the U.S.S.R. and in our complex.
During the course of numerous business trips to the Shikhany test site, we spent a lot of time traveling together on the train to Saratov, and on the steamboat on the Volga River that went to the town of Volsk. Sometimes we traveled on a cutter-launch that had underwater wings. During these trips, Kostenko gradually told me the “secrets” of chemical weapons in the U.S.S.R.
Once, during the summer of 1978 we were traveling on an old steamboat named “Azin” after one of the Civil war heroes. We stood on the top deck, and under the protection of the noise of the paddlewheel and the puffing engine of the steamboat, Gennady Ivanovich patiently explained to me that chemical arms were an absolute anachronism in the military business. He corroborated the “news” I had heard from Drozd, that these arms were not tested in maneuvers by scientists or even by a single military corps. Not a single concrete question of their practical application had been worked out, and you could not even speak about their medical aspects, since there were no specialized doctors or hospitals for curing potential poisoning by chemical agents.
I was shaken up by what I heard, and I asked why all this was being done and why were we wasting vast resources on CW research, testing and production. I was curious to know if the highest ranking military people in the U.S.S.R. knew about this. “Of course they know, and they hold the military chemists in contempt,” was the answer.
43
There is every reason to believe that the dioxin which was used for poisoning in 2004 Viktor Yushchenko, that time presidential candidate of Ukraine, was produced in this institute.