Two months later the director cancelled his transfer order. I finally realized that my opponents wanted me to give up and be humbled. They acted on the request of Chekist Aleksander Martynov, who had conclusive information about my activities within DDR and my attitude toward chemical weapons.
One day at the end of April 1991, a festive atmosphere set in at GOSNIIOKhT. Tables were decked out with a banquet in the Directorate, and toasts were loudly proposed. It was the same in a number of departments. My friend Victor Dmitriev said that they were celebrating the Lenin Prizes that had been awarded to Director Petrunin, General Kuntsevich, and other “scientists”.
“For what?” I wondered.
“For a binary compound,” he replied.
I was really amazed, because this problem was very far from being solved. I thought that Igor Vasiliev was still “lucky” in spite of his love of adventure. I wasn’t at all surprised that his name wasn’t on the list of award recipients. This was completely in line with Soviet practice, when the real author or inventor was given only the crumbs from the table of the power lords. I thought this was the case again.
However I was mistaken about the cause of all this revelry – which substance this highly touted binary compound was based on.
In his last conversation with me, Kurochkin asked what my objective was. I clearly explained that I saw only one way to solve the problem of chemical weapons – to ban all kinds of work in this area, including scientific research. I thought that GOSNIIOKhT should no longer serve military purposes and I was determined to fight for this with all means available.
My former patron only shook his head in reply. I realized that he disagreed with me completely. “Someone inside this incubator of death should assume the initiative,” I encouraged myself. Unfortunately, I started having problems with my health.
CHAPTER 14
I Break the Silence
With great difficulty, I got permission to take my regular vacation at the end of July in 1991. I went to Baranovskoe, a settlement near Moscow, where I had a little plot of land. I was planning to build a dacha (summer house) there. There was a lot of work and that helped me to recover a bit.
On August 21st, the truck driver who brought us concrete for the foundation said that a lot of tanks were moving along the highway towards Moscow. We ran over to our neighbors’ house, where there was a radio and a TV, and that’s how we found out that there was a coup in progress against the government in Moscow. The weather was overcast, dull and rainy, but we decided to finish our work. My assistants talked me out of going back to Moscow, and we followed the events in the capital without switching off the radio for a minute.
By that time I was becoming less enthusiastic about the leaders in the DDR. Nobody there was willing to address the pressing problems that were developing. Their main idea was to seize power. Then, they said, they would decide about everything else.
I still sympathized with Boris Yeltsin, but I felt that there were no selfless people around him, no scientists or prominent specialists who had any programs or plans which ordinary people could understand. The nomenklatura in control at the time saw this, and they knew their power was unshakeable. The DDR leaders were mostly dilettantes, former instructors of Marxism-Leninism, representatives of the Soviet press, or just plain rascals. All these people combined presented little danger to the Communist regime. These demagogues couldn’t attract sharp young minds and train them to be intelligent and honest politicians. Experts, erudite and otherwise competent people also had no illusions about the economists surrounding Boris Yeltsin. There never was any real science of economics in the U.S.S.R. The primary objective of the Soviet “economists” was to explain the basics of socialism and Communism, from the point of view of Marxist-Leninist “philosophy.” If anyone has any doubts about this, let them read the dissertations by these scientists in the Russian State Library.
These were the kind of people who were at the helm of the DDR movement. Many progressive people in Russia pinned their hopes on them, but unfortunately the DDR’s leaders let them down, and they compromised themselves entirely in the eyes of the public. Certainly the common members of the DDR like me were responsible, to some extent, for the shattering disappointment people experienced, because we allowed a small group of scoundrels, yesterday’s fiery Communists, to abuse the people’s trust in democratic ideals.
The defeat of the August of 1991 putsch attempt gave some impetus to the democratic movement in Russia, and it also gave rise to a lot of illusions.
While Boris Yeltsin celebrated his victory and was drinking “like a fish” in the Caucasus Region of Russia, the real power structure which remained in the same hands, had just enough time to shed its old skin. First, the president issued a decree that prohibited political activity in institutions and businesses. This was done under the pretext of banning the activities of the C.P.S.U. However, this document wasn’t simply a farce. The decree betrayed the ordinary DDR members who actually helped the people who issued this decree to reach their current positions. They certainly realized that the C.P.S.U. was strong, even without its formal organization. What was the point of prohibiting the activity of these party committees, if the directors and all the top managers still controlled all aspects of the life and work of their employees? After all, how could Sergei Shakhrai, a Komsomol leader at Moscow State University, who became one of the DDR leaders and an assistant to Yeltsin, know anything if he still knew nothing about the life of ordinary people in the country?
At GOSNIIOKhT, we employees were deprived of our last chance to come forward and struggle with the opponents of the reforms and democratization.
Overall, it wasn’t all that bad. The mass media became even bolder and the newspapers could write concretely about specific problems. I read through the democratic press attentively, but I couldn’t find any serious publications about the military-chemical complex. So, I decided I was ready to speak openly about the problems of the military-chemical complex myself.
I never wanted anyone to think that I did it on the sly, in a cowardly way, hiding behind the back of some journalist. I was suffering from the agonizing burden I carried, feeling personal responsibility for participating in the criminal arms race of chemical weapons. Those thoughts which had been constantly torturing me finally pushed me forward to make a resolute decision to pick up my pen.
However, even before I wrote my first article, I was able to succinctly sum up my concerns in a note to Gavriil Popov, who was then Mayor of Moscow and one of the leaders of the “Democratic Russia” movement. Early in September of 1991, at a meeting of the activists of this organization, I passed him a brief note describing how dangerous the reckless activities of the ruling elite of the VPK were to the life and the safety of Muscovites. I asked Popov to meet with me. He agreed and promised to call me.
Alas, I never received his call. Later, at the urgent request of my lawyer, Popov was asked to come to court as a witness on my behalf. He said that he had difficulty remembering the facts – that we had met or that he had received a note from me. He also didn’t remember that he had promised to meet with me.