The radio in the cell was terribly obtrusive, but it was our only connection with the outside world. It drove me crazy to have to listen every day from 9 A.M. until our 10 P.M. bedtime, to Radio Station Mayak broadcasting the sermons of Asahara Shoko in poor Russian. He was the head of the Japanese religious cult “Aum Shinrikyo”, which later gained notoriety for its unspeakable sarin gas attack on Tokyo subway commuters.[96] He was talking such trash that I had to ask my cellmates to let me lower the volume, but my young friends were used to this voice and they even needed this nonsense. Aleksander easily imitated the fanatic preacher’s voice and recited his sermons by heart in unison with the radio.
I suppose that introduced some variety into our prison life. Food was brought to us three times a day, and I must admit the food wasn’t that bad compared with what my family could afford to put on the table at that time. I remember on the fourth day of my detainment, we were given boiled buckwheat kasha with meat and a meaty borsch soup for lunch. At that time this was a delicacy for most Russians. Alexander remarked that he was eating such a dish for the first time, and he was sure that it was prepared in my honor.
We were given the newspapers Vechernaya Moskva, Sovetskaya Rossiya, and Izvestia, and we took turns reading them. For a few days they didn’t give us Izvestia. Evidently some materials were published about me during those days. Vechernaya Moskva of October 23, 1992 published an article with the title “Detained for Disclosing a Secret that Doesn’t Exist”, which discussed a report circulated by the Ministry of Security. The newspaper wrote that employees of the MB had arrested one of the authors of Moscow News article “A Poisoned Policy” on charges of divulging state secrets. The Ministry of Security didn’t disclose the name of the person detained, but the newspaper wrote that his name was Vil Mirzayanov and he was threatened with a 2-5 year jail term. Also, according to the article, the prisoner was being kept in solitary confinement at Lefortovo. The article concluded with the remark that since according to international agreements Russia didn’t produce chemical weapons, what was there to disclose?
Three days later we were brought some more papers, and we read them from cover to cover, because it helped us to pass the time. On the morning of Monday October 26, when a special team from the prison administration was collecting different appeals and letters to the judicial authorities, I submitted my appeal to the People’s Court with a request to release me. It was almost an exact copy of my application addressed to the investigator.
Of course my appeal was written incorrectly from a legal point of view, because I was supposed to ask the court to set me free, since I didn’t present a danger to the public; holding me under arrest wasn’t in the interests of an unbiased investigation, etc. Instead of saying that, I stated the case from my point of view. But what could I do if my cellmate was my only lawyer at that time?
Three more days passed. The investigator kept silent and didn’t call me in for any interrogations. My cellmates remarked that it was a tactical move on Shkarin’s part, as he wanted me to be in the agony of suspense and relent. However, I found out later that my appeal had caught the Chekists off guard. They hadn’t expected me to decide to write my appeal for release from arrest so quickly, so they had to urgently prepare documents for the forthcoming hearing in court. They didn’t even have time to show me the official indictment. With a little delay, my cellmates asked the security guard to bring the October 23, 1992 issue of Izvestia. I later took that copy with me when I left the prison.
The journalists Andrei Illesh and Sergei Mostovschikov wrote an article titled “Each Journalist Can Now Become a Traitor to the Motherland”. They wrote that a month after the article “A Poisoned Policy” was published, the editor’s office of Moscow News was searched, and copies of the article were confiscated. The authors summarized the original article and analyzed the problem of defining state secrets, which in the end amounted to bureaucratic secrets. They suggested that the specialists from GRNIIOKhT, who they had criticized in their article, had most probably prepared the resolution of the “expert commission” on the article. According to the authors, my arrest gave reason to suppose that I could disclose the creation of stockpiles of binary weapons in Russia, which were completely concealed from the public eye, and probably even Boris Yeltsin had no knowledge of it. Under the sub-title “Arrest-1992” the authors described what happened on October 22, 1992 in the Lev Fedorov’s apartment. My co-author told journalists from Moscow News in an interview that about twenty employees of the MB RF arrived at his apartment and produced a search warrant. However, according to the journalists, this was useless because all the Ministry of Security found in Fedorov’s apartment, was a huge pile of folders with scientific works, mostly in English. The article in Izvestia goes on to say, “Finally, the men from the Ministry of Security confiscated two copies of Moscow News for a reason that only they know and took Lev Fedorov to the Investigation Department of the Ministry of Security at Lefortovo.”
When Fedorov delivered a speech at the annual conference “The KGB, Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow” in February of 1993, he entertained his audience with an embellished version of this story about how a crowd of stupid Chekists arrived to search his apartment and spent a long time fiddling around with English language books and articles. But since they had to take something, they confiscated two copies of the article “A Poisoned Policy.” This colorful story of the fighter against the KGB and chemical weapons received peals of continuous laughter from other conference participants, while Colonel Kandaurov, who was there from the Ministry of Security, turned red and then white. Obviously he had good reason for that. Unlike everybody else, he knew that the reality had been very different from the scene the speaker-actor painted up for his audience.
On the morning of October 28th, I was taken to the investigator, and once more he told me that Nuria had called and said that she and the children were alive and well. She also said that Moscow News had hired a lawyer for me, Aleksander Asnis, and they had assumed the financial responsibility for his services, for working on my case.
I was very pleased to hear this. Now I had a defender and my family wouldn’t suffer financially from that. However, the investigator added that Asnis couldn’t work on my case because he had no clearance for classified documents. Shkarin also stated that Asnis was offered such access, but the lawyer had refused. I understood, however, that he had made the right decision. He didn’t want to make any commitments that would limit his freedom in the future. Then the investigator changed the subject and said off the record, “The stir in the press is growing. Today Moscow News published Fedorov’s and your portraits on the front page.”
I asked Shkarin to let me have a look at this issue of Moscow News. He replied that he had given it to someone, but he would give it to me as soon as he found it. I saw this colorful issue for the first time, with the wonderful materials of the journalists, only after my release. It still makes me feel excited even today.[97] Then Shkarin started the interrogation. From the beginning, I declined the services of lawyer Leonid Belomestnykh. The investigator’s goal was to confirm that all the information in the article “A Poisoned Policy” was given by me. Certainly, he also wanted me to confirm that this information was known to me because of my work.
96
This 20 March 1995 attack killed a dozen, severely and critically wounded 54, mildly injured 980, and frightened thousands of other subway commuters. B.W. Brackett,
97
There are articles: Interfax Agency about the MB RF report of my arrest; “Statement of Editorial Office of Moscow News”; Victor Loshak, “The State Lie as a State Secret”; Natalya Gevorkyan, “To be prisoner according to Law which doesn’t exist”; Aleksei Pushkov, “Really Russia didn’t violate anything?”