Actually, he [Zbarsky] had merely been present at the embalming, which was done by Professor [Vladimir] Vorobiev… A biochemist by profession, a Socialist-Revolutionist in political beliefs, a lively individual and a good conversationalist, a braggart, and an expert at worming favors from officials, Zbarsky was many things but not a serious scientist.24
As described in Chapter 1, in 1952–1953, Zbarsky fell out of Stalin’s favor and during the anti-Semitic purges was one of the accused “doctor-killers.”
In 1926, under Dzerzhinsky’s successor, Vyacheslav Menzhinsky (OGPU chairman, 1926–1934), a secret group was created to conduct terrorist acts abroad. It had its own laboratory of chemical and biological poisons.25 The team was called simply “Yasha’s Group” after the name of its head, Yakov Serebryansky. Serebryansky was convicted before the Revolution in 1909 as one of the killers of the Minsk prison commandant. From 1923, he worked in Palestine as an OGPU agent, and in 1925, he moved to France and then Belgium.26 According to Sudoplatov, Yasha’s Group “had established its networks in the 1920s in France, Germany, and Scandinavia. It chose its members from people of the Comintern underground who were not involved in any open propaganda activities and who had kept their membership in national Communist parties secret.”27
In 1930, Serebryansky organized the kidnapping of General Aleksandr Kutepov, head of the White Russian Military Union (ROVS) in Paris.28 On Sunday, January 26, 1930, Kutepov was abducted from a street in a fashionable area of Paris. However, the chloroform used by the kidnappers was too much for Kutepov’s ailing heart. He died several days later aboard a Soviet steamer while being taken to the Soviet Union. For Kutepov’s kidnapping, Serebryansky was awarded the Order of the Red Banner.29
In the 1930s, a “special operations” group under Serebryansky’s supervision also operated in the United States.30 Eventually, the group “grew into an elite service, more than 200-strong, dedicated to hunting down ‘enemies of the people’ on both sides of the Atlantic.”31 Possibly, through this network the NKVD agents stole a booklet in 1935 from an American laboratory with a secret formula for a powerful bactericide, which was later used in the USSR under the name the “Zbarsky bactericide.”32
Seven years later, Serebryansky’s group seems to have perfected its drugging technique. On September 22, 1937, members of his group successfully drugged and kidnapped the White Russian general Yevgenii Miller, who had succeeded Kutepov as head of ROVS.33 Miller was abducted on a Paris street, drugged, and put in a trunk that was loaded onto a Soviet freighter in Le Havre. Miller survived the trip to Moscow, where he was interrogated at NKVD headquarters, and finally shot.
In 1937 and until Serebryansky’s arrest on November 10, 1938, Yasha’s Group was a separate unit under the NKVD commissar.34 In 1938, accusations were leveled against Serebryansky that a laboratory that was part of his group produced poisons and contagious microbes not to kill enemies, but leaders of the country.35 He was condemned to death on July 7, 1941, but on the intervention of Sudoplatov (at the time, head of Special Group on terrorism under NKVD commissar Beria), Serebryansky was amnestied and released on September 8, 1941. Later Yasha’s Group was reorganized into a Special Group (Department “DR”) of the NKVD/NKGB, headed by Sudoplatov.
According to investigative journalist Arkady Vaksberg,36 the direct predecessor of Mairanovsky’s lab was a poison research laboratory organized within the Soviet security service in the early 1930s under the supervision of NKVD chief Genrikh Yagoda. Yagoda is usually mentioned as a pharmacist or a chemist by training.37 Actually, he had worked as an apprentice at a small jewelry or printing studio. From 1923, Yagoda was Dzerzhinsky’s second deputy (Menzhinsky was first deputy); in 1929, he became Menzhinsky’s first deputy, and in 1934, after Menzhinsky’s death, he was appointed NKVD commissar (1934–1936).38 In fact, since 1929 Yagoda really had acted as head of the OGPU/NKVD because of Menzhinsky’s poor health.39 Apparently, Yagoda’s laboratory was a continuation of the “Special Office.” Although information about this laboratory is sketchy, the lab was discussed during the infamous Bukharin show trial of 1938 as the basis of the accusation against Yagoda.40
At the Bukharin trial that took place in Moscow from March 2 to 12, 1938, Yagoda was convicted of organizing the murders of several important people during fake medical treatments. The list of alleged victims included the writer Maxim Gorky and his son; Yagoda’s predecessor Vyacheslav Menzhinsky; and vice chairman of the USSR Council of People’s Commissars Valerian Kuibyshev.41 Yagoda was also accused of creating a secret laboratory, of developing poisons, and of attempting to poison his successor, Nikolai Yezhov. It is interesting to note how the show trial mixed true accusations—Yagoda did run a secret laboratory that developed poisons, with the full knowledge and approval of Stalin, of course—with falsehoods: Yagoda did not try to poison Yezhov. On March 8, 1938, State General Prosecutor Andrei Vyshinsky (who succeeded Krylenko) interrogated Yagoda’s assistant, Pavel Bulanov:
Vyshinsky: Tell us, please, was Yagoda interested in poisons generally?
Bulanov: Exceptionally.
Vyshinsky: How was his special interest in poisons expressed?
Bulanov: He acquired this interest approximately in 1934… I know, for example, that he formed a very close acquaintanceship with a number of chemists and gave direct instructions to build, or rather to arrange, a chemical laboratory.
Vyshinsky: What for?
Bulanov: It was always emphasized that it must be under the control of Yagoda, as he had in his arsenal a sufficient number of poisons as means for definite ends.
Vyshinsky: What ends?
Bulanov: For counterrevolutionary ends, for purposes of assassination. I know that he employed a number of people on this work. The setting up of this laboratory was an actual fact… Yagoda warned me that this matter was so important that the people mentioned must be allowed unlimited funds and that no accounts were to be demanded.42
Of course, this was a show trial and the accused persons had no other choice than to follow the scenario prepared under the guidance of Vyshinsky, approved by Stalin and, evidently, the Politburo. But it is interesting that Bulanov’s answers included real details of the secret laboratory’s work, its direct subordination to the state security commissar, and its clandestine nature.
Yagoda’s alleged plan to assassinate Yezhov was quite unrealistic, but it was designed to impress the show trial’s audience. Bulanov testified:
When he [Yagoda] was removed from his post as People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs, he directly set about laying poison in the office and those rooms which adjoined the office in the building of the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs which Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov was to occupy. He instructed me personally to prepare a poison, namely, to take mercury and to dissolve it in acid…. I recall that he cautioned me against sulfuric acid, against burns, odor and more of the same kind… I carried out these instructions of Yagoda and made the solution. The spraying of the office which Yezhov was to occupy and the adjoining rooms, the rugs, carpets and curtains was done by [an NKVD officer] Savolainen in the presence of Yagoda and myself. This was on September 29 [1936]. Yagoda told me that this spraying must be done five, six, or seven times, which was done. Two or three times I prepared large flasks of this solution and gave them to Savolainen. He did the spraying with a spray. I recall that it was a large metallic cylinder with a large bulb… It was kept in Yagoda’s dressing room; it was a foreign-made spray…43