Along with work on chemicals, it was necessary to develop methods of poison injection. This was done in cooperation with the NKVD Second Special Department (Operational Equipment) headed by Yevgenii Lapshin. The idea of constructing umbrellas, ballpoint pens, and walking sticks, all of which could shoot very small bullets, seemed to be the best.229 Special small bullets with holes containing poison were invented. All these tools were tested on humans and cost many lives. On September 23, 1953, Mairanovsky testified:
During the research we introduced poisons through food, various drinks and used hypodermic needles, a cane, a fountain pen and other sharp objects especially outfitted for the job. We also administered poisons through the skin by spraying or pouring oxime (fatal for animals in minimal doses). But this substance proved not to be lethal for people, causing only severe burns and great pain.230
If a prisoner did not die during the first administration of the poison, he was subjected to another one. Filimonov himself shot prisoners with poisoned bullets. These shootings were performed in the basement where executions of prisoners condemned to death took place. According to Bobryonev and Ryazentsev, later, during the interrogations, Mairanovsky testified to the following: “I used one prisoner for two or three experiments. But the last case was a rare one. I want to say in this instance that if there is no lethal outcome after administration of the poison and the subject improves, then another poison is tested on him.”231 Even Muromtsev, Mairanovsky’s colleague, who himself used fifteen prisoners or more for his own experiments, said during the interrogation on March 4, 1954, that “Mairanovsky shocked me with his bestial, sadistic treatment of the prisoners.”232
All these descriptions are similar to materials from the Nuremberg Doctors’ trial.233 Also, one can compare Mairanovsky’s attitude to his victims to that of Japanese experimenters: “It is said that some of the doctors associated with the experimentation cried tears of regret when their valuable experimental materials were wasted [e.g., when prisoners died during the experiments].”234
However, it seems that today the present Russian secret service is not ashamed of the past. A fountain pen that could fire poisoned bullets is kept at the Historical Demonstration Room (a museum) of the Federal Security Service, or FSB.235 Sudoplatov used to provide his agents with such pens for the assassination of “anti-Soviet enemies” in Europe.236
WARFARE AND SABOTAGE
Mairanovsky’s work on mustard gas and other substances requires a general comment. These chemicals appeared in Mairanovsky’s laboratory not only because they were known toxins but also because they were chemical and biological weapons.
In the late 1920s to early 1930s, Soviet leaders, military, and security were obsessed with the idea of chemical and toxicological warfare. The first production of poison-gas shells in Russia began earlier, in 1915, during World War I, at a factory in Petrograd and two factories in Moscow.237 At least one of these installations, the Olgin Chemical Plant two miles from Moscow, was converted in 1927 into a pilot plant for testing new methods of producing poison gases. Professor Ye. Spitalsky, who was previously in charge of a study on poison gases at the Karpov Chemical Institute, was appointed its head. The Karpov Institute, established in 1918 and completely reorganized in 1922, was headed by Academician Bach (later Mairanovsky’s supervisor as Director of Institute of Biochemistry) and his deputy, Boris Zbarsky (later a consultant of the OGPU on narcotics and then a victim of the Doctors’ Plot case). The Karpov Institute was subordinated to the Presidium of the Supreme Council of National Economy (VSNKh), chaired by Felix Dzerzhinsky. Spitalsky was a specialist on the production of mustard gas and another chemical weapon, phosgene. Early in 1929, he was arrested by the GPU. When Academician Ipatieff went to Krzhizhanovsky, chairman of the State Planning Committee (Gosplan) (who was among the “elected” academicians in 1929, see Chapter 1), and tried to defend Spitalsky, Krzhizhanovsky said that “Spitalsky apparently was a very dangerous man who had planned to poison many outstanding Communists at a large meeting [in 1924]… He [i.e., Krzhizhanovsky] showed me [i.e., Ipatieff] a small vial filled with water to demonstrate how little poison Spitalsky needed.”238 At that meeting, Spitalsky gave a speech about chemical weapons and “held a small bottle of water before the audience, and explained that if the liquid were a modern poison gas it would be enough to poison all those present.”239 Unfortunately for Spitalsky, the infamous Iosif Unshlikht, a former deputy of Dzerzhinsky, deputy commissar of defense, and head of the Military Intelligence, presided over that meeting and evidently decided that Spitalsky planned to assassinate the participants of the meeting.
Spitalsky was sentenced to death, but in a year, the death sentence was commuted to ten years’ solitary confinement. In fact, Spitalsky was forced to work as a prisoner at the Olgin Plant. He died soon from a heart attack, and his wife was exiled from Moscow. However, a replacement for Spitalsky was found. In November 1929, Professor Kravets, another highly positioned chemist who was a member of the Chemical Committee of the VSNKh, was arrested and sentenced to forced labor at the Olgin Plant.240 This was the beginning of the sharashki system of forced labor by imprisoned scientists.
Before that, in 1923, a special delegation of the German government arrived in Moscow to work out agreements on the cooperative manufacture of guns and poison gases.241 Germans appointed Dr. Stolzenberg to supervise construction of plants for producing poison gases. A joint Soviet-Russian commission visited a factory built during World War I near Samara on the Volga River. In 1926, before his arrest, Spitalsky actively worked with the commission.242 The same year, a joint Soviet-German chemical warfare school called Tomka was organized near Saratov, also on the Volga River.243 It was headed by the German expert Leopold von Sicherer. Both chemical and bacteriological weapons were tested there.244
The first Soviet mustard gas factory was set up in 1923 as a joint enterprise of the German firm GEFU with the Soviet corporation Bersol.245 The Soviet side (called Metakhim) provided the chemical plant and the Germans supplied equipment from the Stolzenberg firm in Hamburg. The contract was signed for twenty years and the project was approved in 1926. The same year, the Stoltzenberg firm built a plant near Volsk on the Volga River (later Volsk-17 or Shikhany-1). Soviet-German cooperation in the production of chemical warfare, testing of chemicals, and training at Tomka ended in July 1933, on Hitler’s order.
Later, the Olgin Plant became a basis of the above-mentioned Soviet research institute on chemical weapons, the GosNIIOKhT. The Volsk-17, or Shikhany-1, became the military Central Scientific Research and Testing Institute of Chemical Troops, which until recently produced chemical weapons, and in fact a large store of these chemicals is still located not far from Saratov.246 Mustard gas was produced at the Kaprolaktam factory in Nizhnii Novgorod.