In August 1951, Ryumin was appointed head of the OVD Department and simultaneously MGB deputy minister. Semyon Ignatiev was appointed the new MGB minister. Before that, Ignatiev headed the Department on the Party, Trade Union, and Komsomol (Communist Youth Organization) Organs of the Central Committee. Immediately after that, Abakumov’s closest MGB associates were arrested.41 Mairanovsky was among the arrested (Documents 15–17, in Appendix II). Eitingon was also arrested in October 1951 (Eitingon’s prisoner card; Document 18, Appendix II) as “a member of a Zionist Plot in the MGB.” Like Mairanovsky, he was a Jew by origin. Researchers Petrov and Kasatkina wrote:
Mairanovsky became one of the victims of a campaign of purges started by Stalin and [the new] MGB Minister, Ignatiev. During those days, in the second part of 1951, all kinds of so-called “plots” within the MGB, in which international intelligence services and “agents of all-world Zionism” supposedly took part, were “discovered.” At first, as Mairanovsky said later, he was accused of spying for Japan. The investigation of his case was given to Ryumin and his assistants, who were known for their sadistic cruelty.42
From February 1952, Ryumin also headed the “investigation” team that interrogated Abakumov43 and the arrested Jewish doctors (Chapter 1). The cruelty of Ryumin’s “interrogations” was described by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archipelago.44 Later, the investigators rejected the spy version of Mairanovsky’s accusation.
There is very little information about the investigation of Mairanovsky’s case and his trial. Evidently, poisons played the main role. In his 1955 letter to Khrushchev, Mairanovsky blamed his colleagues for his arrest:
I… was forced to keep some of the “things” [i.e., poisons] at home and even to destroy them… Many times Zhelezov and company (Muromtsev, Naumov, Grigorovich, Bukharov) secretly made searches and knew very well that I kept “things” [i.e., poisons], but did not say a word [to me]. As it appeared later, they made [searches] as a provocation because they could take everything from me…45
Apparently, the investigation started from testimonies of Mairanovsky’s colleagues regarding poisons. On January 13, 1952, Colonel Zhelezov testified: “Only after the arrest of Sverdlov, Eitingon and Mairanovsky himself many poisons were found and compensated the shortage found at Mairanovsky [i.e., at his laboratory]. Besides, all these persons possessed absolutely new substances, not registered at the laboratory.”46
The name of Andrei Sverdlov, the only son of the first Soviet chairman Yakov Sverdlov, had never appeared before in Mairanovsky’s story. Not much is known about him. Apparently, Andrei Sverdlov was recruited into the NKVD when he was arrested in 1934 and soon released after Nikolai Bukharin made a personal plea to Stalin.47 However, the Russian investigative journalist Arkady Vaksberg, who worked at the KGB and other archives, claims that “even as a boy he [Andrei Sverdlov] had worked as a secret informer of the OGPU, writing denunciations of his schoolmates, the children of other Kremlin big shots.”48 In September 1939, Sverdlov interrogated Bukharin’s wife, Anna Larina, whom he had known since early childhood.49 He interrogated her again in 1941. It is known that Sverdlov investigated several more cases in the 1930s–1940s.50 There is no information available on which assassinations Sverdlov kept poisons for and in which killings he was involved.
Colonel Zhelezov did not name Sverdlov’s superior, Yakov Matusov, who was also arrested at the time of the arrests of the Jewish MGB colonels and generals. In 1939, Matusov was a senior investigator of Anna Larina-Bukharina.51 Before that, in 1937, he signed a warrant for arrest of First Soviet Chief Prosecutor Krylenko.52 It seems that both Matusov and Sverdlov worked at the Political Secret Department, whose goal was “to combat the anti-Soviet elements”; in 1951, it was the MGB Fifth Directorate.53 Sudoplatov stated that “Sverdlov had been accused with Mairanovsky and Matusov of, under the leadership of Eitingon, concealing poisons to be used against the leadership of the country.”54 If this was true, this would mean that there was a separate case of “poisoners-plotters within the MGB” under investigation.
What is known for sure is that the names of Eitingon, Matusov, and Sverdlov appeared in the confession of Lev Schwartzman, one of the cruelest NKVD/MGB investigators of the 1930s–1940s (mentioned in Chapters 1 and 4 as one of Nikolai Vavilov’s investigators). Schwartzman was arrested immediately after Abakumov, on July 13, 1951.55 To escape torture, he pretended to be insane and “confessed” that he had had sexual relationships with his own son and daughter, Abakumov, and British ambassador Archibald Clark Kerr. He also declared that in 1945–1946 he had become a Jewish nationalist and organized a group of high-ranking secret service officers of Jewish origin who shared his views. The list of the “members” of the group was long and included the above-mentioned Eitingon, Raikhman, Matusov, and Sverdlov; all these persons were arrested. I have no information about whether Schwartzman mentioned Mairanovsky or whether the connection between Mairanovsky and others was made during the investigation of Mairanovsky’s case.
The writer Kirill Stolyarov, who had access to Sverdlov’s investigation file, did not mention that Mairanovsky and Eitingon appeared in Sverdlov’s case. However, poisonous substances were included in his indictment:
…Together with his accomplices, [Sverdlov] was involved in wrecking activity within the Chekist organs [i.e., MGB]… secretly kept hostile literature, explosives and poisonous substances [sic!], shells, and a lot of firearms… [He] completely claimed guilty of [actions according to] Articles 58-10 and 182 pt. I of the RSFSR Criminal Code…56
Therefore, there is no independent data available that Sverdlov’s and Matusov’s cases were a part of the same investigation as those of Mairanovsky and Eitingon. Moreover, Sverdolov’s investigation lasted for nineteen months and he had not been tried before Stalin’s death,57 whereas Mairanovsky had already been convicted and kept in Vladimir Prison.
Mairanovsky appealed in vain during the investigation to new MGB minister Ignatiev. On December 19, 1952, he wrote a letter (cited above) in which he tried to persuade the minister how important his findings in poisons were for the MGB. On February 14, 1953, Mairanovsky was tried secretly by the MGB Special Board (the notorious OSO) and was sentenced to ten years in prison three weeks before Stalin’s death (Documents 16 and 17, Appendix II). The final accusation included two points, “abuse of his position” and “illegally keeping strong acting chemicals.” According to Bobryonev and Ryazentsev, the first version of the indictment stated: