Academician Frank is remembered by the Russian biological scientific community as being among those directors who supported independent scientists.155 One of the scientists who worked in Frank’s Institute of Biophysics, Simon Schnol, wrote about Frank: “He combined a vivid, sincere interest in science with a complete understanding of the ‘rules of the game’ [of the Communist Party officials].”156 “A director [of an academy institute] should have had specific talents… It was necessary to be in good relationships with the Party high-ranking officials and the KGB,” added Dr. Schnol.157 As already noted, the KGB controlled every institution in the former Soviet Union and exercised this control in many different ways. First, the head of the personnel department in every institution was usually a retired KGB officer. Second, a special “First Department” in every institution was in charge of “secrets.” No scientific papers (or books) could be published in any Russian or international journal without the approval of the head of the First Department of the Institute. These people were connected with a higher body, a special Academy First Department headed by a KGB general. Another KGB general headed the Academy Department of Foreign Relationships, which controlled and approved contacts with foreign colleagues. Moreover, the details of everyday life in all academy institutes were controlled by a KGB “curator,” located at KGB headquarters.
Besides all this, institutes that were working on the problems of atomic energy were under the control of a special Counterintelligence Department. It was created within the NKGB/MGB in 1945 (Department “K”); after several reorganizations, it became the KGB First Special Department (1954–1959), then the KGB Fifth Directorate (1959–1960), and finally, its functions were transferred under the KGB Second Main Directorate.158 Evidently, this department collected materials from informers among scientists: The recently published secret “Report on Academician Lev Davydovich Landau,” signed by head of the KGB First Special Department Ivanov and dated December 19, 1957, was based completely on the materials from scientist-informers.159 As for Academician Frank, as a KGB expert, he would have had his own connection with this organization.
The obedience of Dr. Frank to orders from the Communist Party was absolute. On August 29, 1973, a letter against Academician Sakharov, with the signatures of forty scientists, was published in the main Soviet newspaper, Pravda.160 The letter stated that Sakharov’s “utterances align him with highly reactionary circles that are working against peaceful coexistence among nations, and against the policies of our Party and state designed to promote scientific and cultural cooperation and world peace.”161 Signing the letter against Sakharov was a test of academicians’ loyalty to the “Party line.” Dr. Frank, who had signed the letter, did not see his name in the newspaper. Terrified, he went to the secretary of the academy to find out the extent of the intrigue against him. The secretary assured him that it was simply a printer’s error.162
The last opponent, Dr. Nikolai Gavrilov, was definitely Mairanovsky’s colleague. He was director of the State Scientific Research Institute of Organic Chemistry and Technology (GosNIIOKhT) or a “post office [a name used in the USSR for secret facilities] No. 702” located at 23 Shosse Entuziastov in Moscow.163 A plant for the production of such chemical weapons as mustard gas and lewisite was hidden behind the scientific-sounding name of this organization. Apparently, this was a successor of the Olgin Chemical Plant of the 1920s–1930s. Experiments on humans were a routine part of this “institute’s” work. Formally, the experiments were said to be performed on “volunteers.” The “volunteers” were young rural men who were desperately trying to escape from their villages (where there was hunger and no work), hoping to receive permission to live and work in Moscow (which was not allowed for villagers).164 In exchange for permission to live in Moscow at the plant’s hostel and to work at the “institute,” as well as receiving a very small fee, these “volunteers” were glad to allow a chemical to be applied to their skin or to receive an injection. The experimenters did not tell them that the application or injection could result in cancer or other terrible diseases.
The list of names of Mairanovsky’s thesis opponents clearly shows that specialists who knew about Mairanovsky’s experiments were officially respectable scientists who eventually became high-ranking members in the hierarchy of the Academy of Sciences and the Medical Academy. In fact, some of them have since become widely known in the Western scientific community. Besides these scientists, there were the members of the Scientific Council who listened to Mairanovsky’s presentation of his dissertation. It seems that the number of specialists who knew and understood what was going on was rather large. Not one of the scientists and doctors who knew about Mairanovsky’s work asked him about the objects of his experiments or how his data had been obtained. Even much later, Academician Blokhin did not ask these questions, although it was evident that the results, which were described by Mairanovsky in his letter to Blokhin, must have been obtained by experimenting on human beings. It was their moral choice and a compromise with their conscience to play a role in Mairanovsky’s crimes.
THE GULAG’S “ACADEMICIANS,” GIDROPROEKT AND DALSTROI
Due to the specific nature of the work of Mairanovsky, Muromtsev, and their colleagues, research facilities of this sort are still secret. However, after Stalin’s death some of the secret MGB-KGB institutes were declassified and their heads became academicians. Academician Sergei Zhuk is a good example of such a scientist.165
Zhuk started his career as one of the organizers of the White Sea–Baltic Canal construction project, the first such Soviet project (1931–1934) to involve hundreds of thousands of prisoners. It is estimated that 200,000 prisoners died during the construction of this canal. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn mentioned Zhuk as one of “6 main murderers each of whom accounted for thirty thousand lives” (the other five were NKVD-Gulag officials).166 In 1940, Zhuk was appointed deputy head of the NKVD Main Directorate of Camps for Hydrotechnical Construction (Glavgidrostroi).167 On October 24, 1941, Glavgidrostroi was reorganized into the Department for Hydrotechnical Construction within the NKVD Main Directorate of Camps for Industrial Construction (Glavpromstroi or GULPS), and Zhuk became head of this department. On March 13, 1950, a new MVD Directorate for Projecting, Planning, and Research (Gidroproekt), again headed by Major General Zhuk, was established. Gidroproekt existed in the MVD system until the reorganizations of the MVD and MGB following Stalin’s death on March 5, 1953. Another “main murderer” of the White Sea–Baltic Canal construction, Major General Yakov Rapoport, became deputy director of Zhuk’s institute when he retired from the MVD in 1956.168