In the 1980s, the “chemist” Dr. Boyarsky was still a member of the Nauka Publishing House Editorial Council and made decisions on which scientists’ books should be published. In 1989, he was finally exposed in the mass media.256
It was revealed that Boyarsky had left a bloody trail in Czechoslovakia in 1950–1951 during the preparation of the anti-Semitic Rudolf Slansky trial.257 Boyarsky was senior adviser within a group of thirty MGB officers who in 1950 supervised the organization of the Czechoslovak Security Service, the StB.258 The first task of the StB was the Slansky trial. Boyarsky’s instruction was simple: “Our greatest enemy is international Zionism, [which has at its disposal] the most elaborate espionage organizations.”259 It is not surprising that for this purpose the fanatical Czech anti-Semite Andre Keppert was appointed director of the StB’s Department for the Search for Enemies of the State. Keppert had a primitive method of identifying his enemies: “[W]henever he saw a hooked nose he either opened a file on the owner or put him in jail.”260 According to both Nazi propaganda and Soviet anti-Semites, a hooked nose is a characteristic feature of the Jews (the Jews as an ethnic, not religious, group).
Ironically, Boyarsky’s career in Czechoslovakia ended because his deputy, Yesikov, started to suspect that Boyarsky was a Jew himself! Yesikov informed Moscow that Boyarsky “had behaved improperly in connection with the materials… regarding the hostile activity of Jewish bourgeois nationalists.”261 MGB deputy minister Yevgenii Pitovranov himself looked into the matter: “According to the allegations of a number of USSR MGB workers, Comrade Boyarsky has incorrectly reported his ethnic background as Ukrainian, although his manner and appearance show him to be a Jew… Verification of Boyarsky’s biographical data did not confirm these allegations.”262
Despite this, Stalin’s decision was negative for Boyarsky: “Experience with Boyarsky’s work in Czechoslovakia has shown that he is not well qualified enough to discharge responsibly the obligations of an adviser.”263
But Boyarsky’s previous actions in Russia were more impressive and showed that in fact he was very experienced in NKVD-MGB work. In 1939, as a NKVD lieutenant, he falsified a case against 103 persons, fifty-one of whom were shot to death on the basis of his work. During his interrogations he used sophisticated torture on both men and women. His former NKVD colleague, Investigator Sheshikov, testified about Boyarsky’s methods of interrogation:
From prolonged standing, the detainee’s body was very swollen, and she weakened and, unable to stand, began to fall. Then Boyarsky proposed that Zarubin [another investigator] and I tie her to the wall. For that purpose he put handcuffs on the detainee’s hands himself, with her hands crossed behind her back, and said we should tie a rope from the handcuffs to a hook stuck in the wall. In addition, Boyarsky said we should string a rope across the detainee’s chest, under her arms, and tie it to a nail in the wall. After that, Boyarsky himself grabbed her braids and tied them to a nail, so that she could not lower her head to her chest or let it rest on her shoulders…. We did not give food or drink to the detainee, we did not take her to the bathroom, and a strong odor began to come from her. Boyarsky came in from time to time and demanded testimony from her, but she did not give any, after which Boyarsky said, “You’ll hang here till you rot, or till you give us testimony.” Toward the end, the detainee began to hallucinate; she groaned, at first loudly, then more and more quietly. At around four or five in the morning, the detainee died.264
Only after Boyarsky was exposed in 1990–1991 in the press (and then at the institute) as a former executioner was he deprived of his scientific degree.
However, exposure of another former MGB investigator in the mass media, Pavel Grishaev,265 did not result in his dismissal. In 1946, he was a member of the SMERSH-MGB team266 that brought a few German witnesses and the testimony of other high-ranking Germans kept in Moscow prisons to the Nuremberg trial. Two years later, Grishaev became one of the most notorious investigators involved in anti-Semitic trials and purges. He was a member of the team that tortured the arrested members of the famous Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee.267 Maryana Zaitseva, a victim of the Allilueva case that preceded the JAC case, later described Grishaev’s style of “interrogation”:
He behaved as an executioner beating me up with a rubber truncheon. As a result I used to faint and was repeatedly given medical assistance. Grishaev showed the truncheon covered with blood to my husband [he had also been arrested and Grishaev also “worked” on him] saying that “this is the blood of your wife”… All interrogations took place at night… Knowing that according to the rules of Lefortovo Prison it was prohibited to sleep during the day, he deprived me of normal sleep for a month… Other investigators of the Department for Investigation of Especially Important Cases were present during my night interrogations—Komarov, Rassypinskii, Likhachev, and others, including former Minister of Security Abakumov, who accused them of being incapable of handling interrogations…268
When the seemingly all-powerful Minister Abakumov had been arrested in 1951 in his turn, Lieutenant Colonel Grishaev became deputy head of the Department for Investigation of Especially Important Cases and was appointed an investigator of the Abakumov case. Abakumov was kept constantly handcuffed and with the help of Grishaev was subjected to many types of tortures, which he had used before to interrogate his own victims, including a cold cell with a refrigerating system.269
Grishaev successfully escaped any punishment, whereas many of his colleagues were shot to death after short trials after Stalin’s death. Moreover, after Stalin’s death he worked as a teacher of law for thirty-five years, became a professor of law and then an “Honored Public Figure” (a special title in the Soviet Union). What a cruel joke! In 1964, after appeals of his former victims to the Communist Party offices, he received “a Party reprimand,” which was erased in 1967. In 1990, he was defended by the officials of the All-Union Institute of Law following newspaper articles about his past: “The article in the newspaper was written with a contemporary evaluation of the past; it does not take into consideration all his [Grishaev’s] later life and scientific and teacher’s careers. His 35-year work at the institute was irreproachable.”270
Another Grishaev colleague, Daniil Kopelyansky, who interrogated Raoul Wallenberg, preferred the career of an architect after he lost his job at the MGB during the purge of Jews from the organs after Abakumov’s arrest in 1951. In the 1990s, he was frequently seen at the library of the Architects’ Club House in Moscow. In 1991–1997, he refused to release any information about the fate of Wallenberg.
Of course, Boyarsky and Grishaev, as well as the other numerous investigators who are still alive, deny participation in any crime.271 Mysteriously, they do not remember details of interrogations or the names of victims. (Nazi war criminals often suffered a similar type of amnesia.) They are proud of their secret service careers and will keep the secrets of the organs until their death. (When KGB officers resigned, they signed a special document promising to never release details of their work.)