The system worked well, especially with persons who volunteered for cooperation with the secret service. In September 1945, a physicist from Moscow University, Yakov Terletsky, was appointed as a secret scientific adviser (evidently, a special informer) to Sudoplatov’s Department “S” of the NKGB (in charge of intelligence materials on A-bomb development by the American and British teams).279 Department S was established within the NKVD on September 27, 1945, with the goal of “obtaining and analyzing the intelligence on the creation of the A-bomb.”280 Sudoplatov was appointed head of this department, and Eitingon and General Nikolai Sazykin became his deputies. On January 10, 1946, Department S was reassigned under the NKGB/MGB. Terletsky was the NKVD/MGB’s point person to contact the famous physicist Niels Bohr in Denmark in 1946 concerning the A-bomb project.281 Terletsky’s mission was under personal control of Stalin.282 In 1990, Terletsky wrote in his memoirs:
Although I myself happened to be connected with the secret intelligence service, I was absolutely shocked when I heard that Niels Bohr could be named an agent of the [British] Intelligence Service. For us, the Soviet people, it was a natural duty to our Motherland (but for many individuals a very unpleasant one) to help the Soviet secret organs. But the “Intelligent Service”! Always, even when the English were our allies, it seemed to have been an organization guarding interests of the bourgeoisie, which is our class enemy.283
Terletsky’s notes show that even professors of the leading Soviet University in Moscow had been heavily brainwashed by the Soviet ideology propaganda machine. It comes as no surprise that Academician Sakharov mentioned Terletsky as “a theoretical physicist and self-appointed champion of ideological purity… Terletsky apparently envied Lysenko’s laurels, as did many at the time.”284
There was additionally a very strong psychological motivation for a scientist to collaborate with the NKVD/KGB: secret power and, as we will see in the Vavilov case in the next chapter, the opportunity to destroy a hated scientific opponent through nonscientific methods.
It has become even easier now to inform the FSB. According to deputy head of the FSB Counterintelligence Department Nikolai Volobuev, in 2001 the FSB has set up a special phone line for scientists who are in contact with foreign colleagues and suspect them to be spies.285 In April 2001, the Russian Supreme Court supported the FSB regulation to use anonymous denunciations from citizens for investigation.286 Since 1988, this practice has been officially banned in the Soviet Union.
SOME BITTER THOUGHTS
Almost all German scientists eagerly accepted offers to become the successors of their Jewish colleagues who had been fired. The simple acceptance of such offers in the name of science made them loyal to the regime.
I have already discussed the possible motivations of Mairanovsky and his colleagues who worked in the secret system of NKVD/MGB installations. No doubt such scientists as Tarusov and Frank and the others from Mairanovsky’s list of thesis opponents rationalized their collaboration with the KGB just as did their colleagues in 1930s Germany who did not hesitate to follow Nazi orders. Usually these people were motivated by moral weakness and fear and would have reasoned something along the following lines: I could not refuse. My refusal would be dangerous for my family and people who depend on me. A scoundrel could replace me and my colleagues would suffer, and so on.
Only the KGB successors know how many “scientists” with the same “excellent service” in the past are still working at or are affiliated with the Russian Academy, and with other scientific institutions. At present, there are numerous secret services in Russia instead of one KGB: the Federal Security Service (FSB), Federal Government Communications and Information Agency (FAPSI), the Foreign (or External) Intelligence Service (SVR), Federal Border Service, State Tax Police, and Federal Guard Service. All of them represent different branches of the former KGB.287
The FSB, FAPSI, and SVR are tightly connected with scientific research. In 1997–1998, the FSB had 76,500 employees. Its power became even wider than that of the KGB in the past. This agency has the authority to search homes and businesses without a prosecutor’s warrant and to gather intelligence on political groups deemed a threat to the state. It can run its own prison system, infiltrate foreign organizations or organized crime, create front enterprises, and demand information from private companies. It controls all state secrets and provides security for the armed forces and the federal government.288
Another domestic agency, FAPSI, has a staff of 54,000. It is responsible for electronic communication security and surveillance and controls the most crucial Russian computer and communication networks.289 There is growing public concern that the FSB and FAPSI are working on the development of monitoring e-mail messages by linking their offices with all Internet providers in Russia.290
The involvement of the KGB First Main Directorate, now SVR, in “dirty tricks,” including assassinations, has already been described in previous chapters. Ken Alibek claims in his recent book Biohazard that assassinations using bacteriological agents were planned by the KGB even in 1989–1990, during Gorbachev’s tenure.291
Today, the three systems, the Russian Secret Service (FSB and FSK), the Academy of Sciences, and the military (Ministry of Defense), are still interrelated. In 1992–1994, Kuntsevich, an academician and a general, testified as an expert on chemical weapons against Dr. Mirzayanov during the investigation performed by the FSB, which is the former KGB. Dr. Mirzayanov was released from the FSB’s Lefortovo Prison only because of international pressure applied by human rights activists.292 Like the former KGB high official Sudoplatov, Russian military experimenters such as Kuntsevich, who was in charge of chemical warfare tests on unprotected servicemen in the 1980s,293 have no regrets about their experiments on humans.
Many of the facts I uncovered while researching this book were a personal shock to me. For instance, I knew several scientists who worked with Academician Shirshov. Did they know that Shirshov had been in charge of the transportation of prisoners, including those sent to Magadan, Kolyma, and the other death camps of the Dalstroi? Possibly they did not, because this part of his life and activity was top secret. But if they knew, what would be their reaction to this knowledge and would their attitude toward him change? Would they think that the goal of Soviet dominance of world affairs justified the means? I do not know. But I suspect that most of them would think so.
Recent Russian publications on the history of the Soviet atomic project show that Russian historians and scientists think that the creation (by all means) of the Soviet A-bomb was crucial to the existence of the Soviet Union because of the American threat in the late 1940s. One author, Yurii Smirnov, wrote: “The A-bomb was created during that dangerous USSR and USA confrontation period which began in the summer of 1946, when the war between the former allies could have started at any moment.”294