Вил Мирзаянов - State Secrets - An Insider's Chronicle of the Russian Chemical Weapons Program

I immediately went to 1 Malaya Pirogovskaya Street, and submitted my documents as if I were in a dream. I could hardly understand which department and major I should choose to list in the application. I coped with this task intuitively and made no mistakes. I asked to enroll in the Department of Organic Synthesis, with a major of “artificial gas and liquid fuels”, where the scholarship was the biggest in the institute. Even today, I can firmly say that I was never sorry about my choice.

Studies in the college and the life in the dormitory were combined with my constant struggle for survival, because my parents couldn’t help me at all financially. My income consisted solely of the scholarship, and it was hardly enough to cover poor meals and pay for a place in the dormitory. Very often, I went to the Kiev Station to find work unloading train cars. Unfortunately, this job wasn’t always available. Sometimes, like some of my fellow students, I managed to get hired for a night shift at the Dorogomilovsky chemical plant.

The work there was hard and hazardous to the health, because safety measures were very primitive. When I was in my fourth year I found a very profitable job. I delivered bottles of distilled water to the laboratories of the institute, and I almost became a prosperous student. I could even dress more decently and buy the first pair of winter shoes I had in my life.

With great difficulty, I managed to scrape together a little money from my poor scholarship to buy tickets to the Bolshoi Theatre. The tickets were the cheapest ones, for the upper circle of the theatre. Even to buy those, I had to go to the Bolshoi Theatre the evening before the tickets went on sale and cue up with other poor opera lovers. Most of us were students, spending a cold winter night together on the street.

They made frequent roll calls in the line, and those who were late were ruthlessly crossed off the waiting list for the tickets. When the ticket offices opened at 10 A.M., the first two hundred names on the list had the best chance of buying tickets for the next ten days of the month. It was cold, and I desperately wanted to sleep and to drink something hot, but this couldn’t stop me. Cold nights in lines became a peculiar musical school for me. Among the students there were great connoisseurs of opera music who shared their knowledge with grateful listeners. Since I came from a remote village and I had never listened to live music before, this was always wonderful and enchanting. Soon the following operas became my favorites – “Aida” by Giuseppe Verdi, “Pikovaya Dama” by Petr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and “Demon” by Anton Rubinshtein.

At that time, everybody loved the singers Nelepp, Lisitsian, and Ivanov. I remember “Aida” performed by Georgi Nelepp (Radames), Irina Arkhipova (Amneris), and Galina Vishnevskaya (Aida), as if I heard it only yesterday. Aleksander Melik-Pashaev conducted the orchestra brilliantly.

By that time, famous the singers Ivan Kozlovsky and Sergei Lemeshev had already stopped performing on the stage of the Bolshoi Theatre, and I didn’t have a chance to enjoy their beautiful voices. But I remember very well the debut of ballerina Maya Plisetskaya in “Walpurgis Night” of “Faust”. Of course it was a remarkable show, featuring the wonderfully staged dances of a corps de ballet in a witches’ sabbath!

I never expected that my studies in the institute would turn out to be a process, which mainly consisted of performing certain duties. There was little captivating there that could ignite a spark in young minds. Unfortunately, practically everything was a burdensome compulsory routine.

From the first years of my studies, I retained the impression that the teachers deeply distrusted the students. They thought that we were lazy and only trying to cheat them. Most lecturers were completely unable to explain anything and the poor students couldn’t force themselves to listen, despite all threats. For example, one time the famous academician Ivan Nazarov was giving a lecture on the basics of organic chemistry. In a monotonous and boring voice, he was trying to explain this subject, which we badly needed. The material was supposed to be interesting and we understood that he was a prominent scientist, but there was no lecture as such. It simply wasn’t working out. Fifteen minutes after the beginning of the lecture, the academician started resorting to sanctions. “The third row from the back, the student in glasses! Would you be so kind as to leave the auditorium?” he ordered. “The young man from the second row on the left – this refers to you as well. You, the girl next to him, you are free to go, too. All of you! Come to my office after the lecture to explain yourselves!”

After the lecture, 15-20 students lined up near his office door. Those who were dismissed from the lecture had to answer to Nazarov himself at the exam. It was almost impossible to cope with that ordeal, and many students flunked out because of their poor performance in organic chemistry.

Unfortunately, even though famous scientists were terrible at giving lectures, it wasn’t perceived as their flaw. On the contrary, the fault was attributed solely to lack of diligence on the part of students. Sometimes really strange things happened. The famous physicist and chemist Yakov Syrkin was also a poor lecturer. Finally, he was so upset with his students’ lack of understanding, that he made a big show of leaving the lecture hall, never to return.

I also remember another curious incident connected with him. At that time, it was rumored that the Americans had developed or would soon develop a thermonuclear bomb. A student asked a corresponding member of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences (who later became an academician) if such a weapon was possible. This scientist replied categorically that it was impossible, even theoretically. You can only imagine our disillusionment when, half a year later, the U.S.S.R. announced that the test of the H-bomb had been successful. For the first time, I realized that even corresponding members and academicians could be mistaken. Much later, I learned that in most cases membership to the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences had nothing to do with a scientist’s talent. It was mostly determined by someone’s contacts and his or her devotion to some clan within this organization. The heads of these clans usually arrange deals between themselves and decide who will be “elected” this year, and who would have to wait until the next year.

Many academicians and corresponding members were elected by direct order of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U., which as “the guiding organization” in the country, fostered certain people connected with science. It artificially provided them with goods unavailable to average hardworking selfless scientists, and it provided career growth for their bosses, the would-be scientists.

My last remark does not reflect in any way on the respected reputation of the late Yakov Kivovich Syrkin, who undoubtedly was a prominent scientist. He made a valuable contribution to the theory of molecular structure.

I won’t dwell on the lecturers who were not up to the mark. They were in the majority at MITKhT. At the same time, I want to speak well of such outstanding professionals as Olga Zuberbiller, who was a professor of Calculus and Professor Nisson Gelperin, the chairman of the “Processes and Apparatus” Department. Students who were not required to attend, teachers, and outsiders simply interested in the subject matter regularly attended their lectures, which were thrilling and amazingly easy to understand.