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

Ordoval-2 — GOSNIIOKhT code name of soman

Post Office Box — Part of code name of all secret scientific research institutes

Post Office Box 702 — Former code name of GOSNIIOKhT

Post Office Box M-5123 — Code name of GOSNIIOKhT for business mailing

Ppt — Part per trillion

R-33 — Russian code name of analog of Substance 33

R-35 — Russian code name of sarin

R-55 — Russian code name of soman

Sharashka — Prison for scientists-political prisoners

S — Secret

SS — Top secret

SS/khf — Top secret/ Foliant program

Substance 33 — Russian code name of VX-analog

Substance 65 — Russian code name of CS-tear gas

Substance 74 — Russian code name of CR-tear gas

Substance 78 — Russian code name of BZ-hallucinogen agent

Substance 84 — GOSNIIOKhT codname of A-230

Substance 100-A — O-cyclopentyl analog of Substance 33

Substance 100-B — O-methylcyclopentyl analog of Substance 33

TSNIIVTI — Central Scientific Research Military Technical Institute

UNKhV — Directorate of Chief of Chemical Troops of Russia

USSR — Union of Soviet Socialist Republic

VF GOSNIIOKhT — Volgograd Branch of GOSNIIOKhT

VKhK — Military Chemical Complex

VP MO — Military Representative of Russian Defense Ministry

VPK — Military Industrial Commission

“White Sea” — Nickname of lake in Volgograd contaminated by residues of chemical agents and phosphoororganic pesticides

“Responsible workers of the military-industrial complex love to babble on about conversion. It’s a popular theme. In reality, a terrible monster continues to devour our economy. Chemists have a different name for this process -

When our press reports about the successful conversion of enterprises of the military-industrial complex (VPK), and about what great benefits this is going to bring us, this often reminds us of similar announcements, not so long ago, about the success of a century of achievements. Fortunately for them, no one has tried to check up on the real progress, and now hardly anyone is likely to do so in the future. They just won’t allow it, that’s all.

Who won’t allow it? The very same ruling elite of the VPK, which hasn’t been rendered harmless. Omnipotent directors with their devoted teams still reign at many enterprises and research institutes, and they enjoy unlimited power without any higher control. And so, as before, initiative and dissent are punished here.

The first, second, and third departments, which are headed up by KGB officers, are still constantly exercising their control over the employees. The very same barbed-wire fence along the perimeter, the checkpoints with guards, a special prosecutor’s office, a special police force, a special court, and a center for tapping telephone conversations, as allowed by the implicit agreement of the trade union leaders, all ensure absolute obedience to the powerful directors. If an employee shows initiative or disagrees with them, they always find some sort of compromising material to morally destroy the disagreeable employee. And when this unfortunate person is thrown out onto the street, he can forget about a suitable job anywhere in this country, or even more so about a job abroad—he won’t be allowed to leave the country because he knows state secrets.

Since V. Bakatin came to work at the KGB, the situation hasn’t changed for employees of the VPK, and change in the future seems unlikely. I am asserting this from my own “Post Office Box”, which is located almost in the center of Moscow. It present itself as a secret structure only to naive Muscovites, who were unaware for decades that it had been killing them with real chemical agents, and that even today it poses a mortal danger. And as for the West… In the autumn of 1967, when preparations were being made for the first exhibition of abstract painters in the U.S.S.R., at the “Druzhba” Club [translates as “friendship”], which was located at this “postal address,” BBC Radio called this enterprise “a factory of death.”

Six years after the beginning of perestroika, when the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons was practically ready, the U.S. and other countries stopped developing chemical weapons, and our press was making a big fuss about the upcoming campaign aimed at converting the VPK [to civilian production]. At that time, at the end of 1990, our director V. Petrunin declared “The nature of capitalism hasn’t changed; our potential enemy remains the same, and that is why it is our duty to keep strengthening our defense power.”

I am not so naive as to think that his opinion is unique. People like our director are disciplined and do exactly what their bosses tell them to do. It is a characteristic feature. Rumor has it that under his glorious leadership at the former enterprise, they had some problems and could not produce a single precursor. So, he forced all his employees, including the graduate students, to synthesize it in laboratory flasks. Let slaves do it. After a month or two they had synthesized the same amount an industrial unit could produce in one or two days. After that, the director was “riding high” [on his success]. Perhaps no one will investigate how he achieved his “success”.

It’s not surprising that he tried similar strategies in Moscow. In all sorts of ways he tried to imitate conversion, uttering fine phrases about self-financing and setting up training, but he never forgot about the “savage nature of capitalism.” During the time of the negotiations in Geneva, they built a plant for destroying chemical weapons near Chapaevsk. The state squandered over 300 million rubles on it, and in the end, it was closed due to a massive protest by the residents of the city, because it didn’t meet even elementary safety requirements.

In connection with this fiasco, not a single hair fell from the heads, either of our clever director, or of his superiors. And what were they to blame for? They unflaggingly supported each other, following the basic policy of the VPK which was focused on taming this very “savage nature.” They were busy developing a more modern type of chemical weapon, and its testing was carried out at an open test [site] in one of the most ecologically unsafe regions.

Finally, the work was completed successfully, and in April of that year the director and his bosses received Lenin Prizes. The heroes of the VPK are not particularly worried that more than 70,000 [metric] tons of chemical agents are kept in warehouses, which is extremely dangerous, and that the state is too impoverished to finance their destruction. Most likely they will not be destroyed in this century. Perhaps, we can expect help from the West…

The representatives of the VPK have started to actively study the West, and they are not at all self-conscious about their status as top-secret VIPs, because they know perfectly well that the regime of secrecy was invented for slaves, to scare them and to subjugate them. That is why they [VPK representatives] can easily go on business trips to the U.S., England, West Germany, and other countries. This would mean nothing, if we didn’t know the true face of the VPK and its representatives. No, specialists hardly ever go to the West, since the bosses usually think that they can’t be trusted. Those trips are for the director and his closest associates, who you can’t call specialists even your wildest imagination. These are the same people who are running around at the negotiations in Geneva, once more trying to make fools out of their Western partners. On the other hand, I think they [the West] have already realized who they are dealing with.