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

We sighed and at that very instant, a frantic yell startled us, “Stop!!!” The man was pale, and his face quivered with indescribable rage. He didn’t dismiss us but rushed to the officers’ quarters to complain. We all understood what could follow, but no one sympathized with me. Everyone was glad that it hadn’t happen to him.

Soon the commander of the platoon, a young lieutenant, came out. He called me solemnly in front of the line and announced an “emergency event”, which had never happened before in their glorious unit. He explained that an insult to a Soviet Army commander might entail up to two years of penalty work. However, he said that taking into consideration the young age and insufficient political and moral awareness of student Mirzayanov, the commander of the battalion decided to limit my punishment to an extra detail in the cafeteria and to washing the floors in the Lenin Room.

Of course, I did all of this without asking any questions. But that was only the beginning. When it was boiling hot, more than 35 degrees Celsius outside, we were ordered to put on rubber overalls, boots, and gas masks. We had to deactivate “the site” contaminated with mustard gas. In order to do this, we had to dig up and turn over the ground, then mix it with bleach, and there was a time limit for all of this. We did everything ahead of schedule, and with satisfied faces we overturned our boots to pour out the sweat. They thanked everybody, but then I heard, “Mirzayanov, go to the commander!”

I ran until I reached the commander’s center to see the head of our military department, General Khandozhko. He was sent to MITKhT from the Main Political Directorate of the Soviet Army, where he had received his “training”. He was an aide to Lev Mekhlis who, together with Lavrentii Beria exterminated more Red generals than the whole fascist army.

The man was short, with a round face and a black moustache, and somehow he reminded us of our “dear” Iosif Stalin. He openly imitated the leader’s manner of putting on an air of importance and majesty. He even spoke with a slight Caucasian accent, though he was Russian.

In a harsh voice, Khandozhko started speaking about the blemish on all students, which presumably was created by my error, and he threatened me with a military tribunal, dismissal from the institute, and other penalties. Oddly, for some reason I felt no fear.

Not everyone found our life in camp so hard. Some guys even liked the meaningless drills, and by the end of our stay there they became aides to platoon commanders, and gave us orders like the sergeants. Later, after graduating from the institute, they soon rose to the top of the administrative ranks.

There was nothing remarkable about my second tour of duty in the military camp, right after my graduation from the institute. In the summer of 1958, we were sent to the chemical battalion in Jykhvi, Estonia. Hardly anyone took any interest in us, and we spent our time paying cards or chess, and missing Moscow.

Another monster that gobbled up students’ precious academic time at MITKhT was our exhaustive study of Marxism-Leninism. Lectures were given by former party bosses and “scientists”, and this was a very lucrative occupation at that time. Those classes were incredibly boring. We could miss lectures in other subjects without any serious punishment, but the attendance was taken strictly in those classes. Skipping three lectures for an “invalid” reason could result in dismissal from the institute. So, fooling around with party matters was extremely dangerous. There was nothing left but to learn everything by heart, all the dates of endless Bolshevik congresses and conferences, their agendas, Lenin’s speeches, and how he struggled with the hateful Mensheviks, etc. There was no guarantee that you wouldn’t get confused by all this heresy, so students prepared simple crib sheets.

Once, a man who resembled a human being appeared in this Communist kingdom of almost medieval ignorance. That was Rem Belousov who came to us from Moscow State University. Rumor had it that he was a secretary of the Komsomol committee there, but had been removed because his views were incompatible with the party doctrine.

Soon we learned about the views of Belousov. First of all, he said that not a single one of Stalin’s five-year plans for the economic development of the country had been implemented. It was even more terrible to hear that the party’s plan, according to Lenin’s appeal, to have 100,000 tractors which would secure the victory of socialism, was never fulfilled. “How come?” we asked in a great outburst. Rem Aleksandrovich explained this very simply. In all the reports on implementing the plan, hundreds of thousands of manufactured tractors were mentioned as, “translated into a 15 horse-power tractor”. So, each 60 horse-power tractor was counted as four tractors, though it couldn’t work in the place of four machines. All this was very strange. Although the views of our new lecturer were very progressive at the time, he didn’t aim to go beyond “going back to Lenin’s principles”.

For a long time after his lectures, we joked whenever we saw a tractor in the street. One student asked another how many tractors he saw. The latter answered that he saw one. “No, dear friend, you are opposed to the party line. There are four tractors there, not one. You should study the history of the party, young man!” added the joker.

The party paid close attention to the institute. Ekaterina Furtseva was a former weaver, who studied at our institute for a year or two. Later she became a member of the Politbureau at the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U. I saw her in 1955. I remembered her resolute, attractive face, her red hair braided on the nape, and her energetic step tap-dancing on the marble floor of the second floor landing, which students traditionally called the “hole” because of the glass dome above it.

The institute’s rector, Myshko, was a stout dumpy guy with short legs, who could hardly keep up with the leader of Moscow Communists (at that time Furtseva was the First Secretary of the Moscow City Committee of the C.P.S.U). For a long time, Myshko held “important posts in the Soviet state apparatus”, including that of Deputy Chairman of the Moscow City Council. But afterwards he was demoted to rector of MITKhT. We remembered him, because he quoted Sergei Esenin in his speeches. Esenin was proclaimed a bourgeois poet by the official propaganda, and it was forbidden to publish his poetry.

However, Myshko combined Esenin’s romanticism with his own roguish habits, which were very far from poetry. For instance, he hired his son-in-law to design the Marxist-Leninist rooms, for which large amounts of money were budgeted. In fact, professional artists did this job for peanuts, while Myshko and his son-in-law divided the money between themselves. At that time, the mischief of the Soviet elite knew no limits.

A storm broke out when it turned out that Myshko had borrowed large amounts of money from some elderly professors, with no intention of repaying them, hoping that these old creditors would soon pass away, departing for a better world where they wouldn’t need any money. But the wife of one old man proved to be quite brave. She stirred up such a scandal that Myshko even agreed to be transferred to some department and to write a doctoral dissertation. But this job was too hard for him. The question was settled simply: Myshko was transferred to another “important position in the Soviet administration”. After all, it was impossible to cast a shadow on the “pure reputation of a Communist”.

A friend of Furtseva’s was Lecturer Khokhlova, who was a permanent secretary of the institute’s party committee. She was especially noted for keeping up appearances.

When the next rector of the Institute, Professor Xenzenko, divorced his wife and married a student (oh, what a scandal!), Khokhlova organized a crusade for “the purity of Communist morals”. As a result, Xenzenko was removed from his position as rector and later, he was driven out of the institute. After this great shock, the scientist fell seriously ill and died.