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

Lecturer Aleksander Smirnov was another “prominent party leader” who worked at the institute during my studies. I don’t know why, but as the Vice Chairman of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Industry of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U., he frequently visited the Department of “Artificial Gas and Liquid Fuel” to supervise our group. In class he would just stand there silently, while we carried out experiments on the synthesis of organic compounds or performed differential distillations of the heavy residues of resin pyrolysis. Nothing could bring him out of this inert state. Even the time when I once made the mistake of short circuiting the power grid and plunging the whole laboratory into darkness for a while, seemed to have no effect on him. I think the prospect of a scientific degree attracted Smirnov. In the evenings, he tried to work in Andrei Bashkirov’s Laboratory at the Institute of Petrochemical Synthesis, at the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences. However, Smirnov’s attempts were doomed. In one of the laboratories, he assembled an experimental unit for synthesis based on carbon monoxide (an extremely poisonous gas) and hydrogen. Either he forgot that the gases flowing out from the reactor should be directed into the exhaust hood, or the rubber hose that served this purpose came off, and the whole thing nearly ended in catastrophe. An employee who happened to enter the room found the unconscious Aleksander Sergeevich on the floor and immediately carried him out into the street. The people summoned by the alarm just barely managed to save the unlucky researcher.

None of this prevented him from becoming the chairman of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Industry of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U. The fate of six to eight Soviet ministers, who were in one way or another connected with chemistry, depended on him. Additionally, through his department, he managed issues of chemical weapons and often visited the State Scientific Research Institute for Organic Chemistry and Technology (GOSNIIOKhT) — the premiere institute that developed chemical agents in the country, where I later worked for 26 years. His son-in-law, Henri Kazhdan, also worked in this institute and though he wasn’t a specialist, he still held a high position there.

Eventually, Smirnov achieved his ambition and became a “famous scientist”. Smirnov and Vladimir Gryaznov, a former party administrator at the Institute of Petrochemical Synthesis at the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences, received a patent some very dubious discovery (pure Soviet classification).

I still remember quite well a number of other meaningless subjects which students were forced to study, such as the theory of machines and mechanisms, heating engineering, and construction, etc. Sometimes we asked our teachers why a chemist should try to calculate and design thermal boilers that produce steam and electrical energy, if electricity has been transmitted for a long time from electric power stations. There were mechanical engineers who worked there, specialists in this field. The machines and components were also designed by specialists and machinists. There were other institutes in Moscow that trained plenty of engineers, majoring in that area. We didn’t receive any answers to our questions. I fear that the same thing still goes on and students have no time to study their major subject areas, for which they entered their institutions of higher learning in the first place.

Each head of every department thought that their area of specialty was the most important one. Even in the Athletic Department, teachers practically terrorized the students who failed to meet the regulation standards for jumping or distance running. It didn’t matter if you were good at skiing, for example, or if you played volleyball very well. Our overweight PE teacher, Victoria Naumovna, was concerned only with her test.

In our second year, my fellow sportsmen and I failed the test in physical training, even though we achieved good results in different city competitions. This was because we had problems with an idiotic set of exercises called “GTO” (“Ready for Labor and Defense”), which required bizarre exercises such as standing on your head.

Two days before our exams, I had to train one whole night, learning how to stand on my head. The next day, I took the damn test with an open wound on my forehead, and since I had trained the whole night, there was no time to prepare for my exam. However, the women from the Athletic Department were not interested in that. Our trainers who were also teachers couldn’t help, as they couldn’t go against the instructions “sent down from above.”

After my third year, the student life at MITKhT became merrier. Apart from Marxism and military science, practically all the unnecessary subjects were behind us, and we could focus on our major subjects. The teachers and professors in our favorite subject areas were not so diabolical, and they didn’t hate the students. Many students never made it this far, because they couldn’t cope with the meaningless drills.

My introduction to the manufacture of chemical products came through my internships at some operating plants. Unfortunately, they were more like excursions, though perhaps a bit more specialized. They didn’t help us much in acquiring the skills of a technological engineer.

I was most impressed by my internship at the Novocherkassk Chemical Plant. At that time, it was a huge plant for producing synthetic fuel from carbon monoxide and hydrogen, using captured German technology and equipment. This plant received state subsidies, but it was unprofitable because the gasoline it produced was of such low quality, that it wasn’t even good enough to refuel the factory buses. During the war, the Germans solved this problem by using additives such as tetraethyl lead. But this additive, which is also a strongly toxic compound, was produced in small quantities and so the products of the plant were of little use. The situation was the same at the two other large factories that were relocated from Germany to Salavat (Bashkortstan) and Angarsk. [8] One plant was situated in Salavat, in Bashkortstan, and the other in Angarsk, which is located on the Angara River in the Irkutsk region, about 30 kilometers north-west of the city of Irkutsk and 50 kilometers north of the western tip of Lake Baikal. By that time, the U.S.S.R. had started developing the rich deposits of natural oil from Bashkortstan and Tatarstan, which produced much better gasoline.

Some time later, a team of scientists led by Andrei Bashkirov, the head of our department, found a better application for the saturated hydrocarbons produced from carbon monoxide and hydrogen.

At that time, the U.S.S.R. had the largest whaling fleet in the world, and it practically wiped Antarctic whales off the face of the earth. Fat was cut off the carcasses of these huge mammals and sent to chemical plants (for example to the Kazan plant), where it was processed and used to produce heavy primary alcohols. These in turn were used to make the synthetic detergent “Novost”. Even at that time it was clear that this madness would have to stop some day. Bashkirov proposed a method for oxidizing the product of the Novocherkassk plant, called “synthine”, in the presence of boric acid into heavy primary alcohols. This was a revolutionary solution, and we were very proud of our professor.

When Docent Gilyarovskaya suggested that I should conduct experiments researching the process of synthine oxidation in my fourth year of studies, I happily agreed. Before that I had hardly dreamed about the career of a scientist. At the time, I thought it was better to work at a plant in the field of chemical engineering; however, I quickly realized that my place was in the research laboratory. You are practically alone there, face to face with the unknown, and it is up to you alone whether something new and unexplored is created or not.