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

The accident was largely my fault, because according to the instructions, the supervisor was directly responsible for everything that happened on his shift. Still, I was puzzled: how did this accident occur, if there was no alkaline in the unit being cleaned?

Later, during the investigation, we found out that the two young men had finished their job and started fooling around, pouring alcohol over each other. Some of the alcohol got into Eminov’s eyes. Fortunately, his burn wasn’t serious and he soon returned to work. Of course I was punished for my negligence, and I was deprived of my quarterly bonus. [9] Thirty years later, in 1994, I was happy to run into this same man at an international meeting, devoted to the role of mass media in the democratization of society. I was very glad to see him. He was a Doctor of Jurisprudence, a professor, and the head of the Department of Criminal Law at the Moscow Law Institute. I realized then that my old colleague was very embarrassed about his worker’s past.

Another emergency incident occurred on another of my night shifts that literally shocked me. A young worker on my shift was studying journalism by correspondence at Moscow State University, and this was the source of his pride and arrogance. He had the highest worker’s category and conducted an important technological operation – the low temperature distillation of diborane. Purity of the product depended on the precision work of the operator. If the quality of the end product was lower than standard, they had to run the distillation over again and the reactor unit had to be stopped.

I started noticing that my aspiring journalist often came to work not quite sober. According to the protocol, I was supposed to dismiss him immediately and send him to the clinic for a medical examination. I decided that a reprimand would be sufficient, but it happened a few more times. I sincerely sympathized with the young man because he would have been fired at once, if I had dismissed him.

One night my “journalist” arrived tipsy again for his shift. Though he assured me that everything would be fine, I decided to stand near him and we would conduct the distillation of the product together. We worked like this until almost midnight, and then I was called to another machine. I had to leave him for just a few minutes, but this was long enough for an accident to take place. I heard the frightened cries of women, who were working nearby on the drainage unit, and ran back. A shaft of flame was bursting from the wall. I immediately understood that the “journalist” had opened the purge valve, which was never supposed to be used under any circumstances, unless all the gas mains had been purged with inert nitrogen gas. The valve had to be plugged immediately, but this hadn’t been done. Every second counted. Flames were licking the pipelines filled with diborane and hydrogen, and this could easily have resulted in a powerful explosion. There were two large tanks of pure diborane, only a few steps from the raging fire, behind the door on the landing. If they exploded, only a pile of ashes would be left of our entire Post Office Box institution and its personnel, and a whole block of buildings in Moscow would be seriously damaged. The situation was terrifying.

I acted like an automaton. I grabbed a roll of asbestos cloth, which was hanging on the opposite wall, and threw it over the valve, having no time to unroll the cloth completely. Urgently I covered valve with the cloth, and quickly I began to turn it off. Fortunately, it worked. The fire went out and when I came to myself, I just felt a slight chill. Only then did I notice the silence. There was no one around anywhere. Everyone was terrified and had run away.

Soon they returned to work, and I wrote a report about the incident. I felt confident because I had managed to do everything that was necessary. Privately, I was pleased that I didn’t panic in this critical situation. However, my worries were not over. Another worker reported that our “journalist” was nowhere to be found. He had vanished into thin air, but since the guards couldn’t let anybody leave the workshop without my written permission, I decided that my hard worker was still around there somewhere. We started looking for him, but to no avail. Suddenly, an idea struck me and I decided to check out my guess. There was a degassing chamber in the unit, which was used for removing poisons from the machines and reactors. It was flatly prohibited to enter this chamber without a hose-type gas mask on. That is where we found our “journalist” stretched out on the floor, sleeping like a log.

Luckily, it turned out that he wasn’t poisoned at all and was quite healthy. But this served as a good lesson for me, for my whole life. After that, I tried to be guided by common sense, not just by feelings of sympathy or pity.

My work at Post Office Box 4019 exhausted me. It was especially difficult during the night shifts, because I couldn’t sleep properly when I came home. We were living in one room with Rita’s parents then, and it was so cramped when our daughter Lena was born that you couldn’t even turn around. I quickly came to the realization that the work of a shift engineer required practically no initiative or elements of creativity. This was a real impasse for me. So, despite all the obstacles, I started to prepare to enter graduate school. That was the only way for me to leave my work, because I was obliged to work for three years at the place of my assignment, irrespective of my wishes. Only two years of work experience were required to enter graduate school.

Hard work and bad living conditions had an adverse impact on my health. At my medical exam, the doctors recommended that I start getting treatment immediately, warning that I could be sent to a hospital. Soon my health improved and our living conditions changed for the better.

I wanted to study at the graduate school of the Institute of Petrochemical Synthesis of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences, which I knew well. But when my documents had to be submitted, I discovered a very important paper was missing: the character references from my workplace, signed by the director of the institute, the chairman of the trade union committee, and the secretary of the Party Committee. I quickly collected signatures from the director and the chairman, but there were problems with Sorokin, secretary of the Party Committee. He said that the party thought that young specialists were necessary right there at this important production site, and if I wanted to study I had to do it there. I almost cried from resentment and profound disappointment. However, I decided that I would return to him 10 days later. Probably he would relent and give in.

But the party boss didn’t change his mind then either. Instead, he rebuked me as a persistent slacker who was trying to shun his duty to the party and to the people. They had let me study and had fostered me, but apparently it wasn’t a success.

When I came on my shift that evening, I was upset and unable to hide my feelings. Of course my workers asked what had happened, so I told them. Then Dima, who became a professor of law in the future, said “Give me that paper!” I gave it to him and was surprised to see that Dima calmly signed it in place of the secretary of the “mind, honor, and conscience of our era”. He said that I would be a fool if I let “that idiot Sorokin” stop me.

I had to agree with this dubious method because there was no other choice. I am still sure that nobody ever read this paper – it was simply a formality. After all, I was going to study at my own risk and lose half of my salary. I wasn’t looking for some kind of government award or career advancement.

Probably I left Post Office Box 4019 just in time. These days, it no longer has a secret name. It is called the Institute of Organic Silicone Compounds Technology and is close to GOSNIIOKhT, where I would work 26 years…