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

He shut down the Dzerzhinsky and Borislavsky branches of the institute in Western Ukraine as incompatible with the main thrust of GOSNIIOKhT’s activities. Under Martynov’s leadership, the Volsk branch in Shikhany was reorganized, and this branch over the course of time became a powerful center for chemical weapons development. Every year, increasing numbers of graduates from colleges and universities in Moscow, Leningrad, Saratov, Volgograd, and other cities came to work there. Many Saratov Military Chemical College graduates came to work at the pilot plant. Industrial products, provisions and goods were supplied directly from Moscow for this branch. The housing situation for employees was decent, and along with the rather privileged salary, it attracted young people.

Martynov rallied practically all of GOSNIIOKhT to help establish and launch the Novocheboksarsk Plant for manufacturing Substance 33 and CS gas. Oddly enough, this coincided with the complete termination of the industrial production of chemical weapons in the United States, and that is unfortunately a typical example of the two-faced policy of the CPSU.

In 1974, every record of every chemical weapons development program and production was purged from the record, even from the secret lists of state secrets. This meant that GOSNIIOKhT and other institutions of the military-industrial complex found themselves operating outside of the law. For Martynov, moral issues have always been, and I am sure still are, of very little importance.

He was a man of a medium height, a bit swarthy, with dark hair and a decisive chin. His features combined to give the impression of a strong-willed face, and he reminded me of our “illustrious” movie actors – playing military leaders who followed our genius Stalin’s instructions on defeating German armies. It seemed that he imitated them, and so his directorate also reminded us of military headquarters. Most of his staffers were former military officers, who played their roles as career military men with marked pleasure.

When any one of the scientists displayed ordinary civilian carelessness or clumsiness, the almighty Martynov did not hesitate to thunder out against him, regardless of who else was present. I am sure that he had practically no sense of humor, and he always took everything too seriously, strictly by the book like soldiers do. This is the reason why people tried to ‘tune’ him in the right way. They used to say that if someone got him to go in one direction, it was almost impossible to turn him back the other way.

Professor Vladimir Kurochkin told me that it was absolutely necessary to be the first person to get to the director’s office and tune him properly. Only those who managed to get to the pompous director first were successful. My classmate from MITKhT, Professor Yuri Zeifman, who worked in Ivan Knunyantz’s laboratory, characterized him as a “superman”. I’m sure he was partially right.

Martynov was warm and fatherly to people in his inner circle, and anyone who succeeded in getting close to him was assured of a successful career. The director never forgot those people and patronized them like a baron. He had an excellent “nose” for new trends in synthetic laboratory work and always gave them the green light. Probably this was the reason why he supported Petr Kirpichev’s team [20] I’ll write further about Kirpichev’s discovery. at GOSNIIOKhT’s Volsk branch. As soon as he learned about their work and their preliminary results in 1973, he arranged for them to be given top secret clearance, which meant the status “of the highest importance”.

According to the senior engineer of this group, Vladimir Uglev, [21] Oleg Vishnyakov, “Interview with a Noose Around the Neck”, Novoe Vremya, No 6, 1993, p. 40. (English version, Oct. 1993, p. 22-23.) the team was provided with first class equipment on Martynov’s directive, and was ordered to submit their reports to Moscow immediately, even in handwritten form. It turned out that the director was farsighted, not only because their work was highly important for the state, but also in the area of his personal interests. After Martynov received the highest award possible in the U.S.S.R., the “Hero of the Socialist Labor” for the successful start-up of the Novocheboksarsk Plant for producing chemical weapons, he felt inspired to become a member of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences. A special vacancy was created for him before the next regular election to the academy, thanks to the Council of Ministers. However, he was not elected a Corresponding Member at first, despite excellent official support.

“This whole damn bunch of academicians and corresponding members! They are not bloody organized at all!” complained retired Colonel Foma Gorelov, Martynov’s first aide and head of the Scientific Technical Department at GOSNIIOKhT, about the “irresponsible” electors.

Colonel Gorelov knew almost nothing about science, but he liked to recall incidents that had taken place during his service as Commander of the Special Battalion for Chemical Defense. “You see, one of my soldiers was bored to death without women and he became violent. And, you see, he screwed one of the local girls, well something like he raped her. So the case went into full swing. The investigator appeared and ordered us to arrange an identification line-up, presenting all the soldiers on the parade ground, without hats. The victim had to look at them and recognize the rapist. I agreed and asked him to come by with the girl the next day. But as soon as he left, I ordered an unscheduled bath-day and haircuts for the soldiers; they had to shave off all their mustaches.

The next day, you see, the investigator and the girl turned up. She made her way along the line and began to cry out from exasperation. “They all look the same!” she sobbed. “The rapist had a thick head of hair and a mustache,” the unmarried girl recalled, in helpless despair.”

So this was Colonel Foma Gorelov’s way to show his quick military wit. He savored telling this story with great pleasure, but he did not understand why people who listened to it turned away in embarrassment….

For nearly a year, Foma was busy trying to help his unlucky master become a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences, and he was very upset about this failure. Apparently he missed the mark, assuming that high-level support would be enough for this undertaking to be successful. As a rule, the Academy of Sciences rubber-stamped the admission of candidates who were governmental people, the directors of the defense-oriented institutes. However, as people say, even a wise man stumbles. Sometimes, even a “superman’s” candidacy was steam-rolled during sessions of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences. Usually though, this kind of outcome was an exception, and it was interpreted as “inadequate work” with the influential members and the leaders of the Academy of Science clans.

At the next election, Martynov became a corresponding member, but this time they worked properly. Frequently you could see Volga cars rolling in, bringing different academicians and corresponding members to a house that was used as a hotel by GOSNIIOKhT. There they gathered for friendly, but lavish, dinner parties, with cognac and caviar, so that the guests had no cause to doubt the director’s scientific merits.

The governmental decree, which established an institute at the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences for fundamental research of new chemical weapons principles, made it possible for Martynov to take a critical step towards getting a “high” scientific rank. According to the code accepted in the military-chemical complex, the term “physiologically active compounds” (FAV) was used as a screen for the forbidden term “chemical agents”. So the new institute was called the Institute for Physiologically Active Compounds (IFAV), and Martynov was appointed its director (It is located in Chernogolovka, in the Moscow Region).