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

We know that the scope of the superman’s authority was much too low there, unlike his reign at GOSNIIOKhT. He was unhappy, because he could not order people to accept his authoritarian rule. The young scientists there practically ignored their director for his “backwardness”, and they imposed a secret boycott on him.

As soon as the Vice President of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences, Yuri Ovchinnikov, saw that Martynov didn’t keep up with his workload, he had a “serious conversation” with him. After that our hero began declining very rapidly and was replaced by a truly prominent scientist, the academician Nikolai Zefirov.

After the GOSNIIOKhT director Grigori A. Patrushev died, Martynov tried to get back into his “native easy chair” – the director’s position, but it was already too late. I am not writing about this with malicious intent. I am simply satisfied that Martynov’s plan to make the Institute of Physiologically Active Compounds, which belonged to the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences, into something similar to GOSNIIOKhT, failed. His lack of talent wasn’t the only reason for it. It also happened because young scientists were disgusted with the “special themes” he had proposed.

Some well-known scientists were contacted by my lawyer Aleksander Asnis to become experts in my “case” after the Moscow City Court sent it back for further investigation in 1994. Their reactions showed how strong this disgust and their devotion to democratic ideals were. Academician Nikolai Zefirov, Director of IFAV at the Russian Academy of Sciences, and Oleg Nefedov, Vice-President of the Russian Academy of Sciences, were among those who agreed to participate in the expertise.

The retirement of Martynov unleashed a furious competition for the director’s post. Although the Ministry of Chemical Industry backed another candidate, Grigory Patrushev enjoyed the Central Committee’s favor and became director of GOSNIIOKhT in 1979. The appointment astonished many people since few had ever noticed that Patrushev had such mighty contacts within the party. He didn’t flaunt his connections, but for anyone paying close attention, the signs had always been there. Patrushev headed the Biomedical Department, and he managed to win funds for a new building to house his laboratories. His fiefdom grew so large that people began to speculate that it might separate from GOSNIIOKhT and become its own entity. Such growth does not happen on its own.

GOSNIIOKhT was populated mostly by chemists, and most of the department chiefs resented the appointment of a medical professional to lead GOSNIIOKhT. They had hoped the rival candidate Guskov would get the post, and they regarded Patrushev’s appointment as an alarming sign for their careers. I did not feel that way though. I knew Patrushev as a highly cultured person and an excellent specialist, so I was originally pleased when he became director.

The pressures of the job must have weighed on him though. Within just a year, Patrushev was transformed into a short-tempered and impatient administrator. Aside from that, Patrushev had a tendency to be mean-spirited. If he disliked someone he could not resist the temptation to victimize that person using the harshest ploys of Soviet bureaucracy. Patrushev’s other shortcoming was his blind faith in Communist ideals. Like many others, I did not share his passion for Stalin, since Khrushchev had by that time revealed the despicable toll that Stalin’s autocratic policies had taken on the country.

Personally, I think Patrushev became so unbalanced because his position was tenuous, in part due to his extremely frosty relations with the young Deputy Minister of the Chemical Industry, Sergei Golubkov, who had objected to his friend Konstantin Guskov not becoming the new director. Golubkov never missed a chance to wound Patrushev’s pride, so Patrushev had to be careful not to offend the overconfident and capricious deputy minister. Patrushev’s attempts to gratify Golubkov damned him. At the end of 1983, Patrushev came down with the flu that was raging through Moscow. Despite his illness and soaring temperature, Patrushev felt obligated to work so as not to incur Golubkov’s wrath. His illness became much more dire, and despite intensive treatment, Patrushev died in 1984.

After his death, everyone expected Guskov to fill Patrushev’s vacancy since he had powerful Golubkov’s backing. On the day that the Board of the Ministry of Chemical Industry was to give its formal approval to Guskov’s appointment, the GOSNIIOKhT staff was so confident of the outcome that banquet tables were laid out to toast to Guskov. When a rumor swirled around the institute that Victor Petrunin, the former director of the Volsk branch, was a dark horse candidate, nobody took it seriously. Before the board meeting began, however, the former First Secretary of the Saratov Regional Party Committee and acting Deputy Prime Minister of USSR, Vladimir Gusev, called Vladimir Listov, the Minister of Chemical Industry, on Petrunin’s behalf. Listov announced Petrunin’s appointment, surprising all members of the Board, demonstrating once again party’s control of key decisions.

Petrunin became “wiser” over the years, working for a long time in the provinces in GOSNIIOKhT’s Shikhany branch. There he learned the art of managing people Soviet style. Relatively quickly, he understood that his career depended on how well he was able to meet and greet his bosses visiting from Moscow. He had to do his best to indulge his guests in every possible way, arranging trips to the Volga, where they could rollick on the estate of the late Count Orlov. [22] Count Grigory G. Orlov (1734-1783) was a lover of Empress Catherine II of Russia. In 1762 he organized the coup d’état that placed Catherine on the Russian throne and subsequently was her close adviser. John Alexander, Catherine the Great: Life and Legend (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1989): 56-7. This lifestyle strongly attracted him, because he liked to drink and to please his guests with his singing. Petrunin loved playing the role of a magnanimous baron. And why not celebrate, when hundreds of people from his institute were forced to work on the estate, for a few months out of each year without pay?

Once Petrunin became Director of the Volsk branch, you could often see him riding in a troika (the traditional Russian carriage with three horses) on the neighboring collective farm. Tipsy, happy and rosy-cheeked from the fresh steppe air, he was sitting in the sleigh singing popular Russian folk songs, while he accompanied himself on the Russian accordion.

Once, during one of those trips to the Volga River, the hospitable Petrunin gave his guests a big scare. After toasting to his “dear guests” many times, and after singing numerous Russian romance solos, the not entirely sober host of the party, “Vityusha”, disappeared. The guests from Moscow didn’t seem to take any notice. It was a beautiful romantic night, with bright stars in the sky. An enormous bonfire was surrounded by tables decked out with salmon, caviar and other scarce gourmet foods from the institute’s storage room. No one had any gloomy premonitions, and so nobody began looking for the singer, as the need for folk songs and dances reached its peak. As usual, no one remembered the end of the party. They found themselves in their cozy beds, but their host was not among them.

In the morning, suddenly one of the Muscovites saw something that looked like a human body under the steep precipice of the riverbank, near the estate. He cried out desperately in fear, and the guests immediately understood that this body could only belong to Victor Petrunin. The fearful guests made their way down the steps on the hill, barely dragging their feet, because no one had fully recovered from his hangover.