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

I remember him only for two scandals, one which almost landed him in criminal court for stealing equipment from the institute.

As a member of the Soviet ruling elite, Kazhdan had access to closed stores with fine imported goods. He decided to grab the attention of the women in his department with the direct delivery of bras and panties, which were in short supply then. He carried all of this across the carefully guarded checkpoint of the institute in his briefcase. Departmental and laboratory heads, who had special permission from the Deputy Director of the Security Regime, could carry their briefcases through the checkpoints at the guard station without being searched.

Apparently, someone who was not happy with Henri reported his activities to the special bodies at the institute, and one day his briefcase was searched without ceremony. Inside they discovered a quantity of women’s panties and bras, but the strong backbone of this supplier of women’s underwear helped him remain in his post without any consequences.

Another scandal developed after the death of his high-ranking father in law, and that time he had some real problems. Kazhdan had a perfectly equipped workshop with good lathes and metal fitting and tooling equipment, and he secretly organized the production of precision miniature woodworking machines, which surpassed even the well known Japanese ones in quality.

It’s not clear to me if he sold them or was getting ready to sell them, but apparently Henri presented some of them to Deputy Director of Science Guskov, to Professor Kurochkin, and others. Workers from his department wrote a series of complaints, and the wheels of justice began to turn. The experienced investigator obtained a confession from Henri, but the case which was brought by the special prosecutor was dropped and did not go to court, because further development of his case would have threatened the regime of secrecy. In all fairness, I must say that these crazy activities of the department chairman did not have much of an impact on the work of the department. He had very good executives and laboratory chiefs, and many experienced and gifted people were working with them, including Natalia Godzhello, Vladimir Goncharov and Mark Stepanski.

Natalia Godzhello (who had a M.S. in Chemical Science) was a veteran in the field of research and production of chemical agents in the U.S.S.R. We lived in the same neighborhood, and she remained my friend, even during the time of my persecution by the KGB. This challenge provoked a reaction by the investigators and the Director of GOSNIIOKhT, in spite of the fact that Godzhello had already retired with a pension at this time. She was summoned to give testimony about my case to the KGB. I learned from our conversations that Godzhello came from a family of chemical engineers, who ran one of the first CW test sites for the Red Army in Kuzminki (this is now a densely populated region of Moscow.)

Her family lived close to this site where CW were tested, and sometimes destroyed. This Polygon continued to operate there until 1960, when its ownership was transferred to Shikhany from TSNIVTI. Godzhello graduated from the Chemistry Department of Moscow State University (MGU) before World War I, and was sent to work at the plant in Chapaevsk, which produced mustard gas and lewisite. After a period of time working there, Natalia Mikhailovna was sent by her boss, against her wishes, to work in the Technical Production Department, where she only had to deal with documentation. Quite possibly this saved her life.

The organized technological production of chemical agents was terrible from the standpoint of technical safety. In Natalia’s own words, faces and hands were burned in the mustard gas-producing section. When workers removed their gas masks or gloves, their skin was burned by mustard gas vapors. Also, they unfortunately did not know that the mustard gas vapor in the air percolated through rubber. When the artillery shells were missing some mustard gas and needed topping off, it was customary to refill them from a tea kettle.

There were many victims in such a system. The number of catastrophes multiplied during the war years when work on CW production was intensified, though the technology and the low level of safety standards remained unchanged. In order to make up for the shortage of workers in the plant, they once brought in soldiers from Uzbekistan. Those soldiers had no idea whatsoever about chemical technology, and they were completely unsuitable for work in the factory. Since their only experience was in their kishlaks (small villages in Central Asia), almost all of them without exception became victims of this horrible production process.

Finally Moscow was forced to respond in some way, so they sent a commission to investigate, which was chaired by the Deputy Minister of Chemical Industry, according to Natalia. As usual, they adopted some organizational measures to bring about changes to the leadership. However, they could not bring about the essential changes needed.

Another large laboratory existed in GOSNIIOKhT for the development of the production technology of tearing agents (lachrymators), which was headed up for a long time by Arkady Gribov (M.S. in Chemical Science), who later replaced Sergei Smirnov. I collaborated with this laboratory during almost all of the 26 years I worked at GOSNIIOKhT.

I worked with my assistants Boris Dubin and Olga Golubeva, developing methods for the determination of micro-concentrations of the agents CS and CR in different media. This included analysis of the air and water that had supplied the start-up of the corresponding experimental pilot plants for the production of these agents. We also researched methods of analysis of the precursors of the developed irritants.

Gribov was a good organizer and distinguished himself by his purposefulness, though apparently he was not a researcher in the full sense of the word. He was able to use the specialties of his subordinates to his advantage. Among them, Sergei Smirnov undoubtedly excelled. He specialized in working out the technology of the nitrile derivatives of a series of organic compounds. He started with the development of the technology of obtaining an allyl cyanide monomer for producing highly stable rubber. Later, he successful developed the technology for producing malonodinitrile, one of the principal precursors of ortho-chlorbenzyledene-malonodinitrile, which is known as the chemical agent CS.

A pilot plant for researching the technical production of CS operated on the institute territory for 5 years. Later an analogous pilot plant was opened at the Volsk branch of GOSNIIOKhT. In spite of huge efforts they made there, the technology for producing malonodinitrile was mastered only with great difficulty.

The year 1978 came and the time for the start-up of a large-scale division for the production of agent CS was approaching in earnest, at the Novocheboksary chemical complex. A quantity of malonodinitrile was necessary for this, but it had not been produced by the branch. I believe the reasons for this were the inadequate qualifications of the plant personnel and the absence of appropriate equipment. Though the matter of ortho-chlorbenzaldehyde and other precursors of agent CS was temporarily resolved by purchasing French chemicals through Turkey, the problem of malonodinitrile hung in the air.

Victor Petrunin was the director of this branch at the time, and he resolved the problem quite simply. Petrunin ordered all research labs to stop their activities for several months, and all scientists were ordered to synthesize the ill-fated precursor in glass retorts. Considering the availability of cheap human labor, such a “solution” was not original, though it was effective. When the time came for the start up the Novocheboksary plant, the malonodinitrile supply was ready.