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

Professor Dubov asked Vladimir Kurochkin to be his aide. Kurochkin came to GOSNIIOKhT from the Science Research Institute at the General Intelligence Directorate (GRU) of the Soviet Army. In early 1960s, this institute was reorganized and many employees from there came to work at GOSNIIOKhT.

When the war began, Kurochkin volunteered to go to the front, where he was badly wounded. I accidentally learned that he had received a lot of awards, which were evidence of his bravery on the battlefront. Kurochkin was gentle by nature, always friendly and quite talented. When he was talking with someone, he quickly grasped the essence of any problem, and did everything he could to make sure that person he was conversing with felt comfortable, and did not fear being misunderstood. He had excellent skills as an organizer but, he was also a man of his times. He didn’t mind wasting his time and energy at the endless meetings of the Party Committee, the trade union committee, and the board of directors of the institute. Kurochkin understood that if he avoided these meetings, he wouldn’t be able to provide his team with state-of-the-art equipment, to raise their wages, or to promote talented young people. Dubov and Kurochkin made a good partnership, campaigning for the development of the Physical Chemistry Department.

At first Director Patrushev ignored my requests and wouldn’t let me move to another laboratory. However, Kurochkin’s diplomatic talents worked wonders and the issue of my transfer was settled quickly. Of course, there were good reasons for that. Shortly before my arrival at the Physical Chemistry Department, a senior staff scientist there, Yevgeny Bogomazov, began research aimed at identifying chemical agents which could break through the filter of a gas-mask.

Bogomazov was a graduate of and then a candidate for a master’s degree at the Military Academy of Chemical Defense (MACD). [47] For a long time it was known as Voroshilov Military Academy of Chemical Defense. He had just completed his dissertation work in General Mikhael Dubinin’s department, and his topic was developing GC methods for evaluating gas-mask reliability. Yevgeny was a typical product of his military educational establishment.

I hope that many of my good friends will forgive me for saying this, but I think that the majority of the MACD graduates are notable for their adventurous and easy approach to all types of problem solving. However, when they use this approach for solving scientific problems, the matter often goes belly-up. Most of them force their way into key positions using all their efforts, and they have no scruples, using people, using bootlicking, hypocrisy and betrayal of their former friends, to achieve their goals. My words may seem harsh and judgmental, but my encounters with people from the MACD have brought me to this sad conclusion. I would advise everyone who has anything to do with MACD graduates (with a few exceptions) to check all of their proposals and research results ten times over, before accepting them as truth.

I don’t mean to imply by this description that Yevgeny Bogomazov did not have any talent. Mostly he excelled in his self-aggrandizement, which tainted everything he did. After Bogomazov received his master’s degree, he got a job in Englin’s laboratory, but he saw no career prospects there, so he quickly moved on to the Physical Chemistry Department.

In a short time, Bogomazov managed to captivate the head of the department with his ideas. Very soon, Bogomazov and two of his junior colleagues, Dmitri Zalepugin and Aleksander Dmitriev [48] Later he was transferred to the KGB and even participated in the search of the apartment of Lev Fedorov, my co-author of the article “A Poisoned Policy”. See Annex 8. (both MACD graduates), made a discovery that all the military chemists of the world could only dream of.

They discovered that the thionic analogs of soman and sarin, CH 3P=S(F)-OR, where R is the alcoxy radical – could break through an army gas-mask filter. Then these compounds, which have a comparatively low toxicity, would turn back into their oxygen analogs, CH3P=O(F)-OR (chemical agents) once they had passed through the filter.

Additionally, according to their results, the same was true for the thionic analog of the neopentyl ether of methylfluorophosphonic acid. The oxygen analog of this ether has toxic features identical to soman. That was a sensational discovery, but it could not be trumpeted to the public – to the deep regret of ambitious Bogomazov. Naturally, Bogomazov’s discovery was immediately reported to the headquarters of the Chemical Troops at the Ministry of Defense, and the Central Committee of the CPSU. In the eyes of those organizations, Bogomazov became one of the leading scientists, a man who made a revolution in military science.

With his usual grandeur, he returned to his research, and decided to attract large-scale resources to his discovery. A number of GOSNIIOKhT’s subdivisions began working under his scientific leadership.

A special group was organized under the supervision of Aleksander Yakovlev at the Engineering Department, to develop an automated device for the analysis of the adsorption properties of the newly synthesized compounds. According to the project, these new compounds should be brought on line by two groups of chemists who were specializing in synthesizing compounds.

Also, the Physical Chemistry Department started a broad-based study for the deeper understanding of the adsorption processes, which caused the breakthrough of chemical agents mentioned above.

A young graduate student, Aleksander Klochkov, from the X-ray Structure Analysis Group headed by Doctor of Chemistry Efim Galperin, began working on his masters’ thesis about the adsorption properties of the thionic analogs. Another graduate student from the group for determining physical-chemical constants, Valery Belikov, discovered that there was a great difference between the compounds that broke through the filter and those compounds which irreversibly adsorbed to the filter, in terms of the thermal effects on adsorption.

A real scientific fever was ignited, which also caused some new discoveries to be made. For example, one of Dubov’s favorite graduate students, Aleksander Tarasov, invented an inhibitor, which blocked the spontaneous ignition of the thionic analogs in the air. Tarasov also found the optimal concentration for the inhibitor, which secured retention of the so-called field or combat concentration of chemical agents in the air. However, everything was being done very incorrectly, because analyses of the mixtures were faulty.

The overwhelming power of the secret regime allows scientific schemers to work miracles, and to pay no attention whatsoever to any analysis. So, Tarasov successfully defended his thesis for his master’s degree before the Science Council.

I learned about all this work only two years after it began, when I transferred into the Physical Chemistry Department, to further research the adsorption processes connected with the breakthrough. True, I had seen Bogomazov before I came to the department. Several of my friends had pointed out a tall and heavy young blond man with blue eyes and a plump white face, and whispered in my ear that he was the author of a stupendous discovery.

Following GOSNIIOKhT’s principle: never ask about things that do not directly concern you, I did not ask anything about the nature of Bogomazov’s discovery then.

After so many years of frustration connected with my doctoral thesis, and simply longing for a team of true scientists, which I believed the Physical Chemistry Department to be, I came to Dubov’s office. Kurochkin and Bogomazov were also present.

Dubov, as head of the department, briefly told me about the importance of Bogomazov’s project, not only for the institute, but also for the “Foliant” program. Overall, my task was to provide compelling theoretical scientific grounds for Bogomazov’s discovery. I believe it was probably some kind of “landscaping job”, to give such a magnificent discovery additional grandeur.