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

These were the kind of people who were at the helm of the DDR movement. Many progressive people in Russia pinned their hopes on them, but unfortunately the DDR’s leaders let them down, and they compromised themselves entirely in the eyes of the public. Certainly the common members of the DDR like me were responsible, to some extent, for the shattering disappointment people experienced, because we allowed a small group of scoundrels, yesterday’s fiery Communists, to abuse the people’s trust in democratic ideals.

The defeat of the August of 1991 putsch attempt gave some impetus to the democratic movement in Russia, and it also gave rise to a lot of illusions.

While Boris Yeltsin celebrated his victory and was drinking “like a fish” in the Caucasus Region of Russia, the real power structure which remained in the same hands, had just enough time to shed its old skin. First, the president issued a decree that prohibited political activity in institutions and businesses. This was done under the pretext of banning the activities of the C.P.S.U. However, this document wasn’t simply a farce. The decree betrayed the ordinary DDR members who actually helped the people who issued this decree to reach their current positions. They certainly realized that the C.P.S.U. was strong, even without its formal organization. What was the point of prohibiting the activity of these party committees, if the directors and all the top managers still controlled all aspects of the life and work of their employees? After all, how could Sergei Shakhrai, a Komsomol leader at Moscow State University, who became one of the DDR leaders and an assistant to Yeltsin, know anything if he still knew nothing about the life of ordinary people in the country?

At GOSNIIOKhT, we employees were deprived of our last chance to come forward and struggle with the opponents of the reforms and democratization.

Overall, it wasn’t all that bad. The mass media became even bolder and the newspapers could write concretely about specific problems. I read through the democratic press attentively, but I couldn’t find any serious publications about the military-chemical complex. So, I decided I was ready to speak openly about the problems of the military-chemical complex myself.

I never wanted anyone to think that I did it on the sly, in a cowardly way, hiding behind the back of some journalist. I was suffering from the agonizing burden I carried, feeling personal responsibility for participating in the criminal arms race of chemical weapons. Those thoughts which had been constantly torturing me finally pushed me forward to make a resolute decision to pick up my pen.

However, even before I wrote my first article, I was able to succinctly sum up my concerns in a note to Gavriil Popov, who was then Mayor of Moscow and one of the leaders of the “Democratic Russia” movement. Early in September of 1991, at a meeting of the activists of this organization, I passed him a brief note describing how dangerous the reckless activities of the ruling elite of the VPK were to the life and the safety of Muscovites. I asked Popov to meet with me. He agreed and promised to call me.

Alas, I never received his call. Later, at the urgent request of my lawyer, Popov was asked to come to court as a witness on my behalf. He said that he had difficulty remembering the facts – that we had met or that he had received a note from me. He also didn’t remember that he had promised to meet with me.

It took me just one evening to write an article. I quickly typed it and took it to the office of the editor of the popular Moscow newspaper Kuranty . There I met Constantine Katanyan, a young and quite well known journalist. The article seemed interesting to him and he promised to publish it without any changes. It was published in Kuranty on October 10th, 1991. [78] Vil Mirzayanov, “Inversion”, Kuranty , October 10, 1991. See Annex 1. When I was writing the article I knew that according to the Wyoming Memorandum (an accord which the U.S. and the USSR signed in 1989), the parties had to give each other information about all the compounds that could be classified as chemical weapons. It was clear to me that the U.S.S.R. had no intention of honestly meeting its commitments. This is why I concluded my article with an analogy which compared the actions of the leadership of the military-chemical complex with the behavior of a chemical compound capable of inversion, when it changes from one form to another, without changing its chemical composition.

When the article was published, I was still on vacation. According to witnesses, my article made a stunning impression on the directors of the institute. The Science Council of GOSNIIOKhT was urgently called together to discuss it, but they failed to pass the necessary resolution that would condemn the article. That was not because many people objected to it, but because they had no idea how the decision should be worded. Also, it was a little awkward to make a decision about my article in my absence.

The institute’s top leaders wrote to the KGB of course, demanding that I should be immediately arrested for my impertinence. Although I don’t know why, criminal proceedings were not brought against me at that time. Many people, including me, supposed that this was connected with the shock that the KGB experienced after the failure of the August coup, which ended with the arrest of its bosses, including Vladimir Kryuchkov, chief of the Chekists. It seemed that in our country, the era of Democracy and Glasnost had finally started to take root.

Later it was proven that we had been sorely mistaken. At that time, there were no formal grounds for prosecution and exemplary punishment. Back in November of 1989, the U.S.S.R. Committee of Constitutional Supervision at the Congress of People’s Deputies, chaired by Sergei Alekseev, issued a decree that declared all normative acts relating to human rights to be null and void unless they were published openly in the press within three months. Naturally, nobody decided to publish such acts openly. So, all the lists of state secrets simply ceased to exist legally. The Belovezhskaya Decision on the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. confirmed the legality of the acts adopted by the U.S.S.R. Supreme Soviet and, consequently, this resolution of the Committee of Constitutional Supervision.

My article was the first of its kind, and it threw out a challenge to the powerful military-industrial complex (VPK). But, unfortunately, it didn’t reverberate either in our country or abroad. Maybe people didn’t pay much attention to it because of the dramatic events at that time connected with the break-up of the U.S.S.R. Everything faded to insignificance against this backdrop. It’s a pity my warning call went unanswered. I hoped to hear something about the VPK and my article in the programs of “The Voice of America”, the BBC, and “Liberty,” but there was nothing.

Still, my article pushed the KGB to issue a new decree about the protection of state secrets, which President Boris Yeltsin signed on January 14, 1992. The decree was secretly adopted and it wasn’t published, so the general public knew nothing about it. I only learned about it a year later when I was already sitting in jail. This decree reinstated all the invalidated normative acts and lists of state secrets. In this way, the president illegally cancelled the resolution of the Committee of Constitutional Supervision.

Once again the Chekists had their hands on one of the major instruments of total control over everyone whose profession was connected with the VPK clan.

When I returned to work after my vacation in October of 1991, I faced a vindictive reaction from the bosses on account of my article. I wasn’t given a pass, so I couldn’t enter the institute grounds. The guards on duty showed me an empty space on the rack for passes. Then I called the Department for the Security Regime, which was responsible for this system. They explained that my pass had been removed by order of Aleksander Martynov, Deputy Director for Security. When I called him, he gave no explanation, and said that my pass would be returned immediately. I entered the institute grounds and went to my room. It was open but people from a different department were working there. I realized they had taken away my workplace and my equipment. It was very unpleasant, but to be honest, I didn’t expect anything else.