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

I told myself that this was just my first reward. The second one would be my dismissal. However, I had no regrets.

Soon my friends from the former Coordination Committee of the DDR movement came to see me and started suggesting different ways to regain what I had lost. I refused because I realized that it would be a nerve-wracking waste of time. So I went to the institute library to read scientific journals. I ran into several people I knew on my way there, and everybody behaved differently. Some people turned away and pretended they didn’t notice me. But there were people who silently came up to me, shook my hand, and quickly left. And I felt very good about that. I realized that many people who I respected and appreciated approved of my article. Certainly they were afraid, but that was only natural. If I had already spent years of serious consideration, agonizing over my role in this criminal enterprise, working on the development of chemical agents, then how could I expect people who read my article to immediately re-evaluate their lives and their careers?

Someone should be the first and bear his cross, even if he were threatened. I was even more certain of this after I ran into Victor Zhakov, the former chief engineer at GOSNIIOKhT, who literally hissed at me, “What are you doing? You’ll leave people without bread and butter! Be assured, they’ll run you through the meat grinder and dump you into the sewer!”

I knew that if they decided to do away with me, there was hardly any way to avoid it. However, I chose to make no changes in my daily routine. In the evening I went for walks outside with my kids, and I went to different meetings of the city DDR organization. I also continued jogging in a park that was not far from my house. By that time I was already an avid jogger with more than fifteen years of experience. Running always calmed me down and helped me remain optimistic, although it was becoming more difficult to be optimistic when there was a general depression in the country, and a scientist couldn’t count on normal work. My uncertain situation without a workplace and equipment couldn’t stay that way forever. The only thing that saved me at that time was a little work in the evenings and on my days off. I analyzed environmental tests at one of the cooperative societies and was paid a little for that. However, soon I lost this work too, because the cooperative had no more work orders.

The DDR activists from GOSNIIOKhT still hoped that they could change the situation. According to a provision in effect at that time, the director was supposed to be elected at a conference of employees, and the council of this group had to work out a contract with him. Only after that, could the contract be approved by the ministry. Petrunin, however, decided not to tempt his fate by trusting it to a meeting of the employees’ collective. So he just ordered each subdivision to elect a representative from their ranks. Then he would convene a meeting of these representatives and finish his business there. However, the elections of the representatives showed that Petrunin had slim chances. He then called upon the members of the old council who were mostly “his people” and they obediently reappointed Petrunin the director.

Outraged by this trick, DDR activists and many other people asked me to intercede and inform the Ministry of Russian Industry about Petrunin’s fraud. I couldn’t refuse and agreed to go there with Vyacheslav Agureev, another chemist.

Our trip couldn’t possibly have had a positive outcome, because the people from the former Ministry of Chemical Industry, who were working there, needed Petrunin more than anyone else, to survive.

The aides of our makeshift director and his deputy, who were closely watching my every step, decided to take advantage of our trip and had our absence classified as truancy. They immediately called a meeting of the employees’ collective, from the department to which I was formally assigned.

I went to the meeting purely out of curiosity. I wanted to know how people under the new conditions would react to their own blatant manipulation. In the past I had read in books and had heard a little from witnesses, that in the 1930s the “common people” made decisions at the workers’ meetings to savagely punish those with whom they had worked and been friends only the day before. As I expected, everything at the meeting evolved as it had in those earlier years.

On November 13, 1991, a meeting took place in Subdivision 45 that resolved to “abolish the position of the leading research scientist and to leave the question of the employment of Vil S. Mirzayanov, Doctor of Chemical Sciences, who occupied this position, to the directorate.” One more step was made towards getting rid of dissenters.

Members of the former Coordination Committee of the DDR issued a leaflet in my support for the occasion. [79] The leaflet of the Committee of Democratic Movement of Russia in GRNIIOKhT, “Witch Hunt” at GRNIIOKhT, September 1991. See Annex 2.

The leaflet was a bold document for that time. Of course, everybody knew the members of the Coordination Committee, so they were taking a bold risk. The administration could start persecuting them, and could punish them in an exemplary manner along with me.

And this is exactly what happened. First a computer was taken away from Valery Morgunov, a research assistant at the Analytical Department, because he used it to type the text of the leaflet. Then the persecution of other former members of the Coordination Committee began. Many of them were quickly dismissed from their jobs because of “staff reductions.” This form of punishing disagreeable people was convenient, and it hardly ever failed.

I kept a copy of that leaflet. Every time I read this simple text, I feel a thrill and unbounded gratitude to my colleagues, who dared to perform a real civic feat when times got tough for me.

At that time, I was still hopeful that the leaders of the Democratic Russia movement would pay attention to the situation I described in my article “Inversion,” especially since I soon had a good chance to talk with them about it.

On November 8 of 1991, I was in the staff headquarters of the Democratic Russia movement. All day I was compiling packets of papers for the delegates to the second congress, which was to take place a few days later. I managed to meet with Lev Ponomarev and Gleb Yakunin there.

Unfortunately, they hadn’t read my article in Kuranty . Then I briefly summed up the publication for them and asked them to take steps to eliminate the danger created by GRNIIOKhT (GOSNIIOKhT was renamed when the USSR broke up), which threatened the lives of Muscovites.

In response, Ponomarev recommended I take a sample of air near GRNIIOKhT and analyze it somewhere. Then the documentary proof that GRNIIOKhT was really dangerous would make it possible to expose the evil chemists.

I don’t know what kind of dreadful advice this was – whether it was downright stupidity or just an ordinary provocation. If I had followed Ponomarev’s “advice”, I could have legally been arrested immediately on suspicion of espionage. I was reeling from the shock of such a crazy recommendation by one of our “leaders,” with whom I had sympathized until then. Truly, he had advised a stranger to commit a crime! This is why I never tried to talk with Ponomarev about it again.

However, at the urgent request of my lawyer, I met with Ponomarev again in January of 1993. By that time he was a deputy of the Russian Supreme Soviet. We hoped he would be a witness for the defense, and confirm that I had met with him in the “Democratic Russia” headquarters and tried to draw his attention to this imminent danger. At that time my lawyer, Aleksander Asnis, was looking at all the different options for defending me in court, and it was very difficult. He hoped that he would be able to prove that I had repeatedly tried to draw the attention of public figures, deputies, and representatives of power to the imminent danger, though in vain. It would mean, according to the Criminal Code of Russia, that I had exhausted all legal means of raising my concerns through the proper channels, and had a legitimate right to take steps, even if my actions violated the current law. My article “Poisoned Policies” could be qualified as one such action.