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

Asnis and I were received with hospitality when we came to see Lev Ponomarev in his office in Room 1609 in the White House on the Krasnopresnenskaya Embankment. By that time, my “case” was widely known throughout the world and people recognized me everywhere, even in the subway. Many passers-by greeted me and thanked me for what I had done.

However, when Asnis briefly explained what we wanted, a thick silence fell over the room. It was clear that Ponomarev was dumbfounded and couldn’t find the words that would help extricate him from the situation. The deputy’s consultant Maximov saved him. According to him, Lev Aleksandrovich was a public figure, and his authority could be seriously damaged if he took part in the proceedings as a witness. “The investigator will certainly ask why there was no feedback and what actions Lev Ponomarev took regarding this issue” he continued. “Probably you, Vil Sultanovich, were not persistent enough and didn’t repeat your request,” Maximov the lawyer, insisted.

“Indeed, Vil Sultanovich, why didn’t you appeal to me again? I always try to help people when they appeal to me, if they can’t get an apartment or have problems with their pension, and with many other issues. I most certainly would have tried to help you, too,” said the DDR “leader”, happily grasping the idea put forth by his aide.

This time my lawyer Asnis and I were the astonished ones. Despite his constant imperturbability and incredible self-control, Asnis was deeply disappointed and couldn’t hide his feelings. There at the Krasnopresnenskaya Embankment, I realized for the first time why people had long ago dubbed such politicians “Dermocrats.” (This translates literally as “Shitcrats”.) Still somehow I found the composure to blurt out that I didn’t want to distract him anymore from his great work.

I was really ashamed in front of Asnis about what was going on. I didn’t believe that politics was always such a dirty business, or that politicians were necessarily dishonorable people. I don’t think so now, either. It seems to me that almost any business can be pure and noble if you do it honestly and professionally. Can the profession of a sanitation worker be “dirty”, only because he is dealing with sewage? On the other hand, chemists, surgeons, and people from many other professions have to put up with a lot of unpleasant things too.

Back in 1991, all my bridges were burned behind me, and it was clear that I would soon be fired from GRNIIOKhT.

On January 5 th1992, I was sent to the Personnel Department, where they handed me an order about my termination, of course for “staff reduction” reasons. The Deputy Chief of the Department for the Security Regime, German Mosyakin, also came to see me. He was a short man, amazingly unpleasant and slippery. He asked me to sign an agreement about the non-disclosure of state secrets, which was already familiar to me from my first days at GOSNIIOKhT.

I said that I would be happy to do this if they showed me a Russian law or governmental decree with a clear definition of what the state secrets in our profession were. I explained to Mosyakin that after my dismissal from the institute I had no intention of living by rules invented by people like him. Of course he couldn’t show me any document that would explain all the subtle aspects regarding state secrets. He just obsequiously begged me to do him a favor because it was his job. We parted at that.

Unfortunately, my dismissal coincided with the beginning of Yegor Gaidar’s reforms in Russia. So, overnight I lost all my savings. These reforms turned my family and me into paupers. I started struggling for survival, which wasn’t easy because I had two sons, 5-year old Sultan and 13-year-old Iskander.

The Gaidar reform wasn’t a “shock therapy” as it was dubbed then. It proved to be just another revolutionary attack in the history of Russia. As always, the top leaders hoped to solve problems that had existed for centuries, in one round. In principle, I have always supported reforms in Russia, but they shouldn’t be so destructive. The authors of the “reform” acted absolutely brutally and inhumanely, even by Russian standards.

Nikita Khrushchev was a cynical and self-confident Bolshevik reformer. However, when he saw that he could no longer extort people by making them sign up for state loans “to restore the national economy,” he abolished those loans. At the same time he suspended annual payments on them, but he promised to resume the payments 15 years later. From the psychological point of view, he was right. The newly hatched reformers were not willing to do even this, and they promised nothing to the people they had robbed.

Was it so difficult to try and develop a long-term plan to compensate people’s savings by selling state property, natural gas, and resources? I am certain it could have been done, but the “reformers” led by Gaidar, were people with the same Bolshevik background. Bolsheviks never thought about people. They have always considered citizens to be “small screws” in the huge wheel of the state machinery. The very fact that they studied in the U.S. doesn’t mean anything. They crossed the ocean, but they came back the same specialists in the economy of developed socialism as they had been before.

Currently, Russia is paying for the great conceit and arrogance of these “specialists”, and the future of the development of democracy in this country remains in question, because of their mistakes.

At that time I couldn’t afford to indulge in similar reflections. I started working in commercial organizations that found practical application for scientific and technological achievements, but these attempts were also fruitless. All those commercial organizations quickly switched over to the simple operations of “buy and sell”, because at that time only those activities allowed them to survive.

Since there was no public reaction to my article “Inversion”, the feeling of dissatisfaction haunted me. From conversations with my colleagues, I realized that they were continuing to test chemical weapons at the Nukus site, even though Uzbekistan had declared independence. This was completely absurd and beyond my comprehension. The leadership of the VPK was wasting money on testing chemical weapons that no one needed, while a lot of military people were being laid off, industrial production was plummeting at a breakneck speed, and people were doomed to struggle for their basic survival.

I was disappointed with the results of my first public statement, so I didn’t write a second one. I thought that times were too tough for people to get interested in the problems of chemical weapons. The country had other business to attend to.

I felt that way until one day when I accidentally stumbled across an article devoted to chemical weapons, in the weekly Sovershenno Sekretno (translates as “Top Secret”) written by Lev Fedorov. [80] Lev Fedorov, “The Delayed Death”, Sovershenno Sekretno, 12 August 1992. The author was a dilettante and there were a lot of mistakes. I immediately realized, judging from the text, that Fedorov had only a vague conception about the fundamental nature of the problem, because he wasn’t a specialist in this field.

In any case, the problem was raised again and people began to call me to ask what I thought about it. As a specialist and a person who had put forth considerable effort to create this evil, I understood that I had no right to keep silent. I asked myself, “If not me, then who would speak as a professional to prevent the next deception?” There were and there are scientists in the VPK who are unquestionably more talented and knowledgeable than I am. However, I knew that none of them would ever risk speaking publicly on the problem of chemical weapons, because they had already become part of the totalitarian system.