Vadim Birstein - The Perversion of Knowledge

246. “Sacked Primakov Was Reluctant Premier,” Reuters, May 12 (1999) (on-line version).

247. This tradition has a long history. Thus, in 1945 Beria tried to give an expensive rifle to Academician Kapitsa after Kapitsa sent Stalin a letter in which he complained about the rudeness of Beria and other high Party leaders toward scientists involved in the A-bomb project (Antonov-Ovseenko, Beria , p. 396).

248. “Security Service Rewards Ex-PM with Rifle,” Reuters, May 18 (1999) (on-line version).

249. “Primakov Is Back,” Moskovskii Komsomolets , July 28, 2000 (in Russian).

250. Gevorkyan, N., and A. Kolesnikov, “Interview with Acting President Vladimir Putin,” Kommersant-Daily , March 10, 2000 (on-line version).

251. Anokhin, “Luis, brat ubiitsy Trotskogo.”

252. The same year, Yevgenii Primakov, later head of the SVR (Foreign Intelligence) and Russian prime minister, was elected a full member of the academy.

253. Albats, The State , p. 156.

254. Turkevich, J., “Agoshkov, Mikhail Ivanovich (Mining Expert),” in Soviet Men of Science , pp. 2–3. Also see “Agoshkov, Mikhail Ivanovich,” in Great Soviet Encyclopedia , vol. 1, p. 141.

255. Investigative journalist Yevgeniya Albats found out that Boyarsky’s candidate dissertation was entitled “Defeat of the Interventionists and White Guards” and the title of his doctoral dissertation was “Development of the Scientific Technical Bases for Open Ore Mining in the USSR: The Experience of Historical Research” (Albats, The State , p. 153). One can only guess who the real author(s) of such different manuscripts were.

256. Petrov, “Sudy protiv NKVD-MGB.”

257. About the trial, see Hodos, Show Trials , pp. 73–92; Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB , pp. 415–416.

258. Kaplan, K., “Sovetskie sovetniki v Chekhoslovakii v 1949–1956” [Soviet advisers in Czechoslovakia in 1949–1956], Problemy Vostochnoi Evropy 11–12 (1983): 41–57 (in Russian).

259. Kaplan, Karel, Report on the Murder of the General Secretary (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1990), p. 134.

260. Cotic, Meir, The Prague Trial: The First Anti-Zionist Show Trial in the Communist Block (New York: Herzl Press/Cornwall Books, 1987), p. 219.

261. Cited in Kaplan, Report on the Murder , p. 128.

262. Cited in Albats, The State , p. 147.

263. Ibid., p. 146.

264. Ibid., pp. 129–130.

265. Vaksberg, A., “Zasluzhennyi deyatel’” [An honored public figure], Literaturnaya Gazeta , March 15, 1989 (in Russian); Vaksberg, A., “Golos ‘ottuda’” [A voice “from there”], Literaturnaya Gazeta , August 1, 1990, p. 13 (in Russian); Abarinov, V., “V kuluarakh dvortsa yustitsii” [In the lobby of the Palace of Justice], Gorizont 9 (1989): 61–70 (in Russian); Abarinov, V., “K voprosu o tendentsioznosti” [On the question of tendentiousness], Gorizon 5 (1990): 43–45 (in Russian).

266. The Main Directorate of Counterespionage SMERSH (an abbreviation of the Russian “smert shpionam,” i.e., death to spies] was organized on the basis of Special Departments of the NKVD within the Soviet Ministry of Defense in 1943. In 1946, it was merged with the NKGB into the MGB. Viktor Abakumov headed SMERSH (1943–1946) and then the MGB (1946–1951) (Kokurin and Petrov, Lubyanka , p. 143). The horrifying style of “interrogations” of POWs or suspected innocent civilians by SMERSH’s officers, when the arrested man or woman could be simply tortured to death, was described in Sinevirskii, N., “SMERSH: God v stane vraga” [SMERSH: A year in the enemy’s camp], Grani (Munich), November (1948): 1–135 (in Russian).

267. See, for instance, “O tak nazyvaemom ‘Dele,’” p. 40.

268. A copy of a letter of Maryana Zaitseva to the First Deputy of the Head of the Communist Party Control Commission, Z. Serduk, dated April 17, 1964 (Memorial’s Archive [Moscow], fond 1, op. 1, d. 1745).

269. Stolyarov, Palach i zhertvy , pp. 66–67.

270. Kutafin, O. E., and E. S. Frolov., “V redaktsiyu Literaturnoi Gazety ” [To the Editorial Office of Literaturnaya Gazeta ], Literaturnaya Gazeta, April 4, 1990 (in Russian).

271. Vaksberg, “Zasluzhennyi deyatel”; Albats, The State ; my own conversations with these people in 1990–1991.

272. Cited in Radzinsky, Stalin , p. 402.

273. Chebrikov et al ., Istoriya, pp. 143–145, 201–202, 237–241, 356, 432, and 558.

274. Ibid., p. 201.

275. Stetsovsky, Istoriya , vol. 2, p. 67.

276. Chebrikov et al ., Istoriya , pp. 239–240.

277. Ibid., p. 558.

278. Sudoplatov, P., et al. , Special Tasks , pp. 10–11.

279. Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb , pp. 135–136.

280. Kokurin and Petrov, Lubyanka , p. 46.

281. Sudoplatov described this “interrogation” of Bohr as an extremely successful MGB operation (Sudoplatov, P., et al ., Special Tasks , pp. 206–207).

282. On November 8, 1945, the NKVD sent Stalin a special report about the meeting of Terletsky with Bohr, which included a list of questions, Bohr’s answers, and Igor Kurchatov’s comments on the answers. See Kozlov and Mironenko, “ Osobaya Papka” I. V. Stalina , p. 150.

283. Terletsky, “Operatsiya ‘Dopros Nielsa Bohra.’”

284. Sakharov, Memoirs , p. 328.

285. “Russia Spy Case Resumes, FSB Warns of ‘Shady’ Links,” Reuters, February 26, 2001 (on-line version).

286. “Russian Court Allows FSB to Probe Anonymous Denunciations,” Agence France Presse, April 25, 2001 (on-line version).

287. Waller, J. M., “Russia’s Security Services: A Checklist for Reform,” Perspective 8 (1) (September–October 1997) (on-line version).

288. See details in Knight, Spies .

289. Agence France Presse, September 25, 1998.

290. See Moscow Libertarium , August 11 (1998) (on-line version).

291. Alibek, Biohazard , pp. 174–176.

292. Albats, The State , pp. 326–327.

293. See Voronov, V., “Prazdnik na obochine.”

294. Smirnov, “Stalin i atomnaya bomba.”

295. Burnazyan, “Fantasticheskaya real nost.” Burnazyan (1906–1981) was deputy minister of health in charge of radiation security.

296. Kuznetsova, N. I., “‘Atomnyi sled’ v VIET (kak zapreshchali nash zhurnal)”[The “atomic trial” in the VIET (the story of how our journal was banned)], Voprosy Istorii Estestvoznaniya i Tekhniki 4 (1997): 59–79 (in Russian).

297. Cited in Smirnov, “Stalin i atomnaya bomba.”

1. Krayer’s letter to Stukart, dated June 15, 1933, and Stukart’s answer, dated June 20, 1933, are cited in Goldstein, A., “Otto Krayer,” in National Academy of Sciences, Biographical Memoirs (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1987), vol. 57, pp. 151–255. Later Prof. Krayer departed Germany and finally moved to the United States. He died in 1982 as a retired full professor at Harvard Medical School.

2. Josephson, Totalitarian Science and Technology , p. 18.

3. Goldschmidt, Richard B., The Golden Age of Zoology. Portraits from Memory (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1956), p. 106.

4. Astaurov and Rokitsky, Nikolai Konstantinovich Koltsov , pp. 22–40.

5. Zalkind, S. Y., “Koltzoff, Nikolai Konstantinovich,” in Gillispie, C. C., ed., Dictionary of Scientific Biography (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1973), vol. 7, pp. 454–457.