Vadim Birstein - The Perversion of Knowledge

Molotov was restored as foreign minister immediately after Stalin’s death, on March 5, 1953. On March 9, the day of Stalin’s funeral and Molotov’s birthday, Khrushchev and Malenkov asked Molotov what he wanted for his birthday. He wanted his wife back. The next day Zhemchuzhina was summoned to see Beria and her husband. She fainted in Beria’s office when she was told that Stalin had died. Zhemchuzhina was released, and her case was closed on March 23. Like Allilueva, despite her experience she remained a staunch Stalinist. 281So did her husband. 282

Incidentally, Molotov was not the only Politburo member whose wife was arrested. The wife of Mikhail Kalinin (1875–1946), Ekaterina, was arrested much earlier, on October 25, 1938. 283Kalinin was one of Lenin’s first adherents. In 1919, he was elected to the Central Committee, and from 1926 until his death, he was a Politburo member. From 1938–1946, Kalinin chaired the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, meaning that he was formal head of the Soviet government. But in fact, he was a “decorative” figure and had no power. During the investigation, which was conducted under the personal supervision of Beria and Bogdan Kobulov, Ekaterina Kalinina was tortured in Lefortovo Prison. On April 22, 1939, Kalinina was condemned to fifteen-year imprisonment in a labor camp as a “Trotskyist.” Only on December 14, 1946, did a special decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet order her release. The decree was signed by the secretary of the Presidium, and not by Kalinin. For eight more years, Ekaterina Kalinina struggled for official rehabilitation. Finally, she received a document stating that “there was no evidence against her anti-Soviet activities” and that “Kalinina’s arrest was an act of retribution by Beria and Kobulov.”

On April 1, 1953, Beria, the new head of state security (now named the MVD), 284approved the draft resolution of the Presidium (i.e., the Politburo) to release the arrested doctors, and on April 3, 1953, the Presidium adopted this resolution. 285Many of the arrested were released immediately, but several others remained imprisoned for one more year. They were released in February 1954, following the order of the new MVD minister, Sergei Kruglov. On April 27, 1954, Dr. Etinger’s wife was moved from Vladimir Prison to Moscow and released. 286Although Dr. Vovsi was released after Stalin’s death, he still became a victim of the executioners: He died soon of osteosarcoma, which formed in those places of his body that had been beaten the most extensively during interrogations.

Ryumin was arrested on March 17, 1953. The death of Dr. Etinger became a special point of discussion at the Presidium meetings as one of the main accusations against Ryumin during the investigation of his activity. 287In 1952, Ryumin included the case of Etinger in the list of accusations against Abakumov, and Abakumov was interrogated by Prosecutor Mogichev regarding Etinger’s alleged anti-Soviet activity. 288Now Beria personally supervised the investigation of Ryumin. On March 28, 1953, he told Ryumin: “You will never see me again and I’ll never see you again. We will exterminate you.” 289In early July 1954, half a year after the execution of Beria and his cronies and five months before the execution of Abakumov, Ryumin was sentenced to death by the Military Collegium of the USSR Supreme Court. He was shot on July 22, 1954. 290Schwartzman was tried in 1956 separately from Beria’s and Abakumov’s other men and condemned to death. 291

In the 1950s–1980s, the control of science by the KGB was overwhelming. However, the details of their control over daily life in scientific institutes is not widely known. When I joined the scientific community in the 1960s, I was aware that each institution had a so-called First (or Special) Department with a retired KGB officer as head, in charge of maintaining secrecy and political control. 292A good example is Sergei Ogol’tsov, who in 1951 for two months became the MGB acting minister. Later he was expelled from the Communist Party and fired from the KGB, but until his retirement, Ogol’tsov was deputy director of security (another name for a head of the First Department) at the top-secret Scientific Research Institute No. 1. 293Fyodor Popov, a professional MGB/KGB officer who headed the counterintelligence division that supervised Academician Andrei Sakharov in the 1950s, wrote about the goals of the First Department: “The First (secret) Department is a structural secret subdivision of an institution or organization whose task is to prepare, register, and give secret documents to those involved [in the secret work] and to control the movement and treatment of these documents.” 294

Possibly, this was the official instruction. But in fact, no manuscript of any scientific paper could be sent to press without a cover document signed by the head of the First Department. These officers had no knowledge or understanding of the scientific matters they guarded. The retired KGB officer Popov even now is convinced that only “some of the theoretical statements of Lysenko were not supported experimentally and did not find industrial application.” 295

In addition, every scientist knew that there were so-called curators of every scientific institution at the KGB headquarters in charge of “supervising” the life of the institutions. I am aware of the mention of KGB “curators” in only one book by a Russian scientist, in the very true and honest memoirs of Professor Aleksandrov. 296I was one of those who had an opportunity to verify that “curators” exist (usually only a few persons in the administration of the institution knew about these curators). In 1984, my contract with the Academy of Sciences’ Koltsov Institute of Developmental Biology in Moscow where I had been working was not renewed. At the First Department of my institute, which was located in an office behind an iron door, the retired KGB officer who worked there told me that “there was an order from the organs” (e.g., the KGB). I was not surprised, since almost all my friends were dissidents or refuseniks. Also, I was involved with Amnesty International, an organization that Soviet officials and the KGB considered “anti-Soviet.” Some of my friends were serving terms in labor camps as political prisoners, and I helped their families when I could (which was dangerous during those years).

The “order from the organs” in the metaphoric language of Soviet secret service meant that I would be unemployed and without any opportunity to continue my scientific career (and eventually might be arrested for leading a “parasitic lifestyle,” i.e., for having no job). My first scientific book on the genetics of amphibians, which I had already submitted in manuscript form to the printing house of the Moscow State University, was stopped and never published. The manuscript simply disappeared without a trace. My editor told me in a whisper: “They (i.e., the KGB officers) came to the head of the publishing house and demanded your manuscript.” In these circumstances, the possibility that my second book would be published was very low, since the documents that were necessary for publishing, according to Soviet rules, had mysteriously disappeared from the file attached to the manuscript. The only weapon I had was to write letters about my unemployment and the problems with my manuscripts to all imaginable branches of power in the former Soviet Union: the KGB, the Central Committee of the Communist Party, the Academy Presidium, and so on. It is a long story, and here I want to mention only my experience with the KGB and the Academy Presidium.

A few days after I had sent my letter to the KGB, I received a phone call. A polite voice asked me to come to the KGB Office in Charge of Moscow and the Moscow Region. There, I was greeted by an officer who said that he was the curator of my institute, and, therefore, my curator. (According to the current Russian press, the FSB “curators” are still in existence. Their language, when they try to recruit informers, remains the same: “You have to understand us.”) 297He knew my problems in detail and assured me that the KGB could not have given any order about my employment. He told me that although he was in charge of only my institute, he knew that as a geneticist I would find a job at the Academy Institute of General Genetics.