Vadim Birstein - The Perversion of Knowledge

September 1938 became a period of drastic changes in the NKVD structure, including the subordination of research laboratories. Beria and Merkulov brought from Georgia a team of Communist Party and local NKVD functionaries who became key persons in the NKVD/NKGB/MGB structure until Stalin’s death in 1953. Shpigelglass was replaced by Vladimir Dekanozov, a former deputy chairman of the Georgia Council of People’s Commissars with a reputation as “the hangman of Baku” because of the death sentences he had handed out in the Caucasus in the 1920s. 95Besides the Foreign Department (now named the GUGB NKVD Fifth Department), Dekanozov simultaneously headed the GUGB Third (Counterintelligence) Department and became deputy NKVD commissar.

The changes in the GUGB Twelfth Department (which included the predecessor of Mairanovsky’s lab) started even earlier. On June 9, 1938, the GUGB Twelfth Department was renamed the Second Special Department (Operational Equipment) and Mikhail Alekhin was appointed its acting head. 96However, on September 13, soon after Frinovsky’s dismissal, Alekhin was arrested. In a year he was condemned as a “German spy” and shot. Yevgenii Lapshin was appointed acting head of the Second Department and Arkady Osinkin, his deputy. 97The same month, Valentin Kravchenko, who later, in 1942, supervised Mairanovsky’s laboratory, joined this department as an engineer. That same September, Mairanovsky started his cooperation with the NKVD. Possibly, the poisons laboratory within “Yasha’s Group” was merged with the Second Department after Serabryansky’s arrest on October 11, 1938.

On February 20, 1939, this Second Special Department was divided in two, with the new Second Special Department headed by Lapshin (621 persons), and the Fourth Special Department headed by Mikhail Filimonov (61 persons). 98The toxicological laboratory, known as Laboratory No. 1 or “The Kamera” (the word kamera in Russian has a sinister meaning—a cell in a prison or a chamber for torture) and now headed by Mairanovsky, was included in Filimonov’s department (Table 2.1). There were two laboratories (called divisions, later departments), under the supervision of Mairanovsky and Sergei Muromtsev within Laboratory No. 1. 99

1Data from Kokurin and Petrov, Lubyanka , pp. 22—25, 55, 60, 73, 128; Petrov and Skorkin, Kto rukovodil NKVD , pp. 380 and 421. Also see the text.

The head of the newly created Fourth Special Department, Mikhail Petrovich Filimonov, was a chemist, and it seems that he had a Candidate of Science scientific degree. At least, he was a graduate student at the Moscow Institute of Precise Chemical Technologies. 100He joined the NKVD in December 1938. At first, Filimonov was deputy head of the Eleventh Division of the GUGB Fifth (Foreign Intelligence) Department.

The reorganization was finalized on March 9, 1939. 101From this time and until mid-1946, Filimonov’s department, including Mairanovsky’s laboratory, was located in a nice-looking building behind the main NKVD headquarters, known as Lubyanka, on the corner of Bol’shaya Lubyanka Street and Varsonofyevsky Lane. The previous location of the experimental laboratory had been in two different NKVD buildings: in Kuchino, a town outside Moscow, and on Fourth Meshchanskaya Street, then in a distant part of Moscow not far from Butyrka Prison. 102The official address of the new building, No. 11 Varsonofyevsky Lane, had a bad reputation among Muscovites. The basement of the inner part of this building, with an entrance from the yard, was known since the 1920s as “the execution garage,” where special VCheKa executioners shot victims condemned to death. This building still exists; however, the entrance into the yard is blocked. 103

In 1939, another part of the building, also with an entrance from the yard, was given to Filimonov’s department. Vasilii Blokhin, who was both the commandant of Lubyanka Prison and the chief executioner, became a close collaborator of Mairanovsky’s: Blokhin was in charge of providing prisoners for experiments. One can imagine that this work did not bother Blokhin much, since he executed innumerable NKVD victims. Here is a description of his work: “He [Blokhin] put on a special uniform: a brown leather apron, a leather cap, a pair of long leather gloves… A person was ordered to enter a soundproof room and was shot [by Blokhin] in the head from behind…” 104

That same March in 1939, Stalin personally, in the presence of Beria, ordered Sudoplatov to develop an efficient plan to kill Trotsky. 105Eitingon, who had just returned from Spain, where he was an NKVD rezident , joined the operation and later became the main organizer of Trotsky’s murder in Mexico. The details of the operation were discussed with the new head (formerly deputy head) of the GUGB Fifth (Foreign Intelligence) Department, Pavel Fitin. Chemicals from Filimonov’s secret NKVD toxicological laboratory were considered among possible tools for use in Trotsky’s assassination. Stalin approved the plan in early August 1939. 106The plan included the following possible means of assassination: “Poisoning of food [or] water; an explosion in the house; an explosion of the car using T.N.T.; smothering; an attack with a knife; a hit on the head; firing a gun. An armed group attack is also possible.” 107Poisoning was considered to be the easiest method.