Vadim Birstein - The Perversion of Knowledge

The legacy of Mairanovsky and his colleagues continues in Russia. There were reports in 1999 to early 2000 that chemical weapons were used by the Russian troops against Chechen rebels and civilians during the fight in Grozny in the North Caucasus. 189Here is a witness’s description:

Animals were the first who felt the beginning of chemical attacks… Poisoned dogs heart-rending howled and whirled strangely as they were trying to bite their own tails. Cats squealed disgustingly like babies when they weep for a long time. Later, after a few hours, people started choking, their skins were covered with red pimples, and their eyes became watering and swollen. 190

One can only guess what kind of chemical poisons the Russian military experimenters tested in Chechnya that caused these symptoms.

I found the first description of Mairanovsky’s lab in the literature in a book authored by the KGB defector, Peter Deriabin:

As late as 1953 the interrogations [at the MGB] were backed by a terror device which would have done credit to the worst of the Gestapo professionals. From 1946 until that year, the state security maintained at its Moscow headquarters a quietly notorious laboratory called the “Chamber” (Kamera). Its staff consisted of a medical director and several assistants, who performed experiments on living people—prisoners and persons about to be executed—to determine the effectiveness of various poisons and injections as well as the use of hypnotism and drugs in interrogation techniques. Only the Minister of the State Security and four other high officers were allowed to enter.

The laboratory prospered. The “doctor” in charge was given a special degree of Doctor of Medical Science by Moscow University and nominated for a Stalin Prize for his “research.” In October 1953 the Soviet regime announced The Chamber’s closing to a select group of State Security officials, after blaming its existence on the Beria excesses. It has probably not been reactivated; but its researchers continue to be exploited by selected personnel of the State Security.

The Chamber, while it lasted, had been under the Commandant’s Section in the administrative directorate of the State Security apparatus. It was this section which supervised all executions of political prisoners condemned to death, in addition to its normal physical security duties. 192

Additional information was published in the former Communist newspaper Izvestiya in an interview with the military prosecutor, Colonel Vladimir Bobryonev, 193who had access to the investigation files on Mairanovsky and Beria, which are still kept at the KGB (FSB) archive. According to the NKVD-MGB-KGB investigation procedure, there were two files for each arrested person. The investigation file contained materials such as transcripts (protocols) of interrogations, and so on. This file was completed before the trial. The prisoner file included documents connected with the life of the arrested person before and after the trial. It contained personal information (the “Anketa”), orders of investigators to move the prisoner within a prison or to another prison, orders to bring the prisoner for interrogations, the trial verdict, the order to transfer the accused prisoner to a labor camp or a prison, and the like. In addition, there was a special file for “operational material” (mainly received from secret informers) on the suspect before the person’s arrest and during his or her imprisonment. 194In his interview, Bobryonev described the laboratory:

A large hall on the first floor of a corner building at Varsonofyevsky Lane [in the central part of Moscow] was provided for the laboratory, which previously had occupied a small room. The hall was divided into five cells with doors facing a large office. The doors had peepholes. During experiments, a member of the laboratory staff was constantly on duty in this office… Almost every day a few prisoners condemned to death were brought to the laboratory. The whole procedure was similar to a medical examination. The “doctor” asked the “patient” about his or her health with concern, gave some advice and medication. 195

At first, mustard gas derivatives were used for experiments. Mustard gas was discovered in 1886 and was used for the first time as chemical weapon by the Germans during World War I in their attack on British troops in July 1917 near Ypres, France. 196Mairanovsky’s results were disappointing: The chemicals were immediately detected during autopsies. This contradicted the main goal of the experiments—to find a chemical without any taste that could not be detected in the victim’s body before or after death. Later, various doses of a toxic substance, a protein called ricin, extracted from castor-oil seeds produced by Ricinus communis, were tried unsuccessfully for a year. This toxin was discovered at the end of World War I and was regarded as a potential agent for biological warfare. 197During World War II, in 1942–1943, ricin, under the name Compound W, was considered by British, Canadian, and American experts as a possible biological weapons agent in the war against Japan. By the end of 1943, a pilot project on the production of ricin was developed, and various ricin dispersal methods were tested. 198In 1944, the Japanese experimented with castor-oil seeds, but not pure ricin, on Russian POWs. 199Mairanovsky also tried digitoxin 200on ten prisoners. Eventually a preparation with all the desired properties, called C-2 (carbylomine cholinchloride), was created. Chemicals were given to the victims as “medication,” or they were mixed with a meal or drinking water to disguise the taste. These poisons usually brought on great pain and suffering.

Colonel Bobryonev claimed that Mairanovsky’s file contains testimonies of witnesses who saw experiments: “Mairanovsky brought to the laboratory people of varying physical conditions, decrepit and full of health, fat and slim. Some died in three-four days, others were racked with pain for a week.” 201According to the witnesses’ testimonies, after having taken the preparation C-2, the victim changed physically, seeming to become shorter, quickly weakening and becoming calm and silent. C-2 killed the victim in fifteen minutes.

During the Mairanovsky case investigation in 1954, Mikhail Filimonov testified about the experiments:

Sudoplatov and Eitingon approved special equipment [poisons] only if it had been tested on humans… I witnessed some of the poisoning tests, but I tried not to be present at the experiments because I could not watch the action of poisons on the psyche and body of humans. Some poisons caused extreme suffering. To conceal shouts we even bought a radio set which we turned on [during the experiments]. 202

Mairanovsky’s assistant, Aleksandr Grigorovich, and a chemist named Shchegolev were in charge of weighing doses of poisons. However, Mairanovsky himself mixed poisons with food. If poison did not cause death, Mairanovsky injected it using a syringe. 203