Vadim Birstein - The Perversion of Knowledge

Before that, in 1923, a special delegation of the German government arrived in Moscow to work out agreements on the cooperative manufacture of guns and poison gases. 241Germans appointed Dr. Stolzenberg to supervise construction of plants for producing poison gases. A joint Soviet-Russian commission visited a factory built during World War I near Samara on the Volga River. In 1926, before his arrest, Spitalsky actively worked with the commission. 242The same year, a joint Soviet-German chemical warfare school called Tomka was organized near Saratov, also on the Volga River. 243It was headed by the German expert Leopold von Sicherer. Both chemical and bacteriological weapons were tested there. 244

The first Soviet mustard gas factory was set up in 1923 as a joint enterprise of the German firm GEFU with the Soviet corporation Bersol. 245The Soviet side (called Metakhim) provided the chemical plant and the Germans supplied equipment from the Stolzenberg firm in Hamburg. The contract was signed for twenty years and the project was approved in 1926. The same year, the Stoltzenberg firm built a plant near Volsk on the Volga River (later Volsk-17 or Shikhany-1). Soviet-German cooperation in the production of chemical warfare, testing of chemicals, and training at Tomka ended in July 1933, on Hitler’s order.

Later, the Olgin Plant became a basis of the above-mentioned Soviet research institute on chemical weapons, the GosNIIOKhT. The Volsk-17, or Shikhany-1, became the military Central Scientific Research and Testing Institute of Chemical Troops, which until recently produced chemical weapons, and in fact a large store of these chemicals is still located not far from Saratov. 246Mustard gas was produced at the Kaprolaktam factory in Nizhnii Novgorod.

Chemical weapons were widely tested by Soviet military scientists on enlisted men in the 1930s–1980s. 247One of the victims, Vladimir Petrenko, testified in 1999 to the Russian branch of the environmentalist group Greenpeace that “these experiments were carried out on dozens of Russian officers in 1982.” 248He had been forced to inhale “unknown toxic substances for 30 seconds” and had since suffered from respiratory, stomach, and thyroid gland illnesses. In the 1980s, chemical tests on unprotected servicemen were held at the secret institute Shikhany-1 by Academician Anatolii Kuntsevich, a future general and deputy commander of the Soviet Chemical Troops. 249Until April 1994, Kuntsevich was also chairman of the Russian President’s Committee on Chemical and Biological Weapons Conventions. Kuntsevich was fired in April 1994 for “numerous and gross violations” of his responsibilities when it became known that he agreed to sell equipment and precursors of chemical weapons to a Syrian laboratory. 250He was succeeded by Pavel Syutkin. In 2000, Colonel General Stanislav Petrov headed Russia’s Radiation-, Chemical-, and Biological-Protection Troops and was in charge of the destruction of toxic chemical substances. At the beginning of 2001, Russia still had around 40,000 tons of these substances, which was almost one-half of the world’s stock. 251

The first biological weapon was developed in Germany also during World War I (in 1915–1918) as a part of the program of biological sabotage against neutral suppliers of the Allied powers. 252In 1925, the Military Chemical Agency was established by Red Army authorities to take charge of chemical and biological warfare programs. Yakov Fishman (1887–1961) directed this agency until 1937, when he was purged. 253In 1928, a laboratory on vaccine and serum research was created within this agency in the village of Perkhushkovo not far from Moscow. The microbiologist Ivan Velikanov (1898–1938) was appointed head of this laboratory. The first types of Soviet bacteriological weapons were developed and produced by the microbiologists arrested in 1930–1931; Velikanov was among them. Microbiologists were accused of planning sabotage in the event of war and of giving information to the German professor Heinrich Zeiss, who worked in Moscow in 1928–1933; Zeiss was expelled. 254In another case, a number of bacteriologists “under the leadership” of Professor Karatygin were tried for allegedly bringing on an epidemic among horses. 255Many of the condemned microbiologists were imprisoned in a former Pokrovsky monastery in the old town of Suzdal. Scientists who succeeded in their experiments were eventually released, and those who could not produce desirable results were shot. 256

In 1933, the laboratory in Perkhushkovo was turned into the Red Army’s Scientific Research Institute of Microbiology (or Biotechnology). In 1937–1938, many veterinarians and microbiologists involved in military research were arrested and tried. Usually they were charged with sabotage, treason, and espionage for Germany or Japan. 257The name of the German professor Zeiss was used again. The former director of the Saratov State Institute for Microbiology and Epidemiology S. Nikanorov; deputy director of the Moscow Chemical-Pharmaceutical Scientific Research Institute O. Stepun; deputy director of the Tarasevich Central Scientific Control Institute of Sera and Vaccines Vladimir Lyubarsky (1881–1939); professor of the Institute of Microbiology Iliya Krichevsky (1885–1939); scientific director of the Central Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology Vladimir Barykin (1879–1939); and director of the Institute of Microbiology Georgii Nadson were arrested and charged with abetting Zeiss’s spy scheme. On April 14, 1939, Nadson (arrested on October 29, 1937), Krichevsky (arrested on March 5, 1938), Lyubarsky (arrested on April 15, 1938), and Barykin (arrested on August 22, 1938) were condemned to death by the Military Collegium as members of the same counterrevolutionary organization and were shot the next day. They were rehabilitated in 1955. 258

On July 6, 1937, head of the Biotechnology Institute Velikanov was arrested again and tried. This time he was condemned to death as a spy and a member of a “counterrevolutionary military plot,” and on July 29, 1938, just after the trial, he was shot. 259During the Bukharin trial, former commissar of agriculture Mikhail Chernov (1891–1938) “testified” that he had instructed the infection of livestock—horses, cattle, and pigs—on the order of German intelligence. 260He was arrested on November 7, 1937, condemned to death on March 13, 1938, and shot on March 15, 1938. He was rehabilitated in 1988. 261Also, Yakov Fishman and dozens of his subordinates were among the arrested. A special NKVD commission investigated their alleged “sabotage activity.” They were condemned to long terms of imprisonment. Fishman survived the imprisonment and was released only in 1954, after Stalin’s death. He was reestablished in the military and became a major general. 262

In 1942, during World War II, the military Institute of Microbiology was moved to the town of Karol, about 500 miles from Moscow. According to Ken Alibek, a tularemia weapon was developed there and then used against German panzer troops shortly before the Battle of Stalingrad in late summer 1942. 263However, according to German military intelligence, the Soviet army was immunized against plague. 264German doctors immediately ordered the vaccine against plague—enough to immunize 1 million men—but never used it. In 1931, another Soviet military laboratory for anthrax (Bacillus anthracis) research was established in the city of Tobolsk in Siberia. 265

During World War II, the threat of chemical war was real. In 1943, the Soviet intelligence radioed to Moscow that the Americans had information that Germany had made active preparations for chemical warfare against the USSR. 266A former Nazi minister of armaments and war production, Albert Speer, mentioned in his memoirs that “our [e.g., Nazi Germany’s] production—until the chemical industry was bombed during the summer of 1944—amounted to 3,100 tons of mustard gas and 1,000 tons of tabun per month.” 267He added that the Allies considered a gas attack on German cities: “On August 5, 1944, Churchill called for a report on England’s capability for waging poison-gas war against Germany. According to the report, the available 32,000 tons of mustard and phosgene gas would effectively poison 965 square miles of German territory, more than Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne, Essen, Frankfurt, and Kassel combined.” Declassified documents list even higher quantities. A total of 40,719 tons of mustard gas, 1,862,643 bombs filled with mustard gas or phosgene, and 3,394,093 specially designed shells charged with mustard gas were produced during the war in England. 268