Vadim Birstein - The Perversion of Knowledge

Sudoplatov wrote that the plan to murder Tito was prepared by MGB deputy minister Yevgenii Pitovranov. 358At first Sudoplatov discussed the plan with Stalin, Beria, and Ignatiev (the new MGB minister, see Chapter 3). It was then discussed with the MVD deputy minister Ivan Serov, with the head of the MGB First (Foreign) Directorate, Sergei Savchenko, and with the MGB deputy ministers Vassilii Ryasnoi, General Yepishev, Pitovranov, and Minister Ignatiev. On March 1, 1953, the MGB reported to Stalin that “Max’s” attempt to assassinate Tito had, unfortunately, not taken place yet. 359Possibly, this report was the last document Stalin read before he suffered the fatal stroke in the early hours of March 2.

According to Vitalii Pavlov, a former head of the KGB Foreign Intelligence Institute, Grigulevich refused to fulfill this assignment. 360He was called back to Moscow and was discharged from the MGB. He was afraid of being killed: He knew too much. Possibly, only Stalin’s death and the arrest of Beria saved his life.

THIS CHAPTER CONCERNS THOSE scientists who accepted the Soviet regime and successfully used its opportunities to their personal advantage without any concern for morality and ethics. This group includes the Soviet secret service’s chief poison investigator, biochemist Grigory Mairanovsky, those who worked in Mairanovsky’s lab, those who wrote positive reviews of his dissertation, those who helped to organize slave labor for the Soviet economy, and those who used contacts with the secret services to enhance their professional careers. Also, I will discuss the phenomenon of academic institutions as a place for retirement of former MGB executioners.

I begin with a detailed biography of Grigory Mairanovsky. Only a few documents about Mairanovsky (in the Memorial Archive) are available; the main archival records are still secret. The existence of Mairanovsky’s laboratory in 1939–1951 became known during the investigation of Lavrentii Beria, one of the main organizers and administrators of the Soviet secret service and manager of the Soviet atomic project, who was arrested soon after Stalin’s death in 1953 and condemned to death during a secret trial. The archival materials concerning this 1953 trial are also still secret. Mairanovsky was arrested even before Beria, in 1951.

The limited materials from Memorial’s Archive 1allow me to reconstruct the scientific career of the head of Laboratory No. 1. Grigory Mairanovsky was born in 1899 in Batumi (Georgia), to a Jewish family and was later identified as a Jew in all official documents. Mairanovsky graduated from Tiflis (Tbilisi) University in 1919 and from the Moscow Second Medical Institute in 1923. In 1929, he became a researcher at the Moscow A. N. Bach Institute of Biochemistry, and from 1933 to 1935 served as head of the Toxicology Department there (Document 11, Appendix II, and Table 3.1). The director of the institute, Academician Aleksei Bach, was well known for his support of the Bolshevik Party. Dr. Zbarsky, who was a consultant of the OGPU/NKVD, was deputy director of the Bach Institute. Both Bach and Zbarsky played an important role in the Sovietization of the academy (Chapter I). Possibly, Mairanovsky’s contacts with the NKVD started when he headed the Toxicology Department, since in the USSR, toxicological studies were always secret and controlled by the secret services. The connection with the NKVD also explains why Mairanovsky, who had been working at the Bach Institute as a researcher for only four years, suddenly became deputy director (Document 12, Appendix II). Apparently, he replaced Zbarsky, who in 1933 was appointed chair of the Department of Biochemistry at the Moscow First Medical Institute.

From 1935 until 1937, Mairanovsky headed a special (i.e., secret) laboratory at the All-Union Institute of Experimental Medicine (VIEM). VIEM was created in 1932 in Leningrad on the personal initiative of the Soviet writer Maxim Gorky and the Soviet leaders Stalin and Molotov. It was based on the old Institute of Experimental Medicine, which was established in 1890. In 1934, the main part of VIEM was transferred to Moscow, and only a small branch of it continued to exist in Leningrad. 2Evidently, Mairanovsky moved to VIEM after the reorganization that followed its transfer from Leningrad to Moscow. He may have been invited to create and head a new secret laboratory. After two years of heading this laboratory, Mairanovsky was demoted to senior researcher and continued to work at this position until 1940 (Document 10, Appendix II). He evidently continued to work at VIEM, but the NKVD became his main affiliation. The name of his last department at VIEM, the Pathology Department of Poisoning Substances, leaves no doubt that this laboratory worked for the NKVD and, probably, also for the military. In September 1938, Mairanovsky officially joined the NKVD (Document 13, Appendix II), where his Laboratory No. 1 started to function in 1939. Mairanovsky worked in the NKVD/MKGB/MGB system until his arrest in December 1951.

In July 1940, Mairanovsky defended his Doctor of Biological Sciences dissertation at a closed council of scientists at the VIEM who had been authorized to know about the secret work of the NKVD-MGB. Each Soviet and now Russian research institute has a Scientific Council consisting of heads of laboratories and prominent scientists working at the institute. Well-known-scientists usually serve on the Scientific Council of several institutes. Besides being in charge of the defense of candidate and doctoral dissertations, the Scientific Council approves the main events of scientific life at the institute—the future plans of different laboratories, reports on ongoing projects, decisions of the administration, and so forth. The scientific secretary of the institute is in charge of the organization of the meetings of the council and all paperwork. Besides the ordinary Scientific Council, whose meetings any employee of the institute can attend, many institutes have a separate special Scientific Council consisting of members who were cleared by the KGB. These special councils are in charge of secret projects of the institute and their meetings are closed to employees without special clearance.