Vadim Birstein - The Perversion of Knowledge

After World War II, in September–October 1945, Mairanovsky, Naumov, and Smykov 23were sent to Germany to find specialists who had experimented on humans with poisons and other chemicals in Nazi Germany. 24The assignment came from then NKGB commissar Merkulov, who received an order from Beria, at the time deputy chairman of Sovnarkom, deputy chairman of the State Committee of Defense (GKO; Stalin was chairman), NKVD minister, and chairman of State Committee No. 1, which had been created to manage the atomic bomb project. Possibly, Mairanovsky’s trip was connected with the work of State Committee No. 1—after World War II, many German scientists were taken to the Soviet Union and spent years in captivity working on numerous projects, including that of the A-bomb. 25

Probably, Beria-Merkulov’s instructions also included a wider search for biologists and chemists who were connected with the Soviet Union. Mairanovsky and Smykov were members of one of a few teams who were in charge of this search. At any rate, the Soviet geneticist Nikolai Timofeev-Ressovsky, who in 1929–1945 headed the Genetics and Biophysics Department at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research in Institute Buch-Berlin, was arrested by the Soviet secret services on September 13, 1945. 26I will describe this arrest in detail in Chapter 4. The next day, on September 14, 1945, Dr. Heinrich Zeiss, the former head of the Military Hygiene Institute of the German Naval Academy, was arrested. 27This was the same Dr. Zeiss whom the condemned microbiologists-“traitors” supposedly provided with Soviet state secrets in the 1930s. Later, in 1948, Zeiss was tried and convicted—not as a Nazi criminal but as a German spy and a “wrecker.” 28

After this work, Mairanovsky came to the conclusion that the Nazis’ achievements in the field of poisons were “significantly less than ours.” 29I do not know the techniques that Mairanovsky and his team acquired in Germany, but there definitely were some successful achievements in the field of Mairanovsky’s principal expertise—methods of execution that simulated “natural causes” of death. Professor Heissmeyer of the SS hospital in Hohlenlychen developed a technique “of intravenous injections of a suspension of live tubercle bacilli, which brought on acute military tuberculosis within a few weeks…. Preliminary tests on the efficacy of this method were performed exclusively on children at the Neuengamme concentration camp.” 30Dr. Sigmund Rascher at Dachau (who was more well known for his freezing and high-altitude experiments) 31“developed cyanide capsules that could be used either for executions or for suicides.” 32

I think that Mairanovsky can be characterized in the same way that Dr. Josef Mengele was later described by one of the Nazi doctors who worked in Auschwitz: “In my view he [Mengele] was a gifted scientist, but a combination of scientific knowledge, opportunism and ambition, which Mengele had, can lead to anything.” 33Although I would not say that Mengele and Mairanovsky were “gifted scientists,” both were professionals motivated by personal ambition who were ready for anything.

In 1946, Colonel of Medical Service Mairanovsky was removed from the directorship of his laboratory. The laboratory was divided into pharmacological and chemical sectors, and Mairanovsky’s critics Naumov and Grigorovich (Mairanovsky’s former assistant) were appointed to head the new laboratories. 34The laboratories were moved to Kuchino in the Moscow suburbs. Due to the reorganization of the MGB, Mairanovsky was transferred to the MGB Operational Techniques Department (head: Colonel Fyodor Zhelezov) with the much less prestigious title of senior engineer.

Although Mairanovsky worked from time to time as an executioner together with Sudoplatov and Eitingon (Chapter 2), he hoped that Abakumov, the new MGB minister, would restore his power at the laboratory. Here is how Mairanovsky described his situation in an appeal to First Party Secretary Nikita Khrushchev in August 1955:

Abakumov and Zhelezov promised me [to create] all conditions of my previous work, gave me an order to develop a parallel project within the existing one… About 30 persons hired as a staff and a temporary place [for the laboratory] was provided outside of Moscow. Many of the “things” [a code word for poisons] were given to me from my previous work. 35

In fact, Zhelezov did not support Mairanovsky. It seems that the work on poisons at Mairanovsky’s laboratory ended in December 1949 and the laboratory was practically liquidated in 1951. At that time, Mairanovsky tried to revitalize his superiors’ interest in ricin. On September 1, 1953, Prosecutor Rudenko presented Beria (who was under investigation) with the following excerpt from a letter Mairanovsky had written to Beria, dated July 17, 1953:

In 1938, when I was summoned by you [Commissar Beria] concerning the work on using dust-like substances to poison through inhaled air (ricin, a toxic substance from the castor-oil plant), you gave me the order to work in this promising field. Unfortunately, at that time [in 1940–1943] the work with ricin did not yield the expected positive results… Recently, our technique has been enhanced by the ability to obtain extremely fine microscopic dispersion. I proposed this topic for research in 1950 along with Major Khoteyev, but it was stopped by Colonel Zhelezov. I have some proposals for using new substances with both sedative and lethal properties to implement your quite correct premise, which you [Minister] gave me… 36

On December 13, 1951, Mairanovsky was arrested (Mairanovsky’s prisoner card in Vladimir Prison; Document 11, Appendix II). Before that, on July 12, 1951, Abakumov was arrested on Stalin’s order. 37Abakumov’s first deputy, Sergei Ogol’tsov, became MGB acting head for a short time. Merkulov later revealed that he had written a note to Stalin denouncing Abakumov. 38However, the main allegations were provided by Mikhail Ryumin, at the time senior investigator of the MGB Department for Investigation of Especially Important Cases (OVD). Ryumin reported to the Communist Party Central Committee that Abakumov had known about a Jewish bourgeois nationalistic plot within the MGB linked to American spies. 39Stalin ordered creation of a special commission for investigation of MGB activity, which consisted of two Politburo members, Beria and Georgii Malenkov, and two Party functionaries, the future MGB minister Semyon Ignatiev and Mikhail Shkiryatov. One of Stalin’s devoted followers, Mikhail Shkiryatov (1893–1954) was deputy chairman in 1939–1952, and from 1952–1954, chairman of the Commission of Party Control within the Central Committee. 40The fate of Abakumov and his men was sealed (Chapter 1).

In August 1951, Ryumin was appointed head of the OVD Department and simultaneously MGB deputy minister. Semyon Ignatiev was appointed the new MGB minister. Before that, Ignatiev headed the Department on the Party, Trade Union, and Komsomol (Communist Youth Organization) Organs of the Central Committee. Immediately after that, Abakumov’s closest MGB associates were arrested. 41Mairanovsky was among the arrested (Documents 15–17, in Appendix II). Eitingon was also arrested in October 1951 (Eitingon’s prisoner card; Document 18, Appendix II) as “a member of a Zionist Plot in the MGB.” Like Mairanovsky, he was a Jew by origin. Researchers Petrov and Kasatkina wrote:

Mairanovsky became one of the victims of a campaign of purges started by Stalin and [the new] MGB Minister, Ignatiev. During those days, in the second part of 1951, all kinds of so-called “plots” within the MGB, in which international intelligence services and “agents of all-world Zionism” supposedly took part, were “discovered.” At first, as Mairanovsky said later, he was accused of spying for Japan. The investigation of his case was given to Ryumin and his assistants, who were known for their sadistic cruelty. 42