Vadim Birstein - The Perversion of Knowledge

On August 27, 1953, Deputy Military Prosecutor Tsaregradsky interrogated Mairanovsky, who gave a detailed testimony. The next day, on August 28, 1953, Rudenko interrogated Beria using Mairanovsky’s information. Then everyone who knew about Mairanovsky’s activity—Merkulov, Kobulov, Bashtakov, Balishansky, and Gertsovsky—were interrogated (Table 3.2). During the trial, a member of the court, secretary of the Moscow Regional Party Committee Nikolai Mikhailov, asked Beria and Merkulov whether they approved of experiments on humans. Both confirmed their knowledge of the experiments and their approval. 95However, this episode was not included in the final version of the verdict. Only vague wording appeared such as “the defendant Beria L. P. and his accomplices executed like terrorists those persons who, as they had expected, were potentially capable to expose them.” 96

Immediately after the trial, on December 23, 1953, Beria, Merkulov, Kobulov, and four others condemned to death by the Special Judicial Session of the USSR Supreme Court were shot. Beria was shot by Colonel General Pavel Batitsky in the presence of Prosecutor Rudenko and General K. S. Moskalenko. 97After Batitsky, five more officers shot at Beria. In 1954, Batitsky (later marshal and deputy minister of defense) was awarded Hero of the Soviet Union, and three other officers received Orders of the Red Banner for killing Beria. 98The other convicts were shot by the first deputy MVD minister K. F. Lunev and Deputy Chief Military Prosecutor Yu. D. Kitaev 99in the presence of Generals Getman, Bakeev, and Sopil’kin. 100This must have been a unique event: A deputy security minister and a deputy military chief prosecutor personally assassinated former leaders of the state security!

Investigation of Mairanovsky’s activity continued after the end of the Beria case. Bobryonev mentions that Tsaregradsky interrogated Mairanovsky again and that Balishansky, Filimonov, Lapshin, Podobedov, Osinkin, Yakovlev, Grigorovich, Naumov, and Muromtsev were also interrogated in February–March 1954. 101It is possible these interrogations were conducted in connection with the investigations of Sudoplatov and Eitingon. In any event, Eitingon was interrogated regarding Mairanovsky’s experiments. 102

In 1955–1956, when all political cases began to be investigated anew, Mairanovsky appealed for rehabilitation and was brought from Vladimir Prison to Moscow again, but his accusation and term were not changed. 103In 1957–1958, he was transferred twice to Lubyanka Prison, each time for about two weeks, on March 2, 1957, and on September 6, 1958. 104Between these dates, from October 1957 until August 1958, Mairanovsky shared Cells 2-2 and 2-52 with an open anti-Semite, Zigurds-Dzierdis Kruminsh. 105It appears that Mairanovsky testified at the trial of Eitingon, since Eitingon was tried by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court on March 6, 1957, 106when Mairanovsky was in Moscow. Sudoplatov was tried by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court on September 12, 1958, 107when Mairanovsky was brought to Moscow for the second time. In his memoirs, Sudoplatov described Mairanovsky’s appearance and behavior in the courtroom:

Another witness [besides Sergei Muromtsev] was Mairanovsky, who was escorted to the reception room by guards, looking pale and haunted. Dressed in shabby clothes, he looked like he had just been brought from jail… Mairanovsky began to weep the instant he saw me. He didn’t expect me to be sitting in an armchair in a good suit with a necktie…

…He testified that he had consulted me on four cases. With the permission of the chairman, 108I asked him whether he was subordinated to me, whether the four cases were experiments [on humans] or combat operations [i.e., kidnappings and killings], and from whom he had received the instructions for these specific actions… Mairanovsky, answering that he had never worked for me, began to weep. Through his tears he said that these were indeed top-secret combat operations, and he named Khrushchev and Molotov as the source of his instructions. He first told of meeting Molotov in the Committee of Information headquarters, and then, to the wrath of the chairman, mentioned meeting Khrushchev in the railroad carriage on his way to Uzhgorod [where Khrushchev ordered Mairanovsky to poison Archbishop Romzha of the Catholic (Uniate) Church]. 109

Both Eitingon and Sudoplatov were accused of “treason against the Motherland” (which, as in Mairanovsky’s case, had nothing in common with the real crimes) and sentenced to twelve and fifteen years of imprisonment, respectively, and three years of disenfranchisement. Now all three could see each other during their daily walks in the prison. Later, Sudoplatov wrote that in Vladimir Prison, Mairanovsky “was a shell of his former self.” 110He was released only at the end of his term, on December 13, 1961.

After Mairanovsky had been released, Eitingon and Sudoplatov shared the same Cell 32 in Corpus 2 from December 25, 1961, until January 12, 1963. Later, they were transferred to Cell 76 in Corpus 1 and then went back to Corpus 2, to Cells 56 and 32 (Documents 18 and 22, Appendix II). In September 1963, Eitingon was moved out. As Pimenov recalled later, “[U]p to the winter of 1962–1963 Sudoplatov and Eitingon were in ‘the hospital’ [of Vladimir Prison]. When the [prison’s] regime became more severe, it was decided that they were not sick anymore and they were transferred to the same floor [as Pimenov] and we met at walks.” 111During these walks, Sudoplatov told Pimenov he should have been tried together with Beria and Merkulov in 1954 when all seven defendants were shot after the trial. Sudoplatov told Men’shagin the same story during their walks in the prison yard. 112Sudoplatov simulated madness and was put into the Psychiatric Prison Hospital in Leningrad. In the 1980s, Men’shagin recalled Sudoplatov’s words:

Sudoplatov’s case was postponed and for five years he was kept in Leningrad under psychiatric investigation. He behaved as an idiot. When his wife was brought to him (apparently, on purpose), and called him “Pashen’ka! Pashen’ka!,” he only answered “Mo-o-o!” [as a cow]. When he was taken for a walk, he used to lay on the ground and ate the earth. He did not use the toilet… 113

In 1958, a medical commission decided to transfer Sudoplatov to the Special Psychiatric Prison Hospital in Kazan. Since Sudoplatov knew about sadistic conditions in that hospital, he stopped simulating and was put on trial. Because of this, he was tried only in 1958 and remained alive. (Sudoplatov’s version in his book published in 1994 in English differs from this story.)

During the walks in Vladimir Prison, Eitingon tried to simulate madness: As Men’shagin remembered, Eitingon “used to stand in the corner of the pen facing it as if he had been punished and ordered to stand in it.” 114Later, Eitingon’s former colleague, a Soviet agent abroad called Matus Steinberg, told Men’shagin (with whom he shared a cell from January 1964 until January 1966) 115that Eitingon had wanted to attract the attention of prison authorities and be declared a mentally ill person. 116Eitingon was released from Vladimir Prison in March 1964, 117and Sudoplatov, in 1968. 118

In December 1961, Mairanovsky returned to his Moscow apartment in a prestigious house built for the Communist Party, military, and KGB elite. He appealed for rehabilitation again: According to the Soviet bureaucracy, it was better for a former prisoner to have a document stating that a person had been wrongly accused. Instead of being rehabilitated, however, Mairanovsky was ordered to leave Moscow in a few days. He left Moscow for Makhachkala, the capital of the small autonomous North Caucasian Republic of Dagestan on the Caspian seashore near Baku, Azerbaijan. There he became a head of a biochemical laboratory. He died in Makhachkala in 1964.