One of the darkest pages in the Beria case was the history of the emergence and activities of a special laboratory in which fatal experiments were carried out on people. They were embarrassed to write about this in a brief newspaper report about the trial of Beria, published on December 24, 1953. The verdict, however, stated: “Other inhumane crimes of the defendants Beria, Merkulov, Kobulov were also established, consisting in conducting experiments on testing poisons on those sentenced to capital punishment and experiments on the use of narcotic substances during interrogations.” What was hidden behind this phrase and what were the scope and organizational forms of this activity?
During the investigation into the Beria case in 1953, this became one of the “shock” episodes, although they did not get to it right away. Imprisoned under Stalin during the exposure of the so-called. Zionist conspiracy in the MGB, Colonel of the medical service Grigory Mayranovsky (sentenced by the MGB OSO on February 14, 1953 to 10 years) himself attracted the attention of the prosecutor’s office. In the spring of 1953, in the hope of being released, he repeatedly turned to the new Minister of Internal Affairs, Beria, and in letters he openly wrote about his “special work” in a special laboratory and emphasized his merits. In the first, from the Vladimir prison on April 21, 1953, he wrote: “With my hand, more than a dozen sworn enemies of Soviet power were destroyed, including nationalists of all kinds (and Jewish ones) - Lieutenant General P.A. Sudoplatov knows about this “- and assured Beria: he is ready to carry out “all your tasks for the benefit of our mighty Motherland.” After Beria’s arrest, these letters fell into the hands of the investigation, and the thread began to unwind. On August 18, 1953, Mayranovsky’s case was transferred to the prosecutor’s office.
During interrogation on August 27, 1953, Mayranovsky described in detail how at the end of 1938 or the beginning of 1939 he asked Beria to allow him to conduct experiments on people and as a result: “Beria approved my proposal. I was instructed to conduct these studies on convicts.”
Now it is the turn to interrogate the main accused. To a direct question about testing poisons on those sentenced to death on August 28, 1953, Beria replied: “I don’t remember.” But after Mairanovsky’s testimony was read to him, he realized that it was pointless to deny: “I admit that what Mairanovsky testifies to is a terrible, bloody crime. I gave the task to Mairanovsky to carry out experiments on those sentenced to VMN, but this was not my idea.” Beria was immediately asked whether his deputy Vsevolod Merkulov was privy to the secret activities of the special laboratory. Beria responded “of course,” clarifying that he “was more involved in this.” After thinking a little more, Beria decided that he had not clearly explained his subordinate role in this matter: “I would like to add that I received instructions about organizing a special laboratory from I.V. Stalin and in accordance with these instructions, the experiments discussed above were carried out.”
By this time, Merkulov, who held the position of Minister of State Control of the USSR, had not yet been arrested. But the investigation had its sights on him as Beria’s closest associate and so far interrogated him as a witness. To the surprise of prosecutorial investigators, during interrogation on August 29, 1953, Merkulov not only did not deny the existence of such a laboratory in the NKVD, but also undertook to theoretically substantiate its necessity. When asked if he believed that these experiments were a crime against humanity, Merkulov said: “I don’t think so, since the ultimate goal of the experiments was the fight against the enemies of the Soviet state. The NKVD is a body that could apply similar experiments on convicted enemies of Soviet power and in the interests of the Soviet state. As an employee of the NKVD, I carried out these tasks, but, as a person, I considered this kind of experience undesirable.” Thus, in the person of Merkulov, the state defeated man.
With such revelations, witness Merkulov paved the way for himself to become accused. On September 1, 1953, Prosecutor General Rudenko sent Malenkov a certificate about Merkulov with a request to authorize his arrest as one of Beria’s “associates” who led the activities of a secret laboratory where experiments were carried out on people.
Meanwhile, Beria, along the way, tried in every possible way to belittle his role in the organization and functioning of “laboratory X”. During interrogation on August 31, he stated: “I saw Mayranovsky only two or three times. He reported to me about the work of the laboratory and about experiments on living people,” and Merkulov gave permission to conduct specific experiments.” Moreover, Beria explained that soon after his appointment as People's Commissar he "was interested in these poisons in connection with the emerging action against Hitler."
When asked “how do you evaluate experiments on living people, secret abductions and murders of people,” Beria replied: “These are unacceptable phenomena and bloody crimes.”
Merkulov, being arrested, admitted during interrogation on September 28 that he personally gave permission to Mairanovsky to use poisons on 30-40 convicts, explaining that no one except him and Beria could give such permission. He repeated again that he did not consider this illegal, since we were talking about those sentenced to capital punishment and there was Beria’s sanction. True, he made a reservation: “In particular, I did not imagine that these experiences were painful in nature. I even believed that the procedure for quietly poisoning a convicted person was less painful than the procedure for execution. Of course, I had to take an interest in the details of the experiments and create the proper framework for them or even stop them altogether.”
In addition to Mayranovsky, who was engaged in toxicological research, senior chemist of the special laboratory Alexander Grigorovich and bacteriologist Sergei Muromtsev, who tested botulinum toxin on prisoners, took part in the experiments on humans. The following had access to the laboratory: Sudoplatov, Eitingon, Filimonov and the head of the laboratory Arkady Osinkin. As Mayranovsky explained during the investigation, in addition to the leaders of the NKVD, employees of the commandant’s office subordinate to the Lubyanka commandant Blokhin also knew about the experiments on people: brothers Vasily and Ivan Shigalev, Demyan Semenikhin, Ivan Feldman, Ivan Antonov, Vasily Bodunov, Alexander Dmitriev, who usually carried out executions, and in In the event of the transfer of the condemned to Mairanovsky's laboratory, they were spared the need to perform their executioner duties. It is difficult to say whether they were happy about this circumstance, whether they saw in Mayranovsky a competitor capable of “taking away the job” - replacing their hands, worn out and calloused from the handles of pistols, with a test tube of poison. So what then - quit?
Commandant Vasily Blokhin spoke in detail about the history of the creation of the laboratory during interrogation on September 19, 1953. Beria, shortly after his appointment as People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, called him and said that it was necessary to prepare a room for conducting experiments on prisoners sentenced to death. Blokhin dates this conversation to 1938. First, Beria found out whether it was possible to use the premises in house No. 2 (in the main building of the NKVD on Lubyanka) for this purpose. Blokhin replied that such work could not be carried out in house No. 2 and that it was possible to equip premises in another building (as is clear from Mairanovsky’s testimony, this was the NKVD building in Varsanofyevsky Lane). Blokhin sketched out a plan and handed it over to Mamulov. The premises on the 1st floor were converted into 5 cells and a reception area.
Mairanovsky injected poison into prisoners through food, through injections with a cane or a syringe, and also conducted experiments with silent weapons. Blokhin said: “When the arrested prisoners were killed by introducing various poisons, I was present, and more often those on duty, but in all cases when the killing had already been carried out, I came to Mayranovsky’s premises in order to complete the entire operation. From Sudoplatov's department - Eitingon was more often than others in Mairanovsky's premises, Sudoplatov was somewhat less likely. In all cases of killing there were representatives of department “A” Podobedov, Gertsovsky, Vorobiev.” Assignments to the special department, and from 1943 to department “A”, to select convicts for transfer to the laboratory were given by Beria and his deputies Merkulov and Kobulov. Those arrested to be delivered to Mayranovsky were delivered and placed in cells, always with the participation of employees of department “A”. “After the death of the arrested, a representative of department “A” was also necessarily present, who, on the back of the order, drew up an act on the execution of the sentence, which was filed by an employee of department “A”, as well as by me and sometimes by a representative of Sudoplatov’s department. These acts are stored in department “A”..."
Blokhin explained that the killing of convicts in this way took place from the end of 1938 to 1947. Most of all in 1939 - 1940. about 40 people. With the beginning of the war this stopped, and since 1943, when experiments on humans resumed, about 30 people. Blokhin kept a notebook where, on his own initiative, he entered the names of the subjects, but in 1941 he burned it, then resumed the notes in 1943 and, retiring in 1953, handed the notebook to his deputy Yakovlev, who, with Blokhin’s consent, burned it .
In December 1953, Beria and his closest associates were convicted and executed. But the prosecutor’s office’s investigation into the history of the special laboratory continued. This is what he said about his participation in the activities of the special laboratory and experiments on people on March 4, 1954, during interrogation at the prosecutor’s office of Muromtsev. In 1942, Sudoplatov called him and, in the presence of Filimonov, offered to participate in duty in a special laboratory. Responsibilities included observing and recording observations. “Personally,” said Muromtsev, “I did not take part in the administration of poisons.” According to Muromtsev’s testimony, Filimonov visited Laboratory X almost every day, “once Sudoplatov was with me (he came with Filimonov) - he examined the situation, walked along the corridor, sat for a few minutes in the reception area, asked Mairanovsky a few questions and left.” As Muromtsev said, he was on duty in the special laboratory for a short time - 2-3 months, then refused, because he was not “able to tolerate this situation”: the continuous drunkenness of Mayranovsky, Grigorovich, Filimonov, together with the workers of the special group. “In addition, Mairanovsky himself was striking with his brutal, sadistic attitude towards prisoners.” Some drugs caused severe suffering in prisoners. Muromtsev’s relationship with his wife began to deteriorate (she didn’t like the fact that he didn’t spend the night at home). Muromtsev talked with Blokhin, he reported to Sudoplatov, and they no longer took him on duty. As Muromtsev explained, “I didn’t talk to Filimonov, because by that time he had become an alcoholic.”
During Muromtsev's duty, experiments were carried out on approximately 15 convicts. When asked whether Muromtsev tested his drugs, he replied: “Once Filimonov told me that, at Sudoplatov’s suggestion, I should test the effect of butulinus toxin (as in the text, we are talking about botulinum toxin. - N.P.) in a special laboratory, where I was brought in by them for duty at Mairanovsky’s.” Muromtsev conducted the experiment together with Mairanovsky, the toxin was given along with food. “There were three such experiments, apparently with fatal outcomes. Death occurred within 48 hours." In all cases, mild stomach pain, nausea and paralysis were observed. Filimonov reported the results of experiments on botulinum toxin to Sudoplatov.
Muromtsev also remembered how once, on the orders of Sudoplatov, transmitted through Filimonov, during the war he gave Mairanovsky one dose of botulinum toxin for use, as Filimonov told him, behind the cordon, in Paris. Then Sudoplatov called Muromtsev and, in the presence of Filimonov, scolded him for the fact that the drug turned out to be ineffective.
During interrogation on March 13, 1954, Mairanovsky was asked why he hid the fact that he conducted poison research at the end of 1938 in an internal prison. Mairanovsky admitted that he began his research in a room located in a house on Varsanofevsky Lane, but once, when it was necessary to test some remedy in order to give it to the leadership, he carried out experiments in the internal prison of the NKVD. Grigorovich began to help on duty when experiments were carried out in another room in Varsanofevsky Lane, and V.D. Shchegolev also helped (in April 1940, during the experiments, he poisoned himself and committed suicide).
A question was asked about experiments with poisoned bullets, and Mayranovsky said that he had conducted experiments under Filimonov. Mairanovsky himself, Grigorovich, Filimonov and Blokhin’s special group took part. These were lightweight bullets, inside of which there was aconitine: “These experiments began in the upper chamber in Varsanofevsky Lane, but when research on poisons was already carried out in the six lower ones.” Mayranovsky: “In Varsanofevsky Lane, in the upper chamber, we carried out experiments, it seems, on three people. Then these experiments were carried out in the basement where the sentences were carried out, in the same building on Varsanofevsky Lane. Here, experiments were carried out on approximately ten convicts.”
Shots were fired into “non-lethal” areas with explosive bullets. Death occurred within 15 minutes to an hour, depending on where the bullet hit. Filimonov or someone from the special group shot at the “experimental subjects”. “It seems to me,” Mayranovsky added, “Grigorovich didn’t shoot, I myself never shot either... all cases where poisoned bullets were used ended in death, although I remember one case when a test subject was shot by special group workers.” And there was a case when the bullet stopped at the bone, and the test subject pulled it out. During the experiments with poisoned bullets in the basement, Mayranovsky, Filimonov, Grigorovich, Blokhin and his employees from the special group were present.
Mairanovsky also remembered experiments with a pillow poisoned with poison, which caused sleep, and how large doses of sleeping pills were given, which caused death.
A number of criminal episodes were never investigated. During interrogation on August 27, 1953, Mayranovsky said that he participated in operations to eliminate people during secret meetings in safe houses. He received assignments through Sudoplatov. The discussion of upcoming actions took place with Beria or Merkulov, and in all cases Sudoplatov (sometimes Eitingon and Filimonov) participated in the discussion. As Mairanovsky explained, “I was never told why this or that person should be killed, and their names were not even given.” Mayranovsky was organized a meeting with a potential victim at a safe house, and while eating and drinking, as he explained, “I mixed poisons,” and sometimes he killed the “stupefied person” beforehand by injection. As Mairanovsky said, “this is several dozen people.”
He testified about the special laboratory and Sudoplatov. During interrogation on September 1, 1953, he said that the head of the 4th special department of the NKVD, Filimonov, brought him up to date on the matter of “Laboratory X” and the experiments, when his department entered the department headed by Sudoplatov. The work in the “special laboratory” was carried out by Filimonov, Mayranovsky and Muromtsev and reported on it to Merkulov and Beria. According to surviving test reports, work began in 1937 or 1938. A total of 150 protocols have been preserved.
According to Sudoplatov, Abakumov in 1946 gave the order to liquidate the laboratory and keep the test reports. And Sudoplatov kept these documents until his arrest in August 1953. After Sudoplatov’s arrest, the protocols were kept in the Prosecutor General’s Office.
In 1954, a folder with the title “Materials of Laboratory X” was transferred from the Prosecutor General’s Office to permanent storage in the KGB. The current FSB keeps its contents secret, although this contradicts Art. 7 of the “Law on State Secrets,” which prohibits classifying information about repressions and crimes against justice. I wonder how long the FSB intends to keep secret the names of the victims of the criminal experiments of Stalin's security officers?
Target: The information points to the central laboratory under the index X8. The mission is not easy. There may be information about secret experiments conducted in the Zone.
Terms of issue: Documents were found in the workshop with product No. 62
Walkthrough: We go to the Yubileiny KBO. We take with us in advance as much ammunition, first aid kits and bandages as possible. They can be obtained from a technician or a physician. On the first floor we approach the elevator, it is de-energized, we need to turn on the generator. We go up the stairs. There are many living creatures on the indicator. As we move to the top floor, we break through, killing the crowds and... On the fifth floor near the elevator you will find Barchuk's PDA, which says that the generator is located on the sixth service floor. We start the generator, go into the elevator and go down to laboratory x8.
We exit the elevator and open the door using the yellow key card. Right there, on the right, there will be a closed door with the sign that no outsiders are allowed to enter. This is where we need the red key card. We open the door, inside there is a whole cloud of weapons and medicines. We go into the classroom, on the path of the electrical anomaly, go down the stairs, on the table lies a blue notebook with notes about the experiment. We take it to the entrance. We go to the canteen, on the way you will meet a couple - it’s too early to be scared.
We go up the flight of stairs and go into the dining room. You can hear a child crying... You will find (!) in the men's toilet on the right. Do not forget to monitor your stamina, otherwise you will be left without a weapon. At the end of the room you will find research documents. We return to the entrance again. Let's go down to the laboratory. But we don’t turn left down, but go up the right stairs. There will be flying there, which always bothers me personally, but at that time I had a GP37. There will also be an RP-74 machine gun, useful in some cases. Now let's go down to the laboratory. Next to the model of the “rainbow” aggression suppressor on the shelf you will find another document. A total of three documents.
Be careful, in one of the rooms with documents there are documents that can easily drive you into subtle anomalies. In the room with two large barrels, there will be a transfer order on the control panel, and a little further on there will be an anabiotic - in my opinion, a very useful thing when there is no shelter from the release nearby. Now we go down, go into the right elevator shaft and go up the stairs, when we see open doors on the floor we jump there. There will be three Burers in the hall. Here we get only 7-6 rounds of ammunition and there are no burers. Well, then you take the two remaining documents. And two more anabiotics.
Now, just as we got here, we return - by elevator. Yes, I almost forgot. It will still be necessary to kill. As soon as you get out, run to the base to Kowalski’s laundry for a face-to-face conversation. In total, you should have 6 docks with you from laboratory x8.
By the way, advice - on the roof of the Yubileiny KBO, you can find two artifacts. But I only use them as a way to earn money. And since by the end of the game I had 240 thousand rubles, I stopped hunting for them.
Alas, among its leaders, “persons of Jewish nationality” were very prominent, exterminating, among others, their own tribesmen
Semyon KIPERMAN, Haifa
Photo: Grigory Mayranovsky
It is very painful to write about laboratories designated by the mysterious sign “X” and engaged in the production of deadly drugs at all stages of the activities of the Soviet security agencies. Especially when it comes to people with scientific degrees and titles acting as executioners.
Pavel Sudoplatov and other authors indicate that the toxicological laboratory was created in 1921 under the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars V.I. Lenin, long before Beria, and was called the “Special Office”. It is possible that Lenin asked Stalin to get him poison from the available supplies in this laboratory-“office”.
This statement is based on post-revolutionary studies of poisons in Russia in the early 20s, headed by Professor Ignatius Kazakov. The heads of the Soviet security agencies - the chairman of the OGPU V. Menzhinsky, his deputy, and later the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs G. Yagoda - showed interest in the ongoing research.
The research laboratory was formally located at the All-Union Institute of Biology of Academician Bach.
Various sources do not rule out that one of the experiences of using narcotic substances in a special operation was associated with the kidnapping of the head of the Russian All-Military Union, General Kutepov, in Paris in January 1930. The executors of the operation were “Yasha’s group” - a special group of senior major Yakov Serebryansky under the chairman of the OGPU.
In broad daylight, the general was pushed into a car in an unconscious state and taken to Marseilles on board a Soviet steamer. However, the weak heart of the old soldier could not stand it, and after a morphine injection he was given, he died almost on the roadstead of Novorossiysk. Seven years later, the same “Yasha’s group,” using narcotic substances, under deep anesthesia, kidnapped and took from the French port of Le Havre Kutepov’s successor, General Miller, who was taken to Lubyanka and executed in 1939.
In December 1937, the first head of the laboratory, Kazakov, was arrested “for participation in a counter-revolutionary anti-Soviet organization” and in 1938, during the trial of the anti-Soviet right-wing Trotskyist bloc (the Bukharin-Rykov trial and others), he was sentenced to death. He was accused of killing the chairman of the OGPU V. Menzhinsky, the chairman of the Supreme Economic Council V. Kuibyshev and the writer M. Gorky on the orders of G. Yagoda. This was the first experience of creating an ominous image of killer doctors, when Kazakov, along with his “accomplices” Levin and Pletnev, were sentenced to death and executed two days later.
In 1935, a unit under the leadership of senior state security major Yakov Serebryansky operated a laboratory for the use of poisons and drugs, which reported directly to the head of the NKVD. The subsequent arrest of Serebryansky in November 1938 led to the disbandment of the laboratory.
From the summer of 1937, as part of the 12th Department of the GUGB NKVD until 1951, the head of the toxicological laboratory (Laboratory - “X”), a special unit engaged in research in the field of toxic substances and poisons, was Grigory Moiseevich Mayranovsky.
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Where did this scary man come from?
He was born in 1899 in Batumi into a large middle-income family. After graduating from high school in 1917, he entered the Tiflis Medical Institute, where he joined the Jewish socialist organization "Bund". Then he moved to Baku, where one of his brothers was among the leaders of the local “Bundists”.
Grigory Mainarovsky continued to study at the university. Having made sure that the Bolsheviks were opposed to the Bund, he quickly got his bearings and in April 1920 joined the RCP (b). The ambitious young man made every effort to prove his loyalty to the new government. For almost two years he worked in one of the departments of the cluster industry of the Council of People's Commissars of the Azerbaijan SSR.
In 1922, G. Mainarovsky moved to Moscow, where he completed his studies at the medical faculty of the 2nd Moscow State University. He worked as a doctor, assistant at a university department, and head of an outpatient clinic. Soon he was offered the head of the toxicology department at the Biochemical Institute of the Central Sanitary and Chemical Institute of the People's Commissariat of Health.
In 1937, Mainarovsky’s research group from the Institute of Biochemistry, headed by Academician Bach, was transferred to the NKVD and became directly subordinate to the head of the special department of operational equipment at the commandant’s office of the NKVD-MGB... The secrecy of the laboratory’s work was ensured by serious control over the involvement of its employees in intelligence operations. Access to the laboratory was strict even for the leadership of the NKVD-MGB, which was regulated by the Regulations approved by the government and orders for the NKVD-MGB... The work of the laboratory was directly supervised by the Minister of State Security or his first deputy. And the work there was carried out exclusively with poisons. And not at all for treatment, but for conducting tests on prisoners sentenced to capital punishment or killing those who, by government decision, were subject to secret liquidation.
In 1940, Mairanovsky defended his doctoral dissertation at VIEM on the topic “Biological effect of products during the interaction of mustard gas with skin.” However, the Higher Attestation Commission under the Committee on Higher Education Affairs did not approve the decision to award the academic degree of Doctor of Medical Sciences, considering that the dissertation required further revision.
Meanwhile, in 1943, on the proposal of the People's Commissar of State Security V. Merkulov, a petition was filed to award Mairanovsky the academic degree of Doctor of Medical Sciences and the title of professor based on a body of work without defending a dissertation. The petition stated that “during his work in the NKVD, Comrade Mayranovsky carried out 10 secret works of important operational significance (quote from the publication “Encyclopedia of the Secret Services of Russia.” M., 2004, p. 609).
In the same 1943, Mayranovsky received the rank of colonel of the medical service.
An example of the “importance of secret operational work” mentioned by the minister is one fact. In 1942, while experimenting with poisons on people sentenced to death, Mairanovsky discovered that when certain doses of the drug were used, the “experimental subject” began to speak exceptionally frankly. The leadership seized on this “discovery” and approved the study of the “problem of frankness” in interrogations. After all, this made it possible to obtain additional material for the investigation. Similar experiments were carried out for several years. In cases where the arrest seemed inconvenient to the higher authorities, Mayranovsky’s technology was used.
This is what they did with the head of the Foreign Department of the GUGB, Abram Slutsky. In February 1938, he suddenly died in the office of Deputy People's Commissar Mikhail Frinovsky. According to the testimony of the perpetrators of the murder, he was given an injection of potassium cyanide. This was the period when the intelligence purge began, when its foreign employees began to be summoned to Moscow. Fearing to frighten off their victims, the organizers of the massacre arranged Slutsky’s funeral with full honors. And Pravda published an obituary in which it wrote that he “died at a combat post.”
Much has been written about the Wallenberg case. But I cannot help but refer to the notes of General P. Sudoplatov, who knew the KGB kitchen well, and in particular, the purpose of Laboratory-X. The general wrote that at the beginning of July 1947, the Raoul Wallenberg case reached a dead end. He refused to cooperate with Soviet intelligence and turned out to be unnecessary either as a witness to secret political games or as a hostage. The Nuremberg trials had ended by that time.
Sudoplatov suggested that the now world-famous Righteous Among the Nations, who saved tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews, a prisoner of the Soviet authorities, Raoul Wallenberg, was transferred to a special cell at Laboratory-X, where he was given a lethal injection under the guise of treatment. Meanwhile, the country's leadership continued to assure them, in response to requests from the Swedes, that they knew nothing about the whereabouts and fate of Wallenberg.
The prison medical service, of course, had absolutely no idea what had happened and the death was recorded in the usual manner.
However, the Minister of State Security Abakumov, apparently aware of the real cause of Wallenberg's death, prohibited an autopsy of the body and ordered him to be cremated. (See: P. Sudoplatov. “Intelligence and the Kremlin”, p. 322).
The zeal of the head of Laboratory-X, Mairanovsky, was encouraged in every possible way by the higher authorities. At the beginning of 1942, when the 4th Directorate of the NKVD was created to organize sabotage groups and special agents in the occupied territory, which was headed by Sudoplatov and his deputy Eitingon, the Directorate was assigned a special department of the NKVD of the USSR, which was engaged in the development of sabotage equipment. To study and research this technique, it included the department of toxicology and biology, which was engaged in the study and research of all kinds of poisons. The work of the department was carried out according to the topics and plans approved at the time by the first deputy. People's Commissar Merkulov and Beria.
The poisons developed by Mayranovsky and his colleagues were used during the war by sabotage groups and special agents in the German rear against the occupiers. For this, the head of “Laboratory-X” was awarded military orders and even received a medal “Partisan of the Patriotic War.” This “valiant partisan,” according to the caustic remark of historian and journalist Mikhail Nordstein, who had never been behind enemy lines, “reveled in prosperity.”
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Mairanovsky’s poisons worked flawlessly. The “great and wise leader” seriously thought about using them to eliminate the objectionable and disobedient Yugoslav President Tito. Stalin planned to involve the Soviet ambassador to Yugoslavia, I. Grigulevich, who was supposed to kill the Yugoslav leader with a poisoned ring. (See: I. Bunin. “Operation “Thunderstorm”,” vol. 2. St. Petersburg, 1994, p. 429).
In 1947, on the initiative of N. Khrushchev, who was then a member of the Politburo and first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, Archbishop of the Mukachevo diocese Yuri Theodor Romzha was liquidated. The party leader was sharply dissatisfied with Romzha’s influence on believers. Khrushchev and the Minister of State Security of Ukraine S. Savchenko in 1947 turned to Stalin and the Minister of State Security of the USSR Abakumov with a request to sanction the murder of the bishop. Accusing him of collaborating with the underground Ukrainian national movement and “secret emissaries” of the Vatican, presenting everything as a serious threat to political stability in the region, which recently became part of the USSR. Stalin's order followed: "Remove."
The GB officers organized a car accident, but Romzha remained alive, although he was seriously wounded and taken to the Mukachevo hospital. After which the Minister of State Security of Ukraine Sergei Savchenko and Grigory Mayranovsky arrived there. The latter's mission was to transfer an ampoule of curara to the MGB nurse agent. She gave the lethal injection.
P. Sudoplatov points to four known facts of the liquidation of persons dangerous to the Soviet state, carried out with the participation of Mayranovsky in 1946-1947. One of them concerned the prominent leader of the Ukrainian national movement A. Shumsky. Repressed in 1930, later released for health reasons, he was in exile in Saratov, where he established contacts with emigrant organizations. To eliminate him, Mairanovsky was sent to Saratov as part of a special group. After which the official conclusion stated that Shumsky died in the hospital from heart failure.
Mairanovsky also committed his vile deed against a Polish Jew who was interned in 1939 after the entry of Soviet troops into Western Ukraine. An engineer by profession, Samet was engaged in secret work on the use of captured German equipment on Soviet submarines, which gave a significant advantage in the duration of their stay under water. Samet contacted the British and was planning to leave for Mandatory Palestine. To prevent this, Soviet intelligence tried to introduce its agent into Samet’s circle and control his connections with foreigners. Eitingon was sent to Ulyanovsk. Soon Mairanovsky arrived there along with an agent, a doctor at the factory clinic, who gave Samet an injection of curare poison during a routine examination.
The fate of the American communist Isaac Oggins was not easy. Arriving in the USSR on a false Czechoslovakian passport, he sincerely sympathized with communist ideas and was an unofficial member of the US Communist Party. Oggins was an old agent of the Comintern and the NKVD in several countries of the Far East and the USA. His wife Nora was part of the NKVD agent network in America and Western Europe, assisting in the maintenance of safe houses for Soviet agents in France and the USA in 1938-1941.
In 1938, Oggins was arrested on suspicion of double-dealing and "Trotskyism." Pleading not guilty, Oggins was nevertheless sentenced to eight years in the camps. For some time, his wife believed that her husband's presence there was due to operational reasons, but then realized that he was under arrest.
After the end of the war, Nora turned to the American authorities with a request to find out the whereabouts and release of her husband. However, the deterioration of relations between the two countries due to the failure of the Soviet intelligence network in the United States and Canada in 1946-1947. aroused Molotov's fears that if Oggins was released, the Americans might bring him before the Commission on Un-American Activities and use him as a witness against the US Communist Party. In addition, Soviet intelligence services suspected Nora Oggins of establishing contact with the FBI, which harmed Soviet agents in the United States and France.
Under these conditions, Abakumov proposed the liquidation of Oggins, approved by Stalin and Molotov. There was no need to look for a performer. In 1947, during a medical examination, Mairanovsky gave Oggins, who was in prison, a lethal injection. Sudoplatov and Eitingon were entrusted with organizing the funeral at the Jewish cemetery in Penza. At the same time, for some reason the burial date was set as 1944 or 1945. (See: P. Sudoplatov. Indicative work., pp. 331-332).
In 1992, General Dm. Volkogonov presented to the US Congress a list of Americans who died in the Soviet Union during World War II, as well as during the Cold War, and expressed regret on behalf of President Yeltsin over their deaths. Oggins was also on the list presented. He was liquidated, according to Volkogonov, so that he could not tell the truth about the situation in Soviet prisons and concentration camps.
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“All the work of Laboratory-X, not only scientific, was well known both to those who were investigating the case of Beria and Abakumov, and to the government and the Central Committee of the Party, who observed and directed the progress of the investigation in these cases and determined its content.” (See: P. Sudoplatov. “Intelligence and the Kremlin”, p. 329).
In 1951, Mairanovsky was arrested as a participant in the “Zionist conspiracy” in the MGB. The senior investigator of the Investigative Unit for Particularly Important Cases, the well-known Ryumin, notes Sudoplatov, managed to extort “incredible testimony” from Mairanovsky (he later abandoned it), and from the arrested deputy head of the secretariat, Abakumov Broverman. But soon the arrested Ryumin was removed from his post, arrested and shot. It turned out to be impossible to fully use the materials he obtained. The ongoing investigation established that the experiments carried out on humans were carried out in accordance with the procedures established by the government and the Ministry of State Security.
As for the head of the toxicology laboratory, his testimony was not supported by the confessions of the doctors arrested in the Abakumov case, who had no idea about the existence of this secret laboratory. All experiments with poisons on those sentenced to death were carried out by Mayranovsky in accordance with the instructions of the government and the procedures established by the MGB.
Mairanovsky got away with a 10-year prison term for illegal possession of toxic substances and abuse of official position.
* * *
Since 1952, the use of poisons resumed without the participation of Mayranovsky, but, as always, was regulated by relevant government instructions.
Meanwhile, “Laboratory-X” and other similar institutions in the 60s, called special laboratory number 12 of the Institute of Special and New Technologies, continued to improve poisoning technology. The Lubyanka arsenal now includes substances that penetrate the body from clothing soaked in them.
In October 1957, the main ideologist of the People's Labor Union, Lev Rebet, died of sudden cardiac arrest in Munich.
In 1959, Bogdan Stashinsky in Munich shot Stepan Bandera at the door of his apartment with a capsule containing poison. Stashinsky was awarded the Order of the Red Banner, which was presented to him personally by KGB Chairman Shelepin. But two years later, Stashinsky fled to the West and told journalists about everything.
The murder weapon was a device in the form of an aluminum tube that sprayed an aerosol of potassium cyanide when a button was pressed. Today this is how an ordinary bottle of eau de toilette works, but back then it was a technical innovation that was used to kill a person. Why not progress?!
The track record of the former KGB general Kalugin, who headed Directorate “K” (external counterintelligence) in the First Main Directorate, also includes at least two murders. This department was engaged in the liquidation of defectors. Kalugin even received the Order of the Red Banner for the abduction of a Soviet defector in Vienna and his liquidation, carried out using toxicological drugs.
Heading the KGB's foreign intelligence service, Kalugin advised Bulgarian intelligence on the operation to eliminate the dissident writer Markov, who was killed in London, where he worked in 1978 for the BBC. He was pricked in the leg by the tip of an umbrella by a “random passer-by.” After some time, Markov’s temperature rose and his blood pressure dropped sharply, and four days later he died of heart failure. In a similar way, an attempt was made on another Bulgarian dissident, Vladimir Kostov, in Paris. He developed similar symptoms; after two days the fever began to subside, but upon learning of Markov’s death, he consulted a doctor. He underwent surgery and removed the capsule, in which English specialists found traces of ricin. Then they decided to re-examine Markov’s body and found the same capsule on him.
There were other ways to kill people. The unsuspecting owner of a personal car grabbed the smeared door handle, opened it, got in and drove away, and two days later he was taken to the hospital, where he died of a “heart attack.”
Mairanovsky also recalled experiments with a pillow poisoned with poison. And also about how a person was given large doses of sleeping pills, after which the doomed person, having fallen asleep, never woke up.
During the experiments with various poisons, Filimonov, Grigoriev, Blokhin, Osinkin and others were present along with Mairanovsky, a total of 20 scientists. The list of victims of secret poisonings sanctioned from above was quite long. Not all laboratory employees could withstand the devilish work with poisons. Some committed suicide, others experienced severe psychological disorders...
And only Mairanovsky himself was not tormented by his conscience. By his own admission, he killed 104 people, although after the death of Beria and his accomplices, during interrogations the figure was given as more than 250 people. He tested the effects of this or that poison mainly on prisoners under Article 58.
“We gave poisons,” he admitted, “through food and various drinks; we administered poisons using injections with a syringe, a cane, a pen and other piercing, specially equipped objects.” Poisons were also administered through the skin, by sprinkling and pouring over it.
In one of the Internet materials he is called "Stalin's Mengele." Even while in prison, Mayranovsky continued to advise the “authorities.” As a specialist poisoner, he was taken several times from Vladimir Special Prison No. 2 to Moscow. The restless Grigory Moiseevich tried in every possible way to achieve release, offering services to improve work with poisons in the USSR. From the Vladimir prison cell in April 1953, Mairanovsky wrote to the then all-powerful Beria about his “merits” and the mistake made in relation to him.
“With my hand, more than a dozen sworn enemies of the Soviet regime were destroyed, including nationalists of all kinds (and Jewish ones) - Lieutenant General P.A. Sudoplatov knows about this...” and assured of his readiness to carry out “all tasks for the benefit of our mighty Motherland."
It is possible that Beria could have released Grigory Moiseevich, but was soon arrested himself. And Mairanovsky’s statements were used by the prosecutor’s office against Beria himself, Abakumov and Merkulov. This time, Mairanovsky was presented as an accomplice of Beria, who was hatching plans to eliminate the country's leadership with the help of poisons.
The review of Mayranovsky’s case, despite all his efforts, did not take place.
After serving the full ten-year sentence, he was released in December 1961. Efforts about rehabilitation did not yield a positive result. He was arrested again and remained in prison until the end of 1962. As a result, his release ended with an order to leave Moscow within 24 hours and a ban on settling in central cities. The former professor and colonel was advised of the place of his future work: an unemployed biochemical laboratory in Makhachkala. However, he did not manage this institution for long. In 1964, “Doctor Death” died suddenly from acute heart failure. Just like hundreds of people died in his laboratories. An ominous coincidence? Or…
"Laboratory-X" under other names still exists today. Their activities extend both to the Russian Federation and to the near and far abroad... Former high-ranking officer of the Soviet Foreign Intelligence Service Alexander Kuzminov, an employee of the secret department "C", voluntarily resigned from the authorities in 1992, and a year and a half later legally emigrated with his family to one of the foreign countries. Defended his doctoral dissertation on international legislation in the field of biotechnology. His book “Biological Espionage - Special Operations of Soviet and Russian Foreign Intelligence in the West” was published in London.
* * *
A legitimate question is: is the use of drugs or poisons in the fight against terrorism justified? Of course, the death penalty or destruction of even the most notorious terrorist should be carried out only in strict accordance with the requirements of the law. However, the danger of the ruling regime using such powerful weapons to destroy unwanted people, political opponents and rivals, as was the case in the history of the Soviet country, must be excluded. Weekly "Secret" (velelens.livejournal.com)
Chapter from the book by I.I. Garin “The Double Murder of Stalin”, Kyiv, Master class, 2006, 272 p.
Notes and citations appear in the text of the book.
Buddy, have you tried radioactive polonium?..
- No...
- So we will treat you...
Research and development of toxic substances intended for terrorist acts of the state and the destruction of political opponents began during Lenin’s lifetime. In 1921, by his personal order, Room No. 2, or “Special Office,” was created, the first prototype of a biochemical laboratory, in which, in addition to chemists, pharmacists and toxicologists worked. The task of the “cabinet” was to develop poisons and methods of their use. It is curious that the toxicological laboratory was created directly under the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars V.I. Lenin. When the dying leader asked Stalin to get him poison, apparently, he had this particular institution in mind.
Work on the use of poisons and drugs intensified in the OGPU since 1926 on the personal instructions of the People's Commissar for Security Vyacheslav Menzhinsky, who later died from them. The special laboratory became part of a secret group headed by former Socialist Revolutionary militant Yakov Serebryansky. The “Yashin Group” was created to carry out terrorist attacks abroad, reported directly to the People’s Commissar and existed until 1938.
People's Commissar Genrikh Yagoda was interested in poisons quite professionally: he was a pharmacist by training. Already under Yagoda, the special toxicological laboratory consisted of two divisions: chemical and chemical-bacteriological.
Under the new People's Commissar, Nikolai Yezhov, the methods of the “Yasha Group” began to be used to “clean up” the Lubyanka itself. On February 17, 1938, the head of the Foreign Department of the NKVD, Abram Slutsky, was found dead in the office of Mikhail Frinovsky, the deputy of the new People's Commissar. Next to the body of security officer Slutsky, who had clumsily slid from his chair, stood an empty glass of tea. Frinovsky confidentially announced to the NKVD employees that the doctor had already established the cause of death: heart rupture. Several officers who knew the symptoms of potassium cyanide poisoning noticed specific bluish spots on Slutsky's face*.
The terrorist actions of the Soviet “organs” were almost officially justified after back in 1927, Comrade Stalin personally dictated the Resolution of the USSR Central Executive Committee, adopted on November 21, 1927, which permitted the physical elimination of enemies of Soviet power. Soon after this, Soviet agents in the West destroyed security defectors Ignatius Reiss, Walter Krivitsky and Georgy Agabekov. Who knows how many state security officers fled to the West during the years of Soviet power and what kind of security is this when its officers are leading the lists of defectors?
At the end of the 20s, under the chairman of the OGPU Menzhinsky, a Special Group was created of Comintern and intelligence officers, whose main task was to destroy the political opponents of the USSR, primarily from among Russian emigrants and defectors. The most famous “active actions” of the Soviet intelligence services were the kidnappings of generals Alexander Kutepov and Yevgeny Miller, as well as the murders of Ukrainian nationalist leaders Yevgeny Konovalets, Lev Rebet and Stepan Bandera. The above laboratory was directly related to the latter.
In the 30s, Professor Kazakov, who was shot in 1938 in connection with the Bukharin trial, became the head of the secret special laboratory. Until 1939, this laboratory was not part of the state security agencies, but after the formation of the Operative Equipment Department under the NKVD of the USSR, which was headed by State Security Major Alekhine, on February 20, 1939, “Laboratory X” or, as it was aptly nicknamed, became part of this special department as a structural unit her own state security officers, “Camera” **.
Under the new People's Commissar, Lavrentiy Beria, the secret laboratory was reorganized. Since 1938, it was included in the 4th special department of the NKVD, and since March 1939 it was headed by Mikhail Filimonov, a pharmacist by training who had a candidate of medical sciences degree. It was from this moment that the main character of the further story, our domestic Eichmann, Professor G. M. Mayranovsky ***, was enlisted as the head of the 7th department of the 2nd special department of the NKVD, that is, he became the head of one of the two laboratories of this special department. Sergei Muromtsev was appointed head of the second (bacteriological) laboratory. The “Laboratory of Death” existed unchanged until 1946, when it was included in the Operational Equipment Department (OOT) and became Laboratory No. 1 of the OOT under the new Minister of State Security Viktor Abakumov.
A new laboratory was formed by taking the group of G. M. Mayranovsky from the Research Institute of Biochemistry, headed by Professor Bach. The letter “X” in the name of the laboratory meant that this laboratory was engaged in “chemistry”. As a cover, it was believed that the laboratory was developing antitumor drugs.
The work of the laboratory was strictly classified, and access to it was strictly limited even for the leadership of the NKVD - MGB. The work of the laboratory was directly supervised by the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs or his first deputy.
The developments of these secret institutions were tested primarily on “their own”. As we can see, the Soviet government had no problems with mutant scientists suitable for this matter. However, not only in these laboratories. The Motherland orders it - we will do it! It is enough to substantiate the case well, and scientists are no longer murderers, but heroes! In the laboratories of Professor Mayranovsky they were killed during a medical examination. The prisoners were not taken to be shot, but to have their health examined. Slow-acting poisons, fast-breaking toxins that provoke heart attacks, and much more were prepared here. Every day, dozens of scientists went to work, “created,” received awards and bonuses, then returned home and raised their children. They were probably proud to carry out the honorable tasks of their dear comrade Stalin! Why not? Hasn’t the work of thousands of teams to create weapons of mass destruction, and not only atomic weapons, become a source of pride for the entire country...
Apparently, it should be especially noted that Mayranovsky’s work on the influence of mustard gas on malignant tumors in 1964 was highly appreciated by the President of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences, Academician Nikolai Blokhin, who did not even question how and on whom such data were obtained. Another interesting thing is that two prominent scientists approved the results of monstrous and criminal experiments while defending Mairanovsky’s doctoral dissertation. This is Professor B. Tarusov and the future academician G. Frank. Both were well aware of what the “scientist” was doing! Such are the things, such is the “Soviet science”.
In the book “Special Operations,” one of the people most dedicated to these matters, Pavel Sudoplatov, later wrote: “The special unit of the internal prison was more like a hotel. The premises in which the prisoners were kept could only be called cells conditionally: high ceilings, normal furniture. Food was brought from the NKVD canteen and restaurant; the quality, of course, was very different from the prison food. However, this place was ominous under Stalin. This building housed the commandant's office of the NKVD-MGB, where in 1937-1950. sentences were carried out against persons sentenced to death, as well as those whom the government considered necessary to liquidate in a special, that is, non-judicial, manner. In Varsonofevsky Lane, behind the Lubyanka prison, there was a toxicology laboratory directly subordinate to the minister and the commandant’s office and a special cell attached to it. The toxicology laboratory was referred to as “Laboratory X” in official documents. The head of the laboratory, Colonel of the Medical Service, Professor Mayranovsky, was engaged in research into the effect of deadly gases and poisons on malignant tumors. The professor was highly regarded in medical circles.”
And one more thing: “An inspection carried out under Stalin after the arrest of Mayranovsky, and then under Khrushchev in 1960, for the purpose of anti-Stalin revelations, showed that Mayranovsky and members of his group were involved in carrying out death sentences and directly liquidating undesirable persons.” government decision in 1937-1947. and in 1950, using poisons for this. I know that similar actions were carried out by our intelligence services abroad also in the 60s and 70s. KGB Major General Oleg Kalugin spoke and wrote about this.”*
The first mention of a special toxicological laboratory in the MGB system, in which experiments were carried out on humans, appeared in the West in 1983 in a book by a former KGB officer, yet another defector, Pyotr Deryabin. He wrote: “From 1946 to 1953, as part of the structure of the Ministry of State Security in Moscow, there was a notorious laboratory called “Camera”. It consisted of a medical director and several assistants. They conducted experiments on people - prisoners sentenced to death - to determine the effectiveness of various poisons and injections, as well as hypnosis and drugs during interrogations.
Colonel Bobrenev, who later had access to the investigative files of Mayranovsky and Beria, described the “death laboratory” as follows: “For the laboratory... they allocated a large room on the first floor of a corner building in Varsanofevsky Lane. The room was divided into five chambers, the doors of which, with slightly enlarged peepholes, opened into a spacious reception area. Here, during the experiments, one of the laboratory employees was constantly on duty... Almost every day, prisoners sentenced to death were brought to the laboratory. The procedure looked like a regular medical examination. “The “doctor” sympathetically asked the “patient” about his health, gave advice and immediately offered medicine... Some died after three or four days, others suffered for a week.”
It is difficult to calculate the number of victims of Soviet science, but it is known that not only poisons were used to destroy them - more than a dozen prominent security officers of that time were killed in a gas chamber equipped in the premises of the Lubyanka commandant’s office.
Naum Eitingon, who was sometimes present “during the experiments in Mayranovsky’s laboratory” and observed “the injection of kukarin poison into four experimental victims,” testified: “The poison acted almost instantly.”
In 1954, during interrogation, the head of the bacteriological laboratory of the same department, Academician of the All-Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences Sergei Muromtsev, who himself killed 15 prisoners (Bobrenev’s data), claimed that he was struck by Mairanovsky’s sadistic attitude towards his victims.
Colonel Bobrenev also said that at least four German prisoners of war in 1944, and at the end of 1945, three more German citizens were provided for “experiments.” The last three were anti-fascist political emigrants who fled Nazi Germany; they died 15 seconds after the lethal injections. The bodies of two victims were cremated, the body of the third was brought to the Research Institute of Emergency Medicine named after. N.V. Sklifosovsky. A post-mortem examination showed that the deceased died of cardiac paralysis; Pathologists found no traces of poison. Japanese prisoners of war, officers and enlisted men, and arrested Japanese diplomats were used in experiments on the "candor problem."
Mairanovsky paid particular interest to the so-called latent poisons, that is, substances that caused symptoms not of poisoning, but of a kind of “natural death”, say from myocardial infarction, angina pectoris, stroke... He was given a task, but they never fully decided - so that there was a heart attack, but no poison was detected. In addition, the laboratory intensively studied drugs that could stimulate the “candor” of interrogated victims.
Mairanovsky spent two years “working” with ricin, a difficult-to-identify protein found in castor bean seeds. The subject of his research was the determination of the lethal dose of ricin. One can only guess how many victims died in these “experiments.”
Laboratory X produced tiny special needles filled with ricin, which were to be quietly injected into the body of the victim; the pain was no stronger than from an insect bite, but the victim soon died, and no traces could be found in the body. The nature of the poisons themselves sometimes predetermined the methods of their use: a ricin needle in an umbrella; a spray sprayed from a tube hidden in a newspaper wrapped in a tube; a point-blank shot of a poison-laced bullet (which was intended for the Russian emigrant Georgiy Okolovich in 1955) from a short-range pistol disguised as a pack of cigarettes or a fountain pen.
The effect of other poisons on the human body was also tested - digitoxin, thallium, colchicine. Each was tested on 10 “test subjects”. The “experimenters” observed the suffering of victims who did not die immediately for 10-14 days, after which the surviving “experimental subjects” were killed.
In the end, a poison with the required properties was found - “K-2” (carbilaminecholine chloride). He killed the victim within 15 minutes and left almost no trace.
In 1942, Mairanovsky told his superiors that he had discovered a means of loosening the tongue: supposedly under the influence of certain doses of ricin, “those under investigation” began to openly say what they thought. At the same time, the settled “scientist” received approval from management to work on the “problem of frankness” during interrogations. Almost two years were spent on experiments conducted by Mairanovsky’s laboratory to obtain “frank” and “truthful” testimony under the influence of medications. Chloralscopolamine and phenaminebenzedrine were tried without success. Interrogations using medications were carried out not only in the laboratory, but also in both Lubyanka prisons, No. 1 and 2. One of the main employees of the laboratory (as well as an assistant at the department of pharmacology of the 1st Moscow Medical Institute), Vladimir Naumov, openly considered these experiments to be profanation. However, it is known that after the war, in 1946, Soviet “advisers” from the MGB used drugs during the interrogation of political prisoners arrested in Eastern European countries.”*
During the Stalinist period of a huge number of mysterious deaths, Mayronovsky’s laboratory seemed to fully correspond to the leader’s maxim “If there is a person, there is a problem, if there is no person, there is no problem.” Indeed, since the time of the Borgia, poison has become the “ideal means” for “solving” political and dynastic problems.
According to Sudoplatov, Mayronovsky personally injected poisons into the prisoners. At the first stage of research, scientists “experimented” with various gases. For example, Mayronovsky’s experiments with mustard gas began earlier than the notorious “experiments” of the Nazis on prisoners of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1939. Except that in the USSR, prisoners of the NKVD internal prison acted as experimental material. But the requirement of “tracelessness” was not achieved then: the poison was found in the corpses. This did not stop Mairanovsky, and the “experiments” continued. The sanction to conduct experiments on living people was given personally by People's Commissar Beria.
After the end of the war, Mayranovsky and two other laboratory employees were sent to Germany to search for German poison experts who were “experimenting” on people. Mairanovsky returned to Moscow firmly convinced that the achievements of Nazi “specialists” in this field were much more modest than those of the Soviets.
Apparently, no one will ever be able to compile a complete list of victims of Soviet scientists who “experimented” with poisons. Most of the documents were destroyed. There are good reasons to believe that the famous Ukrainian historian Mikhail Grushevsky, the former head of the Central Rada (he died soon after an injection given in one of the Moscow clinics), passed away not without the help of poisons. It cannot be ruled out that the head of the OGPU-NKVD of the USSR, Comrade Menzhinsky *, died from the poison created on his own instructions, as well as Nestor Lakoba, the first secretary of the Communist Party of Abkhazia, in whose death Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria himself had a hand.
Following in their footsteps were Yezhov’s deputy Frinovsky, already mentioned above, who was injected with poison right in his office by NKVD officers Alekhin and Zakovsky, as well as State Security Commissioner 2nd Rank A. Slutsky, in whom the poison caused characteristic heart failure, as a result of which he died on place. Slutsky’s younger brother, who worked in the operational department of the Gulag, was poisoned in the Lubyanka canteen in front of hundreds of dining Chekists. He did not have time to finish the first course when he collapsed dead on the floor with purple foam on his lips.
There is strong evidence that the “products” of Professor Mayranovsky were “tried” by Nadezhda Krupskaya and Maxim Gorky. On February 26, 1939, the official press congratulated the hero of the day Krupskaya on her 70th birthday, and on the night of February 27, she ended up in the Kremlin hospital with an official diagnosis of “intestinal thrombosis” - and after an operation she died at 6:15 am. The leader's wife ate a cake presented to her on behalf of Comrade Stalin, and the great proletarian writer ate chocolates from a box sent by the leader. Gorky was diagnosed with cardiac paralysis, and two years later, the Kremlin Medical Directorate doctors Levin and Pletnev were declared guilty of his death. They showed that, on the instructions of the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, Genrikh Yagoda, they treated Gorky so that he would die faster. Professor Levin was shot, and Pletnev, who received 25 years for this with time served in Vorkuta, told the German revolutionary B. Gerland, who was imprisoned with him, that Gorky’s death occurred from the sweets that Comrade Stalin gave to Alexei Maksimovich.
And there were Ordzhonikidze, Kuibyshev, who died in 1935 from sudden sclerosis of the heart, Dzerzhinsky, Tomsky, Shcherbakov, Zhdanov and hundreds of other “sworn friends”, party comrades. “Many of them were burned in the ovens of the crematorium of the Donskoy Monastery. The ashes left behind were mixed with the ashes of the burned bodies of their enemies, pacifying them and reconciling them with each other at the molecular level.”
Here we should also mention the attempted assassination of Okolovich, as well as the liquidation in Munich in 1957 and 1959 by Bogdan Stashinsky of the anti-Soviet emigrant writer Lev Rebet and the leader of Ukrainian nationalists Stepan Bandera. For these terrorist attacks, Stashinsky was awarded the Orders of the Red Banner and Lenin. Lev Rebet allegedly died of a heart attack in October 1957, and four years later, an assassin sent by the KGB fled abroad and told how, while passing Rebet on the stairs, he sprayed a spray in his face with a cyanide-based poisonous gas dissolved in it. Stashinsky, who defected to Germany in 1961, spoke about his terrorist acts to a West German court, which issued a partial ruling: the German court laid the main blame for preparing the assassinations on the leaders of the Soviet state security agencies - Ivan Serov (in 1957) and Alexander Shelepin (in 1959) ). International publicity slightly tempered the ardor of the “authorities” and leaders, but terrorist operations did not stop...
In 1958, with the help of radioactive talc, they tried to kill the Soviet defector Nikolai Khokhlov, who was instructed by the KGB to kill the head of the NTS, Grigory Okulovich, and the chairman of the Provisional Government, Alexander Kerensky. Khokhlov was saved with great difficulty by American doctors; he spent a whole year in the hospital. There is also a known failed attempt to poison Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
The American Oggins, who worked closely with the Comintern, was arrested in 1938. During the war, his wife appealed to the American authorities with a request to rescue her husband from the USSR. The American representative met with Oggins in Butyrka prison in 1943. The MGB did not want to let him go so that he would not be able to tell the West the truth about the Gulag. In 1947, in the prison hospital, Mairanovsky gave Oggins a lethal injection.
The Polish engineer Samet, who wished to emigrate to Israel, was given an injection of curare by Mayranovsky during a preventive examination.
In 1946, one of the leaders of the Ukrainian nationalists, Shumsky, who was in exile in Saratov, was killed in a similar way.
Bulgarian dissident and anti-communist Markov was killed in London, where he worked for the BBC. This was told by former KGB general Oleg Kalugin, who now lives in the United States, and who led this operation from the Soviet side. He described it in his book, Spymaster, published in 1994. The operation was carried out by the Bulgarian state security authorities using poison provided by the KGB. Markov was eliminated only on the third attempt. First, an ointment was used, which was supposed to kill the journalist in one or two days - an autopsy would have declared death from a heart attack. The poison was then added by the agent to a glass of drink prepared for Markov. But only a needle filled with ricin did its job.
Oleg Kalugin received the Order of the Red Banner for another liquidation - the kidnapping of a Soviet defector, naval officer Artamonov, in Vienna. Here, too, the use of toxicological drugs could not be avoided, from which Artamonov died right in the hands of a KGB agent. KGB operations continued later.
The life of another Bulgarian political emigrant, Vladimir Kostov, who also received an “umbrella injection” in the Paris metro, was saved by doctors. The poisonous needle was removed from his body in time, and the ricin did not have time to penetrate the body.
Mairanovsky also gave a lethal injection to the newly appointed Greek-Catholic Archbishop of Transcarpathia Romzha in Ukraine, who actively resisted the joining of Greek Catholics to Orthodoxy. It happened as follows. In 1947, the executioner doctor went to Uzhgorod. There is information that in Kyiv Khrushchev came to his train carriage and, on behalf of the Soviet government in Ukraine, gave the order for the execution of Romzhi. First, Romzhe caused a car accident, and when it failed, they sent Mairanovsky to finish off the wounded man. In Uzhgorod, Mayranovsky handed over an ampoule of poison to a nurse at a local hospital - an MGB agent. She gave Romzha, who was in this hospital after the accident, an injection, and he died, so to speak, “from natural causes.”
Was it because of this secret operation that Khrushchev was so afraid of connecting his name with “laboratory X”? However, he also had more serious reasons for fear - Khrushchev became Stalin’s confidant, vested with the right to impose death sentences “by pricking”.
Interesting fact: when Professor Mairanovsky came out of prison (more on that below) and asked for an appointment with Khrushchev, he accepted him, which in itself is extremely strange. After all, Khrushchev refused to accept the exiled Vasily Stalin, although he, having no job, really wanted to meet him. It seems that Mairanovsky told Khrushchev something unnecessary. Sudoplatov believes that he reminded him of the execution of Archbishop Romzha. As a result, Mairanovsky was arrested again two days later and then deported from Moscow to Makhachkala, where he died in 1964.
A few more examples of this kind of liquidation: the nephew of the former Japanese prime minister, Prince Konoe, an officer of the Japanese army, who allegedly died suddenly of short-lived typhus; the last commandant of Berlin, Helmut Weidling, who died suddenly in November 1955 in Vladimir prison from acute heart failure; German Field Marshal Ewald von Kleist, who died in October 1954 from acute heart failure (the Soviet leadership did not want this military leader to return to Germany, and may have taken revenge on the initiator of the formation of Cossack units of the Wehrmacht from former Soviet citizens).
It is possible that some of these murders were the work of the same Mayranovsky, who, even while in prison, continued to play his usual role of executioner. B. Mueller-Hill * testified that the prisoner Mayranovsky, who was held in the Vladimir Central, was repeatedly taken from his cell to the MGB-KGB Internal Prison. Is it only for interrogations?
Sudoplatov claims that the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who saved European Jews, was also executed using Laboratory X poison. The head of the medical service of the internal prison of the MGB, Smoltsov, wrote that Wallenberg died unexpectedly in his cell on the evening of July 17, 1947. The cause of death was the same unfortunate heart attack. Like Comrade Zhdanov and many other “patients” of Professor Mayranovsky.
On what grounds did all these murders take place? Who gave the orders? There was a special Regulation on the tasks of the reconnaissance and sabotage (read terrorist) service, which directly stated that “the service carries out surveillance and supplies agents to individuals conducting enemy work, the suppression of which, in necessary cases and with special permission from the government, can be carried out by special ways: by compromise, secret seizure, physical influence or elimination.”
In 1952, one of the most successful MGB agents operating abroad, Joseph Grigulevich, trained to use special equipment to assassinate Yugoslav leader Josip Tito using sprayed plague bacilli.
Since 1952, the use of poisons has resumed, but without the participation of Mayranovsky. After Mayranovsky’s removal from the post of head in 1946, the laboratory was divided into two, pharmacological and chemical. They were headed by V. Naumov and A. Grigorovich. The laboratories were moved from the center of Moscow to a new building built in Kuchino.
In the 60-70s, the toxicology laboratory was named Special Laboratory No. 12 of the Central Research Institute of Special and New Technologies of the KGB under the Operational and Technical Directorate. The institute was directly subordinate to the Chairman of the KGB, Yuri Andropov.
In 1980, CIA double agent Boris Korzhak felt a sting similar to a mosquito bite in a store in the suburbs of Washington. A few days later he began to experience internal bleeding and arrhythmia. The doctor he contacted extracted from the “mosquito bite” a microcapsule in which two small holes were made, sealed with wax before entering the body. The wax dissolved in the body, and the poison (ricin) slowly entered the body. The lethal dose of this poison is 0.2 milligrams - half that of cobra venom.
The gloomy glory of this “scientific institution,” despite its secrecy, spread among the people and excited the imagination of Soviet leaders, who continued the terrorist traditions of Comrade Beria. At one time, rumors circulated around Moscow that KGB Chairman Semichastny in 1964 allegedly refused to carry out Brezhnev’s hint on the secret liquidation of Khrushchev... In 1988, KGB Major General Shadrin told Sudoplatov that the highest authority, that is, Gorbachev, was showing interest to the practice of eliminating political rivals in earlier times.
Well, how are things today? Boris Volodarsky in The Wall Street Journal dated April 7, 2005 writes:
“According to Alexander Kuzminov, the former head of a biological intelligence network, who in February of this year published the book “Biological Espionage” in New Zealand, today the Camera is the main consumer and supplier of the 12th department of Directorate “C” of the SVR, who deals with biological warfare issues. Russian President Vladimir Putin was a former head of the FSB and a junior officer of the SVR. The Camera's products (whatever its official name) - toxic biological formulations and chemicals - have been constantly improved over the years as scientific developments open up new possibilities and Kremlin leaders have new needs. These products are highly specialized, tailored to each specific recipient in order to produce the desired effect - usually death or incapacitation - under special conditions. But one condition remains unchanged. Products must meet the requirement that the victim's death or illness appear natural, or at least produce symptoms that will baffle doctors and criminal investigators. To this end, the Chamber has defined its core discipline: the combination of known poisons into original and undetectable forms in the body.”
Even in our time, several examples of poisoning are known. Thus, a KGB agent poisoned the food of the Afghan leader Hafizullah Amin, and in March 2004, with the help of a poisoned letter, the leader of the Chechen separatists Khattab was removed.
In the 90s, one of the Moscow newspapers published an article about the major renovation of a house in Varsonofevsky - deposits of human bones were discovered in the basement. Are these traces of the “successful work” of Mairanovsky’s laboratory?..
Mairanovsky was not the only “Doctor Death”; Beria had other specialists of this kind. The means of physical destruction in the NKVD were developed by microbiologist Colonel Muromtsev. In 1937, he headed a group of “specialists for combating pests in veterinary medicine,” and in 1939 he was appointed head of a department in the 4th special department of the NKVD, which was engaged in the production of special means, strains of bacteria capable of selectively infecting individual organs, as well as pathogens , resistant to all types of drugs existing at that time. In other words, his task was to create means to kill opponents of Soviet power. He was personally subordinate to Beria, who, for unknown merits, recommended that his accomplice be elected academician of VASKHNIL. Unlike the rogue Lysenko, Muromtsev really had “great achievements” in microbiology: the means he developed worked flawlessly. In 1946, Muromtsev was “awarded” the Stalin Prize.
According to Pavel Sudoplatov, this academician also used prisoners as guinea pigs. Another academician of VASKhNIL, who knew Muromtsev well, when asked whether his colleague could create a remedy capable of causing rupture of blood vessels in the brain, replied: “Such a talented person could do absolutely anything!”
In August 1951, Muromtsev was dismissed from the MGB “for health reasons” with the rank of colonel of the medical service. In 1956, he was appointed director of the Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology. N. F. Gamaleya of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences, however, until his death (1960) he remained acting director, since he was not twice approved at the sessions of the Medical Academy in the elections. It is known that at the notorious session of the All-Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences in August 1948, Muromtsev made a statement that “microbiology is waiting for its Lysenko.”
When Muromtsev became director of the IEM, the famous scientist academician P. F. Zdrodovsky submitted his resignation from the institute, because he considered it impossible to work under the leadership of this director. He already had “experience” of working with Muromtsev as a prisoner without rights. In a letter to Ogonyok, published in 1988, employees of the Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences G. I. Abelev and Doctors of Science I. N. Kryukova and V. N. Gershanovich noted that “the directorate of S. N. Muromtsev at the IEM. N. F. Gamaleya left neither a scientific trace nor a good memory in the history of this institute.”
V. Ya. Birshtein: “On October 22, 1992, Moscow chemist Vil Mirzayanov was arrested by security officers and placed in Lefortovo prison. He was accused of revealing state secrets in a series of articles published in Moscow newspapers in 1991-1992, in which he indicated a plan to produce a new type of chemical weapons in Russia, despite international negotiations ongoing at the time to eliminate the production of any chemical weapons. After wide publicity about his case, Mirzayanov was released from prison and later emigrated to the United States. In an interview for a documentary about poisons, Mirzayanov noted that one of Mairanovsky’s most terrible poisons, ricin, was recently produced in Russia in large quantities as a chemical agent. The technical problem was dispersing this poison into the territory of a potential enemy: if a bomb filled with ricin exploded, the poison would inevitably lose its toxic properties due to the high temperature of the explosion. Therefore, it was planned to create bombs filled with special hollow needles with ricin inside them. When such a bomb exploded, the ricin would not be denatured, and at the same time the problem of introducing poison into the bodies of the victims would be solved.”*
“It is difficult to say what is happening with ricin and other Mayranovsky poisons at the moment. However, in February 1994, when Mirzayanov was detained a second time and soon released, the head of the Federal Counterintelligence Service, General Golushko, in an interview given to journalist Evgenia Albats, said: “The operational and technical department [of the former KGB] includes institutes that develop special technology and equipment for intelligence . The operational and technical management, together with designers and institutes, numbers about ten thousand people. We also help the Ministry of Internal Affairs" **. The figure of 10,000 employees mentioned by the general is impressive; only about 20 people *** worked in Mayranovsky’s laboratory.
Sacramental question: why in 1951, the head of the work on the creation of poisons, Colonel of the Medical Service Mayranovsky, was arrested? Was it an accident or was Beria hiding a free or slave accomplice in advance in the impending assassination attempt on Stalin? Why then didn’t he immediately destroy him physically? I will answer all these questions later, but for now two words about the further fate of our domestic executioner in a white coat.
Mairanovsky was arrested in connection with the Zionist case against MGB workers. This case was conducted until 1953, but then none of them were tried during this time.
Mayranovsky’s case was brought into separate proceedings by Ignatiev together with the executor of the sentences, Pavel Sudoplatov’s deputy in the Foreign Department Naum Eitingon, who, in particular, led the liquidation of Leon Trotsky. A special meeting at the Ministry of Internal Affairs quickly sentenced Mairanovsky to 10 years and sent him to Vladimir prison.
By the way, the verdict in the Sudoplatov case, rendered by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court, said:
“Beria and his accomplices, committing grave crimes against humanity, tested deadly, painful poisons on living people. Similar criminal experiments took place in relation to a large number of people sentenced to capital punishment, and in relation to persons disliked by Beria and his accomplices. A special laboratory, created to carry out experiments to test the effect of poison on a living person, worked under the supervision of Sudoplatov and his deputy Eitingon from 1942 to 1946, who demanded from laboratory workers only poisons tested on humans.”
Investigator Ryumin extracted confessions from Mayranovsky, which he later (in 1958) refused. From the interrogation protocol of Mayranovsky (September 23, 1953): “We gave poisons through food, various drinks, and administered poisons using injections with a syringe, a cane, a pen and other piercing, specially equipped objects. They also injected poisons through the skin, sprinkling and pouring on it.”
The latest “achievement” of the main monster of “laboratory X” was the development of a poisoning system that would not be poison in the literal sense of the word, that is, a method of poisoning through the air. For example, poison was applied to an electric lamp, it evaporated when it was turned on and acted through the victim’s respiratory system. Mairanovsky reported to Beria about the new method of destruction. According to one version, many years later Anatoly Sobchak was killed in his hotel room in exactly this way.
Mairanovsky was convicted shortly before Stalin's death. Beria, apparently, was going to release him, but was soon arrested himself. The prosecutor's office immediately used Mayranovsky's statements against himself, against Beria, Abakumov and Merkulov. Now Mairanovsky was presented as Beria's accomplice in his mythical plans to eliminate the Soviet leadership using poisons.
Sudoplatov believed that Mayranovsky's arrest was connected with plans to use him as a witness against someone in senior management. In other words, it was a cover-up arrest. For unclear reasons, he was allowed to live and in February 1953 he was sentenced to ten years in prison for illegal possession of poisons and abuse of office.
When Beria again headed the security agencies, Mairanovsky sent him a huge number of applications for release, wrote about his innocence and referred to work under his direct supervision in 1938-1945. He wrote even after Beria himself was arrested, he wrote simply without knowing about it. The meaning of the scriptures is this: I’m guilty, the strength of my poisons turned out to be insufficient, but I will atone, I solemnly swear to improve.
A characteristic quote from Colonel Mayranovsky’s letter to the chief (April 27, 1953): “I appeal to your generosity: forgive the criminal mistakes I have made... I have proposals for the use of some new substances: both a number of hypnotic and lethal effects - in the implementation “This completely correct installation of yours, given to me, that our technique of using our products in food products and drinks is outdated and that it is necessary to look for new ways of exposure through inhaled air.” Also: “With my hand, more than a dozen sworn enemies of the Soviet regime were destroyed, including nationalists of all kinds.” The surviving documents and letters of Mairanovsky themselves are clear evidence of the inhumanity and cunning of the “knights of the cloak and dagger,” who perfectly mastered not only the methods of exterminating people, but also the methods of appeasing their superiors. By the way, the investigators already understood everything perfectly well, but they feared not so much for the arrested person, but for themselves - where would the curve take them?..
After serving his sentence in 1961, Mayranovsky was released from prison and died three years later in Makhachkala.
Many of Mairanovsky’s employees paid for the inhumane experiments. Shchegolev and Shcheglov committed suicide, Filimonov, Grigorovich and Emelyanov became alcoholics or became mentally ill, and Dmitriev and Mag became disabled.