Poison laboratory of the Soviet secret services

Poison laboratory of the Soviet secret services, alternatively known as Laboratory 1, Laboratory 12, and Kamera which means "The Chamber" in Russian, was a covert research and development facility of the Soviet secret police agencies.

Chronology

 * 1921: First poison laboratory within the Soviet secret services was established under the name "Special Office". It was headed by professor of medicine Ignatii Kazakov, according to Pavel Sudoplatov.
 * 1926: The laboratory was under the supervision of Genrikh Yagoda, a deputy of OGPU chairman Vyacheslav Menzhinsky, who became NKVD chief in 1934 after Menzhinsky's death.
 * February 20, 1939: It becomes Laboratory 1 headed by Grigory Mairanovsky. The laboratory was under the direct supervision of NKVD director Lavrenty Beria and his deputy Vsevolod Merkulov from 1939 to March 1953.
 * December 21, 1951: Grigory Mairanovsky arrested in connection with Viktor Abakumov's arrest, which was presumably a part of Joseph Stalin's campaign to remove NKVD chief, Lavrenty Beria.
 * March 14, 1953: It was renamed to Laboratory 12. V. Naumov is the newly appointed head. Lavrenty Beria and Vsevolod Merkulov were executed after Stalin's death. Immediate NKVD supervisor of the laboratory, Pavel Sudoplatov, received a long term in prison.
 * 1978: Expanded into the Central Investigation Institute for Special Technology within the First Chief Directorate of the KGB.
 * Currently: Several laboratories of the SVR, (headquartered in Yasenevo near Moscow), are responsible for the "creation of biological and toxin weapons for clandestine operations in the West".

Human experimentation
Mairanovsky and his colleagues tested a number of deadly poisons on prisoners from the Gulags ("enemies of the people"), including mustard gas, ricin, digitoxin, curare and many others. The goal of the experiments was to find a tasteless, odourless chemical that could not be detected post mortem. Candidate poisons were given to the victims, with a meal or drink, as "medication".

Finally, a preparation with the desired properties called C-2 was developed. According to witness testimonies, the victim changed physically, became shorter, weakened quickly, became calm and silent and died within fifteen minutes. Mairanovsky brought to the laboratory people of varied physical condition and ages in order to have a more complete picture about the action of each poison.

Pavel Sudoplatov and Nahum Eitingon approved special equipment [poisons] only if it had been tested on "humans", according to testimony of Mikhail Filimonov. Vsevolod Merkulov said that these experiments were approved by NKVD chief Lavrenty Beria. After his arrest, Beria himself testified on August 28, 1953 that "I gave orders to Mairanovsky to conduct experiments on people sentenced to the highest measure of punishment, but it was not my idea".

In addition to human experimentation, Mairanovsky personally executed people with poisons, under the supervision of Sudoplatov.

Prominent victims

 * The leader of the Russian All-Military Union general Alexander Kutepov was drugged and kidnapped in Paris in 1930. He died from a heart attack due to an overdose of the administered drug.


 * One of the leaders of the White movement, Russian general Evgenii Miller, was drugged and kidnapped in Paris in 1937. He was executed later in Russia.


 * Abram Slutsky (17 February 1938)


 * Archbishop Theodore Romzha of the Ukrainian Catholic Church was killed in 1947 by injection of curare provided by Mairanovsky and administered by a medical nurse who was an Ministry for State Security (USSR) agent.


 * In 1978, dissident Bulgarian writer Georgi Markov was assassinated in London using a tiny pellet poisoned with ricin; the necessary equipment was prepared in this laboratory. In a Discovery Channel television program about his illustrated book of espionage equipment called "The Ultimate Spy," espionage historian H. Keith Melton indicated that once the Bulgarian secret police had decided to kill Markhov, KGB specialists from the Laboratory gave the Bulgarians a choice between two KGB tools that could be provided for the task- either a  poisonous topical gelatin to be smeared on Markhov, or an instrument to administer a poison pellet, as was eventually done.


 * Attempted poisoning of the second President of Afghanistan Hafizullah Amin on December 13, 1979. Department 8 of KGB succeeded in infiltrating the illegal agent Mitalin Talybov (codenamed SABIR) as a chef of Amin's presidential palace. However, Amin switched his food and drink as if he expected to be poisoned, so his son-in-law became seriously ill, and ironically, was flown to a hospital in Moscow.


 * Cy Oggins, significant for being one of the few Americans who became a Soviet spy, subsequently was sent to the Gulag, and finally was executed by the Soviets themselves.

Alleged victims

 * Russian writer Maksim Gorky and his son. During the Trial of the Twenty One in 1938, NKVD chief Genrikh Yagoda admitted that he poisoned to death Maksim Gorky and his son and unsuccessfully tried to poison future NKVD boss Nikolay Yezhov. The attempted poisoning of Yezhov was later officially dismissed as falsification, but Vyacheslav Molotov believed that the poisoning accusations were true. Yagoda was never officially rehabilitated (recognized as an innocent victim of political repressions) by Soviet authorities.
 * Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Russian historians Anton Antonov-Ovseenko and Edvard Radzinsky believe that Stalin was poisoned by associates of NKVD chief Lavrentiy Beria, based on the interviews of a former Stalin bodyguard and numerous circumstantial evidence. Stalin planned to dismiss and execute Molotov and other senior members of the Soviet regime in 1953. According to Radzinsky, Stalin was poisoned by Khrustalev, a senior bodyguard briefly mentioned in the memoirs of Svetlana Alliluyeva, Stalin's daughter.
 * Journalist Anna Politkovskaya. During the Beslan school hostage crisis in September 2004 and while on her way to Beslan to help in negotiations with the hostage-takers, Politkovskaya fell violently ill and lost consciousness after drinking tea given to her by Aeroflot flight attendant. She survived. The drug was allegedly prepared in the FSB poison facility.
 * Another victim was former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko. He was poisoned in a sushi bar in London in 2006. Traces of polonium-210 were found in his body. In a farewell letter, Litvinenko accused president Vladimir Putin of being behind the attack on his life. Litvinenko was critic of the Putin regime and accused the FSB of being behind the 1999 attacks in Russia. He died on 23 October 2006.

Planned victims

 * President of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Josip Broz Tito. In the late 1940s, the laboratory manufactured a powdered plague for use in a small container and where the assassin was vaccinated against plague. The device was to be used against Tito, but MGB agent Iosif Grigulevich, who had previously organized the assault on the villa of Leon Trotsky and now received the assignment to kill Tito, was recalled after the death of Joseph Stalin.
 * The first democratically elected President of the Republic of Georgia, Zviad Gamsakhurdia. According to former Deputy Director of Biopreparat Ken Alibek, this laboratory was possibly involved in the design of an undetectable chemical or biological agent to assassinate Gamsakhurdia. BBC News reported that some Gamsakhurdia friends believed he committed suicide, "although his widow insists that he was murdered."