Laboratory No. 12

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In the Labor Institute of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs called Laboratory No. 12 (also called " Camera " or " The Chamber ") in Moscow , toxic substances for targeted killings were researched, tested and made available for " dirty operations " for the government of the USSR . It has been under the supervision of the authorities of the Russian Federation since 1992 , but its activities are still strictly confidential.

history

In 1921 the establishment of a secret laboratory for biological and chemical substances began and it was placed under the Cheka secret service . He had toxic reagents researched in the laboratory, which should be used in the fight against political opponents.

In 1934 the laboratory moved to 11 Warsonofewski-Gasse, just a short distance from the Lubyanka secret service center. Technical supervision was carried out by the Academy of Sciences of the USSR until 1937 , when it was also subject to the NKVD . From 1940 the NKVD Colonel Professor Grigori Mairanowski headed the laboratory. The institution enjoyed the full support of the Politburo, headed by Stalin . His successors Nikita Khrushchev , Leonid Brezhnev and Yuri Andropov also approved the experiments and poison attacks on political opponents.

The former KGB General Pawel Sudoplatow stated in a book published in 1997 about his secret service operations that in the years 1937 to 1947 and 1950, internal party opponents of Stalin had been murdered with toxins produced in the laboratory. This was the result of an internal investigation ordered by Khrushchev after the 20th party congress of the CPSU in 1956.

After Stalin's death in 1953, the detached and arrested secret service chiefs Lavrenti Beria and Vsevolod Merkulov , who were defeated in the power struggle in the Kremlin, were accused of authorizing human experiments with poison during interrogation of prisoners.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 , the secret laboratory has been run by the FSB , the Russian Federation's domestic intelligence service . According to official information, its main task is to participate in programs to prevent poisoning attacks on people and facilities. But Russian experts also admit that the substances produced there are also used in agent missions abroad.

Research assignments

The toxic products that were synthesized and researched in Laboratory No. 12 have been improved more and more over the years to adapt them to the requirements of the respective KGB leaders and the Supreme Soviet .

All of the unit's projects were kept strictly confidential. Above all, human experiments were carried out with poisons. In the "chamber", agents were tested on convicts before they were shot in order to examine their bodies in various stages of intoxication. The chemicals used included mustard gas , ricin , digitoxin , thallium and curare , among others .

Research has also been carried out into the delivery of these poisons through hidden needles or compressed air guns. Another focus was the search for a tasteless poison that could be added unnoticed to the food of people to be disposed of.

Victim

In 1946 the Ukrainian nationalist Oleksander Schumsky , who had been exiled to the Saratov region in Russia , was murdered with poison from Laboratory No. 12, and in 1959 the Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera in Munich .

Theodor Romscha , Archbishop of the Greek Catholic Church in western Ukraine annexed by the Soviet Union, is also said to have been poisoned in 1947.

Nikolai Chochlow , a defector and former KGB employee, was nearly murdered in 1957 with a rare thallium compound mixed in his coffee . He was saved by US specialists after one year of intensive treatment. They concluded that the poison was made in Laboratory No. 12.

The Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markow was poisoned in London in 1978 with rizin balls, which are also said to have been produced in Laboratory No. 12. The attack was carried out by the Bulgarian secret service , but the poison came from the KGB, as former KGB Major General Oleg Kalugin announced.

literature

  • Ken Alibek , S. Handelman: Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World - Told from Inside by the Man Who Ran it. Delta, 1999, 2000, ISBN 0-385-33496-6 .
  • Vadim J. Birstein: The Perversion Of Knowledge: The True Story of Soviet Science. Westview Press, 2004, ISBN 0-8133-4280-5 .
  • Richard H. Cummings: Cold War Radio: The Dangerous History of American Broadcasting in Europe, 1950-1989 . 2009, 532.
  • Milton Leitenberg, Raymond A. Zilinskas, Jens H. Kuhn: The Soviet Biological Weapons Program: A History . 2012.
  • Nikita Petrov : Palachi. Oni wypolnjali sakasy Stalina. Moscow 2011, pp. 69–84. ( Executioner. They carried out Stalin's orders ).

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dmitrij Boltschek: Гость радиожурнала Поверх барьеров - историк спецслужб Борис Володарский . Interview with Boris Wolodarsky on Radio Swoboda , June 4, 2009 (Russian). KGB's Poison Factory . (English version; only for registered users).
  2. ↑ В Великобритании и США опубликована книга бывшего сотрудника КГБ Александра Кузьминова "Биологический шпионаж" Radio Svoboda, 23 February 2005 (in the US and the UK, a book by the former KGB employee Alexander Kuzminov was published), accessed on August 27, 2015.
  3. ↑ Eduard Steiner: Mixtures from Laboratory No. 12 . The Standard , November 28, 2006; Retrieved from derStandard.at on November 25, 2014.
  4. ↑ a b c d e Boris Sokolow: Советская история отравлений . Grani.ru, December 14, 2004, accessed August 27, 2015 (Russian)
  5. ↑ Pavel Sudoplatov: Specoperacii. Lubyanka i Kremlin '1930-1950 gody. Moscow 1997, pp. 449-450.
  6. ↑ Nikita Petrov: Palaci. Oni vypolnjali zakazy Stalina. Moscow 2011, p. 69.
  7. ↑ В Великобритании и США опубликована книга бывшего сотрудника КГБ Александра Кузьминова "Биологический шпионаж" Radio Svoboda, 23 February 2005 (in the US and the UK, a book by the former KGB employee Alexander Kuzminov was published), accessed on August 27, 2015.
  8. ↑ Cummings (2009), page 234.
    Mikhail Sergejewitsch Voslensky : The secret is revealed. Moscow archives tell. Langen Müller 1995, ISBN 3-7844-2536-4 , pp. 56-58.
  9. ^ The KGB's Poison Factory . Wall Street Journal, accessed November 25, 2014
  10. ↑ Donald Rayfield: Stalin and his executioners . Karl Blessing Verlag, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-89667-181-2
  11. ↑ Jamie Frater: Top 10 Evil Human Experiments . Listverse, March 14, 2008; Retrieved November 25, 2014.
  12. ↑ Valery Alexandrowitsch Wolin: Russia rehabilitates those innocently convicted by Soviet military tribunals . 4th Bautzen Forum of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation from June 17 to 18, 1993: June 17, 1953. The beginning of the end of the Soviet empire ; Pp. 75–88, here p. 76 (pdf; 712 kB), documentation, p. 76
  13. ↑ Ex-KGB Agent Kalugin: Putin Was 'Only A Major' , Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty , March 31, 2015, accessed August 25, 2015.