The most terrible rumors circulated about this corner building in Varsonofevsky Lane in Moscow, adjacent to the building of the former internal NKVD prison. When it started here a few years ago major renovation, under the foundation, builders discovered rubble of human bones. It was here that in a special laboratory, until the middle of the last century, the effects of various poisons on prisoners were studied. Some of the experimental subjects died immediately, others slowly dried up before the eyes of the experimenters.

One day Stanislav Lekarev, former employee The KGB translator of the secret poison laboratory told me:

“There they collected recipes for poisonous substances and toxins, which were developed by specialists from India, Egypt, Japan, and Germany. It was in these countries that there were a lot of strong pharmaceutical chemists and domestic specialists. As it turned out, in their developments, scientists even used recipes from the chronicles of the times of Ivan the Terrible.”

“The tsar had his own poisoner, the Belgian doctor Elisha, as he was called,” says publicist Valery Yarho. - He was known as different names. His real name was Elisius Bomelius. He masterfully knew how to create different poisons by order of the king: some killed instantly, others slowly, so that a person rotted for months and died on the appointed day and hour. Grozny himself was afraid of his doctor and did not receive treatment from him. As a result, Bomelia suffered the fate of all those in whom Ivan the Terrible saw a potential threat. The court poisoner was forced under torture to confess to the conspiracy, then taken away somewhere to secret place. No one saw Dr. Bomelius again. A few centuries later, his fate would be exactly repeated by Stalin’s court poisoner. The head of that very secret laboratory is Heinrich Mayranovsky.”

“We looked at which specialists were available, and on a competitive basis we settled on him,” said Stanislav Lekarev, a former KGB officer and translator of the secret poison laboratory. - But he had inclinations towards this, because not everyone would agree to be a producer and manufacturer of deadly weapons. Thus, the lives of many people are on this man’s conscience.

For many years, Mairanovsky’s laboratory developed poisons that left no traces. Experts traveled around the world collecting information about the most exotic species military special equipment.

I remember very well when, at a party congress in North Korea, the entire delegation of one country suddenly died. The diagnosis is poisoning. But when specialists from our laboratory arrived and began taking tests, they did not find any signs of poisoning. People fell asleep and did not wake up. And only later, when the liver of one of the dead was crushed and a spectral analysis was carried out, signs of poison were discovered. It was curarin - a poison of natural origin. The plant contains high larkspur.

It was used by Indians in South America. They moistened the end of the arrow with curarin. When this arrow hit a large animal, it immediately suffered from cardiac paralysis. It also turned out that after this the poison disappears from the body within 24 hours. This is what we need. There were other poisons that also mimic liver disease or pulmonary edema, which can happen to anyone. These poisons were also considered popular laboratory products.

The development of another special laboratory was discovered in London in 2003. British police arrested a group of terrorists from Chechnya. In an underground laboratory, they established the production of one of the strongest poisons - ricin. Its lethal dose is 80 times less than that of potassium cyanide. For poisoning, it is enough to inhale an aerosol or microscopic particles of powder. The mechanism of its effect has not yet been thoroughly studied. Ricin can act selectively, killing certain cells. Today, scientists are trying to find a way to use it in the fight against cancer.”

“Our chemists synthesize about 150 thousand new compounds a year, and it is likely that among them there will be some that have pharmacological activity,” says the head of the development department medicines Vasily Kazei. - At the moment, there are computer programs that allow you to select from a large number of substances those that will be the most successful. However, these software products are not yet perfect.

For the arsenal of military special weapons, ricin turned out to be a real find. An ideal poison, colorless and odorless. Moreover, from the most popular raw material - waste from the production of castor oil."

“After the war, ricin was in service with our security officers and was used for terrorist purposes,” continues Lev Fedorov, Doctor of Chemical Sciences, President of the Union “For Chemical Safety” (photo 11). - It was this poison that killed the Bulgarian dissident Georgiy Markov in London. He received an injection with an umbrella, in the tip of which a microcapsule with poison was hidden. An antidote for ricin has not yet been found. Depending on the dose, death may occur immediately or only on the 5th day.”

“The peculiarity of the secret services, namely the Soviet ones, is precisely that they always strived not to leave traces,” testifies retired KGB general Oleg Danilovich Kalugin. “It was necessary to make sure that no one could ever point a finger at them.” Poisons are ideal for this. This, perhaps, comes from the Byzantine psychology of our leaders. They have always been a favorite means of dealing with their opponents and opponents.”

Photo. 11. Lev Fedorov

The special laboratory contained not only poisons. In those years, the young translator Stanislav Lekarev was a member of the Moscow tennis team. As an athlete, he had to compete for a departmental team at the championship in athletics. The day before, he stole several tablets of the drug from the special forces arsenal from the laboratory.

“These drugs were used by guys from the Brandenburg-800 division, the German special forces of the Abwehr,” commented Stanislav Lekarev, a former KGB officer and translator of the secret poison laboratory. - They made big throws, and in the Caucasus they climbed mountains under the influence of this drug. I knew the effect of the drug only in general outline. Therefore, I decided to limit myself to a small dose.”

“I feel,” Lekarev continued, “that my calves, then my back muscles, biceps, triceps, and abs are starting to turn to stone. In general, I’m a hero, I’ll scatter 5-6 people, like Schwarzenegger.”

According to the rules of the championship, first it was necessary to pass the running standard. But then an unexpected obstacle arose. The start was delayed for several hours. The athlete, pumped up with a combat stimulant, began to get nervous that the effect of the drug would soon wear off and all the tricks would be in vain.

“No, I had no reason to worry,” says Stanislav, “it worked for two days. I ran, just didn’t reach the first category. Everyone gasped, they didn’t know how I did it. They said: “Well, now you’ll run around in the KGB team, we’ll send you everywhere.” I said: “What are you doing?” But after the effect of the drug wore off, I vomited, and I lay and slept for a day without waking up. That is, the body recovers and forces are remobilized in about two to three days.”

However, as experts say, a person can be super-endurable and incredibly strong, but completely devoid of intelligence, which means he is unsuitable for performing a special task. The latest developments from secret laboratories are equipment that seems to massage the brain with special waves, leading mental condition to normal or adjusting for special tasks.

“A fighter of the 21st century, or a super fighter, as we call him, is, first of all, a thinking person,” says Professor, Lieutenant General of the Medical Service Evgeniy Zhilyaev. - This is our main premise. As soon as a person stops thinking, his efficiency decreases professional activity. This is completely obvious. Therefore, our task is to provide pharmacological, physical, physiotherapeutic methods, psychological methods activation of brain capabilities, intellectual abilities, that is, to make maximum use of what distinguishes us from animals.”

Military pharmacology, the secrets of which they first agreed to reveal to me, allows you to carry out even impossible missions. Anti-fear pills are a thing of the past. As well as drugs, taking which you can not sleep for a whole week. As it turns out, special equipment has already been created that allows you to survive without any means of protection, even if the enemy used any weapon of mass destruction.

Today we have a number of drugs in our arsenal, in particular to protect against ionizing radiation. They prevent immediate death even at super-lethal doses of damage. Today we have a drug, the administration of which can delay the death of a person by three to four days.

It’s hard to even imagine what four days means in battle conditions, when the enemy resorted to last resort. However, it is also difficult to imagine how a soldier will feel, knowing that he is doomed and his miraculous salvation- only a short reprieve from inevitable death.

Is this inhumane? Yes, we do not cure soldiers. But along with them, those who need their fire support go into battle. And our soldiers continue to shoot and carry out their combat mission.

After the terrible footage of the consequences of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which went around the whole world, it seemed that the military had finally managed to create the ultimate weapon. It was then that work began in secret laboratories to create a universal means of protection. In essence, scientists had to find the elixir of life. Even limited period actions.

In the UK, on ​​December 17, a book by intelligence historian Boris Volodarsky was published entitled “The KGB Poison Factory” with the subtitle “From Lenin to Litvinenko.” The book talks about the use of poisons by Soviet intelligence services to eliminate enemies of the communist regime. Boris Volodarsky - former officer of the GRU General Staff Soviet army, author of books and articles on intelligence history, fellow of the International Studies Association at the Hoover Institution, and co-editor of the intelligence history journal Personal Files.
His book “The KGB Poison Factory” is dedicated to the history of the development and use of poisons by Soviet and Russian intelligence services, from the Cheka to the FSB. Boris Volodarsky begins his story in 1918, when, on Lenin’s initiative, the first laboratory for the production of poisons was created in Moscow.
“From the very beginning,” writes the author of “The KGB Poison Factory,” “its “products” were intended for use against “enemies of the people.”
The book describes and analyzes in detail the foreign operations of the NKVD and the KGB to eliminate the leaders of anti-Soviet organizations using poisons, the case of Alexander Litvinenko and the attempt to poison the President of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko are analyzed in detail.
Boris Volodarsky argues that the murder of Litvinenko is only one episode in a series of murders carried out by Soviet and Russian intelligence services using poisons, but the case is still outstanding for a number of reasons. An extraordinary poison was used, and most importantly: the murder caused an extraordinary worldwide resonance.
Boris Volodarsky believes that the personal security of the Soviet leaders was involved in the crimes described. One chapter of the book is called " Dead Souls. From Stalin to Putin." It is dedicated to the personal bodyguards of all Soviet leaders. The culmination is the head of Putin’s personal security, Viktor Zolotov.
At the same time he is deputy director Federal service security During Putin's two terms, he promoted from colonel to colonel general. He entered the closest, closest circle of Putin.
Much has been written about the fact that polonium-210, which was used to poison Litvinenko, is too expensive for private individuals to use. As Boris Volodarsky says, poison is inexpensive. This was specifically said to distract the public.
According to experts who have worked with polonium, two factors must be taken into account. First: it's not polonium at all. It is impossible to work with polonium-210 and it is also impossible to poison it. Based on this polonium-210, a completely special poison was produced in a special laboratory, which in the form of a salt crystal, very well and quickly soluble, was subsequently used against Litvinenko.
This crystal was placed in a special jelly, which was placed in two shells to avoid radiation. But there was still radiation for some reason: either the wrong substances were used, or some other circumstances played a role. The radiation was first detected on October 16, when Lugovoi and Kovtun came into direct contact with this poison at the Best Western Hotel.
The laboratory for the production of poisons was created on Lenin's initiative. After Kaplan attempted to assassinate him, he was informed that the bullets were poisoned with a substance called ricin. He became very interested in this, and after some time a small laboratory was created, which was called the “Special Office”.
Judging by the numerous poisonings that have occurred over last years, the poisons laboratory continues its work.
Two years ago, in a suburb of London, a key witness in the case of laundering criminal money from Russia, businessman Alexandra Perepilichny, unexpectedly died. It was announced that the poison of an exotic Asian plant had been discovered in digestive system deceased.

Gelsemium – yellow jasmine

The toxic substance is obtained from plants of the Gelsemium family, or more precisely, from a rare species of this plant growing in Asia - Gelsemium elegans. There are known cases when this poison was mixed into food by Chinese and Russian hired killers.

Alexander Perepelichny.

Kremlin critic and businessman Alexander Perepelichny was granted asylum in the UK in 2009 and assisted a Swiss investigation into Russian money laundering schemes by testifying against suspected Moscow officials involved in corruption, as well as those who may have been involved in a murder in a pre-trial detention center lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
Shortly before Perepelichny died aged just 44 from a heart attack while jogging near his home in Surrey, he told colleagues he had received threats.
Despite the fact that Perepelichny was the fourth person to testify in the Magnitsky case and die under strange circumstances, the Surrey County police initially did not find anything suspicious in his death.
Only on May 18 this year, British authorities reopened the investigation, closed in 2012, as new laboratory tests found traces of a substance derived from the highly toxic gelsemium plant in the stomach of the deceased businessman.
The Surrey coroner said toxicology tests raised "serious questions" about Perepelichny's death: he may have been killed because of his assistance to investigators.

Polonium-210.

Polonium is a very rare and extremely radioactive element found in uranium ores. Polonium-210 is approximately 250 thousand times more toxic than hydrocyanic acid, which is also extremely poisonous and can cause rapid death in concentrated form.

Alexander Litvinenko.

Alexander Litvinenko was a former officer of the Russian Federal Security Service who fled with his family to London, where he was granted refugee status in 2000.
Litvinenko was poisoned in a London sushi bar in November 2006, and an autopsy revealed that the cause of death was the presence of polonium-210 in his body. According to British radiation experts, Litvinenko was the first person in the UK to die due to radioactive exposure to polonium.
Before his death, Litvinenko wrote a letter in which he blamed Vladimir Putin for his death. Previously, he accused the FSB of bombing residential buildings and other actions aimed at bringing the current one to power. Russian President. Moscow denies these accusations.
Litvinenko also accused Putin of having ordered the murder of journalist and Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya, who was shot just a few months before Litvinenko’s death.

Thallium

Thallium – chemical element, a heavy metal found in potassium ores and a byproduct of refining sulfide ores. A small and non-toxic amount of the radioisotope thallium-201 is used in medicine for x-rays.
Thallium salts are highly toxic substances that are used, for example, in the production of rat poisons and preparations for killing harmful insects. Thallium poisoning leads to hair loss. Because this chemical is used as a murder weapon, it is sometimes called "poisoner's poison."

Nikolay Khokhlov

Nikolai Khokhlov was a Soviet intelligence captain who was forced to emigrate to the United States in 1953 because he reported on KGB operations abroad: he reported on the planned assassination of one of the leaders of the People's Labor Union of Solidarists, Georgy Okolovich. In 1957, Khokhlov was treated in Germany for thallium poisoning as a result of an attempt on his life. This poisoning is considered the first case in history of the KGB using toxic substances.

Yuri Shchekochikhin.

Engaged investigative journalism Russian journalist Yuri Shchekochikhin spoke out against corruption and strong influence organized crime in Russia.
He died in July 2003 just days before a scheduled meeting in the United States with an FBI investigator. Shortly before his death, he was seriously ill, but the symptoms included only a severe allergic reaction.
In Russia, it was announced that Shchekochikhin died due to Lyell's syndrome, a severe form of allergic dermatitis, but his drug treatment and autopsy results were under the control of the Russian FSB. Some experts believe that the symptoms of the journalist’s mysterious illness are similar to those that Khokhlov and Litvinenko had.

Tetrachlorodibenzodioxin (TCDD) – “Dioxin”.

TCDD is colloquially called dioxin. It's about about a colorless and odorless substance. Dioxin is found in Agent Orange, which was used by the United States during the Vietnam War. According to the International Agency for Research on Cancer, TCDD is considered carcinogenic to humans.

Victor Yushchenko.

Ukrainian politician Viktor Yushchenko was poisoned with a dangerous amount of TCDD in late 2004 during the presidential election campaign, when his main rival was the pro-Russian candidate Viktor Yanukovych.
According to the analyzes performed, Yushchenko’s body contained the second highest concentration of TCDD ever detected in a person. The consequence of the poisoning was chronic acne, which severely deformed the skin of the face, and recovery was extremely slow.
Yushchenko, who advocated Ukraine's integration into the European Union and the country's membership in NATO, said that his poisoning "is not a private matter" and blamed Russian authorities in obstructing the investigation designed to find those responsible for the poisoning.
According to the official election results, Yanukovych was declared the winner, but this marked the beginning of protests that were later called the “Orange Revolution”. The Supreme Court of Ukraine, having checked the voting results, decided that the results were rigged in favor of Yanukovych, and called new elections, the winner of which was Yushchenko.

Sarin and other nerve agents.

Sarin is an odorless and tasteless liquid nerve agent. It causes death by suffocation because the victim cannot control the muscles involved in the breathing process. Particularly dangerous if inhaled. Sarin evaporates easily and its vapors can penetrate the body and skin. The UN has classified sarin as a weapon. mass destruction. Possession of sarin is prohibited by the Chemical Weapons Convention.

Ibn al-Khattab.

According to FSB statements, its operatives killed in 2002 the field commander Khattab, who fought on the side of the Chechen rebels in the 1990s and early 2000s. Khattab's relatives and sources in Chechnya claim that the commander died shortly after opening a letter he received coated with "a fast-acting nerve agent, possibly sarin or a drug of similar properties."

Ricin.

In the Soviet Union during cold war The poison ricin was used as a weapon. KGB agents were suspected of at least three attempts to assassinate Warsaw Pact defectors using these weapons.
The poison ricin is made from the seeds of the Ricinus communis (castor bean) plant, which are crushed to produce castor oil. The pulp of 8 crushed seeds is considered a dangerous dose for an adult. But deaths from eating castor bean seeds are rare because the seeds have a hard-to-digest shell and the human body is able to digest the toxin.
The poison ricin is most dangerous if it gets into circulatory system person by injection. In purified powder form, a dose of ricin the size of a few table salt crystals can be sufficient to cause death in humans.

Georgy Markov.

The most notorious case of the so-called “umbrella murder” was the 1978 murder in London of Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov. Markov, who contributed to the BBC and Radio Liberty, died four hours after he was stabbed in the leg with a ricin-poisoned needle hidden in an umbrella. The injection was given at the moment when Markov was boarding a bus on Waterloo Bridge.

Vladimir Kostov.

Ten days earlier, a similar assassination attempt was made on the Bulgarian defector Vladimir Kostov, who worked for Radio Liberty. He was pricked in the back with a needle containing the same drug at one of the Paris metro stations in August 1978. However, the injection dose was small, and Kostov survived.

Boris Korzhak.

In August 1981, while visiting a grocery store in the US state of Virginia, exposed CIA double agent Boris Korzhak was wounded in the kidney by a ricin ball fired from a blowgun. Korzhak survived, and always blamed the assassination attempt on the KGB.

Unidentified poisons.

Hafizullah Amin.

Afghan Cold War politician Hafizullah Amin led Afghanistan for three months after he ordered the assassination of pro-Soviet Afghan President Nur Muhammad Taraki. Soviet authorities accused Amin of being a CIA agent. A KGB agent who managed to get a job as a cook in the presidential palace tried to poison Amin on December 13, 1979.
However, Amin suspected that they wanted to poison him, and exchanged his dish and drink with his son-in-law. He fell ill and was sent to Moscow for treatment. Two weeks later, Amin was killed in a storming of the palace Soviet troops. Babrak Karmal became the Afghan president.

Anna Politkovskaya.

Journalist and human rights activist, Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya was seriously poisoned in September 2004 after drinking tea during an Aeroflot flight. Politkovskaya was heading to Beslan, where at that moment the terrorists were holding hostages in a school. Politkovskaya was sure that FSB agents were trying to poison her.
According to press reports, an unknown toxin was used, prepared in one of the secret chemical laboratories left over from Soviet times. Two years later, Politkovskaya was shot dead in the entrance of her house in Moscow.

This is far from full list cases of poisoning disliked by the Kremlin regime. Quite a lot has happened in Russia in recent years mysterious deaths famous people, which suggest poisoning when completely healthy man suddenly dies from an illness that came from nowhere.

Gelsemium - yellow jasmine

The toxic substance is obtained from plants of the Gelsemium family, or more precisely, from a rare species of this plant growing in Asia - Gelsemium elegans. There are known cases when this poison was mixed into food by Chinese and Russian hired killers.

Alexander Perepelichny.

Kremlin critic and businessman Alexander Perepelichny was granted asylum in the UK in 2009 and assisted a Swiss investigation into Russian money laundering schemes by testifying against suspected Moscow officials involved in corruption, as well as those who may have been involved in a murder in a pre-trial detention center lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
Shortly before Perepelichny died aged just 44 from a heart attack while jogging near his home in Surrey, he told colleagues he had received threats.
Despite the fact that Perepelichny was the fourth person to testify in the Magnitsky case and die under strange circumstances, the Surrey County police initially did not find anything suspicious in his death.
Only on May 18 this year, British authorities reopened the investigation, closed in 2012, as new laboratory tests found traces of a substance derived from the highly toxic gelsemium plant in the stomach of the deceased businessman.
The Surrey coroner said toxicology tests raised "serious questions" about Perepelichny's death: he may have been killed because of his assistance to investigators.

Polonium-210.

Polonium is a very rare and extremely radioactive element found in uranium ores. Polonium-210 is approximately 250 thousand times more toxic than hydrocyanic acid, which is also extremely poisonous and can cause rapid death in concentrated form.

Alexander Litvinenko.

Alexander Litvinenko was a former officer of the Russian Federal Security Service who fled with his family to London, where he was granted refugee status in 2000.
Litvinenko was poisoned in a London sushi bar in November 2006, and an autopsy revealed that the cause of death was the presence of polonium-210 in his body. According to British radiation experts, Litvinenko was the first person in the UK to die due to radioactive exposure to polonium.
Before his death, Litvinenko wrote a letter in which he blamed Vladimir Putin for his death. He previously accused the FSB of bombing residential buildings and other actions aimed at bringing the current Russian president to power. Moscow denies these accusations.
Litvinenko also accused Putin of having ordered the murder of journalist and Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya, who was shot just a few months before Litvinenko’s death.

Thallium

Thallium is a chemical element, a heavy metal found in potassium ores, and also a by-product in the refining of sulfide ores. A small and non-toxic amount of the radioisotope thallium-201 is used in medicine for x-rays.
Thallium salts are highly toxic substances that are used, for example, in the production of rat poisons and preparations for killing harmful insects. Thallium poisoning leads to hair loss. Because this chemical is used as a murder weapon, it is sometimes called "poisoner's poison."

Nikolay Khokhlov

Nikolai Khokhlov was a Soviet intelligence captain who was forced to emigrate to the United States in 1953 because he reported on KGB operations abroad: he reported on the planned assassination of one of the leaders of the People's Labor Union of Solidarists, Georgy Okolovich. In 1957, Khokhlov was treated in Germany for thallium poisoning as a result of an attempt on his life. This poisoning is considered the first case in history of the KGB using toxic substances.

Yuri Shchekochikhin.

Russian investigative journalist Yuri Shchekochikhin spoke out against corruption and the strong influence of organized crime in Russia.
He died in July 2003 just days before a scheduled meeting in the United States with an FBI investigator. Shortly before his death, he was seriously ill, but the symptoms included only a severe allergic reaction.
In Russia, it was announced that Shchekochikhin died due to Lyell's syndrome, a severe form of allergic dermatitis, but his drug treatment and autopsy results were under the control of the Russian FSB. Some experts believe that the symptoms of the journalist’s mysterious illness are similar to those that Khokhlov and Litvinenko had.

Tetrachlorodibenzodioxin (TCDD) - "Dioxin".

TCDD is colloquially called dioxin. We are talking about a colorless and odorless substance. Dioxin is found in Agent Orange, which was used by the United States during the Vietnam War. According to the International Agency for Research on Cancer, TCDD is considered carcinogenic to humans.

Victor Yushchenko.

Ukrainian politician Viktor Yushchenko was poisoned with a dangerous amount of TCDD in late 2004 during the presidential election campaign, when his main rival was the pro-Russian candidate Viktor Yanukovych.
According to the analyzes performed, Yushchenko’s body contained the second highest concentration of TCDD ever detected in a person. The consequence of the poisoning was chronic acne, which severely deformed the skin of the face, and recovery was extremely slow.
Yushchenko, who advocated Ukraine's integration into the European Union and the country's membership in NATO, said his poisoning was "not a private matter" and accused Russian authorities of obstructing the investigation to find those responsible for the poisoning.
According to the official election results, Yanukovych was declared the winner, but this marked the beginning of protests that were later called the “Orange Revolution”. The Supreme Court of Ukraine, having checked the voting results, decided that the results were rigged in favor of Yanukovych, and called new elections, the winner of which was Yushchenko.

Sarin and other nerve agents.

Sarin is an odorless and tasteless liquid nerve agent. It causes death by suffocation because the victim cannot control the muscles involved in the breathing process. Particularly dangerous if inhaled. Sarin evaporates easily and its vapors can penetrate the body and skin. The UN has classified sarin as a weapon of mass destruction. Possession of sarin is prohibited by the Chemical Weapons Convention.

Ibn al-Khattab.

According to FSB statements, its operatives killed in 2002 the field commander Khattab, who fought on the side of the Chechen rebels in the 1990s and early 2000s. Khattab's relatives and sources in Chechnya claim that the commander died shortly after opening a letter he received coated with "a fast-acting nerve agent, possibly sarin or a drug of similar properties."

Ricin.

The Soviet Union used the poison ricin as a weapon during the Cold War. KGB agents were suspected of at least three attempts to assassinate Warsaw Pact defectors using these weapons.
The poison ricin is made from the seeds of the Ricinus communis (castor bean) plant, which are crushed to produce castor oil. The pulp of 8 crushed seeds is considered a dangerous dose for an adult. But deaths from eating castor bean seeds are rare because the seeds have a hard-to-digest shell and the human body is able to digest the toxin.
The poison ricin is most dangerous if it enters the human circulatory system by injection. In purified powder form, a dose of ricin the size of a few table salt crystals can be sufficient to cause death in humans.

Georgy Markov.

The most notorious case of the so-called umbrella murder was the 1978 murder in London of Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov. Markov, who contributed to the BBC and Radio Liberty, died four hours after he was stabbed in the leg with a ricin-poisoned needle hidden in an umbrella. The injection was given at the moment when Markov was boarding a bus on Waterloo Bridge.

Vladimir Kostov.

Ten days earlier, a similar assassination attempt was made on the Bulgarian defector Vladimir Kostov, who worked for Radio Liberty. He was pricked in the back with a needle containing the same drug at one of the Paris metro stations in August 1978. However, the injection dose was small, and Kostov survived.

Boris Korzhak.

In August 1981, while visiting a grocery store in the US state of Virginia, exposed CIA double agent Boris Korzhak was wounded in the kidney by a ricin ball fired from a blowgun. Korzhak survived, and always blamed the assassination attempt on the KGB.

Unidentified poisons.

Hafizullah Amin.

Afghan Cold War politician Hafizullah Amin led Afghanistan for three months after he ordered the assassination of pro-Soviet Afghan President Nur Muhammad Taraki. Soviet authorities accused Amin of being a CIA agent. A KGB agent who managed to get a job as a cook in the presidential palace tried to poison Amin on December 13, 1979.
However, Amin suspected that they wanted to poison him, and exchanged his dish and drink with his son-in-law. He fell ill and was sent to Moscow for treatment. Two weeks later, Amin was killed when Soviet troops stormed the palace. Babrak Karmal became the Afghan president.

Anna Politkovskaya.

Journalist and human rights activist, Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya was seriously poisoned in September 2004 after drinking tea during an Aeroflot flight. Politkovskaya was heading to Beslan, where at that moment the terrorists were holding hostages in a school. Politkovskaya was sure that FSB agents were trying to poison her.
According to press reports, an unknown toxin was used, prepared in one of the secret chemical laboratories left over from Soviet times. Two years later, Politkovskaya was shot dead in the entrance of her house in Moscow.

This is not a complete list of cases of poisoning disliked by the Kremlin regime. In recent years, quite a lot of mysterious deaths of famous people have occurred in Russia, which suggest poisoning, when a completely healthy person suddenly dies from an unknown disease.

In the UK, on ​​December 17, a book by intelligence historian Boris Volodarsky was published entitled “The KGB Poison Factory” with the subtitle “From Lenin to Litvinenko.” The book talks about the use of poisons by Soviet intelligence services to eliminate enemies of the communist regime. The author of the book answered questions from Radio Liberty.

Boris Volodarsky is a former GRU officer of the General Staff of the Soviet Army, author of books and articles on the history of intelligence, a member of the Association for International Studies at the Hoover Institution, and co-editor of the journal on intelligence history Personal Files. His book “The KGB Poison Factory” is dedicated to the history of the development and use of poisons by Soviet and Russian intelligence services, from the Cheka to the FSB. Boris Volodarsky begins his story in 1918, when, on Lenin’s initiative, the first laboratory for the production of poisons was created in Moscow. “From the very beginning,” writes the author of “The KGB Poison Factory,” “its “products” were intended for use against “enemies of the people.” The book describes and analyzes in detail the foreign operations of the NKVD and the KGB to eliminate the leaders of anti-Soviet organizations with the help of poisons, and analyzes in detail the case of Alexander Litvinenko and the attempted poisoning of Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko.

Boris Volodarsky claims in an interview with Radio Liberty that the murder of Alexander Litvinenko in London was only an episode in a series of murders committed by Soviet and Russian intelligence services using poisons.

This is just one episode, as I cover quite a few cases in the book. But the Litvinenko case is still outstanding for a number of reasons. An extraordinary poison was used, and most importantly: the murder caused an extraordinary worldwide resonance.

Boris Volodarsky believes that the personal security of the Soviet leaders was involved in the crimes described.

One chapter of the book is called "Dead Souls. From Stalin to Putin." It is dedicated to the personal bodyguards of all Soviet leaders. The climax is the head of Putin’s personal security, Viktor Zolotov. At the same time, he is deputy head of the Federal Security Service. During Putin's two terms, he promoted from colonel to colonel general. He entered the closest, closest circle of Putin.

- You write that the laboratory for the production of poisons was created on Lenin’s initiative. How and when did this happen?

After Kaplan attempted to assassinate him, he was informed that the bullets were poisoned with a substance called ricin. He became very interested in this, and after some time a small laboratory was created, which was called the “Special Office”.

- In our time, does such a laboratory exist within the FSB or GRU?

The GRU never had such a laboratory. There was a department that collaborated with the relevant KGB units. Then the same divisions were in FSK, now they are also working.

Boris Volodarsky was trained as a special forces officer in the GRU, the military branch of Soviet intelligence. I met him in 2007 in London while researching for my book; She was then writing her own book about how everyone in Moscow is obsessed with murders using poisons, and the book was called “The KGB Poison Factory.” Now this man, who has an encyclopedic knowledge of the KGB and its history, and also perfectly understands its essence, is finishing work on a new book called “The KGB File on Orlov.” I asked him if he could answer a few questions regarding the ten Russian “illegals” who were arrested last week, “slow-action” agents who were dropped into the US without diplomatic immunity. He answered the questions.

- What do you think is to the greatest extent misunderstood in the story of “illegals” detained in the US?

- Since most people, including journalists who write long articles about arrests, know nothing about the work of Russian intelligence, or about intelligence in general, the activities of the members of this group give the impression of a set of extremely strange actions, committed as if by characters in a bad movie about Russians. But much of what is shown in bad films is, unfortunately, true. Russians really love wearing fur hats, drinking vodka, eating caviar and going to the bathhouse with beautiful girls. Moreover, with the exception of a couple of innovations, such as task-specific network groups, compressed short-wave transmissions and steganography, in general, in the field of espionage, everything remains as it was. All this is good and works quite well, unless you are already being watched - but in such cases nothing works. But the public, like journalists, simply do not understand that this is not a film at all - very large group very experienced FBI agents spent a lot of taxpayer money and very a large number of time to uncover a real group of Russian intelligence officers who brazenly worked in the United States and were in absolute confidence that no one would catch them, because they had education, training, intelligence traditions, and also the belief that there was much more money behind them than the FBI has. They forgot that the FBI in 2010 is not the same as it was in the 1950s. And all eleven of the defendants (Christopher Metsos, undoubtedly an officer of Directorate C, is in hiding) are trained professionals tasked with infiltrating American society. This is the first time that such a large group of illegal immigrants has been uncovered; Usually there is one, maximum two agents, and I have documents about a huge number of illegal operations in the United States over the last eighty years at least. To this it must be added that, apart from Fischer/Abel and Molody/Lonsdale, almost none of them were successful. But we probably only know about fifty percent of the operations carried out and the agents abandoned.

- Is it possible that some uncontrolled elements from Moscow were behind the operation, who, as some commentators noted, did not understand what kind of information was available in open sources? In other words, are “illegals” a relic of the past, or can they still get some valuable information today?

- Of course, these are not uncontrollable elements. A lot of time, effort and money were spent, and everything was done according to textbooks. This is how it always happens. Again, I can name several dozen examples when Soviet “illegal immigrants,” after appropriate preparation, were first sent to Europe, then almost always to Canada, and then moved to the United States.

As for the information. First of all, the “illegals” were not here to collect information. Their task was to control already recruited valuable agents in government structures with access to classified information (CIA, FBI, other intelligence services, army, science, information technology, and so on) or capable of influencing, say, journalists or politicians. The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service has ALL the information available from open sources. It's always been this way, but it's never enough. Russian intelligence seeks to obtain secret information (in the field of politics, economics, industry, defense, etc.), as well as the opportunity to influence the decision-making process and public opinion, shifting it in favor of Russia. This is why agents are recruited or infiltrated into organizations that are valuable from a secrecy or political point of view.

The task that the “illegals” performed was threefold: to act as liaisons between important sources and the Center (directly or through the SVR), to select potential candidates for further development intelligence activities and possible recruitment, as well as establish contacts that would allow other agents (members of the SVR) or the Center (intelligence officers arriving in different guises, journalists, diplomats or scientists assigned by the SVR) to collect information and/or serve the interests of the Center . Also, the “illegals” performed a number of technical tasks, in particular, they rented housing for arranging hiding places, found places for hiding places, and planned murders, which were also carried out by “illegals”, but from other departments of the same department. They also collected samples of documents that were used during covert operations, and informed Moscow about some standard procedures (buying a house, getting a job, starting a business, and so on).

“Illegal immigrants” are not a relic; they have always been used very actively. The last known case of this kind occurred in Canada, where “Paul William Hampel” was arrested during the Alexander Litvinenko case (November 2006). I am trying to prove in the KGB Poison Factory that the operation to eliminate Litvinenko was carried out by a Russian “illegal.” Now “illegals” are used in other “hard” countries closely controlled by counterintelligence, for example, in the UK, but not in “soft” countries like Austria or Finland.

- “Illegals” can be used not only for infiltration into government or defense circles, but also into corporate and commercial circles, right?

- As already mentioned, this happens very rarely, usually they have other tasks. But in many cases, children who receive American citizenship at birth are ready for introduction. From this group, apparently, only Mikhail Semenko tried to infiltrate a secret institution by getting a job there (for example, in the American Council on foreign policy). But there was a case when a Soviet “illegal” served as Costa Rica’s ambassador to Italy. His story is told in detail in my next book about the Orlov dossier. In principle, the penetration of “illegals” into corporate and commercial structures is possible. In the 1960s, "Rudy Herrimann" was assigned to infiltrate the Hudson Institute.

- Can “illegals” be present in other countries? Like during the Cold War?

- Of course, and these are not necessarily Russians. There were many others, especially from East Germany.

- Why do you think they were arrested now?

- Two reasons, both obvious. First, Anna Kushchenko-Chapman realized that she had contacted an FBI agent in disguise and called her handler from the Russian mission to the UN. Secondly, “Richard Murphy” was planning to leave for Moscow on Sunday, taking with him, as some believe, important intelligence information.

- The Obama administration is engaged in a “reset” of relations with Russia. President Medvedev has just returned from the USA. Is there a contradiction?

- Not at all. The security service operates in accordance with the operational situation, regardless of what is happening in the White House and what the president thinks about it.

- Of all the accused greatest attention The public was attracted to Anna Chapman. Is she a serious intelligence officer?

- Everything suggests that Anna Vasilyevna Kushchenko began collaborating with the SVR soon after she graduated from the SVR in 1998, at the age of sixteen. high school, and before I entered the university. Her father is an officer in the KGB and SVR, possibly in line “N” (support for “illegals”), so everything is in the usual order. A year later, she enrolled in courses at the Peoples' Friendship University in Moscow - many Soviet and Russian officers and intelligence agents. In her second year, in 2001, she went to London (which is extremely unusual) and quickly picked up a young, naive Englishman at a disco. After the second meeting, she took him to bed, and judging by his stories, as well as another story about her use of sex toys, she is especially well prepared in the art of love. She told the Englishman how much she loved him, leaving for Moscow, shed tears, quickly made an invitation, and when he arrived, they got married in March 2002 without the usual formalities.

Having settled in London (and maintaining her student status in Moscow), she worked for some time in several jobs, part-time, and was, in particular, a secretary at a hedge fund and at a private airline. Three years later, she left her husband, went to a young French playboy, who took her to luxurious private clubs in London, and there she made the right acquaintances. He also advised her to open an online real estate agency. In 2004, she miraculously graduated from university (although she did not attend classes, but lived in London), in 2007 she returned to Moscow, opened this Internet agency there, and then, in February 2010, opened the same one in New York. spending a million dollars received from an investment fund supported by the Kremlin. Almost immediately after this, she began sending reports from her laptop to her supervisor in New York. This is a long one interesting story, it would be worth writing more about her.