The Soviet Chemical Weapon Programme by John Hart

NR 3 juli/oktober 2010

titel: Khimicheskoe Vooruzhenie – Voina s Sobst vennym Narodnom: Tragichesky Rossiisky Opyt [Chemical Armament – War Against One’s Own People: the Tragic Russian Experience] författare: Lev Aleksandrovich Fedorov förlag: Self published, Moscow 2009 little has been published on the history of chemical weapons (CW) as compared to that of conventional and nuclear weapons. Furthermore, the literature on past CW programmes and activities is uneven. While much has been published (using primary archival material) on, for example, the Brit- ish, German and US programmes, much remains to be clarified regarding the CW activities in the 20th century by states in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. Al- this gap. It is a fundamental work, rich in though a large literature exists on the Soviet detail and many of the 1057 references are CW programme, much of it is speculative documents from the Russian state archives. or incomplete. A comprehensive treatment Fedorov was a chemist in the Soviet chemi- of the actors, policies and activities based cal defence establishment and is currently on Soviet and Russian archival material has the President of the Union for Chemical been generally lacking. The scope, level of Safety in Moscow. detail and authoritativeness of studies on The first volume describes the origins of the Soviet CW programme can therefore be the Soviet CW programme, including the developed further. Dr Lev Aleksandrovich development of the chemical industry and Fedorov’s 3-volume study does much to fill expertise to support it. The second volume

180 LITTERATUR provides an overview of the research and promote OSOAVIAKhim (the Union of extent of the Soviet CW infrastructure. The Societies of Friends of Defence and Avia- final volume focuses on more contemporary tion-Chemical Construction), a volunteer issues, including the legacy of the programme society that sought to promote the devel- for human health and environmental safety. opment and application of chemistry for Fedorov does not disguise his distaste for agriculture and industry and to simultane- many of the individuals who developed the ously prepare the country against possible CW programme or the military and politi- CW attack. It achieved the latter objective cal leadership behind them, including their partly by organizing CW contamination responisibility for poor working conditions avoidance drills and instructing Soviet citi- for munitions workers and human testing. zens in decontamination procedures. Fish- The study is disjointed partly because of man was also a Soviet military attaché to periodic digressions and the insertion of ex- Berlin in the 1920s and traveled to Europe tended quotations and lists. for discussions on CW-related matters with The Soviet CW programme originated German and Italian officials and specialists in Russia’s World War I programme. The until he was purged (but not killed). Soviet Czarist government brought in chemists, embassies were tasked to collect CW-related such as Vladimir Nikolaiyevich Ipatiev, to information from Britain, France, Germany, assist with the development of respirators Japan, Poland, Romania, Sweden and the and the redirection of the country’s nascent United States. Some of this information is chemical industry towards CW production. reflected in Soviet military journals such as Although Russia employed chlorine, chlo- War and Technology.2 ropicrin and phosgene, its CW capabilities Russia’s principal scientific research and were underdeveloped as compared to those test facility for protection against CW is of Germany. According to casualty figures located at Shikhany in the Volsk region provided by Gilchrist, Russia suffered more (Saratov oblast’). The establishment of the deaths from CW than any of the other bel- Shikhany Central Military Chemical Prov- ligerents: 56 000, while France had the ing Ground was the most lasting result of second highest number at 8 000.1 Russia the German-Soviet cooperation in the field suffered from underdeveloped production of CW. Tomka (or ‘Tomko’) was the name of capacity, often poor gas discipline and poor the village that once existed at the site where integration of these weapons in its military a field test facility was established in 1926 doctrine. CW was also used during Rus- adjacent to the Shikhany military chemical sia’s Civil War. British forces employed the establishment during secret German-Soviet irritant adamsite and Red Army units were CW cooperation within the framework of authorized to use chlorine in 1921 against the 1922 Treaty of Rapallo. Fedorov de- partisans hiding in forests near the city of scribes, using material from Fishman’s per- Tambov. sonal papers located at the Russian State Dr Yakov Fishman (b. 1887, d. 1961/2), Military Archive in Moscow, the Soviet Un- a military chemist and the first head of the ion’s cooperation with Italy on CW. A 1934 Red Army’s Military Chemical Directorate, technical mission headed by Fishman was re- was one the most important organizers and ceived by Mussolini at a reception in which promoters of the Soviet CW programme. a toast was raised to future cooperation in He did this partly by helping to found and this area. Italy and the Soviet Union agreed

181 NR 3 juli/oktober 2010 a 19-point programme of cooperation that mines). The cumulative tonnage for these included the exchange of samples of the irri- agents for 1941-45 is over 2 million met- tant and ‘mask breaker’ diphenylchloroars- ric tonnes (this possibly includes the weight ine (100 kg), and the blister agent sulphur of the munition bodies). It would be useful mustard (350 kg). The two sides discussed to compare Fedorov’s information for these how to lower the freezing temperature of years against a 1951 declassified report pre- sulphur mustard, to produce higher-purity pared by the Austrian chemist and German sulphur mustard and methods of rubber Army officer Walther Hirsch for the United (including synthetic) production. Stalin was States following the war.3 The Hirsch Report kept apprised of the Italian-Soviet contacts. was perhaps the main source of substantive Fedorov also reveals that the Soviet Un- information in this area for the NATO allies ion engaged in technical cooperation with during the early years of the Cold War. China, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland Fedorov reproduces extracts of primary and Romania. For example, he describes documents which both give a feeling of how the Soviet Union transferred sulphur the period and reflect Fedorov’s sometimes mustard produced at Dzerzhinsk to China strong personal convictions that the So- in the late 1950s. viet CW establishment abused its authority He also expands the previously narrow through secrecy and held the Soviet people base of literature on Soviet CW prepared- and environment in disregard. The Soviet ness during World War II. Analysts have Union often changed names of cities, re- debated whether the Soviets possessed gions and facilities. Fedorov’s work helps large-scale stocks of CW and CW produc- to clarify these name changes. The 1993 tion capacity during the war. Two factors Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) has informing this discussion are the fact that served as an informal trigger for the release German forces did not capture appreciable of information on past CW programmes quantities of CW and a general lack of in- partly because it requires states to submit formation. If the Soviets possessed large declarations on past activities. To date, stocks of CW in the theatre-of-operations, 13 parties to the CWC have declared 70 then they were very successful in removing chemical weapon production facilities since them before they could be captured. Part of 1 January 1946.4 Fedorov’s study helps to the lack of such stocks can be explained by put past Soviet activities into the context of dumping operations in the Black Sea. Fe- present-day international arms control and dorov provides locations of pre-World War disarmament. He provides some admin- II CW stocks, including 121 artillery stor- istrative details of novichok (‘newcomer’) age sites where CW was stored prior to the agents, a class of CW agents developed by war. There is ambiguity between production the Soviet Union and published by Dr Vil capacities and 5-year plan goals versus ac- Mirzyanov in 2009.5 Fedorov’s study is in- tual production. Much of the Soviet Union’s dispensable reading. World War II CW production seems to have consisted of sulphur mustard and lewisite The Author is a Senior Researcher at (mainly air bombs, artillery shells and SIPRI.

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Notes

1. All World War I casualty statistics should be treated with caution. Gilchrist, H. L.: A Com- parative Study of World War Casualties from Gas and Other Weapons, US Chemical War- fare School, Edgewood Arsenal, Maryland, 1928, p. 7. 2. ‘Voenno-khimicheskoe delo, k voprosu o “za- preshchenii khimicheskoi voiny”’ [Military- chemical matters, towards the question of the prohibition of chemical warfare], Voina I Tek- hnika [War and Technology], no. 1 1928, pp. 58-62. This article summarizes CW activities in other countries largely on the basis of information published in a 1927 French journal Chemical Industry. While the provenance of this article is not certain, Soviet embassies rou- tinely collected such literature. 3. Hirsch, W: Soviet BW and CW Capabilities (‘The Hirsch Report’), declassified US Army Chemical Intelligence Branch Washington, DC, 1951. 4. The states that have declared having one or more chemical weapon production facilities since 1 January 1946 are: Bosnia and Herze- govina, China, France, India, Iran, Japan, Li- bya, Russia, Serbia, South Korea, the United Kingdom and the United States. These facilities must be verifiably destroyed or converted to peaceful purposes under the supervision of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Che- mical Weapons (OPCW), the body based in The Hague which implements the CWC. As of May 2010 all but 8 of these facilities had been destroyed or converted. As of the same date, 188 states had acceded to or ratified the CWC. The states that have signed, but not ratified the convention were: Israel and Myanmar. The states that had not signed the convention were: Angola, Egypt, North Korea, Somalia and Sy- ria. 5. Mirzyanov, V.: State Secrets: An Insider’s Ch- ronicle of the Russian Chemical Weapons Pro- gram, Outskirts Press, Inc. Denver, Co., 2009.

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