The Soviet Poison laboratory and its legacy of 'Theatrical Assassination'

John Zek
May 20
16 min read

Updated: Oct 1

So, what were the Soviets doing during the Cold War? Had they developed mind control like the CIA alleged? The Soviet Union’s chemical and biological laboratory dates back to the earliest years in 1918. According to historian Boris Volodarsky the laboratory originated after the failed assassination of Vladimir Lenin by Fanya Kaplan who fired three shots at him with bullets allegedly coated in curare, a South American poison that is used by indigenous to coat the tip of their spears and arrow heads. Lenin survived, although the wounds would later contribute to the decline of his health several years later and Kaplan would be executed without trial, the assassination attempt along with other successful attempts would later be used as a pretext for the Red Terror in which the Cheka[1] the early Soviet secret service would murder, imprison and arrest thousands.

Vladimir Pchelin's depiction of the assassination attempt on Lenin.

The ‘poisoned bullets’ were likely a myth[2], despite this Lenin was fascinated with methods that could be used to dispatch ‘enemies of the people’ and a poison laboratory was established in 1921. It was later reported by Stalin that Lenin sought from him a poison in order to commit suicide[i], Much of what happened in this laboratory is unknown given it’s secretive nature although during the 1990s some researchers managed to find out who operated the laboratory, Professor Ignaty Kazakov operated it from 1921 to 1938 followed by his boss Genhrik Yagoda chairman of the NKVD who took charge in 1926. Both men were executed in the Great Purges of 1938 that Stalin orchestrated to rid his administration of his political enemies, a common fate if all those who took part in political killings.

Early examples of airbrushing out former comrades during the Soviet period reflect how the 'Old Guard' were systematically wiped out by Stalin: Original photo shows from left to right: Nikolai Antipov, Josef Stalin, Sergei Kirov, and Nikolai Shvernik.

By late 1938 a Georgian Jewish doctor named Grigory Mairanovsky took control of the poison laboratory and from there headed a regime of political assassination and deadly human experimentation with poisons for almost a decade. Much of what is known about these experiments came from the eventual arrest and trial of Mairanovsky in 1953-1954 as he was implicated in the ‘Doctor’s plot’, an antisemitic campaign led by Stalin before his death.

The Poison Experiments

In the centre of Moscow, the commanding Lubyanka building Mairanovsky worked alongside Vasilii Blokhin notorious NKVD executioner (who was said to have personally executed almost 7,000 Polish officers during the Katyn massacre in 1940).

Military prosecutor Colonel Vladimir Bobryonev who gained access to Mairanovsky’s investigation files in the KGB archive described what was nicknamed ‘Kamera’ (the chamber):

“The hall was divided into five cells with doors facing a large office. The doors had peepholes. During experiments, a member of the laboratory staff was constantly on duty in this office… Almost every day a few prisoners condemned to death were brought to the laboratory. The whole procedure was similar to a medical examination. The ‘doctor’ asked the ‘patient’ about his or her health with concern, gave some advice and medication.” [ii]

The Lubyanka building sits in the centre of Moscow. The 'experiments' were said to occur deep in the bowels of the building.

The main goal of these initial experiments was to find a poison that could not be detected in the victims body before or after death. Multiple chemicals were tested: mustard gas derivatives, curare, ricin and a concoction labelled C-2 (or K-2). Different methods were also test as Mairanovsky testified in 1953:

“During the research we introduced poisons through food, various drinks and used hypodermic needles, a cane, a fountain pen and other sharp objects especially outfitted for the job. We also administered poisons through the skin by spraying or pouring oxime (fatal for animals in minimal doses). But this substance proved not to be lethal for people, causing only severe burns and great pain.”[iii]

Another witness, Mikhail Filiminov described the tests in 1954:

“Sudoplatov and Eitingon approved special equipment [poisons] only if it had been tested on humans ... I witnessed some of the poisoning tests, but I tried not to be present at the experiments because I could not watch the action of poisons on the psyche and body of humans. Some poisons caused extreme suffering. To conceal shouts we even bought a radio set which we turned on [during the experiments].”[iv]

The experiments rivalled both the Japanese and Nazis in their cruelty, the survivors of one subjected to test after test, as Mairanovsky explained:

“I used one prisoner for two or three experiments. But the last case was a rare one. I want to say in this instance that if there is no lethal outcome after administration of the poison and the subject improves, then another poison is tested on him.”[v]

The victims of these experiments were called ptichki (birdies), reminiscent of the dehumanisation of Nazi camp doctors who referred to their victims as “cargo” or “items” while the Japanese called their victims ‘logs’ which was coincidentally the name for prisoners used in the Soviet GULAG prison system. Victims in Lubyanka came from all manner of places, some were criminals sentenced to death taken from a nearby prison, others were political prisoners Soviet citizens, German and Japanese POWs, Poles, Koreans, and Chinese.

Bobryonev indicates that in 1945 three German refugees were taken for experiments. Vasilii Naumov a pharmacist colleague testified

“I was present, experiments were done on spies and saboteurs, as far as I could tell from their interrogations.”[vi]

Another witness described them:

“Mairanovsky brought to the laboratory people of varying physical conditions, decrepit and full of health, fat and slim. Some died in three-four days, others were racked with pain for a week.”[vii]

The exact number of victims is unknown, two of his bosses Pavel Sudoplatov and Grigoriev named at least 150 victims during thier trial. A book containing the names and dates of executions disappeared during the arrest of Sudoplatov in August 1953 and Blokhin supposedly destroyed a copy of his own notebook.[viii]

By 1946 the laboratory divided into pharmacological and chemical divisions and Mairanovksy was removed from directorship, instead he travelled around the Soviet Union taking part in executions alongside Sudoplatov and Nahum Eitington (involved in planning the assassination of Leon Trotsky). Over the years he pleaded with officials to reinstate his laboratory to continue his experiments, this was not successful. Instead on December 13, 1951, Maironovksy was arrested, accused of being part of a ‘Jewish bourgeois nationalistic plot’[ix] along with many of colleagues- this was an anti-semitic purge orchestrated by Stalin otherwise known as 'The Doctors Plot'.

Despite the farcical allegations and his contacts in the NKVD he was sentenced February 14, 1953 to ten years in jail, not for his deadly inhumane experiments but for possessing illegal substances. Stalin’s death was three weeks later but proved to change his imprisonment, his letters to Beria were fruitless as Beria himself was arrested and executed later that year. As de-Stalinization occurred many of the brutal NKVD assassins joined Mairanovsky in the same Vladimir prison for high-profile prisoners, he shared the prison with Nazi doctors Dr. Carl Clauberg who specialized in sterilizing Jewish women.

His time in prison was not pleasant, Sudoplatov who also served a decade describes him as shell of his former self after a decade of imprisonment and beatings. One female doctor recalled approaching with a syringe as he had requested medical treatment, Mairanovsky cried out:

“Do not come up to me! You want to kill me! I know how it could be done!”[x]

In prison he was deprived of his Doctor degree and in 1961 he was released, when he attempted to seek rehabilitation (a route those who had been wrongly accused could follow to reclaim their jobs) instead he was ordered to leave the Moscow region, he served as head of a biochemical facility until his death in 1964. Bobryonev mused that not one of those who worked in the poison laboratory died of natural causes:

“they hanged themselves, shot themselves, drank themselves to death, or ended up dying in mental institutions.”[xi]

The Soviet search for Truth Drugs

In 1942 after noticing special effects of ricin poisoning on victims Mairanovsky proceeded to search for a drug that would provide “truthful testimonies”[xii] and his focus fell on chloral scopolamine (otherwise known as Devil's Breath and the drug of choice for South American criminals to incapacitate and rob victims) and phenamine Benzedrine (which was the amphetamine used in the Bluebird interrogations conducted by the CIA in the late-1940s).

Dr. Charles Schandl, a Hungarian lawyer described in 1958 of his treatment in Lefortovo Prison in 1946 which indicate some form of drug experiment:

The constant noise from the [hidden] speaker made him dizzy, sometimes he got cramps and after some time he had not been able to determine whether the speaker was on or the voice was his own hallucination. He also noticed that the guards sometimes gave him different food from what the other prisoners received, and he was convinced that the prison authorities had mixed some drug in his food and maybe also in his drinking water since after certain meals he felt an increase in the activity of all his glands and at the same time had an upset stomach.[xiii]

According to his colleague Naumov the experiments were a failure, a letter by Mairanovsky corroborates this when in October 1951 he wrote to the acting MGB minister asking

“further elaboration of my methods… in solving crimes by putting subjects into a ‘truth-telling’ state…. For this work I was promised the Stalin Prize”[xiv]

Historian Vadim Birstein suggests Mairanovsky also used narcotics to assist in extracting confessions, pointing to the recollection of WWII air marshall and hero Aleksandr Novikov, who was later arrested and tortured as part of a purge:

“I was given a kind of a cigarette and I lost completely the understanding of where I was and what was going on.”[xv]

One Red army doctor in Hungary reportedly used actedron pentothal, scopolamine, and morphine on political prisoners.

Decades later it seems that a truth drug was in use- ironically probably sparked from a desire to match the CIA, one account from a high-profile defector Alexander Kouzminov who operated in the 1980s to 1990s details a drug ‘SP-17’[3] or “‘remedy which loosens the tongue’”, which according to Kouzminov was given to ‘Illegals…when they returned from their first overseas training”[xvi](illegals is the Russian term for ‘sleeper agents’).

In events very similar to the drugging of U.S biochemist Frank Olson, a target was invited to a party or event and slipped the drug at some point during the evening then interrogated. To avoid overdose

“‘either in the adjacent room or among the actual ‘warm, friendly company’ — a medical doctor to neutralise the ‘medicine’”, if the target attempted to recall why they had become so drunk they were often shown “‘evidence’ of the ‘wild party’ — empty bottles in profusion,”[xvii]

other excuses were often used as well such as ‘sleepiness, sun stroke or fatigue’ when used in different such at a sauna or picnic.

It seems unclear if these drugs were commonly used across the Soviet Union and its blocs, Markus Wolf spymaster for the East German foreign intelligence service for thirty years recalls his encounter with ‘truth drugs’:

“One KGB man was dispatched to buyers throughout the Eastern bloc bearing wares such as untraceable nerve toxins and skin contact poisons to smear on doorknobs. The only thing I ever accepted from him was a sachet of ‘truth drugs’, which he touted as ‘unbeatable’ with the enthusiasm of a door-to-door salesman. For years they lay in my personal safe. One day, in a fit of curiosity, I asked our carefully vetted doctor to have them analyzed for me. He came back shaking his head in horror. ‘Use these without constant medical supervision and there is every chance that the fellow from whom you want the truth will be dead as a dodo in seconds’ he said. We never did use the ‘truth drugs’.”[xviii]

The Poison Lab After Mairanovsky

Can you imagine such power, the humungous strength of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, being abandoned just because of detente and democratisation? Would all the efforts and money expended in training and developing our people be forgotten?

Would all our agents be stood down and the Illegals recalled just because Russia was taking part in the next round of biological weapons talks in Geneva?

I wouldn’t bet on it.

– Alexander Kouzminov Soviet Defector

Many defectors note that no further experiments were conducted after Mairanovsky although the results of his experiments and research seemed to have been utilised in assisting with assassinations of dissidents and defectors abroad. The more recent spate of assassinations that have ties to the Russian government suggests that the poison laboratory at some point in the 1990s was rekindled as more exotic nerve agents such as Novichok are used.

Over the century the motivation behind poisonings shifted from the early Soviet history to the more recent Russian Federation. The earlier aims of the poison laboratory were to make undetectable poisons that allowed invisibility and deniability, we can see this with the method which involved poisoning by tea with chemicals that simulated heart attacks or other illnesses. Through the 50-70s this seemed to have shifted to a more overt display of state power; the ricin pellet and umbrella gun that killed Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov not only allowed the assassin to escape, it was also designed to show dissidents the lengths the Soviet state would go to murder critics.

Diagram of the 'umbrella gun' used in the assassination of Georgi Markov in London.

Some experts call this ‘theatrical vengeance’[xix] as the specialised character of the poisons means only the state could have arranged the killing such as the polonium used to kill Litvinenko which investigators concluded could only come from a nuclear reactor. Voldarsky claims that each poison developed is a ‘designer poison’ specifically calibrated for their victim.

Alexei Navalny faced poisonings and zelyenka attacks as part of a method to terrify and suppress him. He died in January 2024 after imprisonment in the isolated IK-3 prison.

Poisoning also brings fear and terror into mundane nature of our life, Garry Kasparov the chess master and Putin critic apparently eats prepared food and bottled water. When Navalny was poisoned his wife pointed out how difficult it is to eat meals and drinks prepared by yourself when travelling and the reality is that he was poisoned with his clothing. Volodarsky classifies the poisonsof the Russian intelligence services into two categories, ‘soft’ chemicals and deadly poisons. He argues that ‘soft’ chemicals are not designed to kill but to simulate death or to be used as a sleep-inducing agent or to

“frighten the victim, or to incapacitate him or her temporarily to prevent a certain activity”.[xxv]

A wave of attacks on dozens of prominent government critics in Russia and Ukraine in 2016-2017 followed this frame of thought. Known as zelyonka (green) attacks, victims are doused in the face with the commonly used Soviet-era antiseptic green iodine which is incredibly difficult to wash off and in the case of the second attack against Navalny damaged his eyes, often physical assault occurs such as in 2023 when journalist Elena Milashina and lawyer Alexander Nemov were beaten (Milashina’s fingers were broken) and Nemov was stabbed. Whether this was an actual state campaign is difficult to prove though no attackers have ever faced legal issues or even arrest.[xxvi]

Alexander Litivenko poisoned with polonium died after 3 weeks of agonising pain.

The pain and suffering poisoning causes seem to also be a factor for this ‘frightening’. Volodasky himself is no stranger to this as he claims he was a victim of a poisoning attack in 2006 in Vienna by a suspected KGB agent and the description sounds horrifying. Similarly, Litvinenko’s death made him more famous than his life because of the suffering his poisoning caused. The history of the poison lab has shown that it is an integral part of the Russian and Soviet state as force projection and will likely continue to be so in the future.

More tea? Some prominent Soviet/Russian poisonings.[4]

USSR assassinations
Name	Method	Location/ Date	Reason
Pyotr Wrangel	Poisoned tea laced with bacteria given by butler and accomplice. [xxvii] Died after 38 days of severe illness.	Serbia, 25 April 1928	Former General and leader of the White Army.
Maxim Gorky	(Alleged) Poisoned by NKVD chief Genrikh Yagoda along with Kremlin doctors, his death was listed as pneumonia.[xxviii]	Moscow June 1936	Famed writer and friends with political rivals of Stalin.
Nestor Lakoba	Given poison wine at dinner by Levrenty Beria. Unknown substance.	Tbilisi December 1936	Rival to Beria. His treating physician was jailed (or shot) before he could report the murder to the Kremlin. His wife Sariya was tortured to extract a confession but instead she died in jail from her injuries. [xxix]
Ignace Reiss	(Attempted) Chocolates laced with strychnine, his assassin refused to give to his family.	August 1937	Defected Soviet Spy. Reiss was later lured to a train station and shot to death with a machine gun.
Lev Sedov	(Alleged) Died suddenly after surgery at a private Russian clinic that NKVD agent Mark Zborowski persuaded him to attend. [xxx]	Paris February 16, 1938.	Son of Leon Trotsky
Abram Slutsky	Cyanide poisoning by tea/cakes at KGB headquarters.	Moscow February 17, 1938.	Part of ‘purge’ of old Guard NKVD. [xxxi]
Nadezhda Krupskaya	(Alleged) Poisoned by birthday cake[xxxii], death listed as ‘heart attack’ but with peculiar symptoms.	Moscow, 27 February 1939	Wife of former leader Lenin and prominent critic of Stalin.
Nikolai Koltsov	(Alleged) Died suddenly of heart attack after sustained public criticism.	Leningrad December 2, 1940.	Disagreed with prominent Soviet scientist Trofim Lysenko. Famed biologist.
Isaiah Oggins	Injected with curare by Mairanovsky in the Kamera.[xxxiii]	Moscow Date unknown- likely May/-July, 1947	American born NKVD agent. Killed so as to not reveal GULAG system to Americans if repatriated.
Raoul Wallenberg	(Alleged) Poisoned by Mairanovsky.	Moscow Date Unknown, suspected to be September 1947.	Arrested by Soviet SMERSH on suspicion of spying for U.S. A famed Swedish humanitarian businessman who saved thousands of Jews in Budapest. [xxxiv]
Bishop Theodore Romzha	Injected with curare by MGB agent and nurse while in hospital following attempted car ramming.	Uzhhorod (Ukraine) 31 October 1947.	Resisted the incorporation of the Greek Catholic Church into Russian Orthodoxy. Nikita Khrushchev personally ordered his assassination. [xxxv]
Lev Rebet	Murdered by KGB agent Bohdan Stashynsky, using a hydrogen cyanide atomizer mist gun.[xxxvi]	Munich, 12 October 1957	Former member of Organisation of Ukrainian nationalists (OUN)
Nikolai Yevgenievich Khokhlov	(survived) Poisoned with radioactive thallium in tea.	Frankfurt 1957	Was sent to Germany as part of an assassination mission and defected instead.
Stepan Bandera	Murdered by Stashynsky with cyanide spray.	Munich 15 October 1959	Former leader of OUN
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn	(Survived) Likely wiped with ricin gel while waiting at a department store counter. Suffered severe blisters and illness for months. [xxxvii]	Novocherkassk (USSR) 8 August 1971.	Dissident Russian writer, author of Gulag Archipelago.
Georgi Markov	Shot with 1.5mm pellet likely containing ricin from an ‘umbrella gun’ while waiting for a bus. [xxxviii]	London 11 September 1978.	Dissident Bulgarian writer
Vladimir Kostov	(Survived) Attacked in Paris metro fell ill then had pellet removed by British authorities. [xxxix]	August 26, 1978	Defector and Bulgarian news correspondent.
Russian Federation and FSB assassinations
Ivan K. Kivelidi	(Alleged) Radioactive cadmium placed in his telephone handset. [xl]	August 4, 1995	Prominent Moscow banker. His secretary Zara Ismailova died in the attack as well.
Ibn al-Khattab	A letter coated in a nerve agent similar to sarin.[xli]	20 March 2002	Saudi Arabian jihadist fighting with Chechen rebels.
Yuri Shchekochikhin	(Alleged) He died within two weeks of poisoning; doctors diagnosed it as Lyell's syndrome an extremely rare disease. Yuri’s medical records were lost/destroyed to avoid further investigation.[xlii]	July 3, 2003	Investigative journalist and writer, founder of newspaper Novaya Gazeta. He was planning on visiting the U.S to work with FBI on Russian money laundering.
Anna Politkovskaya	(Survived) Poisoned with tea on Aeroflot flight to Beslan in North Ossetia (Russia) by FSB agents. [xliii]	September 2 2004	Famed Russian Journalist. Politkovskaya was attempting to negotiate with hostage takers. She would later be shot to death in her apartment complex in 2006 on Putin’s birthday.
Viktor Yushchenko	(Survived) Poisoned with dioxin while having dinner with Ukrainian security service officials. Yushchenko’s face was disfigured by the chemicals.[xliv]	5 September 2004	Ukrainian president from 2005 to 2010.
Roman Tsepov	(Alleged) Poisoned with tea at FSB headquarters. Symptoms consistent with polonium poisoning.[xlv]	St. Petersburg, September 24, 2004.	Former confidant of Vladimir Putin and suspected Mafia intermediary.
Alexander Litvinenko	Drank tea laced with radioactive polonium-210 given by his former colleagues, this was the 2nd attempt.	London. 23 November, 2006	Former agent for the KGB and FSB. Investigators would find significant radiation contamination in a toilet cubicle (where the assassins Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun had taken the teapot to lace it), the dishwasher, table and a hotel sink where the remaining poison was disposed of.[xlvi]
Alexander Perepilichnyy	(Alleged) Died of a heart attack, while out jogging, autopsy claimed to have found traces of lethal gelsemium a rare Himalayan plant.[xlvii] A later report claimed there was no foul play.[xlviii]	10 November 2012	Russian businessman and whistleblower to Russian money laundering.
Timur Kuashev	(Alleged) Went missing (presumed kidnapped) and found to have died of ‘heart failure’, autopsy found syringe mark under his armpit.[xlix]	July 2014	Journalist-activist
Vladimir Kara-Murza	(Survived) Kara-Murza was poisoned with an unknown substance after having lunch, each time he was placed in a medical coma for one week due to kidney failure. Bellingcat has identified a four-man FSB poison team tailing him both times.[l]	26 May 2015 and 2 February 2017.	Journalist and former aide to Boris Nemtsov (assassinated in 2015). Kara-Murza now remains in solitary confinement in a Siberian high security prison after his arrest in early 2022.
Pyotr Verzilov	(Alleged) (Survived) Suspected poisoning with anticholinergic agents that affect nervous system.[li]	15 September 2018	Pussy Riot activist
Sergei Skripal and daughter Yulia Skripal	(Survived) Poisoned with the military grade nerve agent Novichok that was smeared on Sergei Skripal’s front doorhandle.	Salisbury, 4 March 2018	Ex-KGB. The UK allege the assassins were Anatoliy Chepiga and Alexander Mishkin two GRU agents[lii]. Another two UK civilians were injured Dawn Sturgess (died 8 July 2018) and Charlie Rowley, after Charlie had found the improperly dumped perfume container in a bin that contained Novichok and brought it to Dawn who sprayed it on her wrists.[liii]
Alexei Navalny	(Survived) Poisoned with Novichok agent placed in his underwear at a hotel. Working with an investigative news agency Navalny posed as an intelligence officer over the phone and spoke with one of the accused who admitted the events.[liv]	Tomsk, 20 August 2020.	Russian opposition leader and anti-corruption activist. Navalny died on 16 February 2024 while serving a 19-year prison sentence, the cause of his death is still unclear.

[1] See glossary Russian Secret Services for a detailed timeline of each secret service body. NKVD, OGPU, MGB and KGB are all secret police forces at one point in USSR history.

[2] In the 1990’s a Russian doctor Boris Petrovsky evaluated Lenin’s symptoms and debunked the poison myth.

[3] Another article names it SP-117.

[4] This list does not include conventional assassinations or ‘accidents’ that have involved people falling out of windows or down staircases and is not an exhaustive list of all poisonings, that list would be too long.

[i] The Murder of Maxim Gorky: A Secret Execution By Arkadi Vaksberg page 272

[ii] Perversion of knowledge page 114.

[iii] Ibid 120

[iv] Ibid 115

[v] Ibid 120

[vi] Ibid 128

[vii] Ibid 115

[viii] Ibid 119

[ix] Ibid 151

[x] Ibid 160

[xi] The KGB's poison factory : from Lenin to Litvinenko page 48

[xii] Perversion of knowledge page 118