Secret History of Soviet Nerve Agents

Warfare

History Hit

History

4.5 • 943 Ratings

🗓️ 26 April 2021

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The use of nerve agents is synonymous with Russian espionage for those of us who remember the recent poisonings of Alexei Navalny, Sergei and Yulia Skripal and the residents of Salisbury caught up in the latters’ attempted murders. The origins of this weapon, however, remain shrouded in mystery. Sergei Lebedev is a Russian novelist, currently based in Berlin. He has come onto Warfare to discuss the little known conception of Novichok in the closed town of Shikhany, 600 miles south of Moscow. Sergei explores the cooperation between the Soviets and Weimar Republic Germany from the 1920s until 1932, and delves into the moral responsibilities of making scientific discoveries with the capacity for destruction.

Sergei's new book, Untraceable, follows a ruthless chemist in his search for a new nerve agent, and is available in the UK from Head of Zeus (https://headofzeus.com/books/9781800246591) and in the US by New Vessel Press (https://newvesselpress.com/books/untraceable/).

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello everyone welcome back to the history hit warfare podcast I'm your host James Rogers and in this
0:04.5	episode we have the award-winning best-selling novelist Sergei Lebedev. Now Sergei has written a new novel called
0:11.2	Untraceable where he takes on Putin power and poisons by revealing the hidden history of Soviet chemical and poisonous weapons development.
0:20.0	Sergei has been to all the archives, traveled to the furthest reaches of the former Soviet Union, and as a result he reveals a hidden history that ties together into war collaboration, Second World War developments, Cold War killings, and those infamous Novichock attacks in
0:37.3	Salisbury in England in 2018.
0:41.3	It truly is a masterpiece, a thriller that is dripping in poison. And this episode reveals political
0:48.1	warnings, but also warnings to scientists and us as citizens about how these weapons, these poisons, are being used
0:56.4	in the pursuit of state power. Hi Sergei, thank you so much for coming on the warfare podcast. How are you doing today?
1:18.0	It's a super sunny day in Switzerland, plus 22. I've been in the mountains. I'm always walking when I'm writing and because I'm writing I'm walking.
1:30.0	So this is pretty good. I mean lockdown doesn't sound too bad for you. How is it going over there in Switzerland?
1:36.0	I don't know because I'm visiting one little mountains actually.
1:40.0	Hermit life, I would say. The ideal life for a writer is a hermit life. I like it.
1:46.0	Okay, well the focus of your new novel which you wrote as a hermit takes place across Russia and Germany so not a million miles away from where you are today
1:56.1	But I want to start with one specific location and inspiration in the book and that's a small town in Russia that has unknowingly had a
2:06.0	massive impact on the world here of course I'm talking about the town of
2:11.2	shakani 600 miles south of Moscow talking about the town of Shacani,
2:15.0	why should our listeners know about Shacani?
2:18.4	Because this secret military town,
2:22.4	which is not as secret as it was in the Soviet times
2:25.8	actually is the birthplace of the Soviet chemical warfare program and it's the place with a very ambiguous and interesting history.
2:38.0	Because Soviets in the 20ss after the Civil War,
2:43.7	after the revolution, wasn't very professional
	...

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