Laboratory B in Sungul’

Laboratory B in Sungul’ was one of the laboratories under the 9th Chief Directorate of the NKVD (MVD after 1946) that contributed to the Soviet atomic bomb project. It was created in 1946 and closed in 1955, when some of its personnel were merged with the second Soviet nuclear design and assembly facility. It was run as a sharashka – a secret scientific facility run as a prison. Laboratory B employed German scientists from 1947 to 1953. It had two scientific divisions, radiochemistry and radiobiophysics; the latter was headed by the world-renowned geneticist N. V. Timofeev-Resovskij. For two years, the renowned German chemist, Nikolaus Riehl was the scientific director.

Colonel General A. P. Zavenyagin, as head of the 9th Chief Directorate of the NKVD (MVD after 1946), was deputy to NKVD chief Lavrentiy Beria. From early in 1945, Zavenyagin was responsible for the acquisition of German scientists, equipment, materiel, and intellectual property, under the Russian Alsos, to help Russia with the Soviet atomic bomb project. His authority and responsibilities only increased after the USSR State Defense Committee (GKO, Gosudarstvennyj Komitet Oborony), on 20 August 1945, issued Decree No. 9877, thereby creating and investing the Special Committee with special and extraordinary powers for solving problems related to the atomic bomb project.

Members of the Special Committee were:

Zavenyagin, as head of the 9th Chief Directorate, then had responsibilities for establishing, building, managing, and providing security for the facilities in the atomic bomb project. Zavenyagin’s purview also included the resources of the Gulag; some of the facilities to which the German scientists were assigned were run as a sharashka. German scientists were available for recruitment from the Soviet occupation zone in Germany. Also, immediately after World War II and extending into 1949, the Russians also had a large pool of German PoW scientists and highly skilled specialists from which to recruit; the main camp was at Krasnogorsk.

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