In 1921, Lenin gave the order to create a poison lab in order to combat the enemies of Soviet power. A decision was taken to have recourse to terrorist methods to guarantee the success of the revolution, or at least of its masters’ reigns. Thus, a number of illegal executions in the USSR and abroad were classified as “heart failure” or suicide due to depression… In fact the ends justified the means. So some died at the hands of the very doctors who were supposed to be treating them, others were the victims of strange car accidents… It would be naive to think that these tactics disappeared with Stalin. Included on the long list of victims: Lenin’s widow, the Soviet General Frunze, the emigrant White generals Kupetov and Miller, author Boris Pilniak, Czech president Jan Masaryk, and more recently, the former mayor of Saint Petersburg, Anatoly Sobchak, and the journalist Yuri Schekochikhin.
After a long and meticulous investigation, Arkady Vaksberg recounts the history of the interminable series of political murders, all the way up to the assassination attempt against Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko, who nearly died from poisoning while he was campaigning for his fellow countrymen’s votes against a candidate who had Moscow’s support, and Alexander Litvinenko, a personage whose name crops up several time over the course of the book.

The Poison Lab, run by Professor Mayranovsky, who dedicated all his scientific knowledge to the service of political assassinations, is a sort of modern-day Soviet Borgias