On 9 March 1946, during the investigation into the criminal case against Soviet biologist Nikolai Timofeev-Ressovsky, his German colleagues were brought in for questioning.

In 1925, Timofeev-Ressovsky moved to Berlin, where he quickly became director of the Genetics and Biophysics Division at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research (now the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt) in Buch, a suburb of Berlin. In September 1945, the NKVD detained the genetic scientist in Berlin and transported him to Moscow.

From the minutes of the interview with Wilhelm Pütz, head of human resources and an accountant at the institute:

“Timofeev, being Director of the Genetics Division of the institute, was aware of all the secret directives stipulating all the activities of the institute for the needs of the war. As the Red Army was approaching, Timofeev personally issued orders for the destruction of secret documents, which were kept in my safe. Furthermore, on 20 April 1945, on the eve of the arrival of the Red Army when the battles for Berlin were taking place, Timofeev gave orders to hide the most valuable equipment, so that the Soviet Union would not get hold of it.”

From the minutes of the interview with Hans-Joachim Born, an assistant at the institute and a member of the Nazi Party:
“Question: Why did Timofeev-Ressovsky not return to the Soviet Union?

Answer: Timofeev-Ressovsky did not return to the Soviet Union because he had a good position in Germany and was satisfied with his work. Besides, Timofeev-Ressovsky was loyal to the Fascist regime, but that was his official stance; in his private conversations with me he spoke negatively about the Fascist regime.”

In spring 1937 the Soviet consulate refused to renew Timofeev-Ressovsky's passport, urging him to return to the USSR. However, according to the scientist, he was handed a message from the Soviet Union by Academician Nikolai Vavilov (later repressed) saying that “prison or something worse awaits” him there. Timofeev-Ressovsky continued to live and work in Hitler's Germany.

In the spring of 1945, Timofeev-Ressovsky declined an offer to relocate his division to western Germany and in fact retained the entire staff and equipment until the arrival of Soviet forces. In April 1945, he was appointed Director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research by the Soviet Military Administration in Germany. However, Timofeev-Ressovsky was detained on 13 September 1945 by an NKVD task force in Berlin, transported to Moscow, and placed in an internal NKGB prison.

On 4 July 1946, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the RSFSR sentenced the scientist to 10 years in prison on charges of treason against his country. Nevertheless, when his knowledge and developments became necessary to create Soviet nuclear weapons, Timofeev-Ressovsky would be transferred from his prison to “Object 0211” in the Chelyabinsk Region to work on radiation safety problems. In 1951, he would be released and in 1955, his criminal record would be cleared.

In 1950 the scientist would be nominated for a Nobel Prize for mutation research, but Soviet officials would not even respond to Sweden's enquiry as to whether the candidate was alive. From 1964 to 1969, Timofeev-Ressovsky would head the Radiobiology and Genetics Department at the Institute of Medical Radiology of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences, in Obninsk, where he died in 1981.

The fate of Timofeev-Ressovsky became an example of scientists depending on the views and immediate needs of those in power.

*The place of examination is given as an educated guess. The exact location was impossible to establish.

Source:

Materials from the archival Investigation File of N.V. Timofeev-Ressovsky, Herald of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 2000, Vol. 70, No. 3