All about the skirt
At the dawn of humanity, clothing was not divided by gender. At first everyone had loincloths, which later changed into a skirt. It’s interesting that the words “skirt” and “fur coat” come from the same Arabic word - “jubba” (that’s what the ancient Arabs called a linen robe). Here are some interesting facts about the evolution of the skirt.
Fashionistas in Ancient Greece preferred not to wear a skirt at all, wearing a tunic and a cloak over their naked body. But for men at that time, a skirt was a mandatory attribute of the wardrobe. Moreover, the skirt showed the status and age of the person wearing it. Young people wore short skirts, while mature and wealthy men wore long ones.
Years passed, and the skirt became indispensable for women. The fashion for skirts was constantly changing. In the Middle Ages, skirts with a train were popular, which spoke about the social status of the person: the larger the train, the higher the social status of the lady. Church ministers called trains “devil's tails” and did not absolve women who wore skirts with trains. Despite this, throughout Europe, not only skirts, but also dresses with trains were in fashion for several centuries. The longest train in history was on the dress of Catherine 2, in which she was crowned. Its length was more than seventy meters.
In the 16th century, huge skirts became the latest fashion. They were multi-tiered and multi-layered, and, of course, very heavy. It was also difficult to wear them because it was fashionable to decorate the entire skirt with jewelry (the more noble the lady, the more jewelry). Wedding dresses were especially lavishly decorated, so often the bride could not carry a hundred-kilogram outfit herself, and she was simply carried into the church under her arms. Therefore, over time, they came up with the idea of making the frame of the skirt from light hoops.
In the 17th century, plump women with full hips were in fashion, so skinny women had to wear several skirts at the same time (up to 15-20 pieces), which were decorated with lace.
In the 18th century, the bell skirt became fashionable again, only they began to make it a little shorter (to show the ankle). And they were made from a material that rustled when walking. The “sounding skirt” horrified the church. If a woman wearing such a skirt entered the church, she was allowed to publicly remove her skirt and burn it.
Later, numerous skirts began to be connected together with wire, and the frame was completely removed. The skirts turned out to be very comfortable, and their popularity increased.
At the beginning of the 20th century, skirts became lighter. In Rus', in villages, plump, rosy-cheeked girls were considered beauties, so to create volume, it was customary to wear several skirts at once. Everyday clothes were made from linen; on holidays they wore clothes made from scarlet calico. And by the end of the 20th century, miniskirts became fashionable.
What is "Novichok"?
The first thing to start with: the specific formula for the “Novichok” that was tested at the end of the Soviet era is nowhere to be found. Yes, Vil Mirzayanov, who was responsible for the safety of information about these chemical weapons and ultimately handed it over to Western intelligence services, has repeatedly claimed that he allegedly published specific formulas for compounds of the Novichok family in the literature.
But there is no evidence to support his words. In 2020, at the session of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, substances from the Novichok group were added to the list (numbered 13 and 14) of prohibited substances - but, again, without their exact formulas, only on the basis of the presence of certain fragments in their composition.
Why couldn't Mirzayanov publish the complete and accurate formula in print? When developing the Novichok family, one of the tasks was to obtain a substance that was very toxic, but at the same time easy to manufacture. Let us imagine the consequences of publishing his exact formula. It is widely known that terrorists around the world have enormous funds at their disposal, regularly transferred from, for example, a number of Gulf countries.
]]>
]]>
This is how, according to Vila Mirzayanov, the formula of A-234, one of the compounds of the Novichok family, looks like. Fortunately, in reality, trying to synthesize a substance using this formula is practically useless, and this is good: otherwise terrorists would have long ago used it en masse against us / ©Vil Mirzayanov
It would be natural to expect that they would try to reproduce such a weapon. Then all that remains is to buy more drones on Ali Express for $300, wait for mass events in one or several countries of the Western world, and then spray the resulting substance from a height.
Here it is necessary to take into account the order of the numbers. According to estimates in Western literature, the lethal dose of the Soviet Novichok is about two milligrams. Importing a certain amount of it, disguised as something else, is not so difficult. Let's say 20 kilograms are sprayed - that is, ten million lethal doses - and 99.9% of this substance will end up somewhere other than in the victims' bodies. As a result, tens of thousands of people could die.
It turns out that Novichok is an easy and simple way to organize a terrorist attack larger than the destruction of the Twin Towers and Beslan combined. At the same time, nothing prevents terrorists from using not 20 kilograms, but several centners of the same substance.
They can make “Novichok” using a ready-made formula even in a country where, in principle, there are no world-class scientists. Obviously, no one would publish his exact formula. Even if Mirzayanov had come up with such a wild idea, the Western intelligence services themselves would not have allowed it.
And it’s not just about terrorists: work on substances of the Novichok family was recorded in 2012 in Iran - a country, let us recall, capable of launching satellites into space. What would happen if Tehran, with its vast arsenal of missiles, had access to such weapons? After all, it has ballistic missiles with a warhead weighing up to a ton with five multiple units. When loaded with Novichok, the effect of such a missile attack will be comparable to early nuclear bombs. How, then, could the United States contain it in the region?
Due to the unknown nature of the Novichok formula, this name can be used to designate almost any substance containing certain fragments recognized as “novichok” by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. And if so, no one has any way to directly verify the authenticity of the statement “So-and-so was poisoned by Novichok.” However, when there are no direct opportunities, indirect ones always remain.
To find out whether a person was poisoned by the original Soviet Novichok, you can try to use logic. This is exactly what we will do.
From a historical point of view: how did the Soviet secret services eliminate people?
The USSR has been actively using a variety of chemicals to solve sensitive issues since at least the 1930s. White General Evgeny Miller was drugged in Paris and then brought to the USSR in 1937 (two years later he was executed), 83 years before Navalny’s alleged poisoning.
Since the same 1937, the toxicological laboratory at the All-Union Institute of Biochemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences was transferred to the NKVD. Then it became the toxicology laboratory of the NKGB, then again the NKVD, then the MGB and (as you might guess) has successfully survived to this day.
This laboratory worked at a very good level even at that time. For example, in 1947, the MGB, on orders from above, liquidated Theodore Romzha, a bishop of the Greek Catholic Church, whom Moscow considered guilty of collaborating with armed OUN detachments in Western Ukraine (the war going on there in those years gave the security forces losses equal to the first Chechen war).
]]>
]]>
In 2001, belatedly reacting to the release of Sudoplatov’s memoirs, the Vatican beatified Romzha / ©Wikimedia Commons
The open murder of the bishop was inappropriate: instead, they simulated a robbery attack with an accidental fatal outcome - a typical event of those years in Western Ukraine, which was swarming with armed people who were in conflict with the authorities. However, the attack was supposed to begin with a truck hit, but it could not kill the right person - the bishop only received injuries and went to the hospital.
As Major General Pavel Sudoplatov testifies, after this the head of the toxicology laboratory, Mairanovsky, delivered poison from Moscow to Western Ukraine, which was administered to Romzhe by an MGB agent who had infiltrated the hospital. Sudoplatov does not disclose the real composition of the poison, calling it “curare”.
But this statement should be considered clear misinformation in an attempt to hide the truth: curare causes loss of mobility and death from suffocation. Such symptoms would undoubtedly have worried the attending physicians, and the operation, like all such actions, was carried out in high secrecy.
In fact, the poison from which Romzha died had an extremely unusual effect on him: although his breathing did not stop even in a very serious condition, the autopsy revealed traces of an embolism in one of the arteries of the vital parts of the brain. “The brain substance is swollen, there are several hemorrhages on the surface and section of the cerebellum,” reports forensic expert D.N. Lyubomirov in custody on November 2, 1947. The cause of death, which is natural for such a picture, was recognized as “cerebral edema with subarachnoid hemorrhage ... as a result of injuries received in the accident.”
What follows from this story? The fact that many decades ago local state security could kill a person with such poison that even a forensic expert would not think that there was anything wrong.
Of course, many people like to add after this: but in the late 1950s, the USSR decided to stop liquidating people it disliked, and they stopped poisoning unnecessary people in the country and abroad. This bold hypothesis is based solely on the statement of Soviet officials and therefore cannot be taken seriously.
Let us recall the facts: in 2002, the terrorist Khattab was killed with the help of a poisoned letter, which he personally opened. Like the poisoning of Romzha in 1947, this happened on the territory of our country. In 2004, three representatives of the Russian special services (their departmental affiliation was recognized by Foreign Minister Ivanov) eliminated the terrorist Yandarbiev in the UAE. It seems that the refusal to liquidate in Russia and beyond took place mainly in statements by domestic officials: real life says the opposite.
And it would be strange if things were different. The CIA conducted an entire program of developing poisons (including for the elimination of foreign leaders) and biological weapons for its operations, and if not for an accidental leak, no one would have known about its details. The organization even kept the poison at home, despite the direct ban of the US President, which is logical: presidents come and go, but the CIA remains. Why would his Russian colleagues refuse to eliminate them using poisons?
But it is important to understand: we will never know anything about most of these liquidations using poisons - whether on the Russian side or on the American side. We know about the same Romzha only because Pavel Sudoplatov was greatly offended by the Russian authorities, which is why he considered it possible for himself to write memoirs in the 1990s.
In the overwhelming majority of cases, people involved in liquidation with poisons do not write any memoirs - and if they try, for some reason an accident immediately happens to them.
And doctors won’t tell us about such liquidations. Because they are deliberately organized in such a way as to make death appear completely “natural.” If someone wants to kill an opposition politician so that his death looks like one, then there is nothing particularly difficult about it. The poison, which reliably imitates a naturally occurring cardiovascular problem, was tested by the MGB laboratory back in the time of Theodor Romzha.
One thing is for sure: there is no reliable evidence that domestic intelligence agencies have ever killed people using compounds that inevitably point to the country of origin "Russia". Because this is the same as committing a secret murder and writing on the victim: “killed by the KGB.”
