History

[mshcheniye]

Avery was born Vasily Daniilevich Yevseyev (Василий Даниилевич Евсеев) in the heart of the Stalinist era. The son of a government bureaucrat, he grew up in Leningrad in a relatively privileged family and was close to his younger sisters, Fedosia and Lidiya. From a young age, he was schooled in the virtues of communism and the importance of loyalty to the state, lessons impressed upon him through the climate of fear engendered by the Great Purge.

Around the time Germany invaded the Soviet Union in WWII, Vasily was drafted into the Red Army. Having already discovered his interest in biology, he trained as a medic, and saw action in both his own country and in Germany as the war came to a close. He returned to Leningrad, only to discover that his family had died of starvation and exposure during the siege.

Suffering from what now would be termed post-traumatic stress disorder, Vasily experienced an emotional breakdown and was taken to a psychiatric hospital by a colleague of his father’s. He spent about a month there, treated mainly through barbituates, then applied to the 2nd Moscow State Medical Institute, where he trained to be a physician. A high-achieving student, Vasily performed particularly well in microbiology and biochemistry courses and enjoyed laboratory work, and after graduation was recruited through one of his professors to a position at the Scientific Research Institute of Microbiology in Kirov. There, beneath the auspices of the Soviet Ministry of Defense, he helped develop biological weapons.

In 1956, smallpox was accidentally released from the facility and began to spread amidst unvaccinated individuals in the port city. Vasily’s superiors were unwilling to officially recognize the outbreak, not wanting to get into trouble or attract attention to the bioweapons program. Enraged after having seen so much death in the war, Vasily went over their heads, contacting a local hospital and explaining the situation, urging them to have vaccines shipped in as the case counts rose.

The incident was never acknowledged by the government, and Vasily was quickly arrested. His previous record of psychiatric care made it easy for the authorities to justify committing him, and over the course of two months, he was imprisoned in a hospital and subjected to a series of unnecessary treatments, including antipsychotics and ECT. Shortly after his release, he was contacted by an American spy who had been tracking Soviet political prisoners, who gave him the opportunity to defect.

After copious interrogation by the CIA, Vasily—who began going by the name Avery—was given a commission in the US Army and placed at Fort Detrick to assist in biological weapons research there. In spite of his language barrier, he proved himself to be extremely knowledgeable, and a few years later was an easy pick for Medical Director at Yarrow Springs, a brand-new underground military research complex.