Ukrainian scientist details secret Soviet research project on steroids

by Andrew Nynka

PARSIPPANY, N.J. - A former Ukrainian scientist has revealed portions of a secret Soviet research project that tested the effects of banned performance-enhancing steroids on athletes. The research report for that project seems to support long-held suspicions that Soviet success in Olympic competition was based largely on state-sanctioned use of steroids.

Dr. Michael Kalinski, a former chair of the department of sport biochemistry at the State University of Physical Education and Sport in Kyiv, says the 39-page research report did more than give the green light for athletes in the former Soviet Union to use steroids.

"The document is a clear recommendation-type document and it clearly recommended steroid use by athletes of different specializations," Dr. Kalinski told The Ukrainian Weekly during a series of telephone and e-mail interviews.

According to Dr. Kalinski, the document "Anabolic Steroids and Sport Capacity" presented data from secret studies performed at a premier Soviet sport research laboratory in 1971-1972 on the performance-enhancing effects of anabolic-androgenic steroids.

The document, published by the State Institute of Physical Culture in Moscow in July 1972, was circulated throughout the Soviet Union and reached Dr. Kalinski's institute in Kyiv by mail in December of that year.

A photocopy of the document's cover page bears the signatures of the president of the State University of Physical Education and Sport in Kyiv, Vladimir Parfenov, and the institution's vice-president, Prof. Ivan Wrzesnevskiy. Along with his signature, the vice-president included instructions that Dr. Kalinski forward the document to four other department chairs at the university, though he never did.

"I disobeyed the order of my vice president and kept this document in secrecy ... I took a risk and was hiding the document, and hoped that my action would save some Ukrainian athletes from steroid abuse," Dr. Kalinski said. "Destroying it wasn't an option. At any time I could have been asked to account for the numbered document."

In November 2002 the German medical journal Sportmedizin published an article written by Dr. Kalinski and Matthew S. Kerner of Long Island University where, for the first time, the authors described in detail the content of the Soviet research report. The article was intended to publicize the story without revealing the secret document, which Dr. Kalinski says he still keeps tucked away for numerous reasons.

The Soviet research document "contains a series of scientific reports providing the times and dosages for the administration of anabolic-androgenic steroids to human subjects (athletes) and data from and descriptions of experiments conducted at the ... State Central Institute of Physical Culture in Moscow," the two authors wrote in their 26-page analysis.

Their article offers a compelling and detailed description of the contents of the Soviet research document, including information on dosages, types of anabolic-androgenic steroids and procedures for using the drugs, as well as descriptions of sport-specific protocols for their use.

The steroids described in the report control a number of the body's metabolic processes and their use often fosters a dramatic improvement in an athlete's performance in a short period of time. However, they also have serious long-term health consequences. Side-effects from their use include: impotence, infertility, premature puberty in young athletes, liver problems, muscle injuries due to increased strength, stunted growth and kidney damage.

Steroid use by athletes has been banned in many international and national sport competitions. While tests are regularly administered to root out any possible abuses, their use has remained prevalent. An illegal doping program within the former East Germany was revealed after classified police documents turned up in 1990 and, most recently, sports officials in the United States have had to contend with news of a widespread doping scandal among their own athletes.

Athletes often face great pressure to succeed and the benefits of doing so has pushed them in the past to take great risks. Dr. Kalinski noted that pressure placed on the athletes and coaches within the former Soviet Union to succeed was exceptionally strong.

"It was common knowledge in sport circles that athletic success in the Olympic Games provided high privileges in the ... USSR for the elite athletes, coaches, scientists and sport officials. These privileges included: prestige at the state level, expensive gifts, cars, apartments, state stipends, increased salaries, extensive travel abroad, etc.," Dr. Kalinski wrote in his article.

While the performance-enhancing results of using banned steroids were often played up in the Soviet Union, their side effects were downplayed - to the point, Dr. Kalinski said, that ethical considerations did not appear important.

"The [Soviet research] document makes clear that within the former USSR there was ... a government-sponsored scientific effort, which apparently did not follow the accepted norms of treatment of human subjects," Dr. Kalinski's report reads. Researchers conducting the secret experiments also apparently never obtained consent from their subjects.

"In the past, sport was politics," Dr. Kalinski said. "This is one of the main reasons why sport and athletics was so important in the Soviet Union - it showed that the political system worked; the health of the athletes was not a concern."

"By governmental agencies circulating the research report among elite state sport institutions in the former Soviet Union, sport officials, coaches and athletes were being advised, recommended, encouraged, perhaps even required to use anabolic-androgenic steroids," the two scientists wrote in their article.

Dr. Kalinski said he believes that the document he kept hidden for nearly 30 years represents a small example of the steroid research being conducted in the Soviet Union.

"After the fall of the East German government, any compromising documents regarding anabolic-androgenic steroid research 'disappeared' from the libraries where they should have been stored. It is possible that many of the secret files from the USSR met a similar fate and [the Soviet research report] represents a very small window into what actually occurred during the years of Soviet domination of Olympic sport," Dr. Kalinski's article reads.

Additionally, it appears that some sport administrators and scientists who were responsible for secret steroid programs have maintained prominent positions long after the dissolution of the USSR. Vladimir Parfenov - the university president who initially signed the Soviet research document - still holds his position at the prestigious sports school and, as the vice-president of Ukraine's National Olympic Committee, attended the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Asked why this issue was coming to light 12 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, Dr. Kalinski said he waited before announcing the document because he feared retribution. "I did not want to take a risk of possible blackmailing, falsifying my records in the USSR, destroying my reputation - as always happened with Soviet citizens who questioned the correctness of the Soviet path," Dr. Kalinski said.

"I remember when somebody was speaking out in the former USSR, all the propaganda was aimed against such person to destroy his credibility, his image, his intentions, often portraying him as a criminal element of society," he explained.

As a political activist in the late 1980s, Dr. Kalinski joined student-led protests in the country's capital against the Ukrainian government and was arrested in 1989 when Soviet police found him removing political posters hung throughout Kyiv. At the time, Dr. Kalinski said, Ukraine seemed to be moving away from independence and when the opportunity came to leave the country in 1990 he took it, and the secret document came with him.

Dr. Kalinski now works as a tenured professor of exercise science at Kent State University in Ohio, where he teaches undergraduate and graduate students at the university's School of Exercise, Leisure and Sport. He has written numerous books and articles on exercise biochemistry and recently received research and teaching awards from Kent State University. Dr. Kalinski acquired his U.S. citizenship on August 4, 2000, an event that the Ukrainian scientist said played a large role in his decision to reveal the Soviet research report.

His animosity and resentment of the Soviet regime appear rooted in a turbulent past that separated him from his family, and he offers that as a motive for releasing information on doping in the former Soviet Union. His grandfather died as result of the Famine-Genocide of 1932-1933 and two of his uncles were taken by the Soviet secret police and have never returned. A third uncle was warned that the secret police were coming and he fled Ukraine, never to return.

Dr. Kalinski said his story is just a small example of the cruelty of the Soviet regime. As a U.S. citizen he says he has adopted a new motto: "Nothing in the world will change if we don't change it. You have to do everything in your power, even if it is not much."

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, November 9, 2003, No. 45, Vol. LXXI

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