When Stalin analyzed Mao’s poop

A poop espionage

Even poop can be part of a military strategy to better know your enemy. It sounds like something over-the-top but it’s what happened during WWII.

As explained by a BBC article, according to reports in Russian newspapers, Stalin’s secret police established a special division in the 1940s to collect human waste. The aim was to analyze foreign leaders’ poop in a sort of poop espionage.

Igor Atamanenko, a former Soviet spy, claimed to have discovered this strange procedure while conducting research in the Russian secret services’ files.

“In those days the Soviets didn’t have the kind of listening devices that secret services do today”, he explained.

“That’s why our specialists came up with the most extravagant ways of extracting information about a person”.

Lavrenti Beria, a Stalin’s henchman, according to Mr. Atamanenko, was given control of the covert laboratory.

“For example, if they detected high levels of amino acid Tryptophan”, he explained, “they concluded that person was calm and approachable”.

“But a lack of potassium in poo was seen as a sign of a nervous disposition and someone with insomnia”.

According to Mr. Atamanenko, Soviet spies employed this approach in December 1949 to assess Mao Zedong, the Chinese leader, who was visiting Moscow at the time.  They had allegedly installed special toilets for Mao, which weren’t connected to sewers, but to secret boxes.

Mao was plied with food and drink for ten days while his stools were whisked away for examination. After carefully examining and analyzing Mao’s poop, Stalin reportedly rejected the notion of signing an agreement with him.

Mao stated that China looked forward to a relationship with Russia when he first arrived in Moscow, but he also emphasized that he wanted to be treated equally.

David Halberstam, a journalist, and historian quotes from his book The Coldest Winter:

“Instead, he was being taught a lesson each day. He had become, in Ulam’s words, ‘as much captive as a guest'”.

“As such, he shouted at the walls, convinced that Stalin had bugged the house: ‘I am here to do more than eat and shit'”.

However, when Nikita Khrushchev succeeded Stalin, the experiment was abandoned and the lab was shut down, according to Komsomolskaya Pravda, one of Russia’s most-read daily newspapers.

The Federal Security Service of Russia said far less about the case, stating:

“We cannot comment on this story”.