During the immediate post-war period, Lavrentiy Beria, the Soviet minister of internal affairs, continued to maintain control of the Soviet biological warfare program and to further develop its offensive capabilities. In his new role, Beria and his staff had access to biological weapons specialists captured as a result of the Soviet victory in the Second World War. In the post-war period, Beria maintained the NIIEG facility at remote Kirov as the key hub of the Soviet BW program. During the period 1947 to 1949, a new military BW facility was spun off from the Kirov institute. Based in Sverdlovsk it was known as the USSR Ministry of Defense’s Scientific-Research Institute of Hygiene. In 1953, a third military BW facility, the Scientific-Research Sanitary Institute, was created at Zagorsk. The Vozrozhdenie Island open-air BW proving ground was also expanded after the war.
