From Swords to Ploughshares

A number of long-range research programs were initiated by the Red Army’s biological warfare facilities which would bring about the development and application of a range of civil and defense vaccines during the Second World War. As a result, 8.5 million Soviet troops were vaccinated against plague, 90,000 against anthrax and an unknown number against tularemia. In addition, botulinum toxoids and a vaccine against brucellosis were developed. Although the Red Army’s BW institutes made some useful contribution to the development of antibiotics production, it was UK and US scientists who made critical contributions of technology. The same BW facilities also launched a program for the manufacture of bacteriophage preparations which drew heavily on technology developed in Tbilisi.

On the Brink of Bacteriological War

During the 1930s, a series of reports generated by both German and Soviet intelligence fueled increasing alarm with regard to the perceived BW capabilities allegedly being developed by their potential opponents. After the onset of the Second World War, if either side was going to break the 1925 Geneva Protocol prohibiting the use of gas and bacteriological warfare, to which they had both agreed to abide, then 1942 was the most likely year. However, a number of prominent scholars have strongly disputed Alibek’s account of the deliberate aerosol dissemination of tularemia by the Red Army at Stalingrad in the late summer of 1942. The occasional use by Soviet-supported partisans of biological agents against the German occupation forces is better documented but there is no evidence that these attacks formed part of a wider, centrally coordinated, campaign of biological sabotage by the Soviet authorities.

The Soviet Union’s Enigma BW Programme

The British Secret Intelligence Service identified the RSFSR People’s Commissariat of Health (RSFSR Narkomzdrav) as being the main agency within which ostensibly civil facilities engaged in offensive biological warfare work were concealed. Significant funds for BW research were channeled from RSFSR Narkomzdrav to the Plague Fort at Kronstadt and to other laboratories in Leningrad. Semen Ivanovich Zlatogorov, who had participated in Russian efforts to combat the October 1910 to February 1911 outbreak of pneumonic plague in Manchuria, and had subsequently emerged as one of the world’s leading authorities on pneumonic plague, was the lead scientist heading up BW research in Leningrad. The key institution operating closely alongside the Narkomzdrav facilities appears to have been the Red Army’s Military-Medical Academy.

The Creation of a BW Prison Laboratory

In 1932, the United State Political Organization (OGPU), an early forerunner of the KGB, created a facility known as the Bureau of Special Purpose (Byuro osobogo naznacheniya) of the Special Section of the United State Political Organization – abbreviated simply to BON-OO-OGPU. BON was in fact a special prison laboratory, or sharashka, where approximately nineteen leading plague and tularaemia specialists were arrested and imprisoned by OGPU, and forced to work on the development of offensive and defensive biological weapons. The creation of the Suzdal’ BW sharashka was part of a much wider process whereby the Soviet security organs tightened their grip over the defense industry and the development of new weapons and military-related production processes.

Origins

Although unprecedented in scale and ambition, Stalin’s offensive biological warfare program was not an isolated phenomenon. It can instead be viewed as a response to, and extension of, the biological sabotage programs pursued during the First World War by Germany. During the nearly three-decade period of Stalin’s leadership (1924-1953), two distinct, and highly compartmentalized, components of the Soviet Union’s offensive biological warfare program are in evidence. The main strand was launched by the Red Army in Moscow in 1926 and is very well-documented with numerous archival and secondary sources available. There is in addition a second, earlier and much more ephemeral strand, which is based in Leningrad, which was mainly concealed within the RSFSR People’s Commissariat of Health (RSFSR Narkomzdrav) and the Red Army’s Military-Medical Academy.

Yesterday Today

Knowledge of Stalin’s historical biological warfare network is crucial to making sense of the vast offensive biological warfare program launched by the Soviet Union in the 1970s. It is also a crucial aid to a full understanding of Russia’s current biological defense program. Nearly the entirety of the core infrastructure that was created during Stalin’s leadership remains in place today. The Shikhany proving ground, in existence since the 1920s, remains at the heart of Russia’s network and the three BW facilities created by Stalin at Kirov, Ekaterinburg and Sergiev Posad remain in full operation. As well as having originally created much of Russia’s existing physical military biological infrastructure, Stalin’s BW program is also likely to have resulted in the development by the military of technology for the manufacture of a range of new bioweapons. This technology presumably underwent further development during the offensive program launched in the 1970s by the Soviet Union and was eventually inherited by Russia.

From Flanders to Glanders

There is substantive evidence of the long-term integration of veterinary microbiological facilities within the USSR’s biological warfare programs. The initial impetus to this process were the concerns of the early Soviet regime over BW sabotage attacks by Germany in the First World War. In December 1918, the Red Army created its own military veterinary facility which was eventually transferred to Zagorsk. BW research also appears to have been pursued at a civil laboratory on Lisii Island close to the town of Vyshny Volochek.

From Shikhany to Vozrozhdenie Island

A key requirement with regard to the Soviet Union’s preparedness for biological warfare was the identification of a location—preferably an island—for use in field tests of bacteriological agents. Initially, the Red Army made use of the Central Army Chemical Proving Ground at Shikhany and carried out a range of tests on BW simulants. The risks and difficulties associated with BW tests at Shikhany, especially the proximity of the town of Volsk to the proving ground, eventually led to the transfer of this work to the newly established biological proving ground on the highly remote Vozrozhdenie Island in the Aral Sea.

The Rise and Fall of a Working-Class Hero

In July 1937, the lead scientist of the Soviet Union’s offensive BW program, Ivan Mikhailovich Velikanov, was one of a large number of prominent biological warfare specialists to be arrested by the security organs during the mass repression (dubbed the Great Terror) instigated by Stalin. After his execution in April 1938, Velikanov was effectively airbrushed out of the history of Soviet microbiology. One of the most interesting aspects of developments in Russia’s current military biological network is an attempt by the authorities to create a new institutional memory of the early Soviet BW program, with Velikanov, one of the outstanding microbiologists of his generation, at the very heart of the new historical account.

Stalin’s BW Archipelago

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.