The Soviet Union’s Invisible Weapons of Mass Destruction: Biopreparat's Covert Biological Warfare Programme

278 Pages·2021·5.073 MB·English

by  Anthony Rimmington

The Soviet Union’s
Invisible Weapons of
Mass Destruction
Biopreparat’s Covert
Biological Warfare
Programme
Anthony Rimmington
The Soviet Union’s Invisible Weapons of Mass
Destruction
“We are not playing here, we are making a weapon!”
—Major General Nikolai Nikolaevich Urakov, Director of
Biopreparat’s Institute of Applied Microbiology, Obolensk
“We planned to introduce new properties into disease organisms, such as antibi-
otic resistance, altered antigen structure and enhanced stability in the aerosol
form, making delivery of the agent easier and more effective….We also reasoned
that the genes for toxins or other factors could be introduced into the cells of
bacteria or the DNA of viruses and thereby yield strains with wholly new and unex-
pected pathogenic properties.”
—Igor’ Valerianovich Domaradskii, Second Deputy Director of Science at
Biopreparat’s Institute of Applied Microbiology
Anthony Rimmington
The Soviet Union’s
Invisible Weapons of
Mass Destruction
Biopreparat’s Covert Biological Warfare Programme
Anthony Rimmington
BIRMINGHAM, UK
ISBN 978-3-030-82881-3 ISBN 978-3-030-82882-0 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82882-0
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To
Igor’ Valerianovich Domaradskii,
Vladimir Artemovich Pasechnik
and
Kanatzhan Baizakovich Alibekov
who shone a light on the heart of darkness
A
cknowledgements
The author would like to pay tribute to the high-level Biopreparat scien-
tists who hosted himself and colleagues at their facilities at a time when
their world had been ripped asunder, with the USSR lying in ruins and
political and economic chaos everywhere apparent. The first of these was
Major General (Reserves) Nikolai Nikolaevich Urakov, who invited the
author and his colleagues to visit Biopreparat’s applied microbiology insti-
tute in Obolensk on a number of occasions in the early 1990s. Some in the
international disarmament community mockingly referred to him as
“Darth Vader”, after the villainous Star Wars character. However, under-
neath a mask of stern rectitude, there was a genuine human side to his
character and, after a few meetings, he was revealed to possess a strong
sense of humour. Another scientist with a military background was Colonel
(Reserves) Gennadii Nikolaevich Lepeshkin. In July 1995, he hosted the
author, who was part of a UK group visiting the former SNOPB facilities,
which had been formerly focused on the large-scale production of weap-
onized anthrax bacteria, in Stepnogorsk. Even in very difficult economic
circumstances, he did his utmost to make his guests feel comfortable. At
one stage, he very kindly invited the UK party to visit his apartment in
Stepnogorsk town centre where he allowed them to view his Soviet army
uniform and medals. He was very convivial company and was enormously
proud of his facility’s achievements, both during the Soviet period and in
newly independent Kazakhstan. Finally, there was Vladimir Petrovich
Zav’yalov, who on more than one occasion during the 1990s, hosted UK
visitors to Biopreparat’s Institute of Immunology in Lyubuchany. He
revealed himself to be a scientist of exceptional calibre with an array of
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viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
international publications. More than that, he has since proved himself to
be an individual with an uncompromising adherence to strong moral and
ethical principles and values and was understandably well-liked in the
wider Russian scientific community.
It is necessary to acknowledge the author’s wider debt to the former
Soviet scientists, who, at considerable personal risk, have provided accounts
of their participation in the covert activities of Biopreparat. These include,
especially, Igor’ Valerianovich Domaradskii, Vladimir Artemovich
Pasechnik and Kanatzhan Baizakovich Alibekov. Without them, it would
not have been possible to complete this current study and historians of the
Soviet Union will be forever in their debt. One should note also the enor-
mous contribution to our understanding of the Soviet offensive BW pro-
gramme made, through a series of publications, by the Russian chemist,
Lev Aleksandrovich Fedorov. Mention should also be made of Valerii
Pavlovich Mityushev who has shone new light on the origins of the
Biopreparat network.
The author owes a great debt of gratitude to the monumental scholar-
ship undertaken over an 11-year period by Milton Leitenberg and
Raymond Zilinskas with Jens Kuhn. This resulted in the publication in
2012 of their authoritative work of reference, The Soviet Biological Weapons
Programme: A History. Sadly, Zilinskas, one of the world’s leading author-
ities on the Soviet BW effort, died after a brief illness on 14 September 2018.
Alex Donaldson very kindly read and commented on the manuscript as it
was being finally prepared. A debt of thanks is owed to Dr Christopher Joyce,
who, as a postgraduate student during the period 1998–2005, assisted the
author with accessing documentation from the Russian State Archive of the
Economy (Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv ekonomiki or RGAE) and the
Russian State Library, both based in Moscow. The author also wishes to
acknowledge the kind donation made to him by Reg Bottomley, Director of
Peruvum Ltd., of his personal archive of company documentation relating to
business visits to life sciences organizations in the Soviet Union, undertaken
during the period 1977–1985. Reg, now deceased, probably had the distinc-
tion of being among the very few Westerners to become personally acquainted
with Major General (Reserves) Vsevolod Ivanovich Ogarkov, who had served
as the first head of Biopreparat.
c
ontents
1 Introduction 1
2 The Secret History: Khrushchev’s Creation of Soviet
Reserve Biological Warfare Mobilization Facilities Within
Civil Production Plants in the 1950s and 1960s 9
3 Glavmikrobioprom and the Emergence of the Soviet
Microbiological Industry 19
4 Genesis: The Creation of Biopreparat 49
5 Anthrax on the Kazakh Steppe: Biopreparat’s Network of
Experimental-Industrial Bases 73
6 The Creation of Biopreparat’s Scientific Base: The R&D
Complexes at Obolensk, Kol’tsovo and Leningrad 87
7 A Roadmap to the Future? The Emergence of Biopreparat
as a Major Civil Biopharmaceutical Player 133
8 A Brave New World: Building Capitalism in the New
Russia and the Struggle for Control of Biopreparat 153
ix
x CONTENTS
9 C onclusion 223
Appendix A: Soviet and Russian Abbreviations and Acronyms 235
Appendix B: Composition of the Interbranch Scientific and
Technical Council for Molecular Biology and Genetics (MNTS) 241
Appendix C: List of Associations, Enterprises and
Organizations Included Within the State Concern
Biopreparat, 4 April 1991 243
Appendix D: Award of Soviet State Honours to
Glavmikrobioprom and Biopreparat Personnel 247
Index 251
A A
bout the uthor
Anthony Rimmington is a former senior research fellow at the University
of Birmingham’s Centre for Russian, European and Eurasian Studies
(CREES). He was the winner, as a postgraduate student at this institution,
of the John Grayson Memorial Prize. He has published widely on the civil
life sciences industry in Russia and the former Soviet Republics and is the
author of Technology and Transition: A Survey of Biotechnology in Russia,
Ukraine and the Baltic States (1992). Other publications on this topic
include: Tekhnologiya i perekhodnyi period. Obzor biotekhnologii v Rossii, na
Ukraine i v stranakh baltii, in Biotekhnologiya, ekologiya, meditsina:
Materialy III–IV Mezhdunarodnykh nauchnykh seminarov 2001–2002,
Volga-Vyatka Centre of Applied Microbiology, Kirov, 2002, pp. 75–78;
Biotechnology Legislation in Central & Eastern Europe, European
Federation of Biotechnology Task Group on Public Perceptions of
Biotechnology’s Briefing Paper No. 9, June 1999, p. 4; Biotechnology and
Industrial Microbiology Regulations in Russia and the Former Soviet
Republics, in Hambleton, P., Melling, J., Salusbury, T.T. (Eds.), Biosafety
in Industrial Biotechnology, Blackie Academic & Professional, London,
1994, pp.  67–89; Perestroika and Soviet Biotechnology, Technology
Analysis and Strategic Management, Vol. 2, No. 1, 1990, pp. 63–79;
Soviet Biotechnology: The Case of Single Cell Protein, in Amann, R.,
Cooper, J. (Eds.), Technical Progress and Soviet Economic Development,
Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1986, pp.  75–93; and Issues in Soviet
Biotechnology: The Case of Single-C ell Protein, in Adaptability to New
Technologies of the USSR and East European Countries, NATO Colloquium,
Brussels, 17–19 April, 1985, pp. 217–234.
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