Welcome to twinme.com on July 10 2009.
This is an internet experiment running to monitor browsing habbits of individuals through wikipedia contents.

Soviet biological weapons program

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

The Soviet Union began a biological weapons program in the 1920s at the Leningrad Military Academy in Moscow under the control of the state security apparatus, known as the GPU. This occurred despite the fact that the USSR was a signatory to the 1925 Geneva Convention, which banned both chemical and biological weapons[1].

During World War II Stalin was forced to move his biological warfare operations out of the path of advancing German forces [2]At the conclusion of the war, Soviet troops invading Manchuria captured many Unit 731 Japanese scientists and learned of their extensive human experimentation through captured documents and prisoner interrogations. Emboldened by these discoveries, Stalin put KGB chief Lavrenty Beria in charge of a new biowarfare program.

By 1960, numerous biological warfare research facilities existed throughout the Soviet Union. Although the USSR also signed the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), the Soviets subsequently augmented their biowarfare programs. They doubted the United States’ claimed compliance with the BWC, which further motivated their program[3]. The Soviet biological weapons effort became a huge program, comprising various institutions under different ministries along with commercial facilities and collectively known as Biopreparat after 1973. Biopreparat pursued offensive research, development, and production of biological agents under cover of legitimate civil biotechnology research. It conducted its clandestine activities at 52 sites and employed over 50,000 people. Annualized production capacity for weaponized smallpox, for example, was 90 to 100 tons. [4]

In the 1990s, President of the Russian Federation Boris Yeltsin admitted to an offensive bio-weapons program as well as to the true nature of the Sverdlovsk biological weapons accident of 1979, which had resulted in the deaths of at least 64 people [5] Soviet defectors, including Colonel Kanatjan Alibekov, first deputy chief of Biopreparat from 1988 to 1992, confirmed that the program had been massive and still existed. In September 1992, Russia signed an agreement with the United States and Great Britain promising to end its bio-weapons program and to convert its facilities for benevolent scientific and medical purposes. [6] Compliance with the agreement as well as the fate of the former Soviet bio-agents and facilities, is still mostly undocumented. [7]

Contents

[edit] History

[edit] Timeline

1928 - Revolutionary Military Council signed a decree about weaponization of typhus. Leningrad Military academy began cultivation of typhus in chicken embryos. Human experimentation with typhus, glanders and melioidosis in Solovetsky camp. [8] A laboratory on vaccine and serum research was also established near Moscow in 1928, within Military Chemical Agency. This laboratory was transformed to Red Army's Scientific Research Institute of Microbiology in 1933. [9]

1941: Soviet bioweapons facilities are evacuated to the city of Kirov.

1942: Alleged use of tularemia against German troops.[8] [10]

1945: Japanese documentation from Unit 731 was captured.

1946: A biological weapons facility was established in Sverdlovsk.

1953: Fifteenth directorate of Red Army takes responsibility for the program.

1973: A "civilian" main directorate Biopreparat was founded. Other organizations involved in design and production of biological weapons were Soviet Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Health, USSR Academy of Sciences, and KGB.

1990s: specimens of deadly bacteria and viruses were stolen from Western laboratories and delivered by Aeroflot planes to support Russian program of biological weapons. At least one of the pilots was a Russian Foreign Intelligence Service officer" [11]. At least two agents died, presumably from the transported pathogens [11]

Beginning of 2000s: Academician "A.S." proposed new biological warfare program "Biological Shield of Russia" to president Vladimir Putin. The program reportedly includes institutes of Russian Academy of Sciences from Pushchino [9]

[edit] Military use during World War II

Tularemia was allegedly used against German troops in 1942 near Stalingrad[8]. Around 10,000 cases of tularemia had been reported in the Soviet Union during the years of 1941 and 1943. However, the number of cases jumped to more than 100,000 in the year of Stalingrad outbreak. German panzer troops fell ill in such significant numbers during the late summer of 1942 that German military campaign came to a temporary halt. German soldiers became ill with the rare pulmonary form of tularemia, which indicate the use of an aerosol biological weapon (the ordinary transmission pathway is through ticks and rodents). According to Kenneth Alibek the used tularemia weapon had been developed in the Kirov military facility [8]. It was suggested by some, however, that the outbreak might be of natural origin, since a pulmonary form of tularemia has also been noted in natural outbreaks in Martha's Vineyard in 2000 [10].

In the Soviet Union the outbreak at Stalingrad was described as a natural outbreak. Crops were left in the field during the German offensive and the rodent population swelled putting many inhabitants into contact with infected rodents. In some parts of the Stalingrad Oblast as many as 75% of the inhabitants became infected. It was noted that before the war there was a so-called threshing tularemia caused by people inhaling infected dusts soiled by rodents while threshing grain.[12]

[edit] Post-BWC developments

Soviet Union continued development and mass production of offensive biological weapons, despite having signed the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC). The development and production was conducted by main directorate "Biopreparat", Soviet Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Health, USSR Academy of Sciences, the KGB, and other state organizations [8].

In 1980s Soviet Ministry of Agriculture had successfully developed variants of foot-and-mouth disease and rinderpest against cows, African swine fever for pigs, and psittacosis to kill chicken. These agents were prepared to spray them down from tanks attached to airplanes over hundreds of miles. The secret program was code-named "Ecology". [8]

[edit] Notable outbreaks and accidents

[edit] Marburg virus

The Soviet Union reportedly had a large biological weapons program involving Marburg virus. The development was conducted in Vector Institute under leadership of Dr. Ustinov who accidentally died from the virus. The samples of Marburg taken from Ustinov's organs were more powerful than the original strain. New strain called "Variant U" had been successfully weaponized and approved by Soviet Ministry of Defense in 1990. [8]

[edit] Smallpox

The first smallpox weapons factory in the Soviet Union was established in 1947 in the city of Zagorsk, close to Moscow [8]. It was produced by injecting small amounts of the virus into chicken eggs. An especially virulent strain (codenamed India-1967 or India-1) was brought from India in 1967 by a special Soviet medical team that was sent to India to help to eradicate the virus. The pathogen was manufactured and stockpiled in large quantities throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

An outbreak of weaponized smallpox occurred during its testing in the 1970s. General Prof. Peter Burgasov, former Chief Sanitary Physician of the Soviet Army, and a senior researcher within the program of biological weapons described this incident:

“On Vozrozhdeniya Island in the Aral Sea, the strongest recipes of smallpox were tested. Suddenly I was informed that there were mysterious cases of mortalities in Aralsk. A research ship of the Aral fleet came 15 km away from the island (it was forbidden to come any closer than 40 km). The lab technician of this ship took samples of plankton twice a day from the top deck. The smallpox formulation— 400 gr. of which was exploded on the island—”got her” and she became infected. After returning home to Aralsk, she infected several people including children. All of them died. I suspected the reason for this and called the Chief of General Staff of Ministry of Defense and requested to forbid the stop of the Alma-Ata to Moscow train in Aralsk. As a result, the epidemic around the country was prevented. I called Andropov, who at that time was Chief of KGB, and informed him of the exclusive recipe of smallpox obtained on Vozrozhdeniya Island.” [13][14]

A production line to manufacture smallpox on an industrial scale was launched in the Vector Institute in 1990.[8] The development of genetically altered strains of smallpox was presumably conducted in the Institute under leadership of Dr. Sergei Netyosov in the middle of the 1990s, according to Kenneth Alibek [8]

It was reported that Russia made smallpox available to Iraq in the beginning of 1990s. [13]

[edit] Anthrax

Main article: Sverdlovsk anthrax leak

Spores of weaponized anthrax were accidentally released from a military facility near the city of Sverdlovsk in 1979. The death toll was at least 105, but no one knows the exact number, because all hospital records and other evidence were destroyed by the KGB, according to former Biopreparat deputy director Kenneth Alibek [8].

[edit] References

  1. ^ Martin, James W., George W. Christopher and Edward M. Eitzen (2007), “History of Biological Weapons: From Poisoned Darts to Intentional Epidemics”, In: Dembek, Zygmunt F. (2007), Medical Aspects of Biological Warfare, (Series: Textbooks of Military Medicine), Washington, DC: The Borden Institute, pg 11.
  2. ^ Ken Alibek and K Handelman (1999), Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World Trade From the Inside by the Man Who Ran It, New York, NY: Random House.
  3. ^ Alibek, Op. cit.
  4. ^ B. Beckett (1983), Weapons of Tomorrow, New York, NY: Plenum Press.
  5. ^ J Miller, S Engelberg, and W Broad (2001), Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War, New York, NY: Simon and Schuster.
  6. ^ M Leitenberg (2001), Working Paper: Biological Weapons in the 20th Century: A Review and Analysis, College Park, Md: Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland, University of Maryland; 2001. Available at: www.cissm.umd.edu/documents/bw%2020th%c.pdf. Accessed January 18, 2006.
  7. ^ Adherence To and Compliance With Arms Control, Nonproliferation and Disarmament Agreements and Commitments, Washington, DC: US Department of State; 2005. Available at: http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/52113.pdf. Accessed August 9, 2006.
  8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Kenneth Alibek and S. Handelman. Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World - Told from Inside by the Man Who Ran it. 1999. Delta (2000) ISBN 0-385-33496-6.
  9. ^ a b Vadim J. Birstein. The Perversion Of Knowledge: The True Story of Soviet Science. Westview Press (2004) ISBN 0-813-34280-5
  10. ^ a b Eric Croddy & Sarka Krcalova. Tularemia, Biological Warfare, and the Battle for Stalingrad (1942-1943). Military Medicine 166.10 (October 2001)
  11. ^ a b Alexander Kouzminov Biological Espionage: Special Operations of the Soviet and Russian Foreign Intelligence Services in the West, Greenhill Books, 2006, ISBN 1-853-67646-2 [1]
  12. ^ Yelkin, I. I. (1980), Military Epidemiological Doctrine (Based on Protection of Troops Against Epidemics During the 1941 - 1945 Great Patriotic War) in Translation: Tularemia in the USSR JPRS 82072 (25 October 1982) [ADA357123]
  13. ^ a b Shoham D, Wolfson Z (2004). "The Russian biological weapons program: vanished or disappeared?". Crit. Rev. Microbiol. 30 (4): 241–61. doi:10.1080/10408410490468812. PMID 15646399. http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/tandf/bmcb/2004/00000030/00000004/art00002. 
  14. ^ "Smallpox - not a bad weapon" (in Russian). Interview with General Burgasov. Moscow News. http://mn.ru/issue.php?2001-46-48. Retrieved on 2007-06-18. 

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_biological_weapons_program"
Personal tools
Languages
Visit joltnews for the latest headlines
Visit bloit.com for company information
Geed Media does computer consulting on long island.
This page viewed times. See Logs