Biopreparat

Biopreparat (Russian: Биопрепарат, lit: "Biological substance preparation") was the Soviet Union's Scientific Production Association and major biological warfare agency from the 1970s on. It was a vast, ostensibly civilian, network of secret laboratories, each of which focused on a different deadly bioagent. Its 30,000 employees researched and produced pathogenic weapons for use in a major war.

History

Establishment

Biopreparat was established in 1973 as a "civilian" continuation of earlier Soviet biological weapons programs. The project was reportedly initiated by academician Yuri Ovchinnikov, who convinced General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev that development of biological weapons was necessary.[1] The research at Biopreparat constituted a violation of the terms of the Biological Weapons Convention of 1972, which outlawed biological weapons. Its existence was steadfastly denied by Soviet officials for decades.

Exposure of Biopreparat in the West

In April 1979, a major outbreak of pulmonary anthrax in the city of Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg) caused the deaths of 105 or more Soviet citizens. Sverdlovsk contained a Biopreparat facility. The Soviet Union attempted to cover up reports of the incident but details leaked out to the West in 1980 when the German newspaper, Bild, carried a story about the incident. Moscow described allegations that the epidemic was an accident at a biological warfare facility as "slanderous propaganda" and insisted the anthrax outbreak had been caused by tainted meat.

The first senior Soviet biological weapons engineer to defect to the West was Vladimir Pasechnik (1937–2001) who alerted Western intelligence in 1989 to the vast scope of Moscow's clandestine program. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and US President George H. W. Bush put pressure on Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev to open up Russia's germ warfare facilities to a team of outside inspectors. When the inspectors toured four of the sites in 1991, they were met with denials and evasions. Production tanks, the purpose of which seemed to be to manufacture large quantities of hazardous materials, were clean and sterile when presented to inspectors. Laboratories had been stripped of equipment before being presented to inspectors.

Pasechnik's revelations that the program was much greater in scope than previously suspected were confirmed in 1992 with the defection to the United States of Colonel Kanatjan Alibekov (b. 1950), the First Deputy Director of Biopreparat. Alibekov (now known as Ken Alibek) held his role in Biopreparat from 1988 to 1992. He claimed that development of new strains of genetically engineered weapons was still continuing.

Alibekov later wrote the book Biohazard (1999) detailing publicly his extensive inside knowledge of the structure, goals, operations and achievements of Biopreparat. He was also featured in the October 13, 1998 episode of Frontline entitled "Plague War".

1990s

The Biopreparat complex suffered with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Since then several large bioweapons production lines have been officially closed. Its current state is unknown; however, it is likely that Biopreparat and successor entities continued bioweapons research and development at least through the 1990s.[1]

Operations

Biopreparat was a system of 18, nominally civilian, research laboratories and centers scattered chiefly around European Russia, in which a small army of scientists and technicians developed biological weapons such as anthrax, Ebola, Marburg virus, plague, Q fever, Junin virus, glanders, and smallpox. It was the largest producer of weaponized anthrax in the Soviet Union and was a leader in the development of new bioweapons technologies.

Biopreparat facilities

The project had 18 major labs and production centers:

This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items with reliable sources.

Biopreparat pathogens

Pathogens that were successfully weaponized by the organization included (in order of completion):

Annual production capacities for many of the above listed pathogens were in the tens of tons, typically with redundant production facilities located throughout the Soviet Union.

Leaders

Directors

Gen. Yury T. Kalinin (1973-2001)[3]

Deputy Directors

Col. Kanatjan Alibekov (1988-1992)[3]

See also

References
  1. Alibek, K. 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
  2. Pasternack, Alex (August 29, 2013). "The US is building a bioweapons lab in Kazakhstan". Salon.
  3. Miller, Judith (January 25, 2000). "U.S. Aid Is Diverted to Germ Warfare, Russian Scientists Say". The New York Times. Retrieved October 3, 2020.
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