Biopreparat

History

The origins of the Biopreparat network trace to the 1950s under Nikita Khrushchev, when biological warfare mobilisation facilities were hidden within newly built civil production plants. The first major dual-use plant, the Berdsk Chemical Factory, located 26 km south of Novosibirsk, began construction in 1957 following a decree by the USSR Council of Ministers. A second dual-use facility, the Omutninsk Chemical Factory in Vostochnyi, 150 km north-east of Kirov, was created by a decree of 2 August 1958 from the CPSU and the Council of Ministers.

These plants were designed to switch from civil microbiological output to military biological agents in wartime. Both were transferred to Biopreparat upon its creation in 1974. Another key institution was the Scientific-Research Technical Bureau (NITB), created in August 1958 under the USSR Ministry of Defence's Fifteenth Administration, which managed the Soviet BW programme. NITB developed technology for dual-use pharmaceutical and microbiological enterprises and maintained the military components of dual-use facilities.

Most of its key staff moved to Biopreparat in 1974. On 24 April 1974, Order 131 DSP of Glavmikrobioprom created Biopreparat, and on 26 June 1974, existing dual-use BW facilities were transferred to it. The project was reportedly initiated by academician Yuri Anatol'evich Ovchinnikov, who convinced General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev of the need for biological weapons. The research violated the Biological Weapons Convention of 1972.

Operations

Biopreparat operated as a system of nominally civilian research and design institutes, pilot plants, and dual-use manufacturing facilities, mainly in European Russia, where scientists worked on bacterial and viral pathogens to develop a new generation of biological weapons. It incorporated capacity for producing weaponized anthrax and led in new bioweapons technologies. The network included facilities such as the All-Union Scientific-Research Institute of Applied Microbiology (VNII PM) in Obolensk, the All-Union Institute of Highly Pure Biochemical Preparations (VNII OChB) in Leningrad, and the Stepnogorsk Scientific Experimental-Industrial Base (SNOPB) in northern Kazakhstan.

Research targeted pathogens including Bacillus anthracis, Yersinia pestis, Francisella tularensis, Brucella sp., smallpox virus, Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus, Marburg virus, and Machupo virus. The only reliable production capacity data concerns SNOPB, estimated to have capacity for about 300 metric tonnes of weaponized B. anthracis spores per ten-month production cycle.