The Soviet Biological Weapons Program: A History
Russian officials claim today that the USSR never possessed an offensive biological weapons program. In fact, the Soviet government spent billions of rubles and hard currency to fund a hugely expensive weapons program that added nothing to the country’s security. This history is the first attempt to understand the broad scope of the USSR’s offensive biological weapons research—its inception in the 1920s, its growth between 1970 and 1990, and its possible remnants in present-day Russia. We learn that the U.S. and U.K. governments never obtained clear evidence of the program’s closure from 1990 to the present day, raising the critical question whether the means for waging biological warfare could be resurrected in Russia in the future.

Based on interviews with important Soviet scientists and managers, papers from the Soviet Central Committee, and U.S. and U.K. declassified documents, this book peels back layers of lies, to reveal how and why Soviet leaders decided to develop biological weapons, the scientific resources they dedicated to this task, and the multitude of research institutes that applied themselves to its fulfillment. We learn that Biopreparat, an ostensibly civilian organization, was established to manage a top secret program, code-named Ferment, whose objective was to apply genetic engineering to develop strains of pathogenic agents that had never existed in nature. Leitenberg and Zilinskas consider the performance of the U.S. intelligence community in discovering and assessing these activities, and they examine in detail the crucial years 1985 to 1992, when Mikhail Gorbachev’s attempts to put an end to the program were thwarted as they were under Yeltsin.

1111378401
The Soviet Biological Weapons Program: A History
Russian officials claim today that the USSR never possessed an offensive biological weapons program. In fact, the Soviet government spent billions of rubles and hard currency to fund a hugely expensive weapons program that added nothing to the country’s security. This history is the first attempt to understand the broad scope of the USSR’s offensive biological weapons research—its inception in the 1920s, its growth between 1970 and 1990, and its possible remnants in present-day Russia. We learn that the U.S. and U.K. governments never obtained clear evidence of the program’s closure from 1990 to the present day, raising the critical question whether the means for waging biological warfare could be resurrected in Russia in the future.

Based on interviews with important Soviet scientists and managers, papers from the Soviet Central Committee, and U.S. and U.K. declassified documents, this book peels back layers of lies, to reveal how and why Soviet leaders decided to develop biological weapons, the scientific resources they dedicated to this task, and the multitude of research institutes that applied themselves to its fulfillment. We learn that Biopreparat, an ostensibly civilian organization, was established to manage a top secret program, code-named Ferment, whose objective was to apply genetic engineering to develop strains of pathogenic agents that had never existed in nature. Leitenberg and Zilinskas consider the performance of the U.S. intelligence community in discovering and assessing these activities, and they examine in detail the crucial years 1985 to 1992, when Mikhail Gorbachev’s attempts to put an end to the program were thwarted as they were under Yeltsin.

72.0 Out Of Stock
The Soviet Biological Weapons Program: A History

The Soviet Biological Weapons Program: A History

The Soviet Biological Weapons Program: A History

The Soviet Biological Weapons Program: A History

Hardcover

$72.00 
  • SHIP THIS ITEM
    Temporarily Out of Stock Online
  • PICK UP IN STORE

    Your local store may have stock of this item.

Related collections and offers


Overview

Russian officials claim today that the USSR never possessed an offensive biological weapons program. In fact, the Soviet government spent billions of rubles and hard currency to fund a hugely expensive weapons program that added nothing to the country’s security. This history is the first attempt to understand the broad scope of the USSR’s offensive biological weapons research—its inception in the 1920s, its growth between 1970 and 1990, and its possible remnants in present-day Russia. We learn that the U.S. and U.K. governments never obtained clear evidence of the program’s closure from 1990 to the present day, raising the critical question whether the means for waging biological warfare could be resurrected in Russia in the future.

Based on interviews with important Soviet scientists and managers, papers from the Soviet Central Committee, and U.S. and U.K. declassified documents, this book peels back layers of lies, to reveal how and why Soviet leaders decided to develop biological weapons, the scientific resources they dedicated to this task, and the multitude of research institutes that applied themselves to its fulfillment. We learn that Biopreparat, an ostensibly civilian organization, was established to manage a top secret program, code-named Ferment, whose objective was to apply genetic engineering to develop strains of pathogenic agents that had never existed in nature. Leitenberg and Zilinskas consider the performance of the U.S. intelligence community in discovering and assessing these activities, and they examine in detail the crucial years 1985 to 1992, when Mikhail Gorbachev’s attempts to put an end to the program were thwarted as they were under Yeltsin.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780674047709
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Publication date: 07/20/2012
Pages: 960
Product dimensions: 6.40(w) x 9.40(h) x 2.30(d)

About the Author

Milton Leitenberg is Senior Research Scholar at the University of Maryland.

Raymond A. Zilinskas was Director of the Chemical and Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Program and Senior Scientist at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

Note on Transliteration xv

Introduction 1

1 The Soviet Union's Biological Warfare Program, 1918-1972 16

2 Beginnings of the "Modern" Soviet BW program, 1970-1977 51

3 USSR Ministry of Defense Facilities and Its Biological Warfare Program 79

4 Open-Air Testing of Biological Weapons by Aralsk-7 on Vozrozhdeniye Island 121

5 Soviet Civilian Sector Defenses against Biological Warfare and Infectious Diseases 138

6 Biopreparat's Role in the Soviet Biological Warfare Program and Its Survival in Russia 153

7 Biopreparat's State Research Center for Applied Microbiology (SRCAM) 177

8 All-Union Research Institute of Molecular Biology and Scientific-Production Association "Vector" 205

9 Biopreparat Facilities at Leningrad, Lyubuchany, and Stepnogorsk 250

10 Soviet Biological Weapons and Doctrines for Their Use 282

11 Distinguishing between Offensive and Defensive Biological Warfare Activities 323

12 Assessments of Soviet Biological Warfare Activities by Western Intelligence Services 343

13 United States Covert Biological Warfare Disinformation 397

14 Soviet Allegations of the Use of Biological Weapons by the United States 407

15 Sverdlovsk 1979: The Release at Bacillus anthracis Spores from a Soviet Ministry of Defense Facility and Its Consequences 423

16 Soviet Research on Mycotoxins 450

17 Assistance by Warsaw Pact States to the Soviet Union's Biological Warfare Program 458

18 The Question of Proliferation from the USSR Biological Warfare Program 476

19 Recalcitrant Russian Policies in a Parallel Area: Chemical Weapon Demilitarization 507

20 The Soviet Union, Russia, and Biological Warfare Arms Control 523

21 The Gorbachev Years: The Soviet Biological Weapons Program, 1985-1992 562

22 Boris Yeltsin to the Present 631

23 United States and International Efforts to Prevent Proliferation of Biological Weapons Expertise from the Former Soviet Union 679

Conclusion 698

Annex A Acronyms and Russian Terms 715

Annex B Glossary 723

Annex C A Joint Decree of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, USSR, and the USSR Council of Ministers, dated 24 June 1981 731

Annex D Joint US/UK/Russian Statement of Biological Weapons, September 1992 733

Notes 737

Acknowledgments 889

Index 891

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews