Biopreparat - Knowledge

1131: 71:, was created in accordance with a decree issued on the 2 August 1958 by the CPSU and the Council of Ministers. The idea behind the new plants was that in the event of wartime emergency they could switch from the output of civil microbiological products to the production of military biological agents. Both the Berdsk and the Omutninsk facilities were transferred to 161:'s research and development (R&D) programmes were from the very outset subject to extraordinary levels of secrecy and compartmentalization. The first significant intelligence reaching the West regarding the nature and extent of this Soviet covert BW effort resulted from the defection to the UK in October 1989 of a high-level 275:, in which a small army of scientists and technicians worked on bacterial and viral pathogens with a view to developing a new generation of biological weapons. It incorporated capacity with the potential to produce weaponized anthrax in the Soviet Union and was a leader in the development of new bioweapons technologies. 241:

had three distinct, and, at times overlapping, phases of its existence. From its origins in April 1974 through to the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991, and indeed for some undetermined time thereafter, it was engaged in a major offensive BW research programme. It also maintained five

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the world has ever seen. It was a vast, ostensibly civilian, network employing 30–40,000 personnel and incorporating five major military-focused research institutes, numerous design and instrument-making facilities, three pilot plants and five dual-use production plants. The network pursued major

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offensive research and development programs which genetically engineered microbial strains to be resistant to an array of antibiotics. In addition, bacterial agents were created with the ability to produce various peptides, yielding strains with wholly new and unexpected pathogenic properties.

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had the task of developing technology for use in the creation of dual-use pharmaceutical and microbiological enterprises. It also had the responsibility of maintaining the military components of the Soviet dual-use facilities in a constant state of readiness. Most of the key staff members at

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network incorporated no less than 40 facilities, operating in 15 different cities and had control of domestic production of vaccines, antibiotics and other essential medicines. It was precisely at this moment that Alibekov emerged as a key interlocutor between

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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

67:, began in 1957 in response to a decree by the USSR Council of Ministers on the development of the Soviet chemical and microbiological industry. A second dual-use facility, the Omutninsk Chemical Factory, located in Vostochnyi, 150 km north-east of 259:

was divested of control of nearly all R&D institutes and manufacturing facilities. Henceforward, it assumed a highly diminished role, focused on export control and other matters and only maintained a small headquarters staff.

1216: 123:. On the 26 June 1974, a number of the Soviet Union's existing dual-use BW facilities were transferred to the new agency. These included the Berdsk Chemical Factory and the Omutninsk Chemical Factory. The 63:, of biological warfare mobilisation facilities hidden within newly built civil production plants. The construction of the first major dual-use plant, the Berdsk Chemical Factory, located 26 km south of 819:

Article from James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies report: "FORMER SOVIET BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS FACILITIES IN KAZAKHSTAN: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE". Also describes Biopreparat in some detail.

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MIT Technology Review article featuring a lecture by Dr. Serguei Popov, a former Biopreparat researcher working on recombinant DNA techniques for developing novel biological weapons

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increased in size and political importance and began to emerge also as a major player with regard to the civil biopharmaceutical sector. By 1988, in this second phase, the

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Pasechnik's revelations that the program was much greater in scope than previously suspected were confirmed in 1992 with the travel to the United States of Colonel

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was to draw heavily upon for the recruitment of scientific personnel with knowledge of biological weapons was the Scientific-Research Technical Bureau (

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was a system of nominally civilian, research and design institutes, pilot plants and dual-use manufacturing facilities located mainly at sites in

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Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World - Told from Inside by the Man Who Ran it.

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dual-use manufacturing plants. In March 1985, with the election by the Politboro of Mikhail Gorbachev as General Secretary of the CPSU,

1316: 449:(Stepnogorsk). Here, the plant is estimated to have incorporated capacity for the production of around 300 metric tonnes of weaponized 37:: "biological preparation") was a Soviet agency created in April 1974, which spearheaded the largest and most sophisticated offensive 848: 1275: 1285: 390:

Research was conducted on a range of bacterial and viral pathogens with a view to their potential weaponization. These included:

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when presented to inspectors. Laboratories had been stripped of equipment before being presented to inspectors.

206:(b. 1950). The latter, who subsequently adopted the name of Ken Alibek, had served as First Deputy Director of 177: 1280: 1265: 1184: 507: 184: 147: 128: 740: