Editor’s Note: There is a comparative lack of Russian-language based material describing Soviet and, later, Russian activities in the biological field. This article is largely based on such material and should therefore be of special interest to the ASA family of professionals around the world. Our thanks to John Hart, ASA Correspondent and a Researcher with the CBW Project at SIPRI.

A Historical Note:
The 50th Anniversary of the founding of Russia’s Virology Center at Sergiev Posad

by John Hart (SIPRI)*

          The Virology Center of the Scientific-Research Institute of Microbiology of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, located at Sergiev Posad (formerly Zagorsk), is an important component of Russia’s biological defense establishment. It was created in 1953 when the Scientific Research Institute of Sanitation of the Ministry of Health of the USSR was transferred to the Ministry of Defense and renamed the Scientific Research Institute of Sanitation of the Ministry of Defense of the USSR. [1] The Ministry of Health institute had, in turn, been established on the basis of the Veterinary Institute of the Worker-Peasant Red Army (RKKA). [2] During World War II the RKKA institute had carried out work mainly related to the treatment of glanders.
          To help commemorate its 50th anniversary, the Center’s Council of Veterans published in 2004 a book consisting largely of biographical sketches of current and former employees, including administrators and researchers. The publication also contains numerous photographs and provides a bibliography of the facility’s open scientific publications, dissertations and patents for the period 1954-2003. [3] The information provided is largely Soviet or Russian-based. [4]

Leadership
          Major-General of the Medical Service Mikhail Ivanovich Kostyuchenok, a decorated World War II veteran, was the founding head of the Virology Center. [5] His appointment was approved by the head of the Soviet Ministry of Defense’s Seventh Directorate, Col.-General Efim Ivanovich Smirnov. [6] In 1959 Kostyuchenok was succeeded by another veteran of the war, Maj.-General of the Medical Service and Professor Vladimir Yakovlevich Podolyan (b. 1907, d. 1984). He had served as a medical advisor to the Soviet mission to Japan after the war and was therefore said to have appreciated “the significance of the work completed in Japan [during the war] on the preparation and the conduct of bacteriological warfare.” [7] Podolyan also brought back to the Soviet Union a number of valuable strains of Japanese Encephalitis virus. [8]
         In 1966 Podolyan was replaced by Lt.-General of the Medical Service, Professor Sergei Ivanovich Prigoda (b. 1919, d. 1999). Prigoda was also a veteran of World War II and had taken part in the fighting between Japanese and Soviet forces at Lake Khasan in 1938. [9] In 1987 Prigoda was replaced by Maj.-General of the Medical Service and Professor Viktor Nikolaevich Karpov (b. 1944, d. 1990). In 1990 Karpov was replaced by Maj.-General Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Makhlai. In July 1999 Makhlai was, in turn, replaced by Colonel of the Medical Service and Doctor of Medical Sciences Vladimir Alekseevich Maksimov who is the present head.

Research
         The publication does not describe any stockpiling of biological weapons (BW) by the Soviet Union and does not characterize the Soviet program as “offensive.” One of the contributors, Academician Igor Petrovich Ashmarin, states that the books and articles published by Ken Alibek, Igor Domaradsky and Vladimir Pasechnik and others “distort” the true history of Soviet activities in the biological field. [10] All Soviet biological military work is essentially described in terms of meeting perceived threats posed by the post-World War II BW, including British and U.S., programs. Ashmarin does state, however, that it was not possible for the Soviet Union to evaluate the actual potential of viral and rickettsiae-filled BW without determining the “optimal forms and methods” of their employment. [11]
         The Center has carried out work on what can be characterized as the standard range of pathogens and agents that have been evaluated by well-developed national defense establishments, including the causative agents for various hemorrhagic fevers. The Center developed oral vaccines against plague, Q-fever, smallpox and Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis (VEE). It also developed approximately 10 antiviral sera preparations, including against hemorrhagic fevers. [12] Q-fever was worked on partly because German and U.S. forces experienced cases of it during World War II. [13] The Center also developed antitoxins for treating botulism. According to Prigoda, this was done in response to information that the U.S. had produced military strains of botulinum toxin serotypes A and B. [14] Among the difficulties experienced over the years were problems associated with producing more highly pure reagents and with the optimization of cell cultures for the growing of viruses and rickettsiae.
         One research area that distinguishes Soviet and, later, Russian military work in the biological field from other states’ research is a long-standing interest in mass aerosol vaccination techniques. In principle, this type of work might also be applied to the dissemination of pathogens for biological warfare purposes and has been viewed by some as a possible indicator of an offensive program. [15] Such work should also be viewed within the more general context of large-scale Soviet development projects that stressed the importance the Soviet Union placed on establishing standby military capacity in part by maintaining the option of converting civilian facilities and infrastructure. The publication also does not appear to refer to research involving tests on primates, another potential indicator for possible offensive work.

Library
         The Virology Center is served by a scientific-technical library which contains over 150,000 books in Russian and 5,090 books in other languages, and approximately 80,000 scientific journals, 5,300 inventions and 1,690 patents, respectively. The library also contains material that Soviet forces removed from the State Research Institute Insel Riems (Reichsforschungsanstalt Insel Riems) in Germany at the end of World War II. This facility, located on Riems island in the Baltic Sea, carried out research on Foot-and-Mouth disease. [16] Following the war, U.S. intelligence inferred Soviet interest in Foot-and-Mouth disease partly because the Soviets re-equipped the Riems facility within three years of stripping it in 1945. [17]

Other activities
         A number of more unusual incidents have occurred involving the Virology Center. According to Prigoda, his institute was once called on to determine the nature of a suspicious biological substance that Soviet security had discovered inside a canister found at a Moscow airport. The Center later determined that the substance was a sample of bull semen that a traveler returning from the Netherlands had forgotten. [18] In another incident, an enzyme-linked, non-specific biological agent detection unit was installed in the podium area at the Kremlin’s Palace of Congresses. However, on the opening day of one of the Congresses of the Soviet Communist Party (the year is not given), a KGB security official contacted Prigoda on a secure telephone line and urgently requested that an expert be sent over to check the unit as it was “sounding off and blinking.” The Center subsequently determined that the positive reading had been caused by pollen that had fallen off the flower bouquets that Young Pioneers had given the Party officials as part of the opening ceremony. [19]

Threat perception
         Ashmarin states that a “significant” amount of information received from the USA was misinformation designed to shift Soviet resources into less productive and more costly research areas. [20] Another of the book’s contributors, Academician Evgeni Pavlovich Lukin, characterizes the uncovering of 2,000 tons of BW material at Fort Detrick, Maryland in May 2003, including Bacillus anthracis as, in effect, a standby BW capacity. [21] However, this material had been first inactivated before being dumped, but viable bacteria were later found when the site was excavated in 2003. Although a number of vials were recovered, contaminated soil accounted for the bulk of the material recovered. Finally, a book and a journal article published by Dr Theodor Rosebury, a scientist involved in the U.S. BW program during and after World War II, are said to have influenced the type of research the Soviets decided to pursue. [22]

Conclusions
         The most difficult question regarding the nature of work carried out by a state’s biological defense establishment is whether the work is part of an offensive, and therefore prohibited, program or part of a defensive program under which BW would not be developed under any circumstances. Short of the development of dissemination methods, weapons and large-scale production and stockpiling of BW, most, if not all, research and testing might be justified on the grounds that such work is necessary in order to more properly and fully evaluate possible BW threats. This argument can be justified partly on the grounds that other states are either known or thought to be undertaking similar work. Such activities may also be justified through a stated desire to more fully evaluate the potential BW threat posed by non-state actors (i.e., terrorists). Without access to internal policy documentation, assessing the nature and type of military biological-related activities can be problematic, particularly where political and national sensitivities are involved.
         Threat perceptions may lead a state (or non-state actor) to pursue work that it might not have previously considered or thought important. The manner in which threat perceptions are described can also serve as a justification for activity a state had intended to pursue in any case (e.g., for funding or prestige factors). Again, without access to internal policy documentation, distinguishing “apparent” from “actual” threat perceptions can be problematic. Furthermore, not all aspects of a given program may be reflected in the paperwork. Nor will all of those involved necessarily share a common understanding of what activities had been pursued and why. Publications such as the Virology Center history are useful in that they assist with achieving a better understanding of how such general considerations relate to specific concerns or uncertainties that other states or interested observers may have.

*The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of SIPRI. The author would like to thank Andy Mash and Roger Roffey for kindly providing comments on an earlier draft. Any errors or omissions, however, are the responsibility of the author.

References

[1] The authorization for the transfer was contained in a 24 Sep. 1953 decision of the USSR Council of Ministers (no. 2506) and a 29 Sep. 1953 decree of the Ministry of Defense (no. 00180). Lukina, R. N. (et. al), pp. 81, 144-145, 147.

[2] The head of the Ministry of Health institute, which was a “closed” research facility, was Candidate of Biological Sciences and Col. in the KGB N. I. Bukharin, while the Deputy Director was Professor Anatoly Timofeevich Kravchenko. Lukina, R. N. (et. al), p. 144.

[3] Lukina, R. N., Lukin, E. P. and Bulavko, V. K., Dostoiny Izvestnosti: 50 let Virusologicheskomu Tsentru Ministerstva Oborony [Worthy of Fame: to the 50 Year Anniversary of the Virology Center of the Ministry of Defense] (Ves’ Sergiev Posad Publisher: Sergiev Posad, 2004), 525 pp; ISBN no. 5-93585-037-0. It is one of a number of books published by Russia’s chemical and biological weapon (CBW)-defense establishment in recent years to preserve, it appears, institutional memory, including by describing the contribution made by the World War II generation. See Hart, J., “Historical note: the Shikhany Central Scientific-Research [and] Experimental Institute of Radiological, Chemical and Biological Defense,” ASA Newsletter, no. 104 (29 Oct. 2004), pp. 16-19; and Hart, J., “Information about the CBW weapons programmes of the USSR,” CBW Conventions Bulletin, no. 63 (Mar. 2004), p. 48.

[4] Thirty-seven publications are identified as the primary sources of information used for the book of which at least four are works published outside Russia. Alibek, K. and Handelman, S., Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World -- Told from Inside by the Man Who Ran It (Hutchinson: London, 2000); Dando, M. Biological Warfare in the 21st Century: Biotechnology and the Proliferation of Biological Weapons (Brassey’s Inc.: 1994), 258 pp.; Leitenberg, M., “The Conversion of Biological Warfare Research and Development Facilities to Peaceful Purposes,” pp. 77-105, in E. Geissler and J. P. Woodall (eds), Control of Dual-Threat Agents: The Vaccines for Peace Programme, SIPRI Chemical & Biological Warfare Studies no. 15 (Oxford University Press: Oxford 1994); Rosebury, T. Kabat, E. A. and Boldt, M. H., “Bacterial Warfare: A Critical Analysis of the Available Agents, Their Possible Military Applications, and the Means for Protection Against Them,” The Journal of Immunology, Virus Research & Experimental Chemotherapy, (1947), pp. 7-96; and Tucker, J. B. and Zilinskas, R. A. (eds.), The 1971 Smallpox Epidemic in Aralsk, Kazakhstan, and the Soviet Biological Warfare Program, occasional paper no. 9 (Monterey Institute of International Studies’ Center for Nonproliferation Studies: Monterey, California, July 2002), avaiable at URL <http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/opapers/op9/index.htm>. The fact that the bibliographic information provided is incorrect implies that the items were translated into Russian and back to English. See Lukina, R. N. (et. al), pp. 466-467.

[5] Following the end of the war, Kostyuchenok headed the Soviet Army’s Medical Service of the Belarus Military District. From 1951-1954, he headed the present-day N. N. Burdenko Clinical Hospital.

[6] Lukina, R. N. (et. al), p. 21. Smirnov (b. 10 Oct. 1904, d. 1985) was a graduate of the S. M. Kirov Military-Medical Academy and the M. V. Frunze Military Academy. During World War II, Smirnov was awarded the Order of Kutuzov for his role in evacuating approximately 100,000 wounded from Kharkov prior to the city’s occupation by German troops. Smirnov headed the Main Military-Sanitary Directorate of the Red Army from 1939-1946. A main focus of his work here was to improve military sanitation and to develop a system of treating wounded soldiers and expediting their return to service. This was accomplished in part through the use of specially equipped medical railcars containing test equipment and medical supplies. Smirnov was credited with returning 72.3 per cent of wounded and over 90 per cent of the sick to service respectively. The name of the Directorate was changed in 1946 to the Main Military-Medical Directorate (still headed by Smirnov). From 1947-1953, Smirnov served as the Soviet Minister of Health. He was removed from this position in January 1953 as part of the then developing Doctor’s Plot campaign that was started shortly before Stalin died. Beginning in 1953, he headed the Soviet Ministry of Defense’s military-biological research. At about this time, he was also named head of the S. M. Kirov Military-Medical Academy. Between 1955-1960 he headed the Main Military-Medical Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of the USSR. From 1960 until his retirement he headed the Seventh (later the 15th) Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of the USSR. He was also a member of the Inter-Agency Scientific and Technology Council on Molecular Biology and Genetics (which was involved in coordinating BW-related work). Smirnov is the author of War and Military Medicine: 1939-1945 ( Moscow, 1979) (in Russian).
         The 15th Directorate was established in accordance with a 25 June 1973 decision of the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee decision (no. 444-138) and an 11 January 1973 Soviet Ministry of Defense decree (no. 99). The generally accepted view in the West is that the 7th, and later the 15, Directorate were responsible for the offensive BW work carried out by the Soviet Union.

[7] Lukina, R. N. (et. al), p. 22. The Soviet mission was headed by Lt.-General K. N. Derevyanko. Col. Boris T. (“Doc”) Pash (b. 1901, d. 1995) was the U.S. military liaison to the Soviet mission on General Douglas MacArthur’s staff. His principal responsibility was to counter Soviet intelligence activities. He periodically met Derevyanko and played chess games against him. In an unpublished personal recollection of his time in Japan, Pash described his ability to irritate Derevyanko by repeatedly “checkmating” him both in chess and in countering the Soviet mission’s intelligence efforts. During World War II, Pash headed the Alsos Mission, a scientific-intelligence field mission that operated between 1943-1945 whose primary purpose was to determine the extent of Germany’s nuclear weapon program. The list of target areas was subsequently expanded to include BW-related activities and work. Pash’s personal papers are located at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University ( California). The author is not aware of whether or to what extent Pash or the US occupation administration was familiar with Podolyan or his activities. However, it is probable that that the U.S. compiled dossiers on all members of the Soviet mission.

[8] Lukina, R. N. (et. al), p. 22.

[9] Lukina, R. N. (et. al), p. 23.

[10] Lukina, R. N. (et. al), p. 19. Igor Valeryanovich Domaradsky is a now retired scientist and member of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences who, in the 1960s, worked for the Soviet Anti-Plague System. In the 1970s and 1980s he worked for the Soviet BW program. Following his retirement he published his memoirs privately in Russian. An edited English-language version was published in 2003. Ken Alibek was Deputy Head of Biopreparat between 1987-1991. Biopreparat was the largely civilian, but military directed, component of the post-1972-73 Soviet BW program. Alibek currently lives in the USA. See Alibek, K. and Handelman, S., Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World -- Told from the Inside by the Man Who Ran It, (Hutchinson: London, 1999); and Domaradskij, I. and Orent, W., Biowarrior: Inside the Soviet/Russian Biological War Machine (Prometheus Books: Amherst, New York, 2003). It is unclear whether Pasechnik published any books or articles on the Soviet BW program.

[11] Lukina, R. N. (et. al), p. 18.

[12] Lukina, R. N. (et. al), p. 38.

[13] Lukina, R. N. (et. al), p. 150.

[14] Lukina, R. N. (et. al), p. 37.

[15] See, for e.g., Aleksandrov, N., I. Gefen, N. E., “Kratkie Teoreticheskie Obosnovaniya Metoda Aerogennoi Immunizatsii Sukhimi Pylevymi Vaktsinami,” [A Short Theoretical Basis Method for Aerogenic Immunization with Dry Powdered Vaccines], Sbornik Nauchno-Issledovatel’skikh Rabot po Aerogennoi Immunizatsii [Collected Scientific-Research Work on Aerogenic Immunization], (Moscow: 1961), pp. 5-54 in Lukina, R. N. (et al), p. 472.

[16] Lukina, R. N. (et. al), p. 243. For information about the Riems facility, see Geissler, E., “Conversion of BTW Facilities: Lessons from German History,” pp. 61-62, in E. Geissler, L. Gazsó and E. Buder, (eds.), Conversion of Former BTW Facilities (Kluwer Academic Publishers: Dordrecht, 1998).

[17] Central Intelligence Agency, Quarterly Review of Biological Warfare Intelligence, First Quarter, 1949, OSI/SR-1/49 (declassified), 13 May 1949, p. 1. Report located in the Harry S. Truman Library, location folder information illegible.

[18] Lukina, R. N. (et. al), p. 36.

[19] Lukina, R. N. (et. al), p. 44.

[20] Lukina, R. N. (et. al), pp. 16-17. The U.S. operated a disinformation campaign on the chemical weapon (CW) side (Operation Shocker) for more than 23 years during which time the U.S. reportedly passed some 4,500 documents on fictitious U.S. research on a new type of nerve agent to the Soviets. A similar program was reportedly run on the BW side. See Wise, D., Cassidy’s Run: The Secret Spy War Over Nerve Gas (Random House: New York City, 2000), 228 pp.; Garthoff, R. L., “Polyakov’s Run,” The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, vol. 56, no. 5 (Sep./Oct. 2000), pp. 37-40. In 2000 Garthoff wrote “It is not clear when the US disinformation operations on CBW ended -- probably in the mid-1970s -- but the operations appear not have been compromised until 1985. In any case, it is evident that their effects continued long after.” (Garthoff, p. 39). Subsequent unpublished background research by U.S. researchers indicates that the BW disinformation effort was halted prior to the opening for signature of the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC).

[21] Lukina, R. N. (et. al), p. 78.

[22] Rosebury, T. Kabat, E. A. and Boldt, M. H., “Bacterial Warfare: A Critical Analysis of the Available Agents, Their Possible Military Applications, and the Means for Protection Against Them,” The Journal of Immunology, Virus Research & Experimental Chemotherapy, (1947), pp. 7-96; and Rosebury, T., Peace or Pestilence: Biological Warfare and How to Avoid It (Whittlesey House: New York City, 1949).

Other suggested reading

Lexow, W. E. and Hoptman, J., ’The Enigma of Soviet BW’, Studies in Intelligence, vol. 9 (1965), pp. 15-20. Declassified Central Intelligence Agency publication.

Kuhn, J. H., Experiences of the First Western Scientist with Permission to Work Inside a Former Soviet Biowarfare Facility, Doctoral dissertation in medicine, Charité-University Medicine Berlin, Campus Benjamin Franklin, degree received 3 Sep. 2004.

Smirnov, E. I., Voina i Voennaya Meditsina [War and Military Medicine] (Meditsina Publisher: Moscow, 1979), 2nd ed., 524 pp.