This book focuses upon the secret agricultural biological warfare programme codenamed Ekologiya – which was pursued by the Soviet Union from 1958 through to the collapse of the USSR in 1991. It was the largest offensive agricultural biowarfare project the world has ever seen and Soviet anti-crop and anti-livestock weapons had the capability to inflict enormous damage on Western agriculture. Beginning in the early 1970s, there was a new focus within the Soviet agricultural biowarfare programme on molecular biology and the development of genetically modified agents. A key characteristic of the Ekologiya project was the creation of mobilization production facilities. These ostensibly civil manufacturing plants incorporated capacity for production of biowarfare agents in wartime emergency. During the 1990s-2000s, the counter-proliferation efforts undertaken by the US and UK played a major role in preventing the transfer of Ekologiya scientists, technologies and pathogens to Iran and other countries of potential proliferation concern. Anthony Rimmington is a former Senior Research Fellow at Birmingham University’s Centre for Russian, European and Eurasian Studies, UK. He has published widely on the civil life sciences sector in the post-Soviet states and on the Soviet Union’s offensive biological warfare programme, including Stalin’s Secret Weapon: The Origins of Soviet Biological Warfare.

This book focuses on Biopreparat, the Soviet agency created in 1974, which spearheaded the largest and most sophisticated biological warfare programme the world has ever seen. At its height, Biopreparat employed more than 30,000 personnel and incorporated an enormous network embracing military-focused research institutes, design centres, biowarfare pilot facilities and dual-use production plants. The secret network pursued major offensive R&D programmes, which sought to use genetic engineering techniques to create microbial strains resistant to antibiotics and with wholly new and unexpected pathogenic properties. During the mid-1980s, Biopreparat increased in size and political importance and also emerged as a major civil biopharmaceutical player in the USSR. In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, an acute struggle for control of Biopreparat’s most valuable assets took place and the network was eventually broken-up and control of its facilities transferred to a myriad of state agencies and private companies.

This is the first attempt to understand the full scope of the USSR’s offensive biological weapons research, from inception in the 1920s. Gorbachev tried to end the program, but the U.S. and U.K. never obtained clear evidence that he succeeded, raising the question whether the means for waging biological warfare could be present in Russia today.

This book focuses upon the secret agricultural biological warfare programme codenamed Ekologiya - which was pursued by the Soviet Union from 1958 through to the collapse of the USSR in 1991. It was the largest offensive agricultural biowarfare project the world has ever seen and Soviet anti-crop and anti-livestock weapons had the capability to inflict enormous damage on Western agriculture. Beginning in the early 1970s, there was a new focus within the Soviet agricultural biowarfare programme on molecular biology and the development of genetically modified agents. A key characteristic of the Ekologiya project was the creation of mobilization production facilities. These ostensibly civil manufacturing plants incorporated capacity for production of biowarfare agents in wartime emergency. During the 1990s-2000s, the counter-proliferation efforts undertaken by the US and UK played a major role in preventing the transfer of Ekologiya scientists, technologies and pathogens to Iran and other countries of potential proliferation concern. Anthony Rimmington is a former Senior Research Fellow at Birmingham University's Centre for Russian, European and Eurasian Studies, UK. He has published widely on the civil life sciences sector in the post-Soviet states and on the Soviet Union's offensive biological warfare programme, including Stalin's Secret Weapon: The Origins of Soviet Biological Warfare.

This publication gives a history of biological warfare (BW) from the prehistoric period through the present, with a section on the future of BW. The publication relies on works by historians who used primary sources dealing with BW. In-depth definitions of biological agents, biological weapons, and biological warfare (BW) are included, as well as an appendix of further reading on the subject. Related items: Arms & Weapons publications can be found here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/catalog/arms-weapons Hazardous Materials (HAZMAT & CBRNE) publications can be found here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/catalog/hazardous-materials-hazmat-cbrne

'We thought we had lived through the terror of a nuclear war, but something far more ominous was brewing in the Soviet Union - a biological Armageddon from which no one would escape. Dr Alibek has emerged from the world's deadliest labs to tell a story that is as important as it is chilling. Sometimes the truth is far worse than fiction. No one can afford not to read this book.' Robin Cook 'As the top scientist in the Soviet Union's biowarfare program and the inventor of the world's most powerful anthrax, Dr Ken Alibek has stunned the highest levels of the U.S. government with his revelations. Now, in a calm, compelling, utterly convincing voice, he tells the world what he knows. Modern biology is producing weapons that in killing power may exceed the hydrogen bomb. Ken Alibek describes them with the intimate knowledge of a top weaponeer.' Richard Preston, author of The Hot Zone

In its first Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Case Study, the Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction (CSWMD) at the National Defense University examined President Richard M. Nixon's decision, on November 25, 1969, to terminate the U.S. offensive biological weapons program. This occasional paper seeks to explain why the Soviet government, at approximately the same time, decided to do essentially the opposite, namely, to establish a large biological warfare (BW) program that would be driven by newly discovered and powerful biotechnologies. By introducing the innovation of recombinant DNA technology - commonly referred to as genetic engineering - the Soviets were attempting to create bacterial and viral strains that were more useful for military purposes than were strains found in nature. In historical terms, the Soviet BW program had two so-called "generations," defined as distinct periods of time during which types of weapons were developed from earlier types. The first generation of the Soviet BW program commenced about 1928 and was based on naturally occurring pathogens that had caused devastating epidemics during World War I and the subsequent Russian Civil War. The second generation began approximately in 1972 when the decision was made at the highest political level to institute a research and development (R&D) system that utilized newly discovered techniques of genetic engineering to create novel or enhanced bacterial and viral strains that were better adapted for BW purposes than strains found in nature. President Boris Yeltsin ordered the cessation of the offensive BW program some months after the Soviet Union dissolved in December 1991 and in 1992 publically stated that it had conducted an offensive BW program in violation of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention. However, after Vladimir Putin was elected president, high-level Russian officials have lied about the Soviet BW program, stating that it was strictly a defensive program that had not broken international law. As is discussed later in this paper, elements of the Soviet offensive BW program continue in Russia and may provide the basis for a third-generation BW program supported by the current leadership. The first section of this paper describes the Soviet BW program's first generation, including its establishment, work plan and operations, and accomplishments. The second section focuses on "establishing the conditions" for the Soviet decision that was made sometime during 1969-1971 to establish and operate the second generation BW program. Conditions that are considered include the geopolitical challenges as perceived by the Soviet government, the decision making process for military acquisitions, and the inferior state of the biosciences in the Soviet Union at that time, which stimulated Soviet bioscientists to "play the military card" in order to introduce genetic engineering into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics' (USSR's) bioscience establishment. The final section has two sub-sections. The first summarizes the key factors that drove Soviet decisionmaking in the early 1970s to institute a huge offensive BW program. The second informs readers that even before Vladimir Putin was elected president for the second time, he openly stated that new weapons were to be developed using high technologies including "genetics." Based on this promise, and considering the secrecy that still keeps the military biological institutes and anti-plague institutes closed to outsiders, the paper discusses the possibility that the Putin administration may institute a third generation BW program. The appendix consists of a short biography of the Soviet general Yefim Ivanovich Smirnov who was for many years in charge of the Soviet BW program.