Biohazard

The history of Biopreparat and of the Soviet biological war machine is written in casualty reports, government decrees, instruction manuals for the manufacture of our pathogenic weapons, and summaries of test trials. When I became second-in-command of Biopreparat, I was able to obtain access to many of these records, kept off limits to most employees. But even the records didn't tell the entire story.

Over time, carefully, so as not to draw attention, I managed to find out more through conversations with old-timers who remembered what the records did not, or would not, say. This is how I learned that the Soviet Union's involvement with biological warfare began long before World War II.

A year after taking power in 1917, the Bolshevik government plunged into a savage conflict with anti-Communist forces determined to bring down the fledgling workers' state. Red and White armies clashed from Siberia to the Crimean Peninsula, and by the time hostilities ended in 1921, as many as ten million people had lost their lives. The majority of the deaths did not result from injuries on the battlefield. They were caused by famine and disease.

The casualties inflicted by a brutal epidemic of typhus from 1918 to 1921 made a deep impression on the commanders of the Red Army. Even if they knew nothing of the history of biological warfare, they could recognize that disease had served as a more potent weapon than bullets or artillery shells.

Victory in the civil war did not relieve the pressure on the new government. Hostile foreign powers menaced the Bolshevik experiment on every side, and the weakened Soviet state seemed unlikely to survive another onslaught. Someone realized that one of Russia's natural resources, its scientific talent, might help the revolution survive.

In 1928, the governing Revolutionary Military Council signed a secret decree ordering the transformation of typhus into a battlefield weapon. Three years earlier the fledgling Soviet government had signed an international treaty in Geneva banning the use of poison gas and bacteriological weapons. The weapons program was placed under the control of the GPU (the State Political Directorate), one of the predecessors of the KGB. It would continue to be supervised by state security organs until the early 1950s.

The 1928 decree represented a momentous decision. Bred in the unsanitary conditions of the battlefront or the slum, epidemic typhus has ravaged mankind for centuries. It is carried by lice from one infected person to another and cannot reproduce outside its host. Unlike typhoid fever, which is caused by salmonella bacteria, typhus is a rickettsial disease, carried by tiny rod-shaped microorganisms.

Once inside the body, the rickettsiae swarm through the blood, breaking down the cell walls of blood vessels as they multiply. Around seven to ten days after infection, victims will abruptly develop the first symptoms, beginning with throbbing headaches and a high fever. The stricken tissues become inflamed as they try to fight off the invaders, triggering a rash that spreads over the body. Spots of gangrene will sometimes appear on fingertips and other extremities as blood circulation slows down. Without treatment, the disease will send its victims into weeks of delirium and is fatal in 40 percent of cases.

Improvements in hygiene eradicated epidemic typhus from most of western Europe in the twentieth century, but it continues to afflict Africa, parts of South America, and Asia. A typhus vaccine was developed during World War II, though it is rarely used today, other than to immunize travelers to regions where the disease remains endemic. Administered in three separate doses over the course of five months, it provides almost complete protection from the disease. It was at one time also used for treatment, but it has been replaced in that capacity by antibiotics.

When the Soviet Union first turned to typhus, there was no known way to control or contain this relentlessly efficient killer. The question facing our scientists was how to harness that efficiency.

Infecting lice with typhus and spreading them among a target population was not practical. Eventually someone hit on the idea of breeding typhus in the labs and spraying it in an aerosol form from airplanes.

Early biological weapons work involved primitive methods. The pathogens were bred in chicken embryos or in live animals such as rats that were killed when the concentration of pathogens was highest and were liquefied in large blenders. The liquid was then poured into explosives.