The ruse worked. Western governments did not become fully aware of true of purpose of Biopreparat until a leading Soviet scientist, Vladimir Pasechnik, defected to Britain in 1989.
A Steady Supply of Virulent Strains
When Soviet generals began their expanded buildup of bioweapons in the 1970s, they looked to the antiplague network for help, the Monterey authors said. The largest antiplague institutions were enlisted into a new program, code-named "Problem F," or simply "Ferment."
According to Zilinskas and others, the antiplague institutes were a goldmine for the military because they provided "ready-to-use information, biomaterial and expertise."
Precise details of the antiplague institutes' work remain unclear. The Russian government still refuses to officially acknowledge the existence of the Soviet Union's offensive weapons program. Russia also has outlawed any disclosures of classified information from the pre-1992, Soviet era. But scientists now living outside Russia have brought many key facts to light, the researchers said. It is now known, for example, that key antiplague institutes during this period came under the command of Soviet military officers, some of whom once worked at military biological facilities.
It is also clear, they said, that Soviet bioweapon engineers relied on the antiplague institutes for basic research and identification of pathogen strains that were exceptionally lethal.
"There was a secret law that enjoined all antiplague institutes to send the government any kind of virulent strain that might be used for defensive purposes," said Zilinskas. Soviet bioweapons that most likely originated in antiplague centers include bacterial strains that cause plague, anthrax and tularemia, the report concludes. In addition, it is believed that one of the antiplague facilities, in Volgograd, helped Biopreparat scientists develop weaponized versions of the bacteria that cause glanders and melioidosis, two livestock diseases that also attack humans. "This collaboration probably went beyond the mere supplying of strains," the authors write. "It included efforts to weaponize wild bacterial strains."
The bioweapons program was so secret that many researchers didn't know about it. Lev Mogilevsky, deputy director of the Odessa research facility and a 36-year veteran of the antiplague system, said he believed it was impossible that his institute could have contributed to the creation of offensive biological weapons. But he did remember working on joint projects with military medical units in the 1970s and '80s, during which the exchange of information was decidedly one-way.
"We would hold meetings to discuss Problem Five, and there would be many institutes participating, including military ones," Mogilevsky recalled. "Our contributions would be open, but the military's never were. They revealed nothing."
Under-funded, Under-staffed and Unsecured
Today, the Odessa antiplague station and others like it throughout the former Soviet Union face a new generation of difficulties. Even the simple task of gathering field specimens can be a challenge, because it requires travel. That means using the institute's aging van, which is often in need of repairs, and purchasing gasoline, which the lab cannot afford.
To grow bacteria for testing, the scientists need a sterile nutrient broth, or growth medium, common to biological labs all over the world. But again, the Odessa lab has no money for such supplies. Workers improvise by collecting meat scraps, boiling them down in the lab and skimming off the fat.
The list goes on: Glassware. Lab chemicals. Fax paper. Microscope parts. Testing kits.
"Our budget has been very much decreased. The equipment that we have is old," said Mogilevsky. "Basically what we have is enough to sustain the lab at a very low level of activity."
Other shortages, unrelated to lab work, trouble the institute's deputy director. He worries about broken alarm sensors, ancient locks that need replacing and walls that should be built higher and stronger to keep out intruders. He wonders whether a single guard is enough, and if not, how he could possibly afford another.
When the Monterey Institute and the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a nonprofit group, brought scores of antiplague scientists together two years ago for their first post-Soviet-era meeting, complaints about inadequate supplies and plummeting budgets were a common refrain. In fact, Odessa's plight was nowhere near the worst.
"All were in poor shape," said Zilinskas, who has helped launch a program that brings antiplague scientists to the United States for training. "Some of the facilities received literally no money from their governments, at all."
Many of the centers in the ex-Soviet republics continue to maintain high professional standards, the researchers said, thanks in part to a core of older scientists who were trained under the Soviet system in classic laboratory techniques. But today, training is harder to come by, even for the few young scientists who are willing to accept starting salaries of less than $25 a week.
Over time, continued cost-cutting inevitably will undermine the labs' ability to function at all. And that, the researchers said, has a cost of its own.
"If the system shuts down because of lack of equipment and funding, there's a risk of an epizootic outbreak among animals that becomes an outbreak among humans," said Monterey's Ouagrham. "And humans travel."
