Behind the Soviet Union’s public denials, officials privately acknowledged that the state had developed, produced and stored biological weapons, according to previously released internal records.
That history has drawn renewed attention after biosecurity specialists raised questions about Russia’s handling of the unexplained death of an employee at a plague research facility.
Darya Shipilova, 28, worked at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute in Siberia. She died on October 2 after what Russian authorities identified as pneumonia with no known cause.
Almost 200 people who may have come into contact with her were monitored and tested. Yet, in an update to the World Health Organization on Tuesday, Russian officials said no plague cases had been detected in Irkutsk.
“The Soviet Union had an offensive biological weapons program … and some of those anti-plague institutes were part of that program,” Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told Newsweek.
A report delivered to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in May 1990 and published by the National Security Archive in 2010 directly acknowledged that biological weapons had been created, manufactured and stockpiled.
The document said Soviet institutions had produced 12 formulations and developed methods for deploying them by 1985.
A separate memorandum showed that, four months earlier, Soviet Defense Minister Dmitry Yazov had pressed officials to remove a proposed reference to the stockpiles, warning that it would clash with Moscow’s longstanding public denials.
Darya Shipilova, 28, worked at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute in Siberia and died on October 2 from what Russian authorities described as pneumonia of unknown origin. Above, a team is shown working at the facility.
Russian authorities have not said that plague caused Shipilova’s death. However, the outlet Lyudi Baikala reported that she told medical personnel in late September that she had accidentally shattered a test tube containing live bacteria.
In a notification issued through an international health alert network on Tuesday, Russian health officials said they had implemented extensive precautions. Those measures included identifying Shipilova’s contacts, placing them under medical observation and conducting laboratory tests.
The scale of the reported response has led some experts to wonder whether investigators were also examining an unidentified pathogen other than plague.
“Just because there’s plague on the door doesn’t mean that’s the only thing they work on. They work on many different biological agents there,” Adalja told Newsweek.
There is, however, no evidence indicating that the incident was connected to a biological weapon.
According to the report sent to Gorbachev, Lev Zaikov, a Politburo member responsible for overseeing the Soviet military-industrial sector, wrote that the USSR began its biological weapons work during the 1950s at three organizations operated by the Defense Ministry.
By 1971, another 12 organizations had reportedly joined the effort.
“By 1985, they had developed 12 recipes and means for using them. These were produced in suitable quantities, stored, and destroyed after the expiration of useful life (an average of 6 months),” Zaikov wrote.
The Soviet Union had signed the Biological Weapons Convention in 1972, joining the United States, Britain and numerous other nations.
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The agreement took effect in 1975 and outlawed the development, manufacture, stockpiling, acquisition and transfer of biological weapons.
Shipilova reportedly told medical staff in late September that she had accidentally broken a test tube containing live bacteria.
Zaikov argued that the treaty lacked effective inspections and a clear distinction between weapons development and defensive research.
He alleged that NATO countries exploited those gaps to develop and produce highly virulent infectious agents, with some work conducted in countries that had not signed the treaty. The document portrayed Soviet biological weapons work, which it said continued until 1989, as a response to those alleged activities.
Citing progress in chemical weapons negotiations and the prospect of international inspections, the report said an October 6, 1989, Central Committee decree ordered Soviet biological weapons research to shift toward defensive work to comply with treaty obligations.
It also claimed that Soviet stockpiles had been destroyed in 1988, industrial production had stopped, and equipment used to process biological agents and assemble munitions had been dismantled.
The National Security Archive described Zaikov’s report as putting a ‘very selective spin’ on the program’s history and said the document showed Soviet officials had also misled Gorbachev.
Vladimir Pasechnik, who headed a scientific organization in Leningrad, defected to Britain in October 1989 and began disclosing details of the Soviet program.
Zaikov’s report acknowledged that Pasechnik knew about the secret biological research and the facilities involved.
It downplayed the technical damage his disclosures could cause but warned they could lead Western governments to question Moscow’s compliance with the Biological Weapons Convention.
The death has raised concerns from experts who question what other biological agents the Irkutsk Antiplague Research Institute (pictured, stock) may be working on due to the Soviet Union’s long-held cover-up of building and storing biological weapons
In a January 10, 1990 memo, Soviet Defense Minister Dmitry Yazov opposed a Foreign Ministry proposal to confidentially share information with the US about biological weapons stockpiles and production sites that existed before the treaty took effect in 1975.
He warned that the disclosure would contradict Moscow’s official claim that it had never developed, produced or possessed biological weapons and could damage the country’s international standing.
Yazov urged officials to recall the draft and maintain the existing official position.
The memo also rejected a proposed acknowledgment of a laboratory accident during the 1979 anthrax outbreak in Sverdlovsk.
Yazov insisted the outbreak was foodborne and urged officials to postpone any visit by American experts to the military facility until arrangements for monitoring treaty compliance had been worked out.
A 1994 scientific investigation later concluded that the Sverdlovsk outbreak was caused by airborne anthrax released from the military facility, contradicting the Soviet explanation that contaminated food was responsible.
