The Anti-Plague System and the Soviet Biological Warfare Program

Abstract

The USSR possessed a unique national public health system that included an agency named “anti-plague system.” Its mission was to protect the country from highly dangerous diseases of either natural or laboratory etiology. During the 1960s, the anti-plague system became the lead agency of a program to defend against biological warfare, codenamed Project 5. This responsibility grew and by the middle 1970s came to include undertaking tasks for the offensive biological warfare program, codenamed Ferment. This article describes the anti-plague system's activities relevant to both aspects of the Soviet Union's biological warfare program, offense and defense, and analyzes its contributions to each.

Keywords :

• USSR
• Soviet Union
• Russia
• Plague
• Anti-Plague
• Biological Warfare
• Biological Weapon
• Biodefense
• Biosecurity
• Yersinia pestis
• Infectious Disease
• Public Health

Notes

¹The issue of the secrecy of work at AP facilities is discussed in Ouagrham-Gormley's article on the growth of the anti-plague system during the Soviet period. Here it is sufficient to note that some of the work published by AP scientists easily could fit within the “defensive” rubric, but was never identified as such in the Soviet literature. There is no question that AP scientists were able to publish some of their work.

²Mutation comes from the Latin term mutare, meaning “to change.” In the classical era, scientists could use X-rays, UV light, and chemicals to change the genetic material (DNA) of a microbe in order to alter its characteristics (phenotype). Mutated microbes that evidenced new characteristics of possible military interest were selected for further study. If studies of a mutated microbe indicated that it indeed held promise for military use, it was propagated by, for example, fermentation in order to produce a sufficient number so it could be field-tested.

³The U.S. also captured Japanese BW scientists and was able to extract much information from them (Harris 1994).

⁴The People's Health Commissariat, popularly known as Narkomzdrav, was renamed the Ministry of Health (Minzdrav) in 1942–1943.

⁵The German intelligence was wildly inaccurate as to identifying the location of Mikrob as being near Moscow; in actuality, Mikrob then as now is located in Saratov, approximately 750 kilometers (km) south of Moscow.

⁶As the commanding officer of the Main Military-Health Directorate of the Soviet Army, Smirnov headed the Soviet Army's medical service from 1939 to 1946, was USSR Minister of Health Care between 1947 and 1952, and then held various managing positions in the Red Army until being appointed commander of the 15th Directorate. He died in 1989.

⁷Renamed Burkholderia mallei and Burkholderia pseudomallei in 1992. There are no natural foci for either of these pathogens in Russia, and diseases caused them to appear but rarely in the USSR/Russia.

⁸See Ouagrham-Gormley's article on the growth of the anti-plague system during the Soviet period for references to M.I. Levy. The 12 volumes of which he is the editor had limited printing and are not available outside Russia. Of these 12 volumes, we have been able to secure five.

⁹Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria (1899–1953), the KGB chief under Stalin, was notorious for ruthless persecution of political opponents and one of the main organizers of the massive repression campaign in the late 1930s (the Great Purge).

¹⁰Joseph Stalin (baptized Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili in 1879) was Secretary General of the Communist Party's Central Committee from 1922 until his death in 1953. As such, he was the de facto dictator of the USSR.

¹¹A natural disease focus is an area or region to which a particular disease is endemic—see Appendix 2.

¹²As will be noted in our next Occasional Paper, the problem commissions have been resurrected by the Russian government.

¹³This outbreak probably was part of the 7th pandemic of cholera that ravaged the world between 1965 and 1970.

¹⁴By far most of the scientists we have interviewed had never heard of Problem 5.

¹⁵Since Problem 4 was set up in the middle 1960s, it would appear as if Problem 5 would have been set up later. It could be that defensive BW activities were performed by Problems 1, 2, or 3 in the 1950s, and then given a special status as Problem 5 later on.

¹⁶In 1988, Petr Burgasov, Vladimir Nikiforov, and Vladimir Sergeyev visited the U.S. on the invitation of Professor Matthew Meselson of Harvard University and made presentations “proving” that an anthrax outbreak in 1979 in Sverdlovsk had a natural origin. As of this writing, Sergeyev is the director of the Martsinov Institute of Medical Parasitology and Tropical Medicine in Russia.

¹⁷As pointed out above, the Rostov AP Institute also was the lead institute for Problem 4 (the study of cholera).

¹⁸There are three types of plague; bubonic, pneumonic, and septicemic. Each type presents differing problems as to diagnosis and treatment.

¹⁹Originally, Mikrob procured the Y. pestis EV vaccine strain from the Pasteur Institute in 1936. By the late 1930s, it had become the basis of the plague vaccine used throughout the USSR; it still is the basis for the currently used EV NIIEG (Epidemiology and Hygiene Scientific Research Institute) vaccine. However, it had certain drawbacks; for example, the strain was poorly characterized, its use resulted in excessive adverse reactions in some recipients, and the vaccine exhibited highly variable responses between individuals. Therefore, Soviet plague researchers were forever trying to develop better plague vaccines.

²⁰Vaccine research and development in the USSR present an odd dichotomy as to secrecy. Work done under Problem 5 on vaccines was classified, so its results were not openly published. However, much work on, for example, plague vaccines done at AP institutes was open and its results published. It might be that work to investigate and improve known vaccine strains, such as EV, was permitted to be done openly, while research on new or unique strains was kept secret.

²¹Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics, “Information presented by the USSR in compliance with the agreements reached at the second Conference for examination of the Convention on the prohibition of development, production, and stockpiling of bacteriological (biological) and toxin weapons and their elimination, and in accordance with the resolutions and recommendations of the special Meeting of scientific and technological experts from the participating countries. (Data concerning the Ukrainian and Byelorussian Republics are also included in this information),” United Nations Department of Disarmament Affairs, October 13, 1987.

²²Russian Federation, “Information on Facilities and Biological Activity of the Russian Federation Related to the Convention on the Prohibition of Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on Their Destruction (in Russian),” United Nations Department of Disarmament Affairs, DDA/BWC/2002/CBM, May 23, 2002.

²³The U.S. established the Epidemiological Intelligence Service (EIS) in 1951 that utilized multidisciplinary teams to investigate disease outbreaks (Langmuir & Andrews 1952, 235–238). Since the Soviet Union is known to have copied other American initiatives, it could be that Domaradskij read about the EIS in the open literature and once in a position of power decided to try to establish something similar.

²⁴The Kandidat nauk degree was introduced in Russia (USSR) in 1934. It is awarded to those who pass the relevant degree examinations and defended a kandidat's dissertation. Usually it takes two to three years to complete the program and defend a dissertation.

²⁵The Doktor nauk degree was introduced in Russia in 1819, abolished in 1917, and revived in the Soviet Union in 1934. It is awarded to those who have accomplished independent research that elucidates theoretical principles and solves scientific problems representing an important contribution to scientific knowledge and practice. No fixed time period for completion. Public defense of doctoral dissertation is required.

²⁶Medical school is a six-year program of higher education. Graduates of this program receive the title of vrach (medical doctor). However, in order to practice, they need to complete further specialized training, for which four options are available: