The Soviet Biological Weapons Program - Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons Since 1945 - page 135

including the need not to fall behind the West in the field of BW. 17 Ac-
cording to Domaradsky, Yuri A. Ovchinnikov (a molecular biologist and
Academician of the Soviet Academy of Sciences) and V. M. Zhdanov (a
virologist and member of the Soviet Academy of Medical Sciences) ar-
gued that the Soviet military's BW capabilities had been hindered by
Trofim Lysenko's scientifically unfounded views regarding genetic inheri-
tance. This argument was decisive in persuading the Central Committee
to reorganize and increase financial and political support for the biologi-
cal sciences. As part of this effort, the Soviet government decided that ci-
vilian expertise had to be effectively incorporated into the military's BW-
related work. 18
In 1963 or 1964 the Anti-Plague Department was also reorganized and
integrated into Problem No. 5 projects. 19 Other institutes involved in BW-
related work (offensive or defensive) included the Institute of Physical
Chemistry (Chernogolovka), the Institute of Bio-Organic Chemistry
(Pushchino), the Institute of Biochemistry and Physiology of Microor-
ganisms, the Scientific Research Institute of Biological Experiments in
Chemical Compounds, the Institute of Highly Pure Biological Prepa-
rations (Leningrad), the Institute of Immunology (Soviet Ministry of
Health), the N. F. Gamaleya Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology,
the D. I. Ivanovsky Institute of Microbiology, and various other Academy
of Medical Sciences and Ministry of Health facilities.
In 1963 the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee issued a de-
cision to strengthen the biological sciences and their practical applica-
tion. In February 1966 the Soviet Council of Ministers took a decision to
strengthen the country's biological sciences. The Main Directorate of the
Microbiology Industry (Glavmikrobioprom) was established under the
Council of Ministers to implement the decision. 20
By the 1970s an expanded and more capable civilian-military structure
was put into place as a result of the 1973 Central Committee decision to
expand the Soviet BW program. This system was coordinated by the
Inter-Agency Scientific-Technical Council on Problems of Molecular Bi-
ology and Molecular Genetics. 21 The council, which was established in
1973, 22 consisted of representatives of the Soviet Communist Party's De-
partment of Science; the leadership of military-scientific production facil-
ities (NPOs); the leadership of Glavmikrobioprom; and leading microbiol-
ogists, virologists, geneticists, and molecular biologists from the Soviet