The Soviet Biological Weapons Program - Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons Since 1945 - page 139

Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology [Vector]); the Institute
of Experimental Hygiene (Kirov, now called Vyatka); and the Institute
of Microbiology of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation
(Zagorsk, now Sergeev-Posad).
BW production and storage facilities included those of the Main Direc-
torate for Biological Preparations (Biopreparat) at Berdsk, Omutninsk,
Sverdlovsk (now Ekaterinburg), and Stepnogorsk. 36 A decision appears to
have been taken after the 1979 anthrax outbreak in Sverdlovsk to replace
a storage facility at the MOD's Scientific Research Institute of Bacteriol-
ogy (Military Compound 19, located at Sverdlovsk) with a new facility at
Stepnogorsk, Kazakhstan. 37
The Sverdlovsk facility appears to date to 1949, when a scientific re-
search facility was established in the city on the grounds of an infantry
training school. In 1951 work on developing materials and methods for
defending against botulinum toxin was carried out at this location. In
1960 the facility was renamed the Military-Technical Scientific Research
Institute of the Ministry of Defense of the USSR. The institute developed
production methods for a variety of botulinum antitoxins that were later
transferred to the Ministry of Health. It also worked on the prevention
and treatment of anthrax, including the development and preparation
of anthrax vaccines. In 1974 the institute was renamed the Scientific
Research Institute of Bacterial Vaccine Preparations of the Ministry of De-
fense of the USSR. In 1986 the facility was transferred to Military Epide-
miology's section of the MOD's Scientific Research Institute of Microbiol-
ogy. In 1995 the Sverdlovsk facility was renamed the Center for Military-
Technical Problems of Biological Defense (and continued to remain a part
of the Scientific Research Institute of Microbiology). 38
Starting in the 1950s, the Sverdlovsk center developed mathematical
techniques for modeling the behavior of BW agents in the field, 39 the per-
sistency of aerosols, the effectiveness of re-aerosolization, and ways to
maximize human survival in a BW-contaminated environment. The fa-
cility also produced a handbook describing the behavior of BW agents,
which is reportedly widely used within the Federal Border Service, the
Federal Security Service, the MOD, the Ministry of Emergency Situa-
tions, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs. 40 It has also developed anthrax
vaccines, botulinum antitoxins, and allergens for the detection of meli-