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the institute had been opened to international inspection in 1990. Of-
ficials said that the strains served scientific research that was not military
in nature, and did not violate any international agreement. Moreover,
neither storage site had large-scale production facilities. Defense Minis-
ter Antonin Baudys ordered the destruction of pathogens soon after he
learned of their existence, because they “were no longer useful.” He said
that the majority of the strains represented banal pathogens like influ-
enza, but about 20 percent of them were “especially dangerous and ex-
otic.”
11
The Czech Republic apparently did not inherit facilities needed for
large-scale production and weaponization of pathogens. It seems unlikely
that the collapsing Communist regime would carefully dismantle and
eliminate such equipment while forgetting to destroy the strains them-
selves. It is much more likely that such facilities did not exist in the Cold
War era. However, the possession of smallpox is notable. The possession
of the smallpox virus outside two approved repositories is prohibited by
international agreements since its global eradication in 1980.
We do not know whether the Slovak Republic also inherited anything
related to BWs from Czechoslovakia.
Czechoslovak scientists appear to have been involved in the research,
development, and application of psychoactive drugs in close cooperation
with their Soviet colleagues. In the early 1950s, public testimony by Car-
dinal Mindszenty of Hungary and by American POWs in Korea asserting
that America was evil and Communism superior shocked local people
and Western experts alike.
12
These were the first signs to indicate that the
USSR had developed “mind control” and behavior-modifying drugs. The
extent of this program is hard to assess. The view stressed by Douglass is
that it was a major and serious program starting as early as 1949, when
neuropharmacology appeared as a new branch of science.
13
The scientists
assigned to this KGB program included researchers from Czechoslovakia
and the GDR. The first known operational use of Soviet mind-control
drugs was the use of “confession drugs” in the cases mentioned above.
Another family of drugs, named “friendship drugs,” was used to manipu-
late, for example, the president of Finland and the majority of the Indo-
nesian cabinet in the 1950s. Drugs were also used to eliminate religion
from Communist societies. Friendship drugs made many bishops and
priests “red,” while others were driven to suicide or to insanity by drugs.
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