Anticrop Biological Weapons Programs - Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons Since 1945 - page 219

Soviet Union
Interest in BW in the Soviet Union can be traced back to 1928, when it
launched a program in the same year that it acceded to the Geneva Proto-
col. As Arthur Rimmington has noted, the period between 1945 and the
late 1960s is not well documented “either in Soviet or more recent publi-
cations.” 28 However, it is known that an extensive BW R&D infrastruc-
ture was created during this period through a network of links estab-
lished between the Soviet Ministry of Defense and a number of civilian
facilities. With the BW infrastructure established between 1945 and 1970
as its foundation, offensive BW R&D saw a period of rapid expansion
from the early 1970s through the early 1990s (see Chapter 5).
Established in 1974, the All-Union Science-Production Association,
known as Biopreparat, oversaw development and production of BW ac-
tivities. This organization formed an expanded network of civilian and
military facilities and institutions, including the USSR's Ministry of Agri-
culture, that were central to Soviet BW activities. As Rimmington has
observed, key institutions in the network were headed by senior mili-
tary personnel. Important institutional links between the antiagricultural
components of the USSR's program were established with Soviet Minis-
try of Defense facilities in Sverdlovsk, Sergeev-Posad, and Biopreparat's
Vector research center. Investigations relating to the development of an
offensive antiagricultural capability were conducted under the auspices
of the Ministry of Agriculture and were aimed at the destruction of both
crops and livestock (see Chapter 11 for discussion of antianimal activi-
ties). 29
As part of its antiagricultural activities, codenamed Ekologiya, the anti-
crop aspects of the program are reported to have centered on the pro-
duction of agents, including the causal agents of diseases affecting corn,
rice, rye, and wheat. Some 10,000 BW workers are thought to have
been employed in the antiagricultural component of the Soviet BW pro-
gram through a network of some six facilities and institutes with links
to the Ministry of Agriculture. One such organization, the Central Asian
Scientific-Research Institute of Phytopathology, created in Durmen,
Tashkent, in 1958, included laboratories, greenhouses, an experimental
farm, and a facility for the testing of weapons. 30 Another facility for the