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Palgrave Macmillan

The Soviet Union’s Invisible Weapons of Mass Destruction

Biopreparat's Covert Biological Warfare Programme

  • Book
  • © 2021

Overview

Authors:
  1. Anthony Rimmington

    1. BIRMINGHAM, UK

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  • Focuses on the history of Biopreparat, an important component of the Soviet offensive biological warfare programme

  • Draws upon official documents relating to Biopreparat within the Russian state archives

  • Also includes interviews with UK bioscience companies which interacted with Biopreparat

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Table of contents (9 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xv
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Introduction

    • Anthony Rimmington
    Pages 1-8

  3. The Secret History: Khrushchev’s Creation of Soviet Reserve Biological Warfare Mobilization Facilities Within Civil Production Plants in the 1950s and 1960s

    • Anthony Rimmington
    Pages 9-18

  4. Glavmikrobioprom and the Emergence of the Soviet Microbiological Industry

    • Anthony Rimmington
    Pages 19-47

  5. Genesis: The Creation of Biopreparat

    • Anthony Rimmington
    Pages 49-72

  6. Anthrax on the Kazakh Steppe: Biopreparat’s Network of Experimental-Industrial Bases

    • Anthony Rimmington
    Pages 73-86

  7. The Creation of Biopreparat’s Scientific Base: The R&D Complexes at Obolensk, Kol’tsovo and Leningrad

    • Anthony Rimmington
    Pages 87-131

  8. A Roadmap to the Future? The Emergence of Biopreparat as a Major Civil Biopharmaceutical Player

    • Anthony Rimmington
    Pages 133-152

  9. A Brave New World: Building Capitalism in the New Russia and the Struggle for Control of Biopreparat

    • Anthony Rimmington
    Pages 153-221

  10. Conclusion

    • Anthony Rimmington
    Pages 223-233

  11. Back Matter

    Pages 235-269
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Keywords

About this book

This book focuses on Biopreparat, the Soviet agency created in 1974, which spearheaded the largest and most sophisticated biological warfare programme the world has ever seen. At its height, Biopreparat employed more than 30,000 personnel and incorporated an enormous network embracing military-focused research institutes, design centres, biowarfare pilot facilities and dual-use production plants. The secret network pursued major offensive R&D programmes, which sought to use genetic engineering techniques to create microbial strains resistant to antibiotics and with wholly new and unexpected pathogenic properties. During the mid-1980s, Biopreparat increased in size and political importance and also emerged as a major civil biopharmaceutical player in the USSR. In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, an acute struggle for control of Biopreparat’s most valuable assets took place and the network was eventually broken-up and control of its facilities transferred to a myriad of state agencies and private companies.

Authors and Affiliations

  • BIRMINGHAM, UK

    Anthony Rimmington

About the author

Anthony Rimmington is a former Senior Research Fellow at Birmingham University’s Centre for Russian, European and Eurasian Studies, UK. He has published widely on the civil life sciences sector in the post-Soviet states and on the USSR’s offensive biological warfare programme, including The Soviet Union’s Agricultural Biowarfare Programme: Ploughshares to Swords (Palgrave, 2021).

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: The Soviet Union’s Invisible Weapons of Mass Destruction

  • Book Subtitle: Biopreparat's Covert Biological Warfare Programme

  • Authors: Anthony Rimmington

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82882-0

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham

  • eBook Packages: History, History (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-82881-3Published: 13 October 2021

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-82884-4Published: 14 October 2022

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-82882-0Published: 12 October 2021

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XV, 269

  • Number of Illustrations: 20 b/w illustrations

  • Topics: Russian, Soviet, and East European History, History of Military, Modern History

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