The Soviet biological weapons program : a history /

This stunningly holistic and definitive account (almost 900 pages) catalogs the entire history of 65 years of Soviet biological warfare (BW) research, tracking the various civilian and military Biopreparat programs. These employed as many as 65,000 people from 1928 to 1992, and later resisted the efforts of Russian leaders such as Gorbachev and Yeltsin to shut them down. This volume provides extensive, in-depth coverage, not only of the various civilian and Ministry of Defense (MOD) efforts, illustrated with useful diagrams, but also of the various doctrines for using weaponized pathogens. Leitenberg (Univ. of Maryland) and Zilinskas (Monterey Institute of International Studies) also document the extensive Soviet and later Russian Federation violations of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention of 1972, and end with a chilling reminder that even today, the current status of all the programs not verifiably terminated is simply not known. "There is no available information as to why the Russian government is so intent on keeping its vast BW program a secret, or why the veil of secrecy is maintained over RF MOD [Russian Federation Ministry of Defense] and anti-plague facilities and their operations." This is a very important, even disturbing, book. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate, research, and professional collections. C. Potholm II Bowdoin College