86. The low demand for specialists in agriculture, medicine, and biotechnology caused by the poor state of the Kazakhstani economy and competition from foreign producers has created considerable difficulties in finding civilian jobs for former bioweapons scientists. STEPNOGORSK, 7 June 2000 - A microscopic quantity can kill a human being, in times of war ‘Stepnogorsk’ could produce the same amount of the deadly anthrax as a soft drink factory can produce coca cola: ten thousand bottles a day . 08. (73) The following description of SNOPB is based on the authors’ visit to the Stepnogorsk facility in August 1998 and interviews with NCB specialists. I need to protect my country. Interview with NCB specialists. Only those at Level Four knew the full story. 86. Interview with NCB specialists. Soviet officials had repeatedly insisted that the Sverdlovsk outbreak had natural causes, such as tainted meat. and you may need to create a new Wiley Online Library account.Enter your email address below and we will send you your usernameIf the address matches an existing account you will receive an email with instructions to retrieve your username (79) Known as Petryanov filters, they were probably a Soviet version of the High Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) filters used in the West.

The institute at Lyubuchany, near Chekhov, Moscow Oblast, was created in 1980. 1140, dated November 16, 1993. rights reserved.Cracking open the Soviet biological weapons system, 1990 There were of course other worlds that existed between these two extremes, populated by those who had access to some but not all of the information regarding Biopreparat. While these facilities were reorganizing, foreign pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms moved into Kazakhstan’s domestic market, leaving limited opportunities for local producers.

Taking into account a small influx of young scientists, at least 2.5 million individuals have been forced to leave the field. So although the account of secrecy in this paper deliberately produces distinct accounts of spatial secrecy, in reality the spaces co‐existed and were linked.Secrecy in the Soviet BW programme was practised on at least three clearly identifiable scales: the international‐geopolitical, the national and the local. (114)Preventing “brain drain,” the exodus of specialists from military microbiology enterprises in Kazakhstan to countries of BW proliferation concern, is a key objective of the program. It is not part of the NCB and is under the authority of the Kazakhstani Ministry of Health, Education, and Sport. NISKhI’s vaccine preparation plant can meet all of Kazakhstan’s demand for vaccines, diagnostics, and antisera for veterinary diseases. (20) The network of Anti-Plague Institutes could provide assistance to MOD conventional forces by monitoring outbreaks of natural endemic diseases in the areas where troops were stationed. Much of the work on the spaces of knowledge production explicitly links the making of and communicating of knowledge in public contexts (see for example During an ESRC‐sponsored seminar on ‘Spaces of Secrecy and Transparency’, which was one of a series on ‘Locating Technoscience: the Geographies of Science, Technology and Politics’,Within the institutional context of the Soviet BW programme, multiple worlds were created – one populated by those who ‘knew’ the true purpose of Biopreparat, another populated by those who did not have access to that information. The institute was the only BW research center in Kazakhstan specializing in viruses. To this end, the institute received Soviet intelligence on biological agents developed by Western militaries, including pathogenic strains modified for military purposes, and prepared vaccines and diagnostic preparations against them.The Almaty Anti-Plague Institute had no direct links with the BW research centers under the Soviet MOD, the Ministry of Agriculture, or Biopreparat, although it participated in exchanges of scientists and of technical knowledge. All wastes from the production process were handled in the waste-treatment building.According to estimates by Western experts, the SNOPB facility, once mobilized, could produce 300 metric tons of weapons-grade anthrax over a ten-month period.