Such a reminder on a scrap of paper was left by an employee of the plant of the Military Biological Center of the USSR Ministry of Defense ("Object 19") to his replacement when he went home on Friday evening.
Filters at the plant were responsible for cleaning the air from the working area of the workshops engaged in the production of a culture of anthrax in dry form. The technological process involved drying the bacterial broth to a powdery state, which required special safety measures. In order to prevent a single dispute from leaving the enterprise with a stream of air, an exhaust system worked at the plant to maintain a reduced pressure inside.
Anthrax spores
Lieutenant Colonel Nikolai Cheryshev, shift supervisor at the enterprise, was also in a hurry home on March 30, 1979, and for some unknown reason was not aware of the lack of a filter. As a result, the evening shift workers (the production was organized in three shifts), not finding an entry in the work log, calmly started the equipment. For more than three hours, the plant threw out portions of the dried anthrax culture into the air of the night Sverdlovsk sky. When the lack of biosecurity was discovered, the production was urgently stopped, the filter was installed and the work continued quietly.
Since the work of the plant and the very fact of its existence were deeply classified, no one was notified of the release. And on April 4, the first cases with a diagnosis of pneumonia appeared. Later, most of them died. On average, after April 4, four to five people died every day, the vast majority of them were men. The explanation was simple: on Friday evening at a nearby ceramic factory, which was in the affected area, a night shift, consisting mainly of men, worked. Yes, and it was not the ladies with strollers who walked so late in the closed city. However, later, the ubiquitous American special services got the impression that specialists from the Soviet "Biopreparat" (a program for the creation of biological weapons in the USSR) had created a unique strain of anthrax. It is capable of hitting only men, spreads with aerosols, is not treated and is not transmitted to another person - what is not an ideal weapon?
Sverdlovsk-19. The same plant is located behind the high-rise buildings.
It is noteworthy that the release of spores by the wind was carried from the plant in the southern and southeastern directions, especially without hitting the closed city itself. But the military town No. 32, the Vtorchermet enterprise and the village near the ceramic factory got their own dose of biological weapons.
Suspicions of a pulmonary form of anthrax appeared only on April 10, when in the morgue of hospital No. 40, the pathologist L. M. Grinberg. and Abramova A. A. opened the first corpse. However, the official version was the infection through meat from the local market. On this occasion, the newspaper "Uralsky Rabochy" wrote:
“In Sverdlovsk and the region, cases of cattle diseases have become more frequent. Low-quality feed for cows was brought to the collective farm. The city administration urges all residents of Sverdlovsk to refrain from purchasing meat in “random places”, including in the markets”.
With similar appeals, leaflets were posted throughout the town and nearby settlements, as well as appeals from local television screens. Until now, this version is official and priority. To eliminate the outbreak of anthrax, Colonel-General, Doctor of Medical Sciences Efim Ivanovich Smirnov, at that time head of the 15th Directorate of the General Staff of the USSR Armed Forces, flew out of Moscow. The general brought with him a group of high-ranking officers and doctors. Petr Nikolaevich Burgasov, the Minister of Health of the USSR, an epidemiologist by profession, also arrived at the scene of the tragedy. In the future, all these people until the end of their lives will deny the involvement of the enterprises of Sverdlovsk-19 in the outbreak of anthrax in 1979. And Burgasov will even offer his own version of events, different from the official one, but more about it later.
The revelation of Russian President Boris Yeltsin looks very interesting, which was published in Komsomolskaya Pravda in 1992, where he pointed out that the KGB had nevertheless recognized the involvement of military biologists in the epidemic. Yeltsin also actually admitted that the USSR had a program for the development of biological weapons banned by all conventions, and also mentioned that he had signed a decree to close Biopreparat. And, of course, in an era of openness, Yeltsin told the leaders of the United States, France and Britain about all this. But in 1979, Boris Yeltsin was the secretary of the Sverdlovsk regional committee, but he could not influence the current situation - the security forces kept the situation under control and did not allow anyone superfluous to the facilities.
Kanatzhan Baizakovich Alibekov - Chief Prosecutor of the Ministry of Defense in the 1979 tragedy
Mikhail Vasilievich Supotnitsky, opponent of Alibekov
Information about which strain of anthrax caused such a powerful outbreak is still mixed. In the book of Kanatzhan Alibekov “Caution! Biological threat! " provides data on the deadly modification "Anthrax 836", which was received under unusual circumstances. Back in 1953, at the Kirov plant from the Biopreparat empire, the broth with the bacterial mass got into the sewer. The emergency was liquidated by thorough disinfection, and everything went without tragic consequences. However, the incidence of ulcers among rodents living nearby jumped, and already in 1956, a rat with a completely new strain was caught. The bacteria have mutated in the natural rodent population into the more deadly anthrax species. Naturally, the strain was subsequently taken into circulation, including at the Sverdlovsk enterprise.
However, there is an alternative point of view on the origin of anthrax strains. Employees of the Los Alamos National Laboratory worked with the tissues of deceased people and found that the pathogens were the VNTR4 and VNTR6 strains. And the origin of these bacteria is North America and South Africa. It is on this basis that the third version of the causes of the tragedy is being built - biological terrorism on the part of Western special services. This line is adhered to by the candidate of biological sciences, epidemiologist Supotnitsky M. V. and the previously mentioned Burgasov P. N. The terrorists had the following motives: compromising the leadership of the Soviet Union before the approaching Olympics.
On the side of bioterror, there are also multi-focal outbreaks of anthrax in the area adjacent to Sverdlovsk-19. According to Supotnitsky M. V., anthrax spores could not first settle on the soil after being released, and after a while again go into the inhalation form (particle size - 5 microns) and infect people. Some outbreaks were generally 50 km away from the Sverdlovsk-19 plant, and the entire epidemic lasted about 2 months, which is much longer than any incubation period. This is perfectly explained by the theory of numerous terrorist attacks extended over time. It is assumed that anthrax spores were sprayed from special generators in the southern part of Sverdlovsk at different times at night at stops and sidewalks. "Traitor and CIA agent" (according to Supotnitsky) biologist Kanatzhan Alibekov explains this secondary infection by sanitizing trees before the May Day demonstration. Allegedly, the bacteria were washed away during this, and then, as they dried, rose again into the air and fell into the lungs of the unfortunate.
Not into the hands of supporters of the theory of "factory" infection is played by the information about the radio broadcast of the "Voice of America" on April 5, 1979, during which they announced the outbreak of anthrax in the Urals. How did the Western "colleagues" manage to react so quickly and pinpoint the cause of the disease? The Americans obviously developed a whole program of such subversive activities, which, in addition to Sverdlovsk-19, was tested in 1979-1980 in Zimbabwe (anthrax) and in Cuba in 1981 (Dengue fever).
As a result, the epidemic in the Ural city claimed from several dozen to several hundred casualties among the civilian population and military personnel. Most of them were buried in the 15th sector of the Eastern cemetery in compliance with all disinfection rules. The industrial production of anthrax bacteria in Sverdlovsk-19 was discontinued in 1981 and transferred to Kazakhstan's Stepnogorsk. According to Kanatzhan Alibekov, the actual culprit of the tragedy, Lieutenant Colonel Nikolai Cheryshev was transferred there. At the end of 1988, stocks of anthrax, which were allegedly obtained at the enterprise, were taken to Vozrozhdenie Island and buried.
Now "Object 19" is the Federal State Institution "The 48th Central Research Institute of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation - Center for Military-Technical Problems of Biological Protection of the Research Institute of Microbiology of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation". From the name it is clear that the center deals exclusively with the problems of biological protection.
