The Sverdlovsk Incident

Biological Warfare

by David W. Tschanz, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia

In September 1979 an obscure Frankfurt magazine published by dissident Russians, published a story claiming that an outbreak of anthrax had occurred in the Russian city of Sverdlovsk. The cause was an accident at a biological warfare plant, built in contravention of the 1972 Biological Warfare Convention. The story was picked up by a columnist with the London Daily Telegraph.

By March, the US State Department announced that the outbreak has raised questions of whether Soviets had violated the treaty. The American ambassador to Moscow was instructed to request an explanation. The Kremlin responded with predictable outrage. They questioned the number of dead claimed at between a hundred and a thousand, stating the actual number was only forty. The cause they stated was what Tass called poor standards of personal hygiene in handling contaminated food.

But the intelligence experts disagreed. Analysts claimed that cases of respiratory anthrax had occurred, that observed aerial decontamination attempts were consistent with an accident at the military facility and that the 1000 or more cases exceeded the annual incidence of anthrax throughout the Soviet Union by at least a factor of 100. Soviet officials countered that there had been no cases spread by inhalation, no aerial decontamination and less than one hundred cases.

The claims persuaded a group of Western scientists who met with their Soviet counterparts after a request to Mikhail Gorbachev to meet with them under glasnost was granted. US intelligence officials remained unconvinced however, pointing out that the group was headed by Matthew Meselson, the man credited with fathering the Biological Weapons Convention. The treaty they pointed out would have been destroyed by proof of Soviet production and stockpiling of anthrax, ruining Meselson's accomplishment.

Nothing is likely to be proved about what did or did not happen at Sverdlovsk. Some aspects appear to be pure propaganda, others suggest the claim was true. The end result was a growing concern on the part of the West that the Soviets were not adhering to the treaty. As happened in the inter-war period these fears were enough to justify the continued existence of programs into research on defense against biological weapons.

Related Biological Warfare

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© Copyright 1994 by David W. Tschanz.
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