15th Main Directorate
(Glavnoye Upravleniye Ministerstvo Oborony)
The 15th Main Directorate (Glavnoye Upravleniye Ministerstvo Oborony) of the General Staff was the primary military organization responsible for biological weapons. By the end of the 1960s the Soviet army had its special system of preparing an offensive biological warfare, organized under the direction of Generals Smirnov, Lebedinsky and Yevstigneyev, which began to form in the 1920s. It included the personnel, test sites, depots of biological munitions and three major military-biological research institutes in Sverdlovsk (Yekaterinburg), Kirov and Zagorsk (Sergiyev Posad). The system was crowned by the 15th Agency of the General Headquarters. After 1973 a parallel civilian system, named Biopreparat, was created with the Main Microbiological Industry Agency as its core.
Sources and Resources
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/russia/agency/15gumo.htm
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