Another subset of science cities consists of biology towns, housing institutes that supported the Soviet program to develop biological weapons. Only two (Koltsovo and Obolensk) of the dozen or more small towns and villages where laboratories, institutes, and production facilities were located are on the formal list of science cities. But all of these settlements face the problems that characterize the formerly militarized science cities.

The patron for these activities has been the Moscow-based organization Biopreparat. In the spring of 1995, Major General Yuri Tikhonovich Kalinin, the director general of Biopreparat, invited me to his headquarters. It was located in a district of Moscow that for decades had been off limits to foreigners. He wanted to discuss a proposed U.S.-Russian seminar on redirection of former Soviet biological weapons researchers to civilian tasks. Biopreparat still exerted considerable control over its institutes, although a devolution of Moscow's authority had greatly complicated the organizational structure that had been in place.

Kalinin has presided for two decades over the sprawling Biopreparat complex established during the 1970s. At its peak, Biopreparat employed more than 60,000 people working at 100 facilities. As many as 5,000 of the technical personnel had significant understanding of the workings of biological weapons, and therefore could be attractive targets for the intelligence efforts of other states trying to develop the so-called poor man's weapon of mass destruction. The network of facilities included several dozen research institutes and several industrial plants capable of producing large quantities of deadly ingredients for biological bombs and shells. The Soviet arsenal of destruction that rested on Biopreparat capabilities could deliver hundreds of tons of plague and anthrax bacteria, smallpox viruses, and other infectious agents if given the command.¹⁹

Until the early 1990s, the activities of Biopreparat located in secluded towns and in closed enclaves in large cities had been cloaked in secrecy. Then Biopreparat lost most of its support from the Ministry of Defense and, like other Russian defense-oriented organizations,