Ivan Mikhailovich Velikanov
Ivan Mikhailovich Velikanov (7 November 1898 – 8 April 1938), was a Soviet microbiologist who served in the late 1920s and 1930s as chief scientist of Stalin's offensive biological weapons programme.
In 1928 he was appointed director of a new facility belonging to the Red Army, the Military Vaccine-Sera Laboratory, in Vlasikha, close to the Perkhushkovo railway station, approximately 30 miles to the west of Moscow.
Unconfirmed reports state that a purification process and suitable disseminating media were two major problems encountered in the preliminary investigations; by 1940-1941, studies on agent properties were allegedly in progress and the toxin was purportedly being stockpiled………” The CIA report notes that one scientist in particular - possibly Velikanov himself, although the name has been redacted in the released document - “is said to have seen 227 cases of botulinum intoxication in humans, and his computations on comparative fatality rates among treated cases and untreated controls are one of the few hints of suspected human experimentation related to BW in the USSR“.
Besides Stalin himself, among the political leaders attending the meeting were Molotov, Kalinin, Kaganovich, Kuibyshev, Voroshilov, Ordzhonikidze, Andreev, Yagoda and Mikoyan.
As well as Velikanov, the scientists attending the meeting included Yakov Moiseevich Fishman, who, since August 1925, had headed-up the Red Army's Military-Chemical Directorate.
Stalin's enthusiastic reaction to the meeting meant that new resources were immediately provided to the BW effort, with the prime example being the transfer to it of a state-of-the-art virology institute on Gorodomlya Island, fitted out with the latest Soviet and Western technology.
[3] Immediately after the meeting with Stalin, Velikanov was appointed Director of the Biotechnical Institute, also known by its codename of V/2-1094 which, as indicated, was located on Gorodomlya Island (Lake Seliger) close to the town of Ostashkov in Tver (at that time named Kalinin) oblast’.
Velikanov was one of a large number of prominent BW specialists to be arrested by the security organs during the mass repression (dubbed the Great Terror) instigated within the Soviet Union by Stalin.
On the 8 April 1938 Velikanov was accused by the Military Collegium of the USSR Supreme Court of being an active participant of a military-fascist conspiracy, into which he had been tempted by the national enemy, Tukhasheviskii, in 1936.
Lukina, writing in an official volume published to mark the 50th anniversary of the Russian Ministry of Defences’ Virology Centre: “Ivan Mikhailovich Velikanov ranks among the outstanding microbiologists of the late 1930s – mid-1940s.
Velikanov does not have a direct connection to the founding of the Virology Centre, it is impossible not to give credit to this wonderful scientist, who, being one of the pioneers of military microbiology, stood at the source of the foundation of the system of anti-epidemiological defence of both troops and the population.
