The facility was built in the 1970s after the Biological Weapons Convention prompted the formation of the Biopreparat directorate at the Soviet Union Ministry of Health.

Facilities at this complex "included at least forty two-story tall fermentation tanks, maintained at Biosafety Level 4 (BSL4) inside huge ring-shaped biocontainment zones in a building called Corpus One.

[2] As the USSR crumbled, the British and the Americans convinced the Russians to open up for inspection their state laboratory facilities, including their biological ones.

[2] In order to dissuade the staff from collaborating with rogue states, the Nunn–Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction programme offered incentives to former biological weapons scientists, as well as upgrading the physical security and biosafety of the Obolensk facilities.

[2] In 1997, a scientist working at the Institute named Pomerantsev published a paper in which were described some genetic modifications to the Anthrax bacteria.