[1][2] The first name of this facility was Military Unit 62992, which was replaced with Scientific Research Institute of Medicine of the Ministry of Defense in Zagorsk (now Sergiyev Posad).
[5] Colonel general Aleksandr Smirnov [ru] was personally overseeing the development of the Research institute and brought many top scientists, doctors and the best university graduates to work there.
[5] The pay and benefits were very lucrative, however, the oppressive security measures were hindering the work—for example, the associates of different laboratories could not talk to each other even if they belonged to the same department; another rule prevented the use of the Moscow libraries, so the researchers had to resort to experimentation.
[13] After the collapse of the USSR in 1991, the Zagorsk-6 city was renamed Sergiyev Posad-6, and the Institute shut down almost all research and development due to the lack of funding.
[16] The 2024 US State Department report "assesses that Russia maintains an offensive [biological weapons] program" and actively modernises the 48th Central Scientific Research Institute.
[17] During the first years, single scientists lived in barracks and families rented accommodation in Zagorsk and nearby villages (Zubtsovo, Varavino and Ryazantsy).
[1] A vivarium was added to the Institute around 1954 to host animals used for experimental infections, pathogen propagation and testing of the treatments; the most important species there were primates such as green monkeys, rhesus macaques and baboons.
[20][19] The site was first equipped with slide rules and German electromechanical calculators, but acquired a Minsk-22 computer in 1968 and ES PEVM (Soviet clone of the IBM PC) in 1983.
[19] It expanded its scope in the 2000s by participating in the Unified System for Identification and Estimation of Scales and Consequences of the Use of Weapons of Mass Destruction[a] and supporting its biological branch.
[13] In 1954, Zagorsk-6 established the Museum of Viruses and Rickettsiae; Roza Lukina was his first director and occupied this position for 35 years.