The Dead Hand

————— ILLUSTRATIONS —————

Lev Grinberg (left) and Faina Abramova, the pathologists who autopsied victims of the 1979 Sverdlovsk anthrax outbreak. [David E. Hoffman]

The Chkalovsky district, where the outbreak occurred. [David E. Hoffman]

Sergei Popov, the bright young researcher who worked on genetic engineering of pathogens, and his wife, Taissia, at Koltsovo in 1982. [Sergei Popov]

Lev Sandakhchiev, the director of Vector, who pushed to create artificial viruses for weapons. [Andy Weber]

Igor Domaradsky, the “troublemaker” at Obolensk who attempted to alter the genetic makeup of pathogens. [David E. Hoffman]

Vitaly Katayev (in eyeglasses at left), an aviation and rocket designer by profession, began in 1974 to work for the Central Committee in Moscow. In the years leading up to the Soviet collapse, he kept detailed notebooks, filled with technical information about weapons systems and key decisions. Here, he attends a May Day celebration, date unknown. [Ksenia Kostrova]

Katayev in the 1990s. [Ksenia Kostrova]

A Katayev drawing on modular missiles. [Hoover Institution Archives]

President Ronald Reagan and the Joint Chiefs of Staff discussed the concept of missile defense on February 11, 1983. The president wrote in his diary that night, “What if we tell the world, we want to protect our people, not avenge them…?” [Ronald Reagan Library]

Reagan unveiled his vision for the Strategic Defense Initiative in a televised speech on March 23, 1983. [Ray Lustig/Washington Post]

The nuclear accident at Chernobyl in April 1986 was a turning point for Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. [Reuters]

Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev, chief of the Soviet General Staff, played a key role in Gorbachev’s drive to slow the arms race. [RIA Novosti]

A poster outlining Gorbachev’s proposal in 1986 to eliminate all nuclear weapons by the year 2000. Akhromeyev is identified on the reverse as the main author. [Hoover Institution Archives]

At the Reykjavik summit, October 11–12, 1986, Gorbachev and Reagan came closer than any other leaders of the Cold War Period to agreements that would slash nuclear arsenals. [Ronald Reagan Library]

They parted without a deal after Reagan insisted that his cherished dream of missile defense could not be limited to research in the laboratory. [Ronald Reagan Library]

Yevgeny Velikhov (right), an open-minded physicist, helped break through the walls of Soviet military secrecy. With Thomas B. Cochran of the Natural Resources Defense Council, near the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site, July 1986. [RIA Novosti]

Velikhov and Cochran arranged an unprecedented joint experiment to verify the presence of a nuclear warhead on a missile aboard the Slava, a Soviet cruiser off the coast of Yalta, July 1989. [Thomas B. Cochran]

Anatoly Chernyaev, who harbored hopes for liberal reform in the Soviet Union, became Gorbachev’s top foreign policy adviser in 1986 and remained at his side until 1991. [Photograph courtesy of Dr. Svetlana Savranskaya, National Security Archive, Washington, D.C.]

Valery Yarynich, who spent thirty years in the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces and General Staff, helped bring to fruition the semiautomatic missile launch system known as Perimeter, a modified “Dead Hand.” [Valery Yarynich]

Gorbachev returns to Moscow on August 21, 1991, after the failed coup attempt during which he lost control of the nuclear command system. [TASS via Agence France-Presse]

Gorbachev concludes his resignation speech on December 25, 1991. [AP Photo/Liu Heung Shing]

Secretary of State James A. Baker III closely questioned Russian President Boris Yeltsin about who controlled the nuclear weapons as the Soviet Union neared collapse. [AP Photo/Liu Heung Shing]

Vladimir Pasechnik, the director of the Institute of Ultra-Pure Biological Preparations in Leningrad, defected to Britain in 1989 and revealed the true size and scope of the Soviet biological weapons program. [Photograph courtesy of Raymond Zilinskas at the Monterey Institute]

Pasechnik’s business card.

In this memo to Gorbachev about biological weapons on May 15, 1990, Politburo member Lev Zaikov wrote the word biological by hand, due to its sensitive nature. [Hoover Institution Archives]

Senators Sam Nunn, Democrat of Georgia (right), and Richard Lugar, Republican of Indiana, saw the dangers of loose nuclear materials and weapons in the former Soviet Union. [Ray Lustig/Washington Post]

Andy Weber, a U.S. diplomat, located 1,322 pounds of highly-enriched uranium in Kazakhstan. Here, an image of the uranium, which was airlifted out in Project Sapphire. [Andy Weber]

Loading the uranium onto cargo planes to be flown to the United States. [Andy Weber]

President George H. W. Bush raised questions about biological weapons in a private talk with Gorbachev at Camp David, June 2, 1990. [George Bush Presidential Library and Museum]

Christopher Davis, the senior biological warfare specialist on the British Defense Intelligence Staff, makes a video recording during a second visit to Pasechnik’s institute in November 1992. Yeltsin promised to end the biological weapons program, but it continued nonetheless. [Christopher Davis]

Ken Alibek was chief of the anthrax factory built at Stepnogorsk, and later served as deputy director of Biopreparat, the Soviet biological weapons system. [James A. Parcell/Washington Post]

The Stepnogorsk anthrax facility, with underground bunkers in the foreground. [Andy Weber]

Inside the Stepnogorsk complex, machines were ready to create tons of anthrax for weapons if the Kremlin had given the order. [Andy Weber]

Dry, deserted Vozrozhdeniye Island as seen by Weber and his team as their helicopter approached for the first time in 1995. The island held clues to years of biological weapons testing. [Andy Weber]

Searching for buried anthrax on Vozrozhdeniye Island. [Andy Weber]

Weber, who helped uncover the secrets of the Soviet biological weapons program, found rusting cages once used to hold primates for germ warfare testing on the island. [Andy Weber]

In a tin can of peas at a lightly guarded institute, Weber once found samples of plague agent. [Andy Weber]

The graves of the Sverdlovsk anthrax victims. [David E. Hoffman]