Is Russia playing deadly games with the plague? Look to its history.

Excerpt One of the greatest scourges the world has ever known is in recent headlines: the Plague. A technician at Russia’s Irkutsk Research Anti-Plague Institute has died of “pneumonia of unknown etiology,” nearly 200 people are under medical observation, and the hospital that treated her has been quarantined. Moscow says there is no evidence of the plague and advises everyone to ignore the rumors. The institute handles some of the world’s most dangerous pathogens, including the pneumonic plague, and Russia has a long history of offensive biological weapons research. In a country where asking questions can be hazardous, few answers have been provided. To understand the questions now surrounding Irkutsk, it is worth remembering that Russia has been asking a darker question for nearly a century: how can disease be turned into a weapon? Disease killed more Russians than weapons during the conflicts of the early 20th century, and Soviet scientists began exploring its potential as a weapon. By 1928, the Soviet Union was researching, developing, testing, and manufacturing biological weapons, with the plague emerging as a weapon of particular interest, alongside anthrax and smallpox. In 1937, the deputy director of a Soviet military biological institute died after contracting the plague during research; local authorities contained the incident and prevented an outbreak. Ivana Stradner is a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ (FDD). Rear Admiral (Ret.) Mark Montgomery serves as senior director of FDD’s Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation (CCTI).