Soviet Union Military Chemical Forces

On 23 February 1993, following the Persian Gulf War and the breakup of the Soviet Union, a panel of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Armed Services submitted a special report,2 Special Inquiry of the House Armed Services Committee Into the Chemical and Biological Weapons Threat. This report concluded that despite the decrease in absolute quantities of chemical weapons, the potential diversity and the frequency with which such weapons could be encountered were increasing. The threat had shifted to Third World scenarios, with deployed U.S. military forces facing new threats from chemical and biological weapons. Technological advances have increased the diversity of poten-... 

By the beginning of World War II, the Soviet Union also had a large stock of all types of poison substances excluding the organophosphorous ones. Documents kept in military archives say that over the period of the war Soviet military and political leaders let chemical forces undertake only chemical reconnaissance and decontamination of arms, uniforms and grounds. In addition, chemical forces could use flame-throwers and camouflage smokes. 

Of greater interest is a book published in 1962 in the Soviet Union and in 1963 in the West. This was V.D. Sokolovskii s Soviet Military Strategy. In their introduction, the US editors wrote that Reference to the anticipated use of chemical and biological weapons occurs several times in the present work. . . linked with the allegation that the United States intends to use them in combination with nuclear weapons. Although there is no disussion of specific employment by Soviet forces, the implication is plain that the Soviets would be prepared to do so . ... 

After World War I, interest in chloropicrin shifted from its toxic effects to its harassing effects, causing it to see use in training by the United States, the Soviet Union, and others. The United States used chloropicrin with chloroacetophenone and chloroform in a military formulation designated CNS. This mixture was declared obsolete in 1957. From 1955 to 1960, the USSR loaded chloropicrin into 250-kilogram bombs, which were stockpiled. These bombs were not declared by Russia following the entry into force of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), suggesting that either the stockpile had been destroyed or the bombs were retained for noncombat uses permitted by the CWC, such as domestic law enforcement purposes. 

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