On May 15, 1930, the
Supreme Soviet of the National Economy and
OGPU issued a secret
circulaire "Об использовании на производстве специалистов, осужденных за вредительство" ("On the use in production of specialists convicted of
wrecking"). It ordered the use of "engineers-wreckers" to "eliminate the consequences of wrecking" and to provide them with the necessary literature, materials and devices for this. It also said that "the use of the wreckers must be organized in such a way that their work was carried out on the premises of the organs of OGPU." In 1930
Leonid Ramzin and other engineers sentenced in the
Industrial Party Trial were formed into a special design bureau under the
Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU), which was then the Soviet
secret police. In July 1931, the OGPU seized control of the in
Suzdal and the following year created a special prison laboratory (known as the Bureau of Special Purpose or
BON) where around nineteen leading plague and
tularaemia specialists were forced to work on the development of biological weapons. Colonel Mikhail Mikhailovich Faibich, a specialist in
typhus, was the first director of
BON. The laboratory was in operation until 1936, when the scientists were transferred to a Red Army microbiology facility on
Gorodomlya Island on
Lake Seliger. In 1938,
Lavrenty Beria, a senior
NKVD official, created the Department of Special Design Bureaus at the NKVD USSR (Отдел особых конструкторских бюро НКВД СССР). In 1939, the unit was renamed the Special Technical Bureau at the NKVD USSR (Особое техническое бюро НКВД СССР) and placed under the control of General , under
Beria's immediate supervision. In 1941 it received a secret name, the 4th Special Department of the NKVD USSR (4-й спецотдел НКВД СССР). In 1949, the scope of the
sharashkas significantly increased. Previously the work done there was of
military and defense character. The MVD Order No. 001020 dated November 9, 1949 decreed installation of "Special technical and design bureaus" for a wide variety of civilian
research and development, particularly in the "remote areas of the
Union". The 4th Special Department was disbanded in 1953. == Notable sharashka inmates ==