Penicillin, science diplomacy and the circulation of knowledge between West and East during the Cold War

In recent years historians of science have been paying increasing attention to the role that science and technology play in international relations. A joint report of the Royal Society and the American Academy for the Advancement of Science considered the centrality of science diplomacy, highlighting three dimensions of it: ‘strengthening the contribution of science to foreign policy objectives (science in diplomacy); facilitating international science cooperation (diplomacy for science); and using science cooperation to improve relations between countries (science for diplomacy)’.Footnote ¹ Historians have highlighted the shortcomings of the analysis of the joint report and moved beyond these three dimensions, increasingly using science diplomacy as a lens to examine the circulation of knowledge – particularly during the Cold War years.Footnote ² Most historians have focused on the activity of individuals in international and transnational organizations, which have been acquiring a prominent position since the age of empire. Given the increasing importance of science and technology in the twentieth century, the role of scientists and of scientific policymakers in international relations transcended their position in international organizations. Maria Rentetzi and Kenji Ito considered how scientists and diplomats co-produced knowledge on nuclear science and political nuclear stability, arguing that ‘knowledge production in science and technology is fundamentally diplomatic’.Footnote ³ Indeed, scientific experts played an increasing role in diplomatic affairs and international institutions like the IAEA became crucial diplomatic actors, blurring the distinction between science and diplomacy. This essay endorses an understanding of science diplomacy that goes beyond the places of diplomatic negotiation, treating it as a general framework for the production of knowledge. Indeed, as Adamson and Lalli argue, ‘science diplomacy has often functioned to mediate the circulation of scientific knowledge and material’.Footnote ⁴ This essay focuses on the circulation of knowledge on penicillin between Britain, the US and Soviet Union between the end of the Second World War and the early Cold War years through the lens of science diplomacy. It highlights how the production of knowledge on penicillin was inseparable from its circulation and became intrinsically diplomatic. This essay reveals the complexity of the role of science in international relations, showing that key actors such as E.B. Chain and Howard Florey did not simply behave as science diplomats, using their research as a soft power. Their role as researchers entailed negotiating with the contrasting interests of their own mission as biomedical investigators, their personal views of international scientific cooperation, and the conflicting political aims of London, Washington and Moscow.

It is worth recalling that during the Cold War, circulation of knowledge was not one-way. Nikolai Krementsov has reconstructed the case of Nina Kliueva and Grigorii Roskin’s research on cancer, and Alexei Kojevnikov has stressed the interplay of Soviet and American science.Footnote ⁵ The Soviets were, indeed, far ahead in certain crucial military sectors, such as tank production, aviation and certain sectors of space technology.Footnote ⁶ As Slava Gerovitch has reconstructed in his study of Soviet cybernetics, research on some crucial sectors reveals the complex nature of scientific research in the Soviet Union and of East–West relationships.Footnote ⁷ Penicillin was not only a crucial industrial sector, but also a multifaceted phenomenon, simultaneously an invaluable life-saving drug, a formidable propaganda instrument in Cold War geopolitical strategies, and a weapon in biological warfare. In some senses the drug itself became ‘diplomatic’.

In 1945 the Americans and the Soviets enforced collaboration on medical issues.Footnote ⁸ Penicillin, however, was a rather different topic. Files concerning its research were classified as secrets until the end of the war, as it was considered a defensive biochemical weapon. Thus the American and British governments were not inclined to disclose information on penicillin to the Soviets, and the British and American intelligence agencies monitored penicillin research and production in the Soviet Union and in the Eastern bloc.Footnote ⁹ In the 1950s, when the Soviets were able to organize large-scale penicillin production, the CIA monitored Soviet antibiotics production facilities to gather information on Moscow’s military intentions: an abnormal accumulation of antibiotics could mean that the Soviets were preparing military operations.Footnote ¹⁰ In 1944, the Soviets tried to acquire know-how on large-scale penicillin production from Britain and the USA. This paper reconstructs the different strategies that London, Washington and Moscow deployed.

First, it assesses research on penicillin in the USSR and the Soviet plan to catch up on industrial antibiotic production. Then it deals with the British government’s efforts to slow down penicillin research and production in the Soviet Union. As the Foreign Office could not ask its medical investigators to stop medical assistance to the Soviet Union, the government deployed a subtler strategy. In 1940, an Oxford team led by Howard Florey had proved the antibacterial properties of penicillin. Ernest Boris Chain and Norman Heatley had set up an increasingly sophisticated apparatus in which it was possible to extract a tiny quantity of penicillin.Footnote ¹¹ After animal trials had showed its low toxicity and its extraordinary antibacterial properties, Florey administered penicillin to some patients. Results were spectacular: patients who were seriously infected recovered in a few days or even hours.Footnote ¹² While Florey and Chain were to be allowed to collaborate with Soviet microbiologists with respect to their work, the Foreign Office simultaneously hindered penicillin research and production in the Soviet Union by controlling the export of Podbielniak extractors, crucial for the faster production of better-quality penicillin to the Eastern bloc. By contrast, the USA halted scientific and technological collaboration with the Soviets, but was less strict about the export of industrial machinery. The different strategies generated tensions between the Foreign Office and the Department of State. Finally, the role played by British and Soviet researchers on antibiotics in the Great Game of the Cold War is assessed.

It is important to provide a preliminary clarification. Readers may find the primary sources cited in this essay somewhat imbalanced. Due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the author was unable to conduct more comprehensive archival research in Russian repositories. Consequently, the essay relies predominantly on British and American archival materials, with only limited engagement with Russian sources.

Making antibiotics in the Soviet Union

In the Soviet Union research on antibiotics began in 1942, when two laboratories in Moscow, the Microbial Biochemical Laboratory at the Vsesojuznyj institut jeksperimental′noj mediciny (VIEM), the All-Union Institute of Experimental Medicine of the Academy of Sciences, which was directed by Zinaida Vissarionovna Ermol′yeva, and the Institute for Tropical Medicine of the Ministry of Health, directed by Georgii Frantsevich Gause, started working apparently independently on antibiotics.Footnote ¹³ Gause recalled that he and his co-worker, Brazhnikova, started working on gramicidin in January 1942 and isolated gramicidin S (where S stands for Soviet) in the summer of the same year.Footnote ¹⁴ Their results were published in 1943.Footnote ¹⁵

However, the Soviets gave priority to Ermol′yeva’s laboratory work instead. In 1942 Nikolai Propper-Grashchenkov, the director of the VIEM and former people’s commissioner of health, obtained penicillin strains from Britain and the USA and charged Ermol′yeva with organizing the work on antibiotics.Footnote ¹⁶ Several years later, one of Ermol′yeva’s co-workers, Tamara I. Balezina, claimed that rather it was she who did the work on penicillin, as in 1942 Ermol′yeva was engaged in Stalingrad to fight cholera epidemics.Footnote ¹⁷ According to Balezina, after some months she and her co-workers found a strain which produced a penicillin between four and six times more effective than that of Fleming’s original strain. The strain was identified by L.I. Kursanov as Penicillin crustosum.Footnote ¹⁸ Clinical trials were organized in a number of hospitals in Moscow and Tashkent under Rufanov’s supervision.Footnote ¹⁹ In a report sent to the people’s commissioner of health, Rufanov claimed that penicillin produced at the VIEM was to some extent better than that of the British and the Americans, as it required fewer doses.Footnote ²⁰ Before the praesidium of the Narkomzdrav, the People’s Commissariat of Health, Florey himself claimed that the methods of the Soviet microbiologists equated to those developed at Oxford.Footnote ²¹ Several years later, on the other hand, Michael Shimkin, one of the two American members of the Anglo-American medical mission, recalled that, according to Florey, Soviet penicillin was inferior to ‘our products’.Footnote ²² The two opinions are not necessarily contradictory.

Large-scale penicillin production not only depended on the development of microbiology research, but also required advanced industrial technology on fermentation and purification.Footnote ²³ The Cold War rhetoric insisted that industrial penicillin production was made possible by a state-coordinated Big Science project. In his Science, the Endless Frontier, Vannevar Bush compared the penicillin programme to the Manhattan project, implicitly stressing the good side of military-supported research.Footnote ²⁴ Gladys Hobby, a microbiologist at Columbia University and one of the first to investigate the properties of penicillin, who later on worked at Pfizer, the company that developed the crucial technology of submerged fermentation, also argued that penicillin production needed a Big Science project.Footnote ²⁵ In his book of memoirs published in English after fleeing to Britain, Nikolai Mihailovic Borodin, a Soviet microbiologist and the main agent of the Soviet attempt to acquire penicillin production technology, reported a conversation with a minister who claimed that the Soviets concentrated all their efforts on catching up with the USA on nuclear technology and, therefore, they wanted to acquire technology on penicillin from the West.Footnote ²⁶ In doing so, Borodin stressed that the Soviet government preferred to produce weapons of mass destruction, instead of life-saving drugs.

The whole matter was, however, much more complex. There were two successful paths to acquiring the technology on fermentation and purification needed for large-scale penicillin production. The first was the state-coordinated approach, which was implemented by the Anglo-American project.Footnote ²⁷ Apart from the US, it worked successfully only in Japan and to a lesser extent in Britain.Footnote ²⁸ France embarked on a state penicillin project but ended up never producing it. The matter is slightly different with regard to Eastern European countries, where there was no alternative to state production. As early as 1945 the UNRRA, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, decided to donate a penicillin pilot plant to Italy and a number of Eastern European countries where it operated: Belarus and Ukraine (listed as if they were two separate states), Czechoslovakia, Italy, Yugoslavia and Poland.Footnote ²⁹ UNRRA delivered a pilot plant under the condition that the plant could neither export its products nor compete with private ventures. Italy managed to produce state penicillin, but only on a limited scale.Footnote ³⁰ Apart from the Italian case, apparently the only plant that shipped was the Czech one.Footnote ³¹

The UNRRA plants were, however, already antiquated. In particular, they were not provided with Podbielniak extractors, but with the less efficient Sharples centrifuges, which produced amorphous impure penicillin.Footnote ³² Meanwhile, in 1948 the Communists took control of Czechoslovakia and in January 1949 the USA imposed an embargo on Podbielniak extractors for the Eastern bloc.Footnote ³³ Nonetheless, the work carried out in Czechoslovakia was crucial for the whole Eastern Bloc to catch up on penicillin production with the West, after the Soviets had failed to acquire a factory from Britain. The Soviets decided to create a large-scale production plant in Roztoky u Prahy, which also served for export. The original plant was used for research. Production began in 1949.Footnote ³⁴ Czech engineers likely improved the UNRRA plant extractor, thanks to the know-how they had acquired during their travels to Britain, Canada and the USA. Málek reported that what they learned in their travels in Canada and the USA affected all the UNRRA plants and that the work by Herold was also helpful for Poland and the Soviet Union.Footnote ³⁵ According to a CIA report of 1951, the Czechs produced machinery for all the Soviet plants.Footnote ³⁶

The second path to penicillin production was followed by four small European private pharmaceutical companies who either had previous knowledge of fermentation technology or were able to acquire such know-how quickly thanks to their entrepreneurial strategies.Footnote ³⁷ Only these four small companies could catch up and produce and export penicillin in the post-war years. All the major European pharmaceutical companies, in contrast, acquired know-how and patent licences from US companies.Footnote ³⁸ The second path to penicillin production was not an option for the Soviets, as it was basically rooted in a combination of three factors: entrepreneurial strategies, risky decisions taken by the management of companies, and the ability of skilled engineers and technicians. Furthermore, the Soviets needed penicillin quickly and could not wait for their scientists and technicians to develope in-house technology and expertise.

Historians of Soviet economics observe that the Soviet state organization much more resembled a big Western company than a Western state.Footnote ³⁹ Thus it comes as no surprise that the Soviets behaved like the major European pharmaceutical companies and tried to acquire knowledge on penicillin from the US and Britain. It is also worth noting that the key technologies for penicillin production were not patented or patentable. Problems in production had to be solved on a day-to-day basis. As we shall see in the next sections, the acquisition of know-how on industrial penicillin production required equipment and skilled technicians who could work on site for some time.

Florey’s mission to Moscow

In November 1943, the USA and the USSR decided to hold a medical mission in Moscow in order to trade information on a number of biomedical issues.Footnote ⁴⁰ The mission took place one month after the Teheran conference, at which a climate of trust had apparently been established between the Anglo-Americans and the Soviets. At Teheran Churchill and Roosevelt finally met Stalin’s main request and committed to opening a second front in France.Footnote ⁴¹ The Americans asked the British and the Canadians to join the mission; the latter asked the British to act as their representatives.Footnote ⁴² The Americans sent to Moscow Albert Baird Hastings, who in 1935 had been appointed professor of physiological chemistry at Harvard by James B. Conant and who was also a member of the Medical Committee of the OSRD, and Michael Shimkin, an oncological surgeon who spoke Russian and was already involved in the collaborative programme of the American–Soviet Medical Society.Footnote ⁴³ Before the praesidium of the Narkomzdrav, Hastings declared that ‘the goal of this visit is to establish stronger and durable links in research on the field of medical research, which have important value for our people in peace and war time’.Footnote ⁴⁴ Hasting’s words were not merely rhetoric. They mirrored Roosevelt’s grand design for the post-war period, which aimed to fully integrate the Soviet Union in a stable, durable, peaceful world system as the only way of preventing a third world war.Footnote ⁴⁵ Although no significant scientific and technological discovery was achieved, in an article published three years later Hastings overtly encouraged collaborative projects with the Soviet Union.Footnote ⁴⁶ As already recalled, despite the radical change in Soviet–American relations after 1947, collaboration on medical issues continued throughout the 1950s.Footnote ⁴⁷ Hastings was particularly impressed by the Soviet organization of the collecting of blood, as well as typhus treatment and insecticides in the USSR.Footnote ⁴⁸ The Americans were also interested in a cancer therapy developed by Nina Kliueva and Gregorii Roskin, which had had vast coverage in the US press. But it turned out that the Soviets were not inclined to discuss the matter with their guests.Footnote ⁴⁹ The Soviets were in turn concerned with penicillin, as at that time they were able to produce only small quantities of it for clinical trials.Footnote ⁵⁰

The British government attitude towards the Soviet Union was quite complex.Footnote ⁵¹ In 1939 Churchill said in a BBC interview that the USSR was ‘a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma’, but he added that there was ‘a community of interests’ between Britain, France and the USSR.Footnote ⁵² After the German attack on the Soviet Union of 22 June 1941, Britain and the USSR became ‘reluctant allies’.Footnote ⁵³ It was above all the working class who showed sentiments of gratitude to the Soviets. Fearing the growth of communism in Britain, some politicians gave interviews and delivered speeches that were often enthusiastically favourable to the USSR. The Foreign Office financed the Anglo-Soviet Public Relations Committee in order to avoid leaving Russophilia in the hands of the communists. There were conflicts within the government. Labour did not trust the Soviets, whereas some Tories were friendlier. Lord Beaverbrook, the minister of aircraft production, was the most Russophile, while Deputy Prime Minister Clement Attlee was very much concerned with the expansion of communism.Footnote ⁵⁴ It is within this articulated climate that the historian must frame the behaviour of the British actors involved in the story. Howard Mellanby asked Florey to head the British mission that also included Arthur Gordon Sanders, another member of the Oxford team, who had worked on penicillin extraction. Florey was to show the Soviets how to produce penicillin and how to administer it to patients.Footnote ⁵⁵ Chain too was supposed to take part in the mission. At Oxford, Chain had acquired some know-how and technology concerning penicillin production. His biochemical expertise on penicillin, as well as his knowledge of the Russian language (his father was Russian), made him a natural candidate to take part in the mission. Florey, however, told Mellanby, the Medical Research Council secretary, that the Americans had pointed out that only one scientist for each delegation could travel to the Soviet Union. Chain could thus have joined the mission only as an interpreter. The personal relationship between Chain and Florey had already deteriorated by that time.Footnote ⁵⁶ In a letter to Mellanby, Florey suggested excluding Chain, who – claimed Florey – overestimated his role in the penicillin project, and therefore would never accept a junior interpreter’s role.Footnote ⁵⁷ Instead, Florey took with him Arthur Gordon Sanders, who had developed some technical expertise in the building of the apparatus for penicillin extraction and purification at Oxford, and was willing to accept a low profile role in the mission.

The choice of Florey as an agent of circulation of knowledge meant that the Anglo-Americans could pass on their expertise on the clinical use of penicillin, but they would not be able to disclose any relevant information concerning their industrial technology and know-how. Transferring such knowledge called for a different kind of researcher, someone able to organize and control the whole research and production process. When the USA decided to organize a large-scale penicillin production project in Japan, for example, they sent to Tokyo Jackson W. Foster, a former pupil of Selman Waksman, who worked for Merck & Co. Inc.Footnote ⁵⁸ At the beginning of 1944 the British and the American governments discussed the possibility of disclosing sensitive information to the Soviets. The War Office decided to transmit information on radar, including production methods and technical characteristics, to the Soviets.Footnote ⁵⁹ But, as we shall see, the Foreign Office was more cautious about penicillin than about radar.

The mission landed in Moscow on 26 January 1944. The American delegation left on 11 February, while the British one stayed some ten days more.Footnote ⁶⁰ Florey traded with Soviet researchers a number of published and unpublished papers, as well as substance samples, without disclosing any patented or unpatented method. He also showed them how to treat patients with penicillin.Footnote ⁶¹ The Anglo-American mission was told that two Soviet centres were working on antibiotics. The mission was promised that they would visit both laboratories, but in the end they were only taken to visit Ermol′yeva’s laboratory. Florey only had a brief interview with Gause and was very positively impressed by him and his work.Footnote ⁶² Gause gave Florey the mould they cultivated.Footnote ⁶³ The Soviet researchers shared with their guests their work on gramicidin, Penicillin crustosum and bacteriophages.Footnote ⁶⁴ Florey seems to have been moved by a sincere will to help the Soviets, and a strong sense of fellowship. In Moscow he met the researchers of the country that was defeating the Germans: while Florey had been working in his laboratory in Oxford, Ermol′yeva was fighting against cholera during the siege of Stalingrad. Before the praesidium of the Narkomzdrav, Florey praised the Anglo-American collaboration and envisioned its possible extension to the Soviets. He also proposed to make a list of issues to be jointly investigated in the future and invited Soviet colleagues to pay a visit to British laboratories.Footnote ⁶⁵

In his final report, Florey encouraged cooperation with the Soviets in order to help them in their research and production of penicillin. According to Sanders’s diary, he also pointed out that the Soviets needed a large penicillin plant and the best way to acquire it was to send someone to visit plants in Britain and the USA.Footnote ⁶⁶ After his return to Britain, he corresponded with Soviet scientists throughout 1945. His letters with the Soviet investigators and doctors were cordial, and he even envisaged another trip to Moscow. Soviet surgeons were sent to Britain to be trained in the clinical use of penicillin.Footnote ⁶⁷ Ermol′yeva learned from Florey about cultivation methods of fungi, methods of preservation and preparation of cultures in active condition, and different environments for production goals.Footnote ⁶⁸ At the beginning of 1943 Ermol′yeva was charged with organizing the first penicillin factory.Footnote ⁶⁹ In a report to the health commissioner of the USSR of March 1944 she proposed to start penicillin production in two months.Footnote ⁷⁰ As already recalled, the two main issues for industrial penicillin production were fermentation and purification. Ermol′yeva’s laboratory had solved the first, as they were able to find a fairly efficient medium in which penicillin strains grew. They were not really concerned about the technology of submerged fermentation in large tanks, which was the key issue for Western producers and gave US companies a strategic advantage over competitors that used surface fermentation technology, since the Soviet plants were not competing with foreign companies in the domestic market. Thus the key issue for industrial penicillin production in the Soviet Union was purification. Hastings reported that her laboratory was able to produce strains that produced effective penicillin in clinical use, but their purification methods were primitive.Footnote ⁷¹

Buying a penicillin factory

During his stay in Moscow, Florey suggested that the Soviet researchers send someone to either Britain or the US to study production methods.Footnote ⁷² Ermol′yeva asked the commissioner of foreign affairs to authorize the purchase of foreign equipment.Footnote ⁷³ The American and British governments had, however, a different opinion on the matter. Files concerning penicillin research were classified as secrets until the end of the war, as it was considered a defensive biochemical weapon. A report by the Office of Research and Report of the Central Intelligence Agency written in 1954 explained the matter:

Thus the American and British governments were not inclined to disclose information on penicillin to the Soviets, and the British and American intelligence agencies monitored penicillin research and production in the Soviet Union and in the Eastern bloc.Footnote ⁷⁵

In 1944, the Soviets sent Nikolai Mihailovic Borodin to work at Florey’s laboratory. Everything we know about him derives either from the autobiographical book he published in English after he fled to the UK or from CIA reports whose source is likely Borodin himself, so the historian must be very careful in handling the information. We can focus on a number of elements that made Borodin the ideal agent for the transfer of knowledge on industrial penicillin production. First, he was trained as a microbiologist and worked for Armavir, a military laboratory, where he had acquired expertise on yeasts, which means that he knew about fermentation. Many factories with expertise on yeasts embarked on penicillin production. Second, he was given the Order of Lenin for having fought during the war and he had connections with the political police. Third, he was appointed director of a pharmaceutical factory in Baku which started penicillin production.Footnote ⁷⁶

The collaboration at Florey’s laboratory resulted in a joint paper.Footnote ⁷⁷ Scientific collaboration was not, however, the main purpose of Borodin’s stay in England. Had microbiological research been the Soviets’ main concern, they would have sent to Oxford one of the microbiologists who worked either in Ermol′yeva’s or in Gause’s laboratory. As already pointed out, the Soviet microbiologists did not need any assistance; what the Soviets really needed was industrial know-how and equipment. Thus they sent to Britain someone who was both a microbiologist with expertise in penicillin production and a secret agent. Some months later, Borodin was sent on to the USA, not as a microbiologist this time, but as representative of the Soviet trade delegation Technopromimport, trying to buy production technology. American companies, however, could not sell the Soviets any sensitive technology related to antibiotics production.Footnote ⁷⁸ In February 1949 the Congress approved the Export Control Act. Under the Export Control Act, the US may consider any good as having military importance, and therefore forbid its export.Footnote ⁷⁹ Thus the Soviets turned to the British. Borodin was abruptly called back home and sent again to Britain, in the double role of microbiologist and representative of the Soviet trade delegation. Jointly with two co-workers, Zeifman and Cherniavsky, he was sent to work at Chain’s laboratory, officially in order to study the purification methods, crystallization and assay of penicillin.Footnote ⁸⁰ At the same time he continued to represent the Soviet trade delegation, and was working on the acquisition of both information and a whole penicillin factory.Footnote ⁸¹

Between 1946 and 1948, relations between Britain and the Soviet Union got worse and worse.Footnote ⁸² However, after the Second World War trade between Britain and the Soviet Union increased constantly, and by 1950 Britain had become the first Western trade partner of the Soviet Union. The Americans pushed the British to limit their trade with the Soviets in strategic sectors, but such limitations would have harmed certain British industrial exports and would have made it difficult to secure coarse grains and timber.Footnote ⁸³ As we shall see, the case of penicillin is interesting because what happened in 1948 was the opposite of this.

At the beginning of 1948, the Soviets started negotiating the acquisition of a penicillin factory with three British companies: British Distillers, Glaxo, and Bennett, Sons & Shears.Footnote ⁸⁴ In May 1948 the Soviets were about to sign a contract with Glaxo. The contract entailed the acquisition of a fully operating penicillin production plant, a book of operating instructions, and the training of Soviet technicians for three weeks at Glaxo.Footnote ⁸⁵ The British government, however, persuaded the firm not to sell the factory to the Soviets. Nevertheless, the Ministry of Defence deemed that it was too dangerous to rely only on the collaboration of the British industrialists. Thus the government decided that it was more convenient to focus on machinery in order to slow down the construction of large-scale penicillin facilities in the Soviet Union:

Podbielniak extractors became the element that allowed the British government to control penicillin production in the Soviet Union. Penicillin production was a very complex process that required putting penicillin broth in contact with water and solvents. In the US, Walter J. Podbielniak developed an extractor that allowed the separation of penicillin from solvents and water faster and better. Its use in penicillin factories was at that time considered crucial.Footnote ⁸⁷ As the Podbielniak extractor may be used in any liquid–liquid separation process, there was some concern that it could be used in preparing agents for biological warfare. Furthermore, as already recalled, research on pathogenic agents was closely related to research on antibiotics. For these reasons, Washington forbade the export of Podbielniak extractors to Eastern Europe. In order to overcome the import restrictions, the Soviets tried to buy the Podbielniak extractors from British companies by acquiring a complete production plant. In their correspondence with their American counterpart, officials of the Foreign Office highlighted the danger of the possible use of Podbielniak extractors for biological warfare. As already recalled, the definition of biological warfare included the use of antibiotics to heal people attacked by biological agents.Footnote ⁸⁸ Nevertheless, this aspect was never made explicit in communications with the Americans.

The report of a British expert was quite sceptical about whether the Soviets could acquire expertise on biological warfare through research on penicillin:

The British government wanted to use the Podbielniak extractors as an instrument for hindering biochemical research and production in the Soviet Union, and for controlling other strategic sectors of Soviet industry, as pointed out in a letter from an official of the Engineering Industries Division of the Ministry of Supply to an official of the Ministry of Defence:

Thus, in spite of a report that minimized the risk of biological warfare, the British government kept putting pressure on the Americans in order to maintain the restrictions on the import of Podbielniak extractors.Footnote ⁹¹ Two years later, in May 1950, the Department of State alerted the Foreign Office that a group of experts in antibiotics headed by Ernst Boris Chain had asked the World Health Organization (WHO) to use its good offices to remove restrictions on the sale of Podbielniak extractors.Footnote ⁹² The Directorate of Scientific Intelligence (DSI) of the British Ministry of Defence communicated to the Foreign Office that Podbielniak extractors could be used in biological warfare, and that members of the WHO who requested the removal of restrictions on the sale of Podbielniak extractors either had no knowledge of biological warfare or could not disclose their knowledge of it. Thus the DSI asked the Foreign Office to brief British delegates at the WHO in order to oppose the appeal to remove restrictions on sale of Podbielniak extractors.Footnote ⁹³ The Foreign Office instructed British delegates at the WHO to ground their opposition in patents law rather than in their possible use in biological warfare.Footnote ⁹⁴ Washington, by contrast, was inclined to allow the sale of Podbielniak extractors, both to protect the interests of Podbielniak, which were seriously harmed by the restrictions on their sale, and because the American technical experts deemed that the sale of Podbielniak extractors was not a serious risk in the development of biological weapons.Footnote ⁹⁵ It is hard to assess whether or not in the Soviet bloc such technology would be used for biological warfare too. Most scholars agree that the Soviets developed a biological-warfare programme only in the 1970s.Footnote ⁹⁶ Robert Bud, however, reports a private communication with the Swedish microbiologist Carl-Gören Hedén, who was shocked to learn from some Czech postdocs working in his lab that they had used a fermenter they had bought from Sweden to grow pathogen agents.Footnote ⁹⁷ All we can state is that at that time both the American and the British governments thought that the Soviets were not working on biological warfare. In 1948, a CIA report stated that there was no reliable evidence concerning the Soviet Union’s capability of waging large-scale biological warfare.Footnote ⁹⁸ A CIA report of 1954 titled ‘Soviet biological warfare and penicillin production’ stated that, according to an undisclosed source, the Soviets were not working on a large-scale biological-warfare programme. The report added that the Soviets could think of biological warfare as ‘means of sabotage’ and that they could use the existing microbiological facilities.Footnote ⁹⁹ In 1948, the British believed that, as the Soviets had seen a Podbielniak extractor in Czechoslovakia, they would have been able to reconstruct it in a year or two.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ During his stay in Czechoslovakia, Chain persuaded the Czech authorities of the necessity of buying Podbielniak extractors. However, in January 1949 Podbielniak extractors were placed on the list of goods requiring an export licence and could not be delivered to Czechoslovakia.Footnote ¹⁰¹

In 1950, the British government opposed the elimination of restrictions on the sale of Podbielniak extractors.Footnote ¹⁰² In the end, London persuaded Washington.Footnote ¹⁰³ Tensions between the two partners arose, as the British criticized the way of acting of the American government. The British officials reproached the Americans for the fact that they had allowed industrialists to participate in a meeting with the representatives of the British government, and that they had already promised Mr Podbielniak permission to export their extractors, before discussing the matter with them.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ London was puzzled by the Americans’ behaviour. Washington had apparently not informed the American delegation at the OEEC in Paris of the administration’s will to remove restrictions on the export of Podbielniak extractors, before a meeting where the matter was discussed took place in Paris.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ Thus the American delegation voted against the proposal to remove such restrictions. A British official observed that it was difficult to interact with the Americans, as they seemed to work ‘as a series of separate teams in the dark as to each others’ activities’.Footnote ¹⁰⁶

Chain as a knowledge transfer agent

While in Britain, Borodin contacted Chain too, who delivered to the Soviet trade delegation in London two memoranda concerning the production of penicillin and streptomycin.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ Furthermore, he provided the Soviets with the following information: (1) a description of the manufacturing processes of the factories he directly knew, the Swedish Astra and the British Distillers Company; (2) working instructions for the processes of industrial penicillin production for a plant the Soviets were setting up; (3) a set of drawings and flow sheets; (4) photographs of the British Distillers’ plant and of a pilot plant of Pfizer (probably the factory Pfizer was setting up in Britain); (5) blueprints of papers on penicillin; and (6) microfilms of Anglo-American reports on penicillin chemistry.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ Chain disclosed all the know-how he had either developed or gathered from the industry he had worked with or had observed. For instance, he suggested that the future Soviet factory adopt the system of air sterilization used at the Distillers Company.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Chain did not, however, disclose any secret, nor did he transmit to the Soviets any knowledge covered by patent.Footnote ¹¹⁰ It is worth noting that, even if the Soviets had been successful in acquiring an entire production plant from the UK, collaboration between the Oxford team and Soviet scientists and technicians would have been helpful in order to make the plant fully operative in a short period of time. The British authorities were informed from Glaxo that after three weeks of training in the UK the Soviet technicians would have been able to start production in one year.Footnote ¹¹¹ This opinion was likely too optimistic. The Swedish company Astra that embarked on a penicillin project in 1945 with the collaboration of Chain was only able to produce penicillin three years later.Footnote ¹¹²

Chain visited the Astra research and production facilities several times. He sent penicillin strains obtained in Rome to the Swedish.Footnote ¹¹³ However, these strains were not performing well in Sweden and the issue was solved only when Chain’s assistants Toniolo and Falini went to Sweden and found out that the corn steep liquor used in Sweden was the cause of the problems.Footnote ¹¹⁴ Chain also asked Italian industries to build agitators for Astra that he and his co-workers had designed at the Italian National Institute of Health.Footnote ¹¹⁵ The Soviets asked Chain to visit their industrial facilities, and, as the title of one of Chain’s letters suggests, the trip to the Soviet Union was just the first of a series of planned travels. As we have seen with the story of Astra, Chain’s trip was crucial in the process of the acquisition of knowledge, as the complex scientific and technological problems of large-scale penicillin production could often be solved only in situ. The Soviets were willing to allow Chain to know all the details of their research and production methods, but the consultancy activity was abruptly interrupted when Borodin fled to Britain. As a result, Chain did not go to the Soviet Union.Footnote ¹¹⁶ Borodin ascribed his decision to his fear of possible persecution, as he felt himself to be in discredit in Moscow.Footnote ¹¹⁷ Interestingly, Borodin did not write anything in the book concerning his work in the United Kingdom. These facts seem to indicate that, although the British government allowed the Oxford team to collaborate with the Soviets, it tried to limit the possible damage.

The different strategies that Britain and the US deployed in their relations with the Soviet Union concerning penicillin also caused indirect trouble. Both Howard Florey and Ernst Boris Chain tried to ease the acquisition of penicillin production technology and know-how by the Soviets, although the latter did so more actively. Florey told Wilkins that antibiotics were probably no longer useful as antibacterial agents.Footnote ¹¹⁸ Chain accepted an invitation from the Czech government, to go to Czechoslovakia in order to help the Czechs to set up the pilot plant donated to them by the UNRRA itself, as, due to the embargo on Podbielniak extractors, setting up the plant proved somewhat difficult.Footnote ¹¹⁹ In 1949, the State Department refused to issue Chain a visa to enter the USA. The refusal was officially motivated by his involvement in activity in Czechoslovakia. Chain was planning to spend two to three months in the US in order to study the submerged fermentation techniques developed by Pfizer that gave the Americans a strategic advantage.Footnote ¹²⁰ Chain vehemently protested at what he deemed an unfair action; after all, his consultancy activity in Eastern Europe had been conducted under the auspices of the United Nations. The visa application was rejected due to Washington’s worries that Chain could aid the circulation of knowledge concerning penicillin production. Chain could disclose what he would learn in the US either directly to the Soviets or to third parties who could in turn transmit it to the Soviets. In any case, Chain’s presence in the USA could only harm American industrial and strategic interests in penicillin.

It is worth noting that Chain always thought that the centre of his projects was Britain. When he worked in Italy, Beecham technicians were trained at the Italian National Institute of Health and Chain even offered the British government the opportunity to exploit knowledge that he had acquired in Rome.Footnote ¹²¹ In 1949, while still in Rome, Chain wrote to the minister of health, Aneurin Bevan, to set up a national biochemical and pharmaceutical centre in order to compete with the Americans.Footnote ¹²²

Although the Soviet reconstructions claimed that, as of the late 1940s, they were able to set up large-scale antibiotics production, according to some CIA reports antibiotics were in chronic shortage in the USSR in the 1950s, and therefore the Soviets performed trials with penicillin diluted in solvents. It was only by the end of the 1950s that antibiotics production could meet domestic demand.Footnote ¹²³ Although scientific collaboration between Britain and the Soviet Union was not kept secret, emphasis was placed on the tension between the two blocs. The official discourse on penicillin between 1944 and 1949 mirrored the increasing deterioration of Anglo-Soviet relations.

In their post-war reconstructions, the Soviets concealed the importance of collaboration with the British and presented their research on penicillin as a purely national venture.Footnote ¹²⁴ Zinaida Ermol′yeva became the heroine of Soviet penicillin. She was given the Order of Lenin for her work fighting cholera epidemics in Stalingrad during the eponymous battle, and the writer Veniamin Kaverin portrayed her as a heroine, a sort of Soviet Fleming, in the novel Otkrytaya kniga (The Open Book).Footnote ¹²⁵ After all, penicillin was presented as a symbol of national pride everywhere. Collaboration on penicillin production was concealed in some Western European countries too. Both in Franco’s dictatorial Spain and in democratic Italy the factories set up with Danish technology were presented as solely national ventures.Footnote ¹²⁶

Cold War scientists and science diplomacy

This essay has shown the intricate entanglement between the production of knowledge about penicillin and the dynamics of international relations. Industrialists, researchers, policymakers, officials from the Foreign Office and the US Department of State, and even characters – such as Nikolai Borodin, whose story could well inspire a John le Carré novel – were all actors in this complex history. The narrative presented here invites a reconsideration of the role of science and scientists in international affairs, offering material to think over science diplomacy and history. Chain and Florey did not merely serve as science diplomats, wielding science as a tool of soft power. Their agency was deeply embedded in the practices of negotiation that define international relations – practices which, as Simone Turchetti has emphasized, became a hallmark of science in the twentieth century.Footnote ¹²⁷ The negotiation involved their commitment to saving lives as medical researchers, their own perspectives on scientific collaboration with the Soviets, and their sense of loyalty to their country. The complexity of the Cold War dynamics and particularly the Soviet attempt to catch up on large-scale antibiotics production and the different views and strategies of the British and US governments were crucial to shaping the role Chain and Florey played in the post-war scenario. More than fifty years ago Arthur Schlesinger Jr warned the historian about how to write the history of the Second World War and the Cold War. Unpredictable chains of events conditioned the agency of leaders, who often had to rely on improvisation, and whose words depended on the moment and the audience.Footnote ¹²⁸ If this held true for leaders like Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin, it was even more compelling for those whose ability to influence events was markedly weaker. Researchers involved in penicillin research were conditioned and often surpassed by events. They ended up playing a certain role in Cold War dynamics. Both Chain and Florey had been agents of the circulation of knowledge between the two blocs, but their personalities, their different research profiles and Cold War circumstances made them two very different actors.