Yakov Moiseevich Fishman

Yakov Moiseevich Fishman, was a Russian revolutionary and politician, previously a leader of the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party who participated in the assassination of the German ambassador Wilhelm von Mirbach in 1918 and later, the anti-Bolshevik Left SR uprising. During the Russian Civil War, he joined the Russian Communist Party and played a key role in establishing the chemical and biological weapons program|biological] warfare capabilities of the Soviet Union, becoming a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. He also went to Italy and Germany as a Soviet intelligence officer and oversaw the Tomka gas test site in cooperation with Weimar Germany.
In August 1925, he was appointed the first head of the Red Army's Military-Chemical Directorate. In 1926, at a small laboratory controlled by VOKhIMU, Fishman initiated research on Bacillus anthracis. In February 1928, Fishman prepared a key report for Kliment Efremovich Voroshilov on the Soviet Union's preparedness for biological warfare. It asserted that "the bacterial option could be successfully used in war" and proposed a plan for the organisation of Soviet military bacteriology.
He became a Doctor of Chemical Sciences and a Major General of the Technical Troops.