Lake Seliger
In July 1931, OGPU seized control of the Convent of the Intercession in Suzdal and then, 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 Gorodolyma Island on Lake Seliger.