There were such cities in the USSR that no one knew about and whose residents, in conversations with "strangers", were forced to indicate their fictitious place of residence. The emergence of the first closed Soviet cities was associated with the development of the latest types of weapons. Many of them to this day have the status of ZATO (closed administrative-territorial entities).
The very first and most secret
Secret settlements with a special regime are not an invention of the Soviet state machine. The first territory of this type appeared in Great Britain back in 1915 due to the opening of a plant for the production of cordite (smokeless powder) on the border between England and Scotland. In early 1943, a closed settlement was organized in the United States in the town of Los Alamos in connection with the launch of the Manhattan Project (codename for the United States' nuclear weapons program).
In the USSR, the formation of the first closed city was also due to the beginning of the creation of the atomic bomb. The Soviet Union lagged behind the United States on this military issue. But thanks to the efforts of intelligence agencies in America and Great Britain, the Soviet leadership received the data necessary to eliminate the gap that had arisen.
On February 11, 1943, a resolution of the USSR State Defense Committee was adopted on the start of practical work on the creation of a nuclear bomb. Initially, the work under the leadership of IV Kurchatov was carried out in the secret Laboratory No. 2 of the Academy of Sciences (now the Institute of Atomic Energy named after IV Kurchatov).
After the American bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the USSR stepped up its activities in the atomic sphere. This required the construction of a special facility that would be located far from the capital or other large cities.
At the beginning of 1946, a place for such an object was found. On April 9, 1946, a resolution was adopted by the Council of Ministers of the USSR on the organization of a Design Bureau (KB) at Laboratory No. 2 of the USSR Academy of Sciences in the village of Sarov in the Gorky Region, not far from the Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery. At the beginning of 1947 KB-11 (later the city of Arzamas-16) received the status of a special regime enterprise. Here the first Soviet atomic bomb was created, tested in 1949.
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What other closed cities existed
Over time, the number of closed cities in the USSR grew. They arose around particularly important facilities, including research institutes and enterprises for the production of various types of weapons.
Large nuclear facilities were located, in addition to Arzamas-16, in Sverdlovsk-44, where they still produce highly enriched uranium, which is necessary for the production of nuclear weapons; in Chelyabinsk-65, specializing in the production of radioactive isotopes; in Snezhinsk, where the most powerful thermonuclear bomb "Kuzkina-mother" was born.
In the 1950s, the USSR, concerned about the production of biological weapons in the West, began to study the consequences of its use on the basis of the Scientific Research Institute of Sanitation of the USSR Ministry of Defense, established in 1954. Subsequently, the industrial production of Soviet biological weapons based on the variola virus was established here. Vaccines against the most dangerous diseases, including Ebola, were also developed here.
The most important military closed facilities of the USSR include the Gabala radar station on the territory of Azerbaijan, the task of which was to warn of a nuclear missile strike.
What was attractive about life in a closed city
In cities with a special regime, and life was special. They could not be found on the map, and they were named according to a certain principle: a special number was added to the name of one of the nearest settlements.
The access control of secret facilities was the strictest. For example, scientists who worked at KB-11 until the mid-1950s could only leave their city on business trips.
The degree to which cities were closed was not the same. In some of them, only employees of local enterprises and family members living with them were allowed. Today ZATOs can be visited by other relatives of employees as well, and sometimes they are also opened for other people.
Due to the special regime of the closed cities, their residents had to endure certain inconveniences. However, this was offset by wage increases and the creation of more favorable conditions than in ordinary Soviet cities. All the necessary infrastructure existed here, scarce products were available. In addition, the crime rate in such cities was lower.
Maria Tonkova