When it comes to the closed cities of the Soviet Union, the majority of fellow citizens immediately imagine a fenced-in ten fences with barbed wire, a settlement inside which there are laboratories for the creation of some kind of "Novichok" in orderly rows. In fact, this idea of closed cities is quite far from how things really were.
The city under the hood
In fact, the concept of a “closed city” is philistine. Correctly, such settlements are called ZATO or “Closed administrative-territorial formation”. Thus ZATO is not always a city. It can be a specially built complex or just a small village. Getting a job in ZATO in Soviet times was most often not easy - the best were selected there, with an almost impeccable reputation. This is because absolutely any ZATO is an object of national importance.
Soviet citizens who worked and served in closed territorial entities were infringed on their rights for the duration of their professional activities. In return for this, they got the opportunity to earn good money by Soviet standards and were treated kindly by the state machine in every possible way in terms of security and social guarantees. In any case, if they were directly employees of secret objects. About what these secret objects were and where they were, we will discuss further.
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Locked without a lock
Not all "closed" cities in the USSR belonged to ZATOs. In general, these were ordinary Soviet cities with the only caveat that foreigners were not allowed into them. Most often, the list of "secret" cities without ZATO status included large industrial, warehouse or military centers. So, for example, foreigners would hardly have been able to visit Ufa in Soviet times - space production, Saratov - aviation production, Omsk - rocket science, Krasnoyarsk - many military-industrial complex enterprises, Arzamas - development avionics. The list goes on. There were at least 39 cities closed to foreigners in the USSR.
What's behind the fence?
As for full-fledged ZATOs, there were dozens of them throughout the USSR. No need to think that each of them contained top-secret laboratories for growing Ivan Drago, creating Novichok, or developing a laser gun to destroy the moon. Very often, there were military bases, military depots, training grounds, important communications centers, radar stations, fleet bases, and strategic production facilities in ZATOs. Here are just a few examples of former closed cities across the republics of the former USSR…
Russia - 5 ZATOs of Rosatom, 44 ZATOs of the Ministry of Defense: the city of Lermontov - uranium mining, the village of Zavoyko - a submarine base, the village of Yasnaya - a base of strategic missiles, the city of Shikhany - development chemical weapons, the village of Koltsovo - a center of virology, the village of Gudym - an underground nuclear weapons warehouse, the village of Chernetskoye - a radar base and many other.
Belarus - 5 ZATOs of the Ministry of Defense: the city of Vileyka is the communications center of the Navy, the village of Gantsevichi is the radar base, the city of Postavy is the headquarters of the missile division.
Ukraine - at least 16 ZATOs of Rosatom and the Ministry of Defense: the city of Sevastopol - the base of the Navy, Kirovograd-25 - the military unit of nuclear technical support, Uzin - the base of strategic aviation, Zhovtiye Vody - uranium mining, Kalinovka - the base of the over-the-horizon radar.
Kazakhstan - at least 15 ZATOs: Baikonur - needs no introduction, the village of Gulshat - a radar base, Alma-Ata - the production of biological weapons, Kurchatov - a nuclear research center, Emba-5 - training ground for missile troops, Gvardeisky urban-type settlement - agricultural institute that worked in the field of biological weapons.
Azerbaijan: Gabala-2 - radar base.
Kyrgyzstan: Karakol is a testing base for torpedo weapons, Kara-Balta is a communications center for the Navy.
Latvia - about 15 ZATOs of the Ministry of Defense: Sigulda is a government communications bunker, Undva is an air defense base, Tsekule is a large warehouse, Liepaja is a naval base, Jelgava is a fighter-interceptor base.
Uzbekistan: Karshi-Khanabad - military airfield, Kantubek (Aralsk-7) - biological weapons laboratory.
And many more…
If you want to know even more interesting things, then you should read about 7 citiesthat were flooded during the construction of reservoirs in the USSR.
Source: https://novate.ru/blogs/170322/62441/