Closed City

Definition and Origins

A closed city is the general name for a settlement where travel or residency is restricted. In the Soviet Union such cities were built from the late 1940s to seal nuclear and military facilities off from the outside world. The first Soviet closed cities were created during work on the atomic project in 1946-1953. Stalin oversaw the project, Beria directed it as head of the Special Committee, and P. Ya. Meshik handled the organization of the territories on site. Sarov became a closed city in 1946 and kept that status in the Russian Federation after 1991.

In Russian law the ZATO is an administrative-territorial formation encompassing military and other objects that require a special regime of safe functioning and protection of state secrets, including the development, production, storage and disposal of weapons of mass destruction and the processing of radioactive materials. The whole territory forms a municipal formation with the status of an urban district, and the Russian President decides on its creation, reorganization or abolition.

Secrecy and Control

Soviet closed cities were strictly secret. Soviet citizens without access rights were not told of their existence or location. Entry was allowed only to employees of local enterprises or their relatives with permanent registration, while outsiders needed a travel order or one-time or temporary pass. All adult residents signed a non-disclosure agreement about their true place of residence and could face liability up to criminal for disclosure. The cities were surrounded by barbed wire and guards, and no one could come or go without authorization. Russian ZATOs are likewise fenced with barbed wire and guarded where geography allows; visiting requires a special permit stating the reason. The permit procedure is discretionary rather than notification-based, and an ordinary resident can request a permit for close relatives only with proof of kinship.

The cities were largely built by slave labor from Gulag prison camps. Gulag then accounted for 23% of the non-agricultural labor force of the Soviet Union.

Conditions and Privilege

Residents of closed cities were privileged relative to other Soviet citizens. They enjoyed better housing, food, goods and health care, and the lack of freedom was compensated by such conditions. Soviet closed cities had better supply, openly sold goods that were deficit elsewhere, and better urban amenities and social services. A 20% wage supplement was paid to workers in all branches of the urban economy regardless of access to secret information, and crime was significantly lower because of the movement barrier.

Locations were chosen for geography: often remote places deep in the Urals and Siberia, out of reach of enemy bombers, near rivers and lakes supplying water for heavy industry and nuclear technology. Existing civilian settlements nearby were used as sources of construction labor. Though closure began as a temporary measure, it became a lasting institutional feature of the Soviet system.

After the USSR

After the dissolution of the USSR the ZATO list was declassified and approved by a special Russian law adopted in 1992 and amended several times. The cities received or restored proper names instead of numeric designations and many were opened to visitors. The current list was approved by Russian government decree No. 508 of 5 July 2001; 42 ZATOs were included initially, 4 were added and 8 removed, leaving 38 in the current list since April 2019. At the 2010 census they had 1,252,207 residents, excluding Salsk-7 and Balashov-13. Under federal law all such entities have the status of urban districts. In 2001 the Russian government acknowledged the existence of 42 closed cities.

After 1991 ZATO living standards declined sharply amid slashed budgets and laxer security, and concerns arose in the West that unemployed former atomic scientists from the closed cities might sell their expertise to other countries. This led to the 1991 Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program and the International Science and Technology Center in Moscow, plus sister-city collaboration between Arzamas-16 and Los Alamos. Many Soviet ZATOs remain closed: Russian citizens must obtain special permission to visit and foreigners are strictly forbidden.

Examples

Among the biggest Soviet ZATOs were Arzamas-16 (established 1946, now Sarov), Sverdlovsk-44 (established 1946, now Novouralsk), Chelyabinsk-65 (established 1947, now Ozyorsk), and Sverdlovsk-45 (now Lesnoy). Their names came from nearby cities with the number signifying a post office box number. Most now have real names, but some remain closed today.

Sarov was established on 13 April 1946 with Design Bureau No. 11 (KB-11), on the site of a former monastery in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast 60 km from Arzamas. Originally named Arzamas-60, it was soon changed to Arzamas-16 because authorities feared '60' could reveal its location. Khariton became Chief Designer and General Zernov the official director. By 1948 the city was completely cut off from the outside world, residents' identities were erased from the official census, and reports had to be handwritten with code words like 'zero points' for neutron.

Chelyabinsk-65 (now Ozyorsk), home to a plutonium production plant, was built essentially from nothing near a collective farm in the southern Urals. Gulag prisoners first built the construction site, then a road, then living quarters, and early years were very difficult with poor infrastructure, high alcoholism and poor living conditions. The Mayak plant dumped nuclear waste into the nearby Techa River, causing a health crisis for the city and riverside villages. Conditions improved only after Stalin's death in 1953 under Khrushchev, and residents later owned two to twenty times as many cars and appliances as the average Soviet citizen. In 1989 and 1999 the government polled Chelyabinsk-65 residents on whether to open the city and they voted to keep it closed, while half of the nuclear scientists said they would refuse to stay if it were opened. Residents also had a higher life expectancy than the national average despite radiation danger from the plutonium plant.

Access regimes varied greatly in practice. Raduzhny in Vladimir Oblast has had de facto free entry for Russian citizens since the late 1990s, and the former ZATO Bolshoy Kamen never had a fence and removed its checkpoint in 2012. Sarov (former Arzamas-16), site of VNIIEF, the main developer of Soviet and Russian nuclear weapons, remains strictly closed with multi-row barbed wire, a control strip, modern surveillance and Rosgvardiya.

The current Russian ZATOs are specialized. Ten serve Rosatom nuclear objects: Sarov (Arzamas-16) for nuclear warhead development, Ozyorsk (Chelyabinsk-65) for Mayak spent-fuel and radioactive-waste processing and plutonium production, Novouralsk (Sverdlovsk-44) and Lesnoy (Sverdlovsk-45) for uranium enrichment, and Seversk (Tomsk-7) and Zheleznogorsk (Krasnoyarsk-26) for plutonium. Three serve Roscosmos, including the Zvyozdny gorodok cosmonaut training center and Tsiolkovsky (Vostochny cosmodrome). Most of the others serve Ministry of Defense objects including Strategic Rocket Forces and Navy bases: Mirny (Plesetsk Cosmodrome), Znamensk (formerly Kapustin Yar-1, the Kapustin Yar test range), Vlasikha (Strategic Rocket Forces Main Staff), and naval base ZATOs in Murmansk Oblast serving the Northern Fleet.

The phenomenon is not limited to Russia. Estonia had two closed cities, Sillamäe (closed until independence in 1991) and Paldiski (a Soviet Navy nuclear submarine training center, closed until 1994). Kazakhstan's Baikonur became a closed city in the Kazakh SSR after 1955 and remains leased to Russia until 2050, with access requiring a permit from Roscosmos.

Distinctions

Surrounded by security perimeters with barbed wire and towers, and with their existence often classified, closed cities are distinguished from gated communities. In Soviet times there were two distinct categories: small communities with sensitive military, industrial or scientific facilities, closed to everyone; and border cities or areas closed for security, freely accessible to Soviet citizens but closed to foreigners. Examples of the first category are Ozyorsk (Chelyabinsk-65) with a plutonium production plant and Sillamäe, site of a uranium enrichment facility; even Soviet citizens were barred without proper authorization. The second included Perm, which produced artillery, munitions and aircraft engines, and Vladivostok, headquarters and primary base of the Soviet Pacific Fleet.

Russian law distinguishes ZATOs from closed military towns (закрытые военные городки), which are garrison settlements of military units with pass systems located in populated places or separately outside them; ZATOs are instead administrative-territorial units with local self-government. Russian law also distinguishes territories that are not ZATOs but require special permits for foreigners to visit, the largest locality being Norilsk. On 30 October 2001 foreign travel was restricted without exception in the northern cities of Norilsk, Talnakh, Kayerkan, Dudinka and Igarka; Russian and Belarusian citizens visiting these cities are not required to have permits, but local courts have been known to deport Belarusian citizens. The number of closed cities has been significantly reduced since the mid-1990s.

Counts differ. Russian sources give 38 ZATOs, while English-language sources state there are 44 publicly acknowledged closed cities in Russia with a total population of approximately 1.5 million, 75% administered by the Russian Ministry of Defense and the rest by Rosatom, with about 15 additional undisclosed closed cities believed to exist.