SSR city. Ussr area

The USSR or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics collapsed in 1991. The collapse was influenced by a number of reasons and circumstances of a political nature, today there are many versions of the collapse of a powerful state in the past.

The mighty power that had held out on the world stage for more than two-thirds of a century fell, or, to use the language of Ancient Russia, fell into territorial fragmentation. The "Belovezhskaya agreement" of 1991 opened a new page, both in the history of the Russian Federation and in the annals of the rest of the former Soviet republics, of which there were 15 at the time of the collapse, and which began to function as independent states. You can get a complete list of countries united "under the auspices" of the Soviet Union from our article -.

During the existence of the union, each republic retained an autonomous position and had its own capital. Below is a brief overview of each of them, as well as a small informative description of the official main city.

1. RSFSR - Moscow - today is the capital of the Russian Federation. Included in the top ten world cities in terms of population
2. Azerbaijan SSR - Baku - the largest city in the Caucasus, the largest port of the Caspian Sea
3. Armenian SSR - Yerevan - the political, scientific and cultural center of Armenia.
4. Byelorussian SSR - Minsk - the city has the status of a hero city. The capital of Belarus today houses the headquarters of the CIS, an organization designed to regulate relations between the former Soviet republics.
5. Georgian SSR - Tbilisi - the city was founded in the 5th century AD. The strategic location of the capital between Europe and Asia has more than once made Tbilisi a bone of contention between different parts of the Caucasus.
6. Kazakh SSR - Alma-Ata - the largest city, known as the "Southern Capital"
7. The Kirghiz SSR - Frunze, the Kyrgyz name is Bishkek, the city is located at the foothills of the Tien Shan.
8. The Latvian SSR - Riga - the largest Baltic city today with a population of over 600 thousand inhabitants. The historical center of the capital is included in the UNESCO list.
9. Lithuanian SSR - Vilnius - for many centuries was the leading city of the Commonwealth.
10. The Moldavian SSR - Chisinau - has a special status - a municipality in the administrative division of Moldova.
11. Tajik SSR - Dushanbe - in 2009 the city was declared the capital of Islamic culture of Tajikistan.
12. Turkmen SSR - Ashgabat - today the city is a separate administrative unit of Turkmenistan with the status of a region.
13. The Uzbek SSR - Tashkent - today is one of the five most populated cities in the CIS, with a population of over 2 million people.
14. Ukrainian SSR - Kyiv - a hero city, known in history as the center of Kievan Rus, due to which today it is called the "Mother of Russian Cities".
15. Estonian SSR - Tallinn - today a major tourist destination in the Baltic states, during the entry of Estonia into the Russian Empire, the capital was called Revel.

Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, there were 24 million-plus cities in it. 4 of them had a population of over 2 million. 23 of them were millionaires already according to the 1989 census, and Volgograd with 999 thousand of the population crossed this threshold a little later, during the year.
I decided to see what happened to the population of Soviet million-plus cities and what their fate was after the collapse of the USSR.

Below is a table of results of my research. Unfortunately, for some post-Soviet cities outside the Russian Federation, the data differs, and in some - like Baku, Alma-Ata or Tbilisi, it also has a wide spread, so I tried to take either data from national statistical committees, or from Wiki with confirmation by a source. In some places I had to look in external sources. For clarity, the value of 2000-2002 is also taken. (for Russia - 2002, Ukraine - 2001, the rest are different), the times of the highest depopulation, which almost everywhere fell at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Green background - population growth, red - depopulation.
Red numbers - if the population of the city is below the Soviet value of 1989.
Red numbers on a green background - the population of the city has not recovered to the level of 1989, but the bottom point has been passed and there is an increase relative to the beginning of the 2000s.
The source of data for 1989 is the official census results, published in a pamphlet.

As you can see, the growth record holders are Moscow, Alma-Ata and Baku. All have more than 20% growth. Belarusian Minsk is close to them in terms of dynamics. Peter got over the pit at the beginning of the 2000s and then gradually began to recover.

The situation is worst in Ukrainian megacities, which gradually lost after the collapse of the USSR the industry integrated with the all-Union complex and are still degrading. Donetsk has lost the status of a millionaire, Dnepropetrovsk and Odessa are already on the verge. Kharkiv also shows consistently negative values. Kyiv is an exception; all the surviving economic forces from all over the country are drawn there, as in the capital.

In Russia, the worst situation is with Nizhny Novgorod, which is developing according to the Ukrainian model. I wonder why. The rest of the millionaires, after the peak of depopulation at the beginning of the 2000s, are now recovering. Even Perm, which was dropping out of the millionaires, joined them again. And many millionaires have exceeded the values ​​of 1989, but most of them are quite recent.

Stable depopulation in Yerevan. Tashkent is growing quite moderately, I thought more (apparently, it is tightly regulated by the authorities). With Baku, the situation is ambiguous - the actual population is shown in the table, but the so-called. "forced migrants" from areas abandoned in the early 1990s as a result of local wars. There are approximately 200-250 thousand of them. In Tbilisi during the Saakashvili era, a constant increase was recorded.

An interesting picture, of course.

USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or Soviet Union for short) - a former state that existed on the territory of Eastern Europe and Asia.
The USSR was a superpower-empire (in a figurative sense), a stronghold of socialism in the world.
The country existed from 1922 to 1991.
The Soviet Union occupied one sixth of the total surface area of ​​the Earth. It was the largest country in the world.
The capital of the USSR was the city of Moscow.
There were many large cities in the USSR: Moscow, Leningrad (modern St. Petersburg), Sverdlovsk (modern Yekaterinburg), Perm, Krasnoyarsk, Novosibirsk, Kazan, Ufa, Kuibyshev (modern Samara), Gorky (modern Nizhny Novgorod), Omsk, Tyumen, Chelyabinsk, Volgograd, Rostov-on-Don, Voronezh, Saratov, Kyiv, Dnepropetrovsk, Donetsk, Kharkov, Minsk, Tashkent, Tbilisi, Baku, Alma-Ata.
The population of the USSR before its collapse was about 250 million people.
The Soviet Union had land borders with Afghanistan, Hungary, Iran, China, North Korea, Mongolia, Norway, Poland, Romania, Turkey, Finland, Czechoslovakia.
The length of the land borders of the Soviet Union was 62,710 kilometers.
By sea, the USSR bordered on the United States, Sweden and Japan.
The dimensions of the former empire of socialism were impressive:
a) length - more than 10,000 km from the extreme geographical points (from the Curonian Spit in the Kaliningrad region to Ratmanov Island in the Bering Strait);
b) width - more than 7,200 km from the extreme geographical points (from Cape Chelyuskin, Taimyr Autonomous Okrug, Krasnoyarsk Territory to the city of Kushka, Mary Region, Turkmen SSR).
The shores of the USSR were washed by twelve seas: Kara, Barents, Baltic, Laptev, East Siberian, Bering, Okhotsk, Japanese, Black, Caspian, Azov, Aral.
There were many mountain ranges and systems in the USSR: the Carpathians, the Crimean Mountains, the Caucasus Mountains, the Pamir Range, the Tien Shan Range, the Sayan Range, the Sikhote-Alin Range, the Ural Mountains.
The Soviet Union had the largest and deepest lakes in the world: Lake Ladoga, Lake Onega, Lake Baikal (the deepest in the world).
On the territory of the Soviet Union there were as many as five climatic zones.
On the territory of the USSR there were areas where there was a polar day and a polar night for four months a year and only polar moss grew in summer, and areas where there was never snow all year round and where palm trees and citrus trees grew.
The Soviet Union had eleven time zones. The first zone differed from universal time by two hours, and the last by as much as thirteen hours.
The administrative-territorial division of the USSR competed in its complexity only with the modern administrative-territorial division of Great Britain. The administrative units of the first level were the union republics: Russia (Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic), Belarus (Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic), Ukraine (Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic), Kazakhstan (Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic), Moldova (Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic), Georgia (Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic), Armenia (Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic), Azerbaijan (Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic), Turkmenistan (Turkmenistan Soviet Socialist Republic), Tajikistan (Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic), Kyrgyzstan (Kyrgyz Soviet Socialist Republic), Uzbekistan (Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic), Lithuania (Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic), Latvia (Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic), Estonia (Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic ).
The republics were divided into administrative units of the second level - autonomous republics, autonomous districts, autonomous regions, territories and regions. In turn, autonomous republics, autonomous okrugs, autonomous regions, territories and regions were divided into administrative units of the third level - into districts, and those, in turn, were divided into administrative units of the fourth level - city, village and settlement councils. Some republics (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Armenia, Moldova) were immediately divided into second-level administrative units - into districts.
Russia (RSFSR) had the most complex administrative-territorial division. It included:
a) cities of union subordination - Moscow, Leningrad, Sevastopol;
b) autonomous Soviet socialist republics - the Bashkir ASSR, the Buryat ASSR, the Dagestan ASSR, the Kabardino-Balkarian ASSR, the Kalmyk ASSR, the Karelian ASSR, the Komi ASSR, the Mari ASSR, the Mordovian ASSR, the North Ossetian ASSR, the Tatar ASSR, the Tuva ASSR, the Udmurt ASSR, Chechen-Ingush ASSR, Chuvash ASSR, Yakut ASSR;
c) autonomous regions - Adygei Autonomous District, Gorno-Altai Autonomous District, Jewish Autonomous District, Karachay-Cherkess Autonomous District, Khakass Autonomous District;
d) regions - Amur, Arkhangelsk, Astrakhan, Belgorod, Bryansk, Vladimir, Volgograd, Vologda, Voronezh, Gorky, Ivanovo, Irkutsk, Kaliningrad, Kalinin, Kaluga, Kamchatka, Kemerovo, Kirov, Kostroma, Kuibyshev, Kurgan, Kursk, Leningrad, Lipetsk Magadan, Moscow, Murmansk, Novgorod, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Orenburg, Orel, Penza, Perm, Pskov, Rostov, Ryazan Saratov, Sakhalin, Sverdlovsk, Smolensk, Tambov, Tomsk, Tula, Tyumen, Ulyanovsk, Chelyabinsk, Chita, Yaroslavl:
e) Autonomous Okrugs: Aginsky Buryat Autonomous Okrug, Komi-Permyatskiy Autonomous Okrug, Koryak Autonomous Okrug, Nenets Autonomous Okrug, Taimyr (Dolgano-Nenets) Autonomous Okrug, Ust-Ordynskiy Buryat Autonomous Okrug, Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, Chukotskiy Autonomous Okrug, Evenki Autonomous Okrug, Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug.
f) territories - Altai, Krasnodar, Krasnoyarsk, Primorsky, Stavropol, Khabarovsk.
Ukraine (Ukrainian SSR) included only regions. It included: Vinnitsa. Volyn, Voroshilovgrad (modern Luhansk), Dnepropetrovsk, Donetsk, Zhytomyr, Transcarpathian, Zaporozhye, Ivano-Frankivsk, Kyiv, Kirovograd, Crimean (until 1954 was part of the RSFSR), Lvov, Nikolaev, Odessa, Poltava, Rivne, Sumy, Ternopil , Kharkiv, Kherson, Khmelnytsky, Cherkasy, Chernivtsi, Chernihiv regions.
Belarus (BSSR) consisted of regions. It included: Brest, Minsk, Gomel, Grodno, Mogilev, Vitebsk regions.
Kazakhstan (KazSSR) consisted of regions. It included: Aktobe, Alma-Ata, East Kazakhstan, Guryev, Dzhambul, Dzhezkazgan, Karaganda, Kzyl-Orda, Kokchetav, Kustanai, Mangyshlak, Pavlodar, North Kazakhstan, Semipalatinsk, Taldy-Kurgan, Turgay, Ural, Tselinograd , Chimkent region.
Turkmenistan (TurSSR) included five regions: Chardzhous, Ashgabat, Krasnovodsk, Mary, Tashauz;
Uzbekistan (UzSSR) included one autonomous republic (Karakalpak ASSR), the city of republican subordination Tashkent and regions: Tashkent, Ferghana, Andijan, Namangan, Syrdarya, Surkhandarya, Kashkadarya, Samarkand, Bukhara, Khorezm.
Georgia (GrSSR) consisted of the city of republican subordination of Tbilisi, two autonomous republics (Abkhaz ASSR and Adjara ASSR) and one autonomous region (South Ossetian Autonomous Region).
Kyrgyzstan (KyrSSR) consisted of only two regions (Osh and Naryn) and the city of republican subordination Frunze.
Tajikistan (Tad SSR) consisted of one autonomous region (Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Okrug), three regions (Kulyab, Kurgan-Tube, Leninabad) and the city of republican subordination - Dushanbe.
Azerbaijan (AzSSR) consisted of one autonomous republic (Nakhichevan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic), one autonomous region (Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region) and the city of republican subordination Baku.
Armenia (Armenian SSR) was divided only into regions and the city of republican subordination - Yerevan.
Moldova (MSSR) was divided only into regions and the city of republican subordination - Chisinau.
Lithuania (Lithuanian SSR) was divided only into regions and the city of republican subordination - Vilnius.
Latvia (LatSSR) was divided only into regions and the city of republican subordination - Riga.
Estonia (ESSR) was divided only into regions and the city of republican subordination - Tallinn.
The USSR has gone through a difficult historical path.
The history of the empire of socialism begins with the period when autocracy collapsed in tsarist Russia. It happened in February 1917, when the Provisional Government was formed in place of the defeated monarchy.
The interim government failed to restore order in the former empire, and the ongoing World War I and the failures of the Russian army only contributed to the further escalation of unrest.
Taking advantage of the weakness of the Provisional Government, the Bolshevik Party, led by V.I. Lenin, organized an armed uprising in Petrograd at the end of October 1917, which led to the liquidation of the power of the Provisional Government and the establishment of Soviet power in Petrograd.
The October Revolution led to an escalation of violence in a number of regions of the former Russian Empire. A bloody Civil War began. The fire of the war covered the whole of Ukraine, the western regions of Belarus, the Urals, Siberia, the Far East, the Caucasus and Turkestan. For about four years, Bolshevik Russia waged a bloody war against the supporters of the restoration of the old regime. Part of the territories of the former Russian Empire were lost, and some countries (Poland, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia) declared their sovereignty and unwillingness to accept the new Soviet power.
Lenin pursued the single goal of creating the USSR - the creation of a powerful state capable of resisting any manifestation of counter-revolution. And such a power was created on December 29, 1922 - Lenin's Decree on the formation of the USSR was signed.
Immediately after the formation of the new state, it initially included only four republics: Russia (RSFSR), Ukraine (Ukrainian SSR), Belarus (BSSR) and Transcaucasia (Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic (ZSFSR)).
All organs of state power in the USSR came under the strict control of the Communist Party. Any decision on the spot was not made without the approval of the party leadership.
The Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks was the highest authority in the USSR during Lenin's time.
After the death of Lenin, a struggle for power in the country flared up in the highest echelons of power. With equal success, I.V. Stalin, L.D. Trotsky,
G.I. Zinoviev, L.B. Kamenev, A.I. Rykov. The most cunning of all was the future dictator-tyrant of the totalitarian USSR - I. V. Stalin. Initially, in order to destroy some of his competitors in the struggle for power, Stalin teamed up with Zinoviev and Kamenev in the so-called "troika".
At the XIII Congress, the question was decided who would become the leaders of the Bolshevik Party and the country after the death of Lenin. Zinoviev and Kamenev managed to rally around themselves the majority of the Communists and most of them voted for I.V. Stalin. So the country has a new leader.
Having headed the USSR, Stalin first of all began to strengthen his power and get rid of his recent supporters. This practice was soon adopted by the entire Stalinist environment. Now, after the elimination of Trotsky, Stalin took Bukharin and Rykov as his allies in order to jointly oppose Zinoviev and Kamenev.
This struggle of the new dictator continued until 1929. This year, all of Stalin's strong competitors were exterminated; there were no more competitors to him in the struggle for power in the country.
In parallel with the inner-party struggle, until 1929, Lenin's NEP (New Economic Policy) was carried out in the country. During these years, private entrepreneurship was not yet completely banned in the country.
In 1924, a new Soviet ruble was put into circulation in the USSR.
In 1925, at the XIV Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, a course was set for the collectivization and industrialization of the entire country. The first five-year plan is being developed. The dispossession of lands began, millions of kulaks (wealthy landowners) were exiled to Siberia and the Far East, or driven from good fertile lands and received in return junk lands that were not suitable for agriculture.
Forced collectivization and dispossession caused an unprecedented famine in 1932-1933. Ukraine, the Volga region, Kuban, and other regions of the country were starving. Cases of theft in the fields have become more frequent. The notorious law was adopted (popularly called the “Law of Three Spikelets”), according to which those caught even with a handful of grain were assigned long prison terms and a long exile to the regions of the Far North, Siberia and the Far East.
1937 was marked by a year of mass repressions. The repressions primarily affected the leadership of the Red Army, which seriously weakened the country's defense in the future and allowed the army of fascist Germany to reach almost unhindered almost to Moscow itself.
The mistakes of Stalin and his leadership cost the country dearly. However, there were also positive moments. As a result of industrialization, the country has taken the second place in the world in terms of industrial production.
In August 1939, just before the start of World War II, Nazi Germany and the USSR signed a non-aggression pact and the division of Eastern Europe (the so-called Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact).
After the Second World War began, the USSR and Germany divided the territory of Poland between them. The USSR included Western Ukraine, Western Belarus, and later Bessarabia (became part of the Moldavian SSR). A year later, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were included in the USSR, which were also turned into union republics.
On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany, violating the non-aggression pact, began to bomb Soviet cities from the air. Hitler's Wehrmacht crossed the border. The Great Patriotic War began. The main production facilities were evacuated to the Far East, Siberia and the Urals, and the population was being evacuated. At the same time, the full mobilization of the male population into the active army was carried out.
At the initial stage of the war, the strategic mistakes made by the Stalinist leadership in previous years affected. There were few new weapons in the army, and what
there was, inferior in its characteristics to the German one. The Red Army retreated, many people were taken prisoner. The headquarters threw more and more new units into battle, but this did not have much success - the Germans stubbornly advanced towards Moscow. In some sections of the front, the distance to the Kremlin was no more than 20 kilometers, and on Red Square, according to eyewitnesses of those times, artillery cannonade and the rumble of tanks and aircraft were already heard. German generals could observe the center of Moscow through their binoculars.
Only in December 1941, the Red Army went on the offensive and pushed the Germans back 200-300 kilometers to the west. However, by the spring, the Nazi command managed to recover from the defeat and changed the direction of the main attack. Now Hitler's main goal was Stalingrad, which opened up a further advance to the Caucasus, to the oil fields in the region of Baku and Grozny.
In the summer of 1942, the Germans came close to Stalingrad. And by the end of autumn, fighting was already going on in the city itself. However, the German Wehrmacht failed to advance further than Stalingrad. In the middle of winter, a powerful offensive of the Red Army began, a 100,000-strong group of Germans under the command of Field Marshal Paulus was captured, and Paulus himself was captured. The German offensive failed, moreover, it ended in complete defeat.
Hitler planned to take the last revenge in the summer of 1943 in the Kursk region. The famous tank battle took place near Prokhorovka, in which a thousand tanks from each side took part. The Battle of Kursk was lost again and from that moment the Red Army began a rapid advance to the west, freeing more and more new territories.
In 1944, all of Ukraine, the Baltic states and Belarus were liberated. The Red Army reached the state border of the USSR and rushed to Europe, to Berlin.
In 1945, the Red Army liberated most of the countries of Eastern Europe from the Nazis and in May 1945 entered Berlin. The war ended with the complete victory of the USSR and its allies.
In 1945 Transcarpathia became part of the USSR. A new Transcarpathian region was formed.
After the war, the country was again gripped by famine. Factories and plants did not work, schools and hospitals were destroyed. The first five post-war years were very difficult for the country, and only in the early fifties did the situation in the country of the Soviets begin to improve.
In 1949, the atomic bomb was invented in the USSR as a symmetrical response to the US nuclear domination attempt in the world. Relations with the United States worsen, the Cold War begins.
In March 1953, I.V. Stalin dies. The era of Stalinism in the country ends. The so-called "Khrushchev thaw" is coming. At the next party congress, Khrushchev sharply criticized the former Stalinist regime. Tens of thousands of political prisoners are released from numerous camps. The mass rehabilitation of the repressed begins.
In 1957, the world's first artificial Earth satellite was launched in the USSR.
In 1961, the world's first manned spacecraft was launched in the USSR with the first cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin.
During the time of Khrushchev, in opposition to the NATO bloc created by Western countries, the Warsaw Pact Organization was created - a military alliance of Eastern European countries that embarked on a socialist path of development.
After Brezhnev came to power in the USSR, the first signs of stagnation began to appear. The growth of industrial production slowed down. The first signs of party corruption began to appear in the country. The Brezhnev leadership, and even Brezhnev himself, did not realize that the country was facing the need for fundamental changes both in politics, and in ideology, and in the economy.
With the coming to power of Mikhail Gorbachev, the so-called "perestroika" began. A course was taken for the wholesale eradication of domestic drunkenness, for the development of private
entrepreneurship. However, all the measures taken did not give positive results - in the late eighties it became clear that the huge empire of socialism had cracked and was beginning to fall apart, and the final collapse was only a matter of time. In the union republics, especially in the Baltic states and Ukraine, a massive increase in nationalist sentiments began, associated with declarations of independence and secession from the USSR.
The first impetus for the collapse of the USSR was the bloody events in Lithuania. This republic was the first of all the Union republics to declare its withdrawal from the USSR. Then Lithuania was supported by Latvia and Estonia, which also declared their sovereignty. Events in these two Baltic republics developed in a more peaceful way.
Then Transcaucasia began to seethe. Another hot spot has emerged - Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenia announced the annexation of Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan started a blockade in response. A war began that lasted for five years, now the conflict is frozen, but tensions between the two countries remain.
Around the same time, Georgia separated from the USSR. A new conflict begins on the territory of this country - with Abkhazia, which wished to secede from Georgia and become a sovereign country.
In August 1991, a putsch begins in Moscow. The so-called State Committee for the State of Emergency (GKChP) was created. It was the last attempt to save the dying USSR. The coup failed, Gorbachev was actually removed from power by Yeltsin. Immediately after the failure of the coup, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, the republics of Central Asia and Moldova declare their independence and are proclaimed sovereign states. Belarus and Russia are the latest to declare their sovereignty.
In December 1991, a meeting of the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, held in Belovezhskaya Pushcha in Belarus, stated that the USSR as a state no longer exists and annulled Lenin's decree on the formation of the USSR. An agreement was signed to establish the Commonwealth of Independent States.
So the empire of socialism ceased to exist, not having lived only one year before its 70th anniversary.

These cities were not on the maps. Their residents signed non-disclosure agreements. Before you - the most secret cities of the USSR.

Under the heading "secret"

Soviet ZATOs received their status in connection with the placement there of objects of state importance related to the energy, military or space spheres. It was practically impossible for an ordinary citizen to get there, and not only because of the strictest access control, but also because of the secrecy of the location of the settlement. Residents of closed cities were ordered to keep their place of residence in strict secrecy, and even more so not to disclose information about secret objects.

Such cities were not on the map, they did not have a unique name and most often bore the name of the regional center with the addition of a number, for example, Krasnoyarsk-26 or Penza-19. Unusual in ZATO was the numbering of houses and schools. It began with a large number, continuing the numbering of the settlement to which the inhabitants of the secret city were "assigned".

The population of some ZATOs, due to the proximity of dangerous objects, was included in the risk group. There have also been disasters. Thus, a large leak of radioactive waste that occurred in 1957 in Chelyabinsk-65 endangered the lives of at least 270 thousand people.

However, living in a closed city had its advantages. As a rule, the level of amenities there was noticeably higher than in many cities of the country: this applies to the service sector, social conditions, and everyday life. Such cities were very well supplied, they could get scarce goods, and the crime rate there was practically reduced to zero. For the costs of "secrecy" in addition to the basic salary of the residents of ZATOs, an allowance was charged.

Zagorsk-6 and Zagorsk-7

Sergiev Posad, which until 1991 was called Zagorsk, is known not only for its unique monasteries and temples, but also for closed towns. The Virological Center of the Research Institute of Microbiology was located in Zagorsk-6, and the Central Institute of Physics and Technology of the USSR Ministry of Defense was located in Zagorsk-7.

Behind the official names, the essence is a little lost: in the first, in Soviet times, they were engaged in the development of bacteriological, and in the second, radioactive weapons.
Once in 1959, a group of guests from India brought smallpox to the USSR, and our scientists decided to use this fact for the good of their homeland. In a short time, a bacteriological weapon based on the variola virus was created, and its strain called "India-1" was placed in Zagorsk-6.

Later, endangering themselves and the population, research institute scientists developed deadly weapons based on South American and African viruses. By the way, it was here that tests were carried out with the Ebola hemorrhagic fever virus.

It was difficult to get a job in Zagorsk-6, at least in a “civilian” specialty - an impeccable purity of the biography of the applicant and his relatives was required almost up to the 7th knee. This is not surprising, since there have been many attempts to get at our bacteriological weapons.

The military stores of Zagorsk-7, which were easier to get to, always had a good selection of goods. Residents from neighboring villages noted the striking contrast with the half-empty shelves of local shops. Sometimes they made lists in order to centrally purchase products. But if officially it was not possible to get into the town, then they climbed over the fence.

The status of a closed city was removed from Zagorsk-7 on January 1, 2001, and Zagorsk-6 is closed to this day.

Arzamas-16

After the use of atomic weapons by the Americans, the question arose of the first Soviet atomic bomb. They decided to build a secret facility for its development called KB-11 on the site of the village of Sarov, which later turned into Arzamas-16 (other names are Kremlin, Arzamas-75, Gorky-130).

The secret city, built on the border of the Gorky region and the Mordovian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, was promptly placed on a heightened security regime and surrounded by two rows of barbed wire along the entire perimeter and a control strip laid between them. Until the mid-1950s, everyone lived here in an atmosphere of extreme secrecy. Employees of KB-11, including family members, could not leave the restricted area even during the holidays. An exception was made only for business trips.

Later, when the city grew, residents had the opportunity to travel to the regional center on a specialized bus, and also to host relatives after they received a special pass.
Residents of Arzamas-16, unlike many fellow citizens, learned what real socialism is.

The average salary, which was always paid on time, was about 200 rubles there. The shelves of shops in the closed city were bursting with abundance: a dozen varieties of sausages and cheeses, red and black caviar, and other delicacies. Residents of neighboring Gorky never dreamed of such a thing.

Now the Sarov nuclear center, the former Arzamas-16, is still a closed city.

Sverdlovsk-45

Another "born by order" city was built around plant No. 814, which was engaged in uranium enrichment. At the foot of Mount Shaitan, north of Sverdlovsk, prisoners of the Gulag and, according to some reports, Moscow students, have been working tirelessly for several years.
Sverdlovsk-45 was immediately conceived as a city, and therefore was built very compactly. It was distinguished by orderliness and characteristic "squareness" of buildings: it was impossible to get lost there. “Little Peter,” one of the guests of the city once expressed himself, although to others his spiritual provinciality reminded patriarchal Moscow.

By Soviet standards, they lived very well in Svedlovsk-45, although it was inferior in terms of supply to the same Arzamas-16. There was never a crowd and a stream of cars, and the air was always clean. The inhabitants of the closed city constantly had conflicts with the population of the neighboring Lower Tura, who envied their well-being. It used to be that they would watch for the townspeople leaving through the watch and beat them, solely out of envy.

It is interesting that if one of the residents of Sverdlovsk-45 committed a crime, then there was no way back to the city for him, despite the fact that his family remained in it.

The secret objects of the city often attracted the attention of foreign intelligence. So, in 1960, an American U-2 spy plane was shot down near him, and its pilot was captured.

Svedlovsk-45, now Lesnoy, is now closed to casual visitors.

Peaceful

Mirny, at first a military town in the Arkhangelsk region, was transformed into a closed city in 1966 due to the nearby Plesetsk test cosmodrome. But the level of secrecy in Mirny turned out to be lower than in many other Soviet ZATOs: the city was not surrounded by barbed wire, and documents were checked only on access roads.

Due to relative accessibility, there were many cases when a lost mushroom picker or an illegal immigrant who entered the city for scarce goods suddenly appeared near secret objects. If no malicious intent was noticed in the actions of such people, they were quickly released.

Many residents of Mirny call the Soviet period nothing more than a fairy tale. “A sea of ​​toys, beautiful clothes and shoes,” one of the residents of the city recalls her visits to the Children's World. During the Soviet era, Mirny gained the reputation of the “city of carriages”. The fact is that every summer graduates of military academies came there, and in order to cling to a prosperous place, they quickly got married and had children.

Mirny retains its status as a closed city even now.