Discover more about closed cities, the hidden spaces of the Soviet state that existed for much of the second half of the 20th century
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Closed cities sound fictional: places hidden from maps, closed behind checkpoints and inaccessible without permission. Yet for much of the second half of the 20th century, they formed a surprisingly ordinary part of life in the Soviet Union. Entire urban settlements existed with restricted entry, built around weapons production, scientific research or military facilities that the state considered too important – or too secret – to expose to wider society.
Most developed during the Cold War, when Soviet authorities expanded strategic industries linked to defence and nuclear technology. These places were designed to isolate sensitive work from outside attention. Some later became known as ZATOs – closed administrative-territorial formations – but long before that official label existed, many already operated in practical isolation.
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What made them unusual wasn’t simply their security, it was how thoroughly their secrecy shaped geography. Some settlements disappeared entirely from public maps. Others were identified using postal names borrowed from nearby cities. Arzamas-16, one of the Soviet Union’s most important nuclear weapons research centres, wasn’t actually in Arzamas at all. The name functioned largely as a disguise. Today, it’s known as Sarov, though access still remains restricted.
Closed cities generally fell into two broad categories. Some centred on military infrastructure: submarine bases, missile facilities, weapons testing sites. Others focused on scientific-industrial development – often nuclear research.
Perhaps one of the strangest examples sits deep in northern Siberia. Norilsk developed around nickel mining and metallurgy, and grew out of the Soviet Gulag system, where prisoners provided labour during its early expansion. Even by Russian standards, it’s unusually isolated. No roads connect it to the wider national road network. Supplies arrive mainly by river or air. Temperatures can drop below –30°C in winter, and residents experience weeks of polar night when the sun never rises above the horizon. Today, foreign visitors still require special permission to enter.
Isolation didn’t necessarily mean deprivation. Some closed cities offered living standards that compared favourably with ordinary Soviet settlements. Ozersk was established after the Second World War in the Ural Mountains region around the Mayak Complex – a plutonium-production facility central to the Soviet nuclear programme. It existed for years under the coded names Chelyabinsk-40 and later Chelyabinsk-65, and residents faced restrictions on movement; visitors required authorisation to enter and some families couldn’t openly tell relatives where they lived because, officially, the city didn’t exist.
However, the isolation could also bring advantages. Compared with the average Soviet settlement, Ozersk avoided the worst food shortages, and its housing and public services were better. In 1957, the Mayak facility became the site of one of the world’s worst nuclear accidents, exposing surrounding areas to severe radioactive contamination. Restrictions and privileges existed alongside environmental risk, which made places such as Ozersk among the Soviet Union’s strangest urban spaces.
It’s tempting to think of closed cities as Cold War leftovers – odd historical artefacts belonging to a long gone political era – but they reveal something broader about how states shape space. Cities don’t always emerge naturally. Sometimes they are deliberately engineered around security, secrecy and strategic power, and the landscapes they produce can remain long after the political circumstances that created them have changed.
