Reut Grigory A.,
Doctor of Historical Sciences, Krasnoyarsk State Agrarian University, Krasnoyarsk, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Zheleznogorsk (Krasnoyarsk-26) – Secret Urbanization in a Closed City
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2019-4-13
The article discusses the town-planning aspects of the development of closed administrative-territorial formations of the Ministry of Medium Machine Building of the USSR in the context of urbanization processes in Western and Eastern Siberia. The peculiarity of the Soviet cities-newly built in Siberia was their pronounced dependence on the city-forming enterprises. The very phrase “city-forming enterprise” indicated the priority of the production facility in relation to the locality. The departmental cities were almost completely dependent on departmental arbitrariness. The financing of the sphere of social and cultural life through the departments led to the counterproductive use of capital investments, material and labor resources. The quality of architectural and town-planning construction was often low, the buildings were placed chaotically, without taking into account the prospects for further development of the city. The town-planning policy for closed cities was based on the principle of secrecy, which was supposed to prevent the leakage of any information about the real potential of the Soviet nuclear complex. The social and domestic infrastructure in closed cities was viewed by the leadership of the USSR Minsredmash as an element of the system for ensuring the uninterrupted and safe operation of enterprises producing nuclear weapons. This approach predetermined a high level of development of the socio-economic infrastructure. The set of measures to ensure the smooth functioning of the socio-cultural and material infrastructure, contributed to the successful implementation of production tasks in the harsh conditions of the Soviet deficit economy.An example of the development of Zheleznogorsk suggests that the closed cities became a kind of exception from the Soviet town-planning practice, in which the departmental nature of the main city-forming enterprise manifested itself more likely with a plus sign. In fact, the creation of comfortable conditions for the population of a closed city has become a necessary production function. This, in many ways, predetermined the difference between the city of Zheleznogorsk and most other new cities in Siberia.
Publishing: 30/08/2019
How to cite: Reut G.A. Zheleznogorsk (Krasnoyarsk-26) – Secret Urbanization in a Closed City // Historical Courier, 2019, # 4 (6). Article 13. [Available online:] http://istkurier.ru/data/2019/ISTKURIER-2019-4-13.pdf
Links: Issue 4 2019
Keywords: Closed city; Zheleznogorsk; Krasnoyarsk-26; Minsredmash; urbanization; urban planning; secrecy; socialist cities