Krasnoiarsk-26: a closed city of the defence-industry complex

Abstract

A unique feature of the Soviet defence-industry complex was its ‘closed cities’. These were cities in the remote regions of the Volga, the Urals, and western Siberia, not marked on any map, entirely specialised in defence production and built for no other purpose (see Chapter 1). The closed cities had their origins in the evacuation of the defence industry from the regions threatened by German occupation to the remote interior in 1941 and 1942; huge production complexes evacuated from the west and south of the country were shifted bodily with a substantial proportion of their workforce to the east where new settlements sprang up around them. The secrecy attached to these new settlements was greatly reinforced after the war as they became the focus for the development and manufacture of atomic weapons.