Urban mode

Rosatom and the Public Chamber discuss the development strategy for CATUs

The closed cities that remain on the map of Russia are entering a period of anniversaries. Founded for the most part in the first post-war decade, these settlements surrounded by barbed wire, in which secret military units and flagships of the domestic defense industry are located, are celebrating round anniversaries one after another. On June 10, Snezhinsk, a closed administrative-territorial entity (ZATO) with a population of 50,000, celebrated its half-century anniversary, 120 kilometers from Chelyabinsk. For most of its history, the city was called differently - Chelyabinsk-70. Despite the conspiracy, which was abandoned only in 1993, Western intelligence services knew very well that Chelyabinsk-70 was a kind of backup for another secret city - Arzamas-16, which is now called Sarov. The 60th anniversary of Sarov was widely celebrated a year ago. Both cities were developing nuclear weapons.

The 50th anniversary of Snezhinsk and its city-forming foundation - the Russian Federal Nuclear Center - All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Technical Physics, like all similar anniversaries, became an occasion not only to remember the achievements of our nuclear scientists, but to discuss the protracted crisis of the closed administrative towns, in which about million people. Almost all 45 closed cities are still in a post-stress state, caused both by Gorbachev’s perestroika and the events of the first half of the 90s. Some of them are destined to remain inaccessible to outsiders as “dormitories” for rocket scientists or submariners. However, some ZATOs, and primarily those ten cities that fall under the jurisdiction of Rosatom, have not yet lost their chances of “demobilization” and transformation into populated areas that stand out from the rest not because of the barbed wire around the perimeter, but because of their scientific and technological potential . Both Rosatom and the Public Chamber, where they recently prepared an expert report on the strategy for the socio-economic development of CATUs, have their own recipes for solving the problem. But all the existing developments are very hypothetical and suffer from an abundance of subjunctive moods. Although they are no longer a secret.

Communism behind the barbs

Closed cities were products of the arms race that unfolded in the early 50s of the last century. The components of the USSR's success in this race were created there: the development and testing of nuclear weapons, spacecraft, submarines was underway, missiles and warheads were assembled. To set up such centers, where the homeland mobilized the best scientists and engineers, as a rule, the most remote and protected corners of the country were chosen - mainly beyond the Urals. “Our cities exist around enterprises. Fifty years ago, industry leaders did not look at the map and say: let’s choose some provincial city and locate a federal nuclear center there,” says Sergei Novikov, assistant manager of Rosatom, about the peculiarities of locating closed closed cities. “Then they specially selected places where there was nothing at all - the forest, the thicket, the forest was cut down, and on this empty place they built a city for an enterprise.”

THEN were not indicated on the map, turns to them from the roads were not indicated, mail was sent only “poste restante”. Not only were the closed cities hidden in the thickets of the forest, but a security ring was built around them: fences with barbed wire, several checkpoints. Employees of secret enterprises and even members of their families were allowed to leave the city only as a last resort - all of them were keepers of state secrets. In fact, about a million people voluntarily gave up the complete freedom of action guaranteed by both the Soviet and Russian Constitutions.

However, such a “reclusive” life in the Soviet years was not scary - young scientists were willing to exchange the megacities in the central zone of the USSR, where they studied, for small towns, specially “lost” in the forests. This is because the price for being closed was internal amenities. In terms of supplies, amenities, and comfort, the ZATO had no equal in the entire country. Not only did scientists naturally receive large salaries, but the state provided them with everything they needed: even in the late stagnation era of total shortages, store shelves in closed cities were not empty. In addition, they practically did not know what crime was - any more or less serious offense was regarded as an emergency, and the culprit was threatened with deportation.

The end of the Cold War and, as a consequence, a sharp reduction in defense spending, which was reflected in most closed enterprises, came as a real shock to the residents of nuclear cities. The older generation still cannot move away from it, and the youth, who have found this “communism” behind barbed wire, only worsens the psychological atmosphere - the new generation simply does not understand why thousands of people are sacrificing their freedom.

Soviet fathers and Russian children

Coming to ZATO, member of the Public Chamber, professor of the Moscow Architectural Institute (MARCHI) Vyacheslav Glazychev sometimes asks little residents to depict their city as they see it. In his opinion, kids don’t know how to lie, and in their drawings you can see the “real city” - its moral and psychological atmosphere, which is masked by greenery and smooth facades of houses. Mr. Glazychev visited many closed cities, and the drawings of children that he brought from there shocked him. “These were the most constrained drawings that I have seen,” he says. “An experienced eye can clearly see how much of the drawing consists of self-expression, and how much of training: in this case, the number of trained works was an order of magnitude greater than in ordinary cities.” . The same applies to high school students from Sarov, Snezhinsk, Ozersk, Trekhgorny and other nuclear cities. Members of the Public Chamber in each ZATO asked to write their essay on the topic “How I see my city.” As Mr. Glazychev said, he was struck by the fact that there was practically no independent work - teachers helped write essays. “On the title page it was written: “the head of the work is such and such,” he says. “And from the totality of these writings, two contrasting things stood out very clearly. One: what a good city we have and how much we don’t want it leave, and secondly, there’s nothing to do here.”

This, in his opinion, is the main problem of generations in ZATO. On TV, young people there see one picture, but when they look out the window, they see a completely different one. Young people are no longer attracted by the “reclusive” life and the lack of a real choice of profession - apart from the city-forming “objects”, there is nowhere to work there. And at the enterprises of the nuclear complex there was a “failure of generations.” Today there are middle-aged specialists who have been working since Soviet times, and there are also very young ones who do not yet have either experience or education. And the middle generation “eroded”, the majority left military science for business - in the 90s, only fanatics could be retained with earnings typical for enterprises in the nuclear industry.

“We have now found an opportunity to pay special bonuses to key specialists of nuclear centers,” says Sergei Novikov. “If, for example, in Sarov, compared to the Volga District, the salary of specialists is slightly above average, then compared to the salary level in the Central District it will be narrower.” even below average. And this is unacceptable. If people live in a closed city, then they should receive at least more than the average salary in the country, since they bear the burdens associated with the place of work." But Vyacheslav Glazychev is sure that it will be impossible to keep the natives of the closed city in their small homeland with salaries alone. “The privileges of such cities were the price to pay for being closed, but this can no longer deter young people - the desire for a big city is obvious, but as a rule they never return,” he says. “A problem arises: on the one hand, these are high-tech, knowledge-intensive industries that require the reproduction of their elite layer, and on the other hand, young people who are not ready for this and do not want to live in closed cities. This is the drama.”

At the same time, gradually, including under the pressure of young people who do not want to live “on the perimeter,” the external Russian environment is penetrating into closed cities. And this frightens those who are used to living in their own quiet little world, believing that the “thorn” saves them from all the vices of the big world. Whenever information reaches residents of closed cities that somewhere in Moscow they are once again thinking that cities should be opened, waves of protest begin. This is a manifestation of collective fear of crime, which will supposedly immediately rush into the created niche, of business giants, which will immediately crush local businessmen, and even of migrant workers. “Many of the residents of ZATO are not happy that their cities are increasingly confronted with the external environment, that their internal culture is assimilating with the external one and is under its influence,” says Sergei Novikov. Vyacheslav Glazychev also agrees with him: “To people who ended up in a closed administrative city during the Soviet Union, the world outside the fence seems scary, aggressive, hostile and incomprehensible. And they don’t want to let it into their world.”

The regime does not tolerate investment

However, the outside world is actually already inside, and closed cities are gradually being integrated into it. Since the beginning of 2007, all budgets of CATUs, previously financed under special items, have been included in the consolidated budgets of the federal subjects on whose territory they are located. The abolition of direct federal subsidies led to the fact that spending on closed cities, specifically as municipalities, and not on the social sphere of sensitive enterprises, began to decline. And the problem, as they say at Rosatom, is not only this. “Here sits, let’s say, the Minister of Finance of the regional government, where there is a ZATO. And it’s quite difficult to explain to him that the enterprise needs such a volume of funds for a new computer. Because he knows that the region can build an entire socially significant facility with this money, for example, a modern sports and recreation complex,” one of the experts in the nuclear industry gives an example. “A financier thinks in his own categories, in which he grew up, in which he has been working for many years, and sometimes explaining to him what he will never see. impossible, because he does not have appropriate access to information containing state secrets."

But you can’t count on your own internal reserves. The main source of income still remains the city-forming, sensitive facility; small businesses that have appeared recently have not radically changed the situation, and the road beyond the barbed wire is closed to serious investors. That is why the conversion never reached ZATO on any significant scale. For example, in Zheleznogorsk there is a very promising production facility - a silicon complex. However, Rosatom cannot finance it from the budget, since this production is a by-product. According to the atomic department, Russian investors are also not eager to invest money in closed cities. Foreigners are ready for this, knowing that ultra-pure silicon is used in the growing market for the production of solar panels. China still holds the championship in silicon production, but experts believe that Russia still has the opportunity to occupy a niche in this business. However, according to the law on closed cities, foreigners are strictly prohibited from going there.

“Finding a way to attract investment in closed cities would be very beneficial, first of all for these cities themselves,” says Sergei Novikov. “We need to come up with a mechanism under which companies, including those with foreign capital, could participate in the creation of production facilities "that are not directly related to the nuclear industry. This would increase the tax base and allow enterprises operating there to occupy new niches, and this would be beneficial for any city."

But the FSB, assessing the threat of a leak of state secrets, can put an end to any plans today. And until now, any appearance of foreigners near the once closed city was considered by this department, to put it mildly, as an undesirable event. At the same time, as Vyacheslav Glazychev notes, extending the regime of total secrecy to literally the entire city, which sometimes occupies an area hundreds of times larger than the territory of the sensitive facility, is no longer always justified today. “Modern technical means make it possible to perfectly organize the secrecy of the enterprise itself, without extending it to the rest. It is important here to raise the level of preservation of secrets that are not only military, but also of a business nature, and this is a serious conversation about security technology,” he says.

Publication

The search for a form that would allow, on the one hand, not to injure the deserved elite of the ZATO, and on the other hand, would provide new opportunities for young people and the cities themselves as single organisms, has been going on for several years. The Public Chamber considers the experiment in Sarov to be a rather successful solution, where a technology park is being created near the city, capable of attracting technologies and personnel from behind the barbed wire and money from the outside world. “A technology park is a model that creates favorable preferential conditions for starting an activity: good infrastructure conditions, good relationships with the opportunity to obtain high-quality human capital,” says Vyacheslav Glazychev. In addition, according to him, there are several more successful projects, interesting examples of the development of CATUs. For example, in the smallest of the ZATOs - Trekhgorny - a fairly effective ring of small and medium-sized businesses has arisen around a city with a population of about 30 thousand - about a dozen successfully operating enterprises. And in Novouralsk, the first pharmaceutical plant in the Urals was recently opened, which became one of the largest suppliers of insulin to the region.

The residents of ZATO themselves also advocate more global projects, including a significant “repurposing” of cities and the abandonment of defensive and physical dominance. In particular, during the on-site expert hearings, which were held by the Public Chamber in Sarov, it turned out that a significant part of the residents of this nuclear capital are in favor of creating a university of a wide profile, capable over time of claiming the title of the intellectual center of the entire Nizhny Novgorod region, and at the same time expanding opportunities for obtaining humanitarian education by residents of all closed cities.

The department of Sergei Kiriyenko has high hopes for the nuclear corporation being created on the instructions of the president. Rosatom hopes that restructuring the industry, which includes a clearer division into a defense component and an area of ​​civil nuclear research open to investment, will help overcome the “post-traumatic syndrome” left over from the 90s. And breathe new life into cities that have so far only gotten rid of the numbers in their names, but have retained all the problems that accompanied these numbers. “Using the status of a nuclear corporation to create a mechanism for improving life in ZATO is a promising idea,” says Sergei Novikov. Vyacheslav Glazychev also agrees with him. “With the formation of new structures of the nuclear corporation with a greater share of peaceful and commercial programs, new opportunities should appear to solve the problems of closed cities,” he believes.

Kirill MELNIKOV