A walk through the Ural city (21pics)

Greetings, my friends.
I recently told you that I returned to my childhood for a short time. But this is not my only journey into the past. Last November, I visited a city where it seemed to me that I was in the past, about the 80s-90s of the last century. I was invited to come to the Urals in a closed city. What is a "closed city"?
Officially, such cities are called "closed administrative-territorial entities" (ZATO). Some of them are completely excluded from visiting not only by foreigners, but even by Russian citizens if they do not have a special pass, while others are simply not recommended for visiting. On the website https://goingrus.com/info/ru/get-russian-visa/informatsiya-k-prochteniyu/zato-rossii-dlya-inostrantsev you can see 38 such cities.
Life in such cities is subject to its special rhythm. In Soviet times, such cities had a special food and commodity supply, people's incomes were above the national average, and this left its mark on the way of life of people even after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It so happened that my 2 sons live in such closed cities. 10 years ago, my eldest son told me about the problems of purchasing computer components, because it is difficult for merchants to get into the city. Online stores have corrected the situation and it has become easier to buy the necessary goods.

To enter the territory of this city, you need to get a pass. To do this, a resident of the city (the inviting party) must apply to the federal security service, which will check the data on the declared person and resolve the issue of issuing a pass or refusal.
Depending on the degree of its secrecy, a real border with all degrees of protection can be located around the city. You can only pass through the checkpoint, where people with shoulder straps on their shoulders and without smiles on their faces check documents. I was warned not to talk loudly, take pictures, or even joke at the checkpoint.
The checkpoint is behind us and we have entered another world. I came to a city that in Soviet times was an ideal city for building communism.



So, a little bit of history, is taken from open sources, from the Internet. The city of Lesnoy was founded on June 19, 1947. Initially, it was just a secret place called "Base-9". The status of the city appeared after Stalin's death in 1954. But I must say that all the closed secret cities in Soviet times had special names. This city was called Sverdlovsk-45. For example, the city of Sarov was called Arzamas-16.
We would not have been able to see such names on the maps of those years. These cities did not exist in the official information field.
The city received its modern name only in 1994.



The history of the country's development can be traced in the city. It has houses dating back to the founding of the city, they are located compactly on several streets of the city. I know such houses, exist in the city where I live, but in Lesnoy they are improved and modernized.
There are also streets where houses from the time of Khrushchev's reign are located. These are mostly five-storey brick houses.
These are houses with a height of 9 floors, which began to be built in the 70s, during the reign of Brezhnev. Such houses make up the bulk of residential buildings in the city. But I was surprised that all of them are lined up as if on a ruler and there is a lot of space between them, wide streets and roads with no traffic jams! These are properly designed streets, taking into account the fact that in the future people will have a lot of cars for personal use.
This is some kind of special pedestrian street and special houses with 5 floors.






It must be understood that once there was a taiga in this place. Even now, the outskirts of the city intersect with the forest, which is mostly coniferous trees.
I stayed in the city for 5 days, and I walked it from north to south and from west to east with my feet from edge to edge. I had a wonderful guide. Once he grew up here, graduated from high school, and went to study in Moscow. Now we came to this city with him and he showed me all of it and told me about his childhood years.



This is the only church in the city. It was built after the collapse of the USSR. We remember that in the city they tried to build communism, which denies the existence of God and Religion itself.



I showed this photo to my eldest son and he told me - there is such a house in our city too. Then he looked at photos of the city on the Internet, photos of the cinema, and the Palace of Culture and we laughed. My son lives in Sarov. These 2 cities are closely connected, began to be built at the same time, and have exactly the same architecture of the Soviet era. The discrepancies began only at the beginning of the 21st century.



This is one of the city schools. It even has its own observatory with a telescope for stargazing. My guide told me that he had met such schools in 2 more cities in the Urals, which are also closed cities. He visited these cities during his school years at various sports competitions.
Such a school is even now a rarity in many regional centers of Russia. There is even a branch of the Moscow Institute of Engineering and Physics in this city. How do students get there?



The Walk of Fame. On both sides of the alley there are stands with photos of famous residents of this city.



This is already a modern park, which was built recently. My companion said that there was a forest in which treadmills were made and they ran on them. He was a skier.












These are already modern new buildings. A friend said that a new area of the city began to develop 15 years ago.



My guide was surprised to see this track. He said that as a child, he often walked through this forest from his house to his grandmother and remembered the fairy tale about Little Red Riding Hood, especially at the dark time of the day.

This is a ski base. The building was built in 1949. Now this building is no longer used for its intended purpose and has been left as a historical structure. A wonderful ski sports base has been built in the city. My friend even showed me her.



I liked this city. I was fascinated by these spacious, clean streets. The city I live in, which is more than 600 years old, is not like that at all.

This city has only one unpleasant detail that disgusts me. Friends, I think you've guessed what I'm talking about. This is a barbed wire in 2 rows, and between it there is a control trace strip. This is a real border with technical means of protection. Such a border has been built around the city.



I would like to come to this city with my wife this summer, but the presence of this obstacle stops me. I would like to explore the surroundings of the city. But to enter and leave the city, it is necessary to go through the procedure of obtaining a pass every time. It's annoying. We also wanted to go to a nearby town and visit the highest mountain in the area, but we were told that access to the mountain was closed, and mining operations began there. There are many rare metals in these mountains, even platinum.


Friends, I hope you enjoyed this little walk around the northern Ural city.