In a rather timely decision, the BBC have just decided to publish a feature article about the Russian cosmodrome at Plesetsk. Now, Plesetsk isn’t a closed city, but Mirny, the town next door is. The BBC reporter managed to get a precious invitation to visit Mirny, and this is what he saw:

Home to about 80,000 military staff and their families, at first glance, it seems like any other town, save the austere apartment blocks and lack of road signs.

We are taken to the space museum in the town square, then the kindergarten, where children dressed in traditional clothes sing Russian songs.

Despite the presence of occasional teams of foreign engineers, most of the town remains off limits to visitors. They can walk around only a small central section and must not stray outside the designated area.

The town was never on the map and its inhabitants can still only be officially reached under a military field post number.

I’ve just been to see if I could find Mirny using both GoogleEarth (the satellite imaging programme) and Expedia maps. I tried every spelling of the name I could think of without any luck (although I did discover there is a village with the same name in Southern Russia). I think I’ll have to investigate further, to see whether any of the closed cities that the Russian government has admitted to (and Mirny isn’t one of them) are on any maps.

So far, the only other account I’ve been able to find about a visit to a closed city, is Tajikblog’s visit to Taboshar, the city where the uranium for the first Soviet nuclear bombs was mined. Taboshar – in Tajikistan, by the way, and not Russia – is no longer a closed city. But it certainly doesn’t seem a very welcoming place…

Either way, we just slowly begin to explore the town. It’s really quite a nice town with birch trees and huge stone houses lining the streets, aside from the fact that most of the buildings are empty and starting to fall apart. Soon enough, though, another set of suspicious men appears (with their wives and children in tow, not exactly an intimidating sight) and the confrontation begins.

The mayor (who prior to this had a good reputation among internationals) was at the center of the posse. I wanted to meet him anyway hoping for a tour, so this was as fine a time as any to say hello. I must have caught him at a bad time, though, as his mood was sour.

After the initial “hi I’m Peter XXX, photographer from New York” schtick, it was time for the inquisition.
Why are you here? Who guided you here? What do you know about this town? Etc. etc.
Nargiza steadfastly translates the questions and my answers, but suddenly his suspicion and temper rise.

One thing that set him off, I think was my knowledge of the town’s having a high-tech science lab. Stephanie told me about it as the mayor’s sad attempt to attract people to his town, to create a center for technology. Maybe something else is going on, because he certainly didn’t want to speak about it.

I’m going to keep searching for stories about Russian closed cities (and others around the Former Soviet Union if I can find them). If you have any links, or stories of your own, please feel free to share them here.

Closed cities from the inside is a post from: Siberian Light

Freedom of movement is the biggest practical problem. True, movement generally is still quite restricted in Russia – for example, the need for residential permits means that many people who have moved to Moscow are living there illegally and have limited legal rights – but the issues facing closed cities are a class apart. Roemer Lemaître of the Belgian Institute for International Law [pdf file] observes that:

Apart from the right to freedom of movement the entry and residency restrictions imposed by the ZATO Law infringe directly or indirectly on a considerable number of other rights belonging to natural and legal persons resident within the ZATO as well as to outsiders. Identity checks and searches of bags and vehicles upon entry or exit from the ZATO run afoul of the right to privacy (Article 17 of the ICCPR and Article 8 of the ECHR). According to the same provisions, the right to family life might be violated if someone is not allowed to live with his/her close family because he/she did not get the required security clearance. Limitations on property rights (especially those that largely exclude property rights for outsiders) contradict Article 1 of the First Protocol to the ECHR.

Foreigners also face many restrictions, as this news report about the announcement that the mining city of Norilsk was to become a closed city indicates:

Under the restrictions, as of Monday the city is closed to all non-Russians – except Belarusians. Any foreigner wishing to travel to Norilsk must first obtain special permission from the FSB, the Russian state security police.

Lebed stated that he will demand that all foreigners – whether living as residents or presently visiting – leave Norilsk.

The restrictions placed on residents in closed cities also directly inhibit their ability to participate fully in the democratic process – such as it is in Russia these days. The role of the media, in particular, is heavily restricted:

Federal and local mass media have no access to closed cities. Besides, local media are poorly developed, scanty and usually controlled either by agencies that they belong to, or by commercial price of information. Almost the whole volume of information flow in and out of ZATOs is censoring in order to assure its safety for ZATOs system’ existence. None of independent pressmen are allowed to visit ZATOs.

I haven’t specifically seen any sources mentioning it, but I would imagine that freedom of association – for example, in the sense of the ability to join protests – is also heavily restricted.

No other democracy today has closed cities. Today, with the exception of Russia, they are the preserve of crackpot dictatorships, like North Korea. Even China doesn’t feel the need to close off whole cities from its own people.

Unless there is something that Russia and North Korea know that the rest of the world doesn’t, I think it is safe to conclude that closed cities are no longer necessary for security. And, if that is the case, then Russia’s justification for restricting the human rights of almost 2 million of its own citizens rings hollow.

Closed cities and the Democratic Deficit is a post from: Siberian Light