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108-467: The name Serpukhov-15 is a code name following the practice established to name closed cities and military facilities. It is named after the nearest city, Serpukhov in Moscow Oblast which is about 35 kilometres (22 mi) away. Oko consists of two types of early warning satellites - US-K and US-KMO . The older US-K satellites are in highly elliptical molniya orbits which give them coverage of

216-616: A Closed Area Permit. From 1951 to 2012, the FCA encompassed an area of 28 square kilometres, containing numerous villages. Following several stages of reduction, by 2016, the border town of Sha Tau Kok remained as the sole settlement within the FCA. Within the Korean Demilitarized Zone between North Korea and South Korea are two "peace villages" (one maintained by each nation): Daeseong-dong (South) and (possibly) Kijŏng-dong (North). Access by non-residents to Daeseong-dong requires

324-767: A German rebuilding effort set forth by western European countries in 1948, the US, Britain and France spearheaded the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany from the three Western zones of occupation in April 1949. The Soviet Union proclaimed its zone of occupation in Germany the German Democratic Republic that October. Media in the Eastern Bloc was an organ of the state , completely reliant on and subservient to

432-417: A factory. The name of such a facility was usually secret, as were the activities there. Incoming mail was addressed to "Mailbox #XXXX", thus the name of "mailbox". Most Soviet design bureaus (OKB) for weapons , aircraft, space technology, military electronics , etc., were "mailboxes". Russia has the largest number of closed cities globally. The policy governing these cities underwent significant changes in

540-635: A general term, in his essay "You and the Atomic Bomb", published 19 October 1945 in the British newspaper Tribune . Contemplating a world living in the shadow of the threat of nuclear warfare , Orwell looked at James Burnham 's predictions of a polarized world, writing: Looking at the world as a whole, the drift for many decades has been not towards anarchy but towards the reimposition of slavery... James Burnham's theory has been much discussed, but few people have yet considered its ideological implications—that is,

648-510: A major propaganda effort began in 1949 was Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty , dedicated to bringing about the peaceful demise of the communist system in the Eastern Bloc. Radio Free Europe attempted to achieve these goals by serving as a surrogate home radio station, an alternative to the controlled and party-dominated domestic press in the Soviet Bloc. Radio Free Europe was a product of some of

756-449: A military escort, while Kijŏng-dong is not accessible to visitors. The Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center sits within a closed city that occupies 24.8 square kilometers (9.6 sq mi). The classification of a city being closed or not closed is dubious in a North Korean context, as North Korean citizens generally need a permit if they wish to travel outside of their county, and further permits required for entry to Pyongyang , thus

864-626: A neutral Germany to prevent West Germany's incorporation into NATO, but his attempts were cut short after he was executed several months later during a Soviet power struggle. The events led to the establishment of the Bundeswehr , the West German military, in 1955. In 1949, CCP Chairman Mao Zedong 's People's Liberation Army defeated Chiang Kai-shek 's United States-backed Kuomintang (KMT) Nationalist Government in China. The KMT-controlled territory

972-655: A new war". On 6 September 1946, James F. Byrnes delivered a speech in Germany repudiating the Morgenthau Plan (a proposal to partition and de-industrialize post-war Germany) and warning the Soviets that the US intended to maintain a military presence in Europe indefinitely. As Byrnes stated a month later, "The nub of our program was to win the German people ... it was a battle between us and Russia over minds ..." In December,

1080-572: A permit. An example of international cooperation in these cities is the Nuclear Cities Initiative (NCI), a joint effort of the United States National Nuclear Security Administration and Minatom , which involves, in part, the cities of Sarov , Snezhinsk , and Zheleznogorsk . The number of closed cities has been significantly reduced since the mid-1990s. However, on 30 October 2001, foreign travel

1188-683: A plan envisioning an economically self-sufficient Germany, including a detailed accounting of the industrial plants, goods and infrastructure already taken by the Soviets. In June 1947, in accordance with the Truman Doctrine , the United States enacted the Marshall Plan , a pledge of economic assistance for all European countries willing to participate, including the Soviet Union. Under the plan, which President Harry S. Truman signed on 3 April 1948,

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1296-613: A secret 1950 document, the National Security Council proposed reinforcing pro-Western alliance systems and quadrupling spending on defense. Truman, under the influence of advisor Paul Nitze , saw containment as implying complete rollback of Soviet influence in all its forms. United States officials moved to expand this version of containment into Asia , Africa , and Latin America , in order to counter revolutionary nationalist movements, often led by communist parties financed by

1404-477: A source of intelligence. During the late 1970s and 1980s, the KGB perfected its use of espionage to sway and distort diplomacy. Active measures were "clandestine operations designed to further Soviet foreign policy goals," consisting of disinformation, forgeries, leaks to foreign media, and the channeling of aid to militant groups. Retired KGB Major General Oleg Kalugin , former head of Foreign Counter Intelligence for

1512-487: A special postcode, for example, Arzamas‑16, Chelyabinsk‑65. The actual settlement can be rather distant from its namesakes; for instance, Sarov , designated Arzamas-16, is in the federal republic of Mordovia , whereas Arzamas is in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast (roughly 75 kilometres (47 mi) away). People not living in a closed city were subject to document checks and security checkpoints , and explicit permission

1620-545: A total population of approximately 1.5 million people. Seventy-five percent are administered by the Russian Ministry of Defense , with the remainder under the administration of Rosatom . It is believed that about 15 additional closed cities exist, but their names and locations have not been publicly disclosed by the Russian government. Some Russian closed cities are open to foreign investment, but entry for foreigners requires

1728-530: A unified and neutral Germany was undesirable, with Walter Bedell Smith telling General Eisenhower "in spite of our announced position, we really do not want nor intend to accept German unification on any terms that the Russians might agree to, even though they seem to meet most of our requirements." Shortly thereafter, Stalin instituted the Berlin Blockade (June 1948 – May 1949), one of the first major crises of

1836-552: Is a list of territories within Russia that do not have closed-city status but require special permits for foreigners to visit. The largest locality within such territory is the city of Norilsk . There were two closed cities in Estonia : Sillamäe and Paldiski . As with all the other industrial cities, their population was mainly Russian-speaking. Sillamäe was the site for a chemical factory that produced fuel rods and nuclear materials for

1944-441: Is required to visit or remain overnight. Such places may be sensitive military establishments or secret research installations that require much more space or internal freedom than is available in a conventional military base . There may also be a wider variety of permanent residents, including close family members of workers or trusted traders who are not directly connected with clandestine purposes. Many closed cities existed in

2052-551: The Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic ". A week later, on 13 March, Stalin responded vigorously to the speech, saying Churchill could be compared to Adolf Hitler insofar as he advocated the racial superiority of English-speaking nations so that they could satisfy their hunger for world domination, and that such a declaration was "a call for war on the USSR." The Soviet leader also dismissed

2160-806: The Berlin Wall to prevent the citizens of East Berlin from fleeing to West Berlin , at the time part of United States-allied West Germany . Major crises of this phase included the Berlin Blockade of 1948–1949, the Chinese Communist Revolution of 1945–1949, the Korean War of 1950–1953, the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the Suez Crisis of that same year, the Berlin Crisis of 1961 ,

2268-852: The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, and the Vietnam War of 1964–1975. Both superpowers competed for influence in Latin America and the Middle East , and the decolonising states of Africa , Asia , and Oceania . Following the Cuban Missile Crisis, this phase of the Cold War saw the Sino-Soviet split . Between China and the Soviet Union's complicated relations within the Communist sphere, leading to

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2376-837: The Eastern Bloc . Cominform faced an embarrassing setback the following June, when the Tito–Stalin split obliged its members to expel Yugoslavia, which remained communist but adopted a non-aligned position and began accepting financial aid from the US. Besides Berlin, the status of the city of Trieste was at issue. Until the break between Tito and Stalin, the Western powers and the Eastern bloc faced each other uncompromisingly. In addition to capitalism and communism, Italians and Slovenes, monarchists and republicans as well as war winners and losers often faced each other irreconcilably. The neutral buffer state Free Territory of Trieste , founded in 1947 with

2484-503: The KGB and involved in its intelligence operations, adhered to Moscow's line, although dissent began to appear after 1956. Other critiques of the consensus policy came from anti-Vietnam War activists , the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament , and the anti-nuclear movement . In early 1947, France, Britain and the United States unsuccessfully attempted to reach an agreement with the Soviet Union for

2592-506: The Kingdom of Greece in its civil war against Communist-led insurgents. In the same month, Stalin conducted the rigged 1947 Polish legislative election which constituted an open breach of the Yalta Agreement . The US government responded to this announcement by adopting a policy of containment , with the goal of stopping the spread of communism . Truman delivered a speech calling for

2700-556: The Sino-Soviet border conflict , while France, a Western Bloc state, began to demand greater autonomy of action. The Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia occurred to suppress the Prague Spring of 1968, while the United States experienced internal turmoil from the civil rights movement and opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War . In the 1960s–1970s, an international peace movement took root among citizens around

2808-718: The Soviet boycott of the Allied Control Council and its incapacitation, an event marking the beginning of the full-blown Cold War and the end of its prelude, as well as ending any hopes at the time for a single German government and leading to formation in 1949 of the Federal Republic of Germany and German Democratic Republic . The twin policies of the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan led to billions in economic and military aid for Western Europe, Greece, and Turkey. With

2916-700: The Soviet Union during the Cold War . Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, a number of them continue to exist in the post-Soviet states , especially in Russia . In modern Russia, such places are officially known as "closed administrative-territorial formations" ( Russian : закрытые административно-территориальные образования [ЗАТО] , romanized :  zakrytye administrativno-territorial'nye obrazovaniya [ZATO] ). Closed cities are sometimes represented only on classified maps that are not available to

3024-594: The Space Race . The US and USSR were both part of the Allies of World War II , the military coalition which had defeated Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in 1945. After the war, the USSR installed satellite governments in the territories of Eastern and Central Europe it had occupied, and promoted the spread of communism to North Korea in 1948 and created an alliance with the People's Republic of China in 1949. The US declared

3132-844: The Truman Doctrine of " containment " in 1947 as communist-led uprisings led to the Greek Civil War and First Indochina War , launched the Marshall Plan in 1948 to assist in Western Europe's economic recovery, and founded the NATO military alliance in 1949 (which was matched by the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact in 1955). The Berlin Blockade took place, and Germany's occupation zones solidified into East and West Germany in 1949. The USSR tested its first nuclear weapon in August 1949, four years after

3240-593: The Turkish Straits crisis and Black Sea border disputes were also a major factor in increasing tensions. In September, the Soviet side produced the Novikov telegram, sent by the Soviet ambassador to the US but commissioned and "co-authored" by Vyacheslav Molotov ; it portrayed the US as being in the grip of monopoly capitalists who were building up military capability "to prepare the conditions for winning world supremacy in

3348-499: The United Nations Security Council Resolution 82 and 83 backed the defense of South Korea, although the Soviets were then boycotting meetings in protest of the fact that Taiwan (Republic of China), not the People's Republic of China , held a permanent seat on the council. A UN force of sixteen countries faced North Korea, although 40 percent of troops were South Korean, and about 50 percent were from

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3456-450: The fall of the communist regimes of the Eastern Bloc in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The Western Bloc included the US and a number of First World nations that were generally capitalist and liberal democratic but tied to a network of often authoritarian Third World states, most of which were the European powers' former colonies . The Eastern Bloc was led by

3564-450: The period of communist rule in Albania, the towns of Çorovodë and Qyteti Stalin (now Kuçovë ) were closed cities with a military airport, military industry and other critical war infrastructure. The Frontier Closed Area (FCA) is a restricted zone along the northern border of Hong Kong, serving as a buffer between the closed border and the rest of the territory. Access to this area requires

3672-512: The Atlantic. The other three, looking over the Pacific, need to be controlled from the eastern centre. On 26 September 1983 the system suffered a major malfunction when it erroneously identified a launch of five Minuteman ICBMs in the United States. It appears that the system misidentified a particular set of circumstances including high clouds and the autumn equinox. Lt. Colonel Stanislav Petrov ,

3780-460: The Cold War was in its essence a war of ideas. The United States, acting through the CIA, funded a long list of projects to counter the communist appeal among intellectuals in Europe and the developing world. The CIA also covertly sponsored a domestic propaganda campaign called Crusade for Freedom . The rearmament of West Germany was achieved in the early 1950s. Its main promoter was Konrad Adenauer ,

3888-459: The Cold War, preventing Western food, materials and supplies from arriving in the West Germany's exclave of West Berlin . The United States (primarily), Britain, France, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and several other countries began the massive "Berlin airlift", supplying West Berlin with food and other provisions despite Soviet threats. The Soviets mounted a public relations campaign against

3996-743: The Communist governments militarily. The fall of the Iron Curtain after the Pan-European Picnic and the Revolutions of 1989 , which represented a peaceful revolutionary wave with the exception of the Romanian revolution and the Afghan Civil War (1989–1992) , overthrew almost all of the Marxist–Leninist regimes of the Eastern Bloc. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union itself lost control in

4104-400: The KGB (1973–1979), described active measures as "the heart and soul of Soviet intelligence ." During the Sino-Soviet split , "spy wars" also occurred between the USSR and PRC. In September 1947, the Soviets created Cominform to impose orthodoxy within the international communist movement and tighten political control over Soviet satellites through coordination of communist parties in

4212-428: The Marshall Plan, seeing it as an effort by the US to impose its influence on Europe. In response, the Soviet Union established Comecon (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance) to foster economic cooperation among communist states. The United States and its Western European allies sought to strengthen their bonds and used the policy of containment against Soviet influence; they accomplished this most notably through

4320-506: The Russian Civil War further complicated relations, and although the Soviet Union later allied with Western powers to defeat Nazi Germany , this cooperation was strained by mutual suspicions. In the immediate aftermath of World War II, disagreements about the future of Europe, particularly Eastern Europe , became central. The Soviet Union's establishment of communist regimes in the countries it had liberated from Nazi control—enforced by

4428-528: The Soviet nuclear power plants and nuclear weapon facilities, while Paldiski was home to a Soviet Navy nuclear submarine training centre. Sillamäe was closed until Estonia regained its independence in 1991; Paldiski remained closed until 1994, when the last Russian warship left. Tartu , home to Raadi Airfield , was partially closed. Foreign academics could visit the University of Tartu , but had to sleep elsewhere. Moldova has one partially closed city:

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4536-475: The Soviet Union and its communist party , which had an influence across the Second World and was also tied to a network of authoritarian states. The Soviet Union had a command economy and installed similarly communist regimes its in satellites. United States involvement in regime change during the Cold War included support for anti-communist and right-wing dictatorships , governments, and uprisings across

4644-461: The Soviet Union was used to monitor dissent from official Soviet politics and morals. Although to an extent disinformation had always existed, the term itself was invented, and the strategy formalized by a black propaganda department of the Soviet KGB. Based on the amount of top-secret Cold War archival information that has been released, historian Raymond L. Garthoff concludes there probably

4752-556: The Soviet Union, which at the time was undergoing the Era of Stagnation . This phase saw the new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev introducing the liberalizing reforms of glasnost ("openness") and perestroika ("reorganization") and ending Soviet involvement in Afghanistan in 1989. Pressures for national sovereignty grew stronger in Eastern Europe, and Gorbachev refused to further support

4860-499: The Soviet Union. A number of self-proclaimed Marxist–Leninist governments were formed in the second half of the 1970s in developing countries , including Angola , Mozambique , Ethiopia , Cambodia , Afghanistan , and Nicaragua . Détente collapsed at the end of the decade with the beginning of the Soviet–Afghan War in 1979. Beginning in the 1980s, this phase was another period of elevated tension. The Reagan Doctrine led to increased diplomatic, military, and economic pressures on

4968-455: The Soviets accumulated after broken promises by Stalin and Molotov concerning Europe and Iran. Following the World War II Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran , the country was occupied by the Red Army in the far north and the British in the south. Iran was used by the United States and British to supply the Soviet Union, and the Allies agreed to withdraw from Iran within six months after the cessation of hostilities. However, when this deadline came,

5076-425: The Soviets agreed to withdraw from Iran after persistent US pressure, an early success of containment policy. By 1947, US president Harry S. Truman was outraged by the perceived resistance of the Soviet Union to American demands in Iran, Turkey, and Greece, as well as Soviet rejection of the Baruch Plan on nuclear weapons. In February 1947, the British government announced that it could no longer afford to finance

5184-404: The Soviets had permitted to retain democratic structures. The public brutality of the coup shocked Western powers more than any event up to that point, set in motion a brief scare that war would occur, and swept away the last vestiges of opposition to the Marshall Plan in the United States Congress. In an immediate aftermath of the crisis, the London Six-Power Conference was held, resulting in

5292-426: The Soviets remained in Iran under the guise of the Azerbaijan People's Government and Kurdish Republic of Mahabad . Shortly thereafter, on 5 March, former British prime minister Winston Churchill delivered his famous " Iron Curtain " speech in Fulton, Missouri . The speech called for an Anglo-American alliance against the Soviets, whom he accused of establishing an "iron curtain" dividing Europe from " Stettin in

5400-455: The Truman Doctrine marked the beginning of a US bipartisan defense and foreign policy consensus between Republicans and Democrats focused on containment and deterrence that weakened during and after the Vietnam War , but ultimately persisted thereafter. Moderate and conservative parties in Europe, as well as social democrats, gave virtually unconditional support to the Western alliance, while European and American Communists , financed by

5508-447: The U.S. initiated contacts with China in 1972 . In the same year, the US and USSR signed a series of arms control treaties limiting their nuclear arsenals, which eased tensions in a détente . In 1979, the toppling of pro-US governments in Iran and Nicaragua and a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan again raised fears of war. In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev rose to leader of the USSR and expanded political freedoms in his country, which led to

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5616-462: The U.S.'s first test , thus starting an arms race. A major proxy war was the Korean War of 1950 to 1953, which ended in stalemate. The Cuban Revolution of 1959 installed the first communist regime in the Western Hemisphere, and in 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis began after deployments of U.S. missiles in Europe and Soviet missiles in Cuba; it is considered the closest the Cold War came to escalating into nuclear war . Another major proxy conflict

5724-434: The US assistance, the Greek military won its civil war . Under the leadership of Alcide De Gasperi the Italian Christian Democrats defeated the powerful Communist – Socialist alliance in the elections of 1948 . All major powers engaged in espionage, using a great variety of spies, double agents , moles , and new technologies such as the tapping of telephone cables. The Soviet KGB ("Committee for State Security"),

5832-476: The US government gave to Western European countries over $ 13 billion (equivalent to $ 189 billion in 2016) to rebuild the economy of Europe . Later, the program led to the creation of the OECD . The plan's aim was to rebuild the democratic and economic systems of Europe and to counter perceived threats to the European balance of power , such as communist parties seizing control through revolutions or elections. The plan also stated that European prosperity

5940-419: The US was trying to buy a pro-US re-alignment of Europe. Stalin therefore prevented Eastern Bloc nations from receiving Marshall Plan aid. The Soviet Union's alternative to the Marshall Plan, which was purported to involve Soviet subsidies and trade with central and eastern Europe, became known as the Molotov Plan (later institutionalized in January 1949 as the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance ). Stalin

6048-424: The USSR. In this way, this US would exercise " preponderant power ," oppose neutrality, and establish global hegemony . In the early 1950s (a period sometimes known as the " Pactomania "), the US formalized a series of alliances with Japan (a former WWII enemy), South Korea , Taiwan , Australia , New Zealand , Thailand and the Philippines (notably ANZUS in 1951 and SEATO in 1954), thereby guaranteeing

6156-412: The United Nations, was split up and dissolved in 1954 and 1975, also because of the détente between the West and Tito. The US and Britain merged their western German occupation zones into " Bizone " (1 January 1947, later "Trizone" with the addition of France's zone, April 1949). As part of the economic rebuilding of Germany, in early 1948, representatives of a number of Western European governments and

6264-445: The United States a number of long-term military bases. One of the more significant examples of the implementation of containment was the United Nations US-led intervention in the Korean War . In June 1950, after years of mutual hostilities, Kim Il Sung 's North Korean People's Army invaded South Korea at the 38th parallel . Stalin had been reluctant to support the invasion but ultimately sent advisers. To Stalin's surprise,

6372-401: The United States announced an agreement for a merger of western German areas into a federal governmental system. In addition, in accordance with the Marshall Plan , they began to re-industrialize and rebuild the West German economy, including the introduction of a new Deutsche Mark currency to replace the old Reichsmark currency that the Soviets had debased. The US had secretly decided that

6480-422: The United States at certain times during the day. For full coverage of the US missile grounds four US-K satellites need to be operational and the system can have up to nine of them in orbit at once. The US-KMO satellites are geosynchronous satellites providing continuous coverage. In total, 101 satellites have been launched . The system was placed on combat duty in 1982. The last US-KMO satellite ( Kosmos 2479 )

6588-450: The Warsaw Pact's primary function was to safeguard Soviet hegemony over its Eastern European satellites, with the pact's only direct military actions having been the invasions of its own member states to keep them from breaking away; in the 1960s, the pact evolved into a multilateral alliance, in which the non-Soviet Warsaw Pact members gained significant scope to pursue their own interests. In 1961, Soviet-allied East Germany constructed

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6696-423: The Western agencies paid special attention to debriefing Eastern Bloc defectors . Edward Jay Epstein describes that the CIA understood that the KGB used "provocations", or fake defections, as a trick to embarrass Western intelligence and establish Soviet double agents. As a result, from 1959 to 1973, the CIA required that East Bloc defectors went through a counterintelligence investigation before being recruited as

6804-402: The accusation that the USSR was exerting increasing control over the countries lying in its sphere. He argued that there was nothing surprising in "the fact that the Soviet Union, anxious for its future safety, [was] trying to see to it that governments loyal in their attitude to the Soviet Union should exist in these countries." Soviet territorial demands to Turkey regarding the Dardanelles in

6912-432: The allocation of $ 400 million to intervene in the war and unveiled the Truman Doctrine , which framed the conflict as a contest between free peoples and totalitarian regimes. American policymakers accused the Soviet Union of conspiring against the Greek royalists in an effort to expand Soviet influence even though Stalin had told the Communist Party to cooperate with the British-backed government. Enunciation of

7020-426: The bureau responsible for foreign espionage and internal surveillance, was famous for its effectiveness. The most famous Soviet operation involved its atomic spies that delivered crucial information from the United States' Manhattan Project , leading the USSR to detonate its first nuclear weapon in 1949, four years after the American detonation and much sooner than expected. A massive network of informants throughout

7128-483: The chancellor of West Germany, with France the main opponent. Washington had the decisive voice. It was strongly supported by the Pentagon (the US military leadership), and weakly opposed by President Truman; the State Department was ambivalent. The outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 changed the calculations and Washington now gave full support. That also involved naming Dwight D. Eisenhower in charge of NATO forces and sending more American troops to West Germany. There

7236-502: The closure of cities originated as a strictly temporary measure that was to be normalized under more favorable conditions, in practice the closed cities took on a life of their own and became a notable institutional feature of the Soviet system. Any movement to and from closed areas was tightly controlled. Foreigners were prohibited from entering them and local citizens were under stringent restrictions. They had to have special permission to travel there or leave, and anyone seeking residency

7344-416: The communist party. Radio and television organizations were state-owned, while print media was usually owned by political organizations, mostly by the local communist party. Soviet radio broadcasts used Marxist rhetoric to attack capitalism, emphasizing themes of labor exploitation, imperialism and war-mongering. Along with the broadcasts of the BBC and the Voice of America to Central and Eastern Europe,

7452-441: The country and was banned following the 1991 Soviet coup attempt that August. This in turn led to the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991 and the collapse of Communist governments across much of Africa and Asia. The Russian Federation became the Soviet Union's successor state, while many of the other republics emerged from the Soviet Union's collapse as fully independent post-Soviet states . The United States

7560-449: The first category of closed cities were chosen for their geographical characteristics. They were often established in remote places deep in the Urals and Siberia , out of reach of enemy bombers. They were built close to rivers and lakes that were used to provide the large amounts of water needed for heavy industry and nuclear technology. Existing civilian settlements in the vicinity were often used as sources of construction labour. Although

7668-401: The formation of NATO , which was essentially a defensive agreement in 1949. The Soviet Union countered with the Warsaw Pact in 1955, which had similar results with the Eastern Bloc. As by that time the Soviet Union already had an armed presence and political domination all over its eastern satellite states, the pact has been long considered superfluous. Although nominally a defensive alliance,

7776-410: The general public. In some cases, there may be no road signs or directions to closed cities, and they are usually omitted from railroad timetables and bus routes. Sometimes, closed cities are indicated obliquely as a nearby insignificant village, with the name of the stop serving the closed city made equivocal or misleading. For mail delivery, a closed city is usually named as the nearest large city and

7884-452: The ground station every 2 or three orbits to maintain their orbital position. The fire caused the loss of four satellites - two satellites were lost immediately ( Kosmos 2340 and Kosmos 2351 ) and two more ( Kosmos 2368 and Kosmos 2342 ) within a year due to the negative effect on their orbits. Closed city A closed city or town is a settlement where travel or residency restrictions are applied so that specific authorization

7992-518: The kind of world-view, the kind of beliefs, and the social structure that would probably prevail in a state which was at once unconquerable and in a permanent state of "cold war" with its neighbours. In The Observer of 10 March 1946, Orwell wrote, "...after the Moscow conference last December, Russia began to make a 'cold war' on Britain and the British Empire." The first use of the term to describe

8100-501: The late 1980s and early 1990s. The adoption of a new constitution for the Russian Federation in 1993 prompted substantial reforms to the status of closed cities, which were subsequently renamed "closed administrative-territorial formations" (or ZATO, from the Russian acronym). Municipally , all such entities have the status of urban okrugs , as mandated by federal law. There are 44 publicly acknowledged closed cities in Russia with

8208-414: The most prominent architects of America's early Cold War strategy, especially those who believed that the Cold War would eventually be fought by political rather than military means, such as George F. Kennan. Soviet and Eastern Bloc authorities used various methods to suppress Western broadcasts, including radio jamming . American policymakers, including Kennan and John Foster Dulles , acknowledged that

8316-411: The officer on duty at the time, discounted the reports as the system had only recently become operational and the launches were not corroborated by early warning radar . A fire broke out at the control centre on 10 May 2001 at 2:20 local time. The military tried to put the fire out itself but called the civilian fire brigade at 3:20 local time. They discovered that the fire was located in the gap between

8424-661: The policy change. Once again, the East Berlin communists attempted to disrupt the Berlin municipal elections , which were held on 5 December 1948 and produced a turnout of 86% and an overwhelming victory for the non-communist parties. The results effectively divided the city into East and West, the latter comprising US, British and French sectors. 300,000 Berliners demonstrated and urged the international airlift to continue, and US Air Force pilot Gail Halvorsen created " Operation Vittles ", which supplied candy to German children. The Airlift

8532-441: The political decision-making level on either side. Similarly, there is no evidence, on either side, of any major political or military decision that was prematurely discovered through espionage and thwarted by the other side. There also is no evidence of any major political or military decision that was crucially influenced (much less generated) by an agent of the other side. According to historian Robert L. Benson, "Washington's forte

8640-474: The presence of the Red Army —alarmed the US and UK. Western leaders saw this as a clear instance of Soviet expansionism, clashing with their vision of a democratic Europe. Economically, the divide was sharpened with the introduction of the Marshall Plan in 1947, a US initiative to provide financial aid to rebuild Europe and prevent the spread of communism by stabilizing capitalist economies. The Soviet Union rejected

8748-431: The second and third floors. 100 firefighters were involved and media reports said that the affected building was burnt out. It was reported that the centre restarted operations on 20 August 2001. At the time of the fire there were four satellites in the constellation, all US-K in molniya orbits . The effect of the fire was that control of the satellites was lost for 12 hours. Satellites in molniya orbits need contact from

8856-462: The source of the term, Lippmann traced it to a French term from the 1930s, la guerre froide . The roots of the Cold War can be traced back to diplomatic and military tensions preceding World War II. The 1917 Russian Revolution and the subsequent Treaty of Brest-Litovsk , where Soviet Russia ceded vast territories to Germany, deepened distrust among the Western Allies. Allied intervention in

8964-463: The specific post-war geopolitical confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States came in a speech by Bernard Baruch , an influential advisor to Democratic presidents, on 16 April 1947. The speech, written by journalist Herbert Bayard Swope , proclaimed, "Let us not be deceived: we are today in the midst of a cold war." Newspaper columnist Walter Lippmann gave the term wide currency with his book The Cold War . When asked in 1947 about

9072-405: The two superpowers , though each supported opposing sides in major regional conflicts known as proxy wars . Aside from the nuclear arms race starting in 1949 and conventional military deployment , the struggle for dominance was expressed indirectly via psychological warfare , propaganda campaigns , espionage , far-reaching embargoes , sports diplomacy , and technological competitions such as

9180-553: The village of Cobasna ( Rîbnița District ), which is under the control of the unrecognized state of Transnistria internationally recognized as part of Moldova. The village, on the left bank of the Dniester river, contains a large Soviet-era ammunition depot guarded by Russian troops. Only the Transnistrian and Russian authorities have detailed information about this depot. Ukraine had eighteen closed cities, including: During

9288-485: The whole nation could be considered closed. Between 1957 and 1962, approximately one-third of the United States was closed to Soviet citizens. Only eight states were accessible in their entirety: Oregon, Wyoming, Utah, North Carolina, Arkansas, Vermont, Missouri, and Mississippi. The 2020 film Tenet prominently features a fictional Soviet-era closed city in Siberia called Stalsk-12. Cold War The Cold War

9396-411: The world, while Soviet involvement in regime change included the funding of left-wing parties , wars of independence , revolutions and dictatorships. As nearly all the colonial states underwent decolonization and achieved independence in the period from 1945 to 1960, many became Third World battlefields in the Cold War. At the end of World War II, English writer George Orwell used cold war , as

9504-473: The world. Movements against nuclear weapons testing and for nuclear disarmament took place, with large anti-war protests . By the 1970s, both sides had started making allowances for peace and security, ushering in a period of détente that saw the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks and the 1972 visit by Richard Nixon to China that opened relations with China as a strategic counterweight to

9612-497: Was 'signals' intelligence - the procurement and analysis of coded foreign messages." leading to the Venona project or Venona intercepts, which monitored the communications of Soviet intelligence agents. Moynihan wrote that the Venona project contained "overwhelming proof of the activities of Soviet spy networks in America, complete with names, dates, places, and deeds." The Venona project

9720-533: Was a period of global geopolitical tension and struggle for ideological and economic influence between the United States and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc , that started in 1947, two years after the end of World War II , and lasted until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The term cold war is used because there was no direct fighting between

9828-412: Was a strong promise that West Germany would not develop nuclear weapons. Widespread fears of another rise of German militarism necessitated the new military to operate within an alliance framework under NATO command. In 1955, Washington secured full German membership of NATO. In May 1953, Lavrentiy Beria , by then in a government post, had made an unsuccessful proposal to allow the reunification of

9936-547: Was also fearful of a reconstituted Germany; his vision of a post-war Germany did not include the ability to rearm or pose any kind of threat to the Soviet Union. In early 1948, following reports of strengthening "reactionary elements", Czech Communists executed a coup d'état in Czechoslovakia (resulting in the formation of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (9 May 1948)), the only Eastern Bloc state that

10044-537: Was as much a logistical as a political and psychological success for the West; it firmly linked West Berlin to the United States. In May 1949, Stalin backed down and lifted the blockade. In 1952, Stalin repeatedly proposed a plan to unify East and West Germany under a single government chosen in elections supervised by the United Nations, if the new Germany were to stay out of Western military alliances, but this proposal

10152-648: Was contingent upon German economic recovery. One month later, Truman signed the National Security Act of 1947 , creating a unified Department of Defense , the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the National Security Council (NSC). These would become the main bureaucracies for US defense policy in the Cold War. Stalin believed economic integration with the West would allow Eastern Bloc countries to escape Soviet control, and that

10260-463: Was kept highly secret even from policymakers until the Moynihan Commission in 1995. Despite this, the decryption project had already been betrayed and dispatched to the USSR by Kim Philby and Bill Weisband in 1946, as was discovered by the US by 1950. Nonetheless, the Soviets had to keep their discovery of the program secret, too, and continued leaking their own information, some of which

10368-510: Was launched on 30 March 2012 and the last US-K satellite ( Kosmos 2469 ) on 30 September 2010. They are due to be replaced by a new system called EKS . In 1960 the site was used as one of the locations of the missiles for the S-25 Berkut (Russian: С-25 Беркут ) air defence system. Later it was one of the intended bases for A350 missiles for the A-35 anti-ballistic missile system , although it

10476-502: Was left as the world's sole superpower. In February 1946, George F. Kennan 's " Long Telegram " from Moscow to Washington helped to articulate the US government's increasingly hard line against the Soviets, which would become the basis for US strategy toward the Soviet Union for the duration of the Cold War. The telegram galvanized a policy debate that would eventually shape the Truman administration 's Soviet policy. Washington's opposition to

10584-402: Was not completed. The Oko control centre was built later and was put on combat duty in 1982. It consists of antennas and facilities for data processing. Photographs of the site show a number of buildings and seven domes, presumably containing the antennas. As the western control centre it can communicate with geosynchronous satellites in four of the seven reserved locations, those looking over

10692-540: Was now restricted to the island of Taiwan , the nationalist government of which exists to this day. The Kremlin promptly created an alliance with the newly formed People's Republic of China. According to Norwegian historian Odd Arne Westad , the communists won the Civil War because they made fewer military mistakes than Chiang Kai-Shek made, and because in his search for a powerful centralized government, Chiang antagonized too many interest groups in China. Moreover, his party

10800-495: Was often compensated by better housing conditions and a better choice of goods in retail trade than elsewhere in the country. Also, in the Soviet Union, people working with classified information received a salary bonus . Closed cities were established in the Soviet Union from the late 1940s onwards under the euphemistic name of "post boxes", referring to the practice of addressing post to them via mailboxes in other cities. They fell into two distinct categories. The locations of

10908-403: Was parity in the quantity and quality of secret information obtained by each side. However, the Soviets probably had an advantage in terms of HUMINT (human intelligence or interpersonal espionage) and "sometimes in its reach into high policy circles." In terms of decisive impact, however, he concludes: We also can now have high confidence in the judgment that there were no successful "moles" at

11016-433: Was required for them to visit. To relocate to a closed city, one would need security clearance by the organization running it, such as the KGB in Soviet closed cities. Closed cities were sometimes guarded by a security perimeter with barbed wire and towers . The very fact of such a city's existence was often classified, and residents were expected not to divulge their place of residence to outsiders. This lack of freedom

11124-445: Was required to undergo vetting by the NKVD and its successor agencies. Access to some closed cities was physically enforced by surrounding them with barbed wire fences monitored by armed guards. "Mailbox" ( Russian : Почтовый ящик , romanized :  Pochtovyy yashchik ) was the unofficial name of a secret Soviet facility much like the closed city, but smaller, usually the size of

11232-865: Was restricted without exception in the northern cities of Norilsk , Talnakh , Kayerkan , Dudinka , and Igarka . Russian and Belarusian citizens visiting these cities are not required to have permits; however, local courts have been known to deport Belarusian citizens. The number of closed cities in Russia is defined by government decree. The reasons for restrictions vary. These cities include: Altai Krai Amur Oblast Arkhangelsk Oblast Astrakhan Oblast Republic of Bashkortostan Chelyabinsk Oblast Kamchatka Krai Kirov Oblast Krasnoyarsk Krai Moscow Oblast Murmansk Oblast Nizhny Novgorod Oblast Orenburg Oblast Penza Oblast Perm Krai Primorsky Krai Pskov Oblast Saratov Oblast Sverdlovsk Oblast Tomsk Oblast Tver Oblast Vladimir Oblast Zabaykalsky Krai There

11340-537: Was still useful to the American program. According to Moynihan, even President Truman may not have been fully informed of Venona, which may have left him unaware of the extent of Soviet espionage. Clandestine atomic spies from the Soviet Union, who infiltrated the Manhattan Project at various points during WWII, played a major role in increasing tensions that led to the Cold War. In addition to usual espionage,

11448-467: Was the Vietnam War of 1955 to 1975, which ended in defeat for the U.S. The USSR solidified its domination of Eastern Europe with the crushing of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 and the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Both powers used economic aid in an attempt to win the loyalty of non-aligned countries , such as India . After the Sino-Soviet split between the USSR and China in 1961,

11556-625: Was turned down by the Western powers. Some sources dispute the sincerity of the proposal. Britain, France, the United States, Canada and eight other western European countries signed the North Atlantic Treaty of April 1949, establishing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). That August, the first Soviet atomic device was detonated in Semipalatinsk , Kazakh SSR . Following Soviet refusals to participate in

11664-483: Was weakened during the war against Japan . Meanwhile, the communists told different groups, such as the peasants, exactly what they wanted to hear, and they cloaked themselves under the cover of Chinese nationalism . Confronted with the communist revolution in China and the end of the American atomic monopoly in 1949, the Truman administration quickly moved to escalate and expand its containment doctrine. In NSC 68 ,

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