Closed Cities Today
The policy of closing cities underwent major changes in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Some cities, such as Perm, were opened well before the fall of the Soviet Union; others, such as Kaliningrad and Vladivostok, remained closed until as late as 1992. The adoption of a new constitution for the Russian Federation in 1993 prompted significant reforms to the status of closed cities, which were renamed "closed administrative-territorial formations" (or ZATO, after the Russian acronym). Municipally, all such entities have a status of urban okrugs, as mandated by the federal law.
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Famous quotes containing the words closed, cities and/or today:
“We are closed in, and the key is turned
On our uncertainty;”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Such poverty as we have today in all our great cities degrades the poor, and infects with its degradation the whole neighborhood in which they live. And whatever can degrade a neighborhood can degrade a country and a continent and finally the whole civilized world, which is only a large neighborhood.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“The great majority of people in England and America are modest, decent and pure-minded and the amount of virgins in the world today is stupendous.”
—Barbara Cartland (b. 1901)