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:
“For a long time, I went to bed early. Sometimes, my candle barely put out, my eyes closed so quickly that I did not have the time to say to myself: “I am falling asleep”.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“Like other cities created overnight in the Outlet, Woodward acquired between noon and sunset of September 16, 1893, a population of five thousand; and that night a voluntary committee on law and order sent around the warning, “if you must shoot, shoot straight up!””
—State of Oklahoma, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“The late Président de Montesquieu told me that he knew how to be blind—he had been so for such a long time—but I swear that I do not know how to be deaf: I cannot get used to it, and I am as humiliated and distressed by it today as I was during the first week. No philosophy in the world can palliate deafness.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)