Code-named City 40, Ozersk was the birthplace of the Soviet nuclear weapons programme after the second world war. For decades, this city of 100,000 people did not appear on any maps, and its inhabitants’ identities were erased from the Soviet census.
In 1946, the Soviets began construction of City 40 in total secrecy, around the huge Mayak nuclear plant on the shores of Lake Irtyash. It would house the workers and scientists transported from across the country to lead the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons programme, and build an atomic bomb.
For the first eight years, residents were forbidden from leaving the city, writing letters or making any contact with the outside world – including members of their own family. Those who had been relocated here were considered missing by their relatives, as if they had disappeared into oblivion.
Today, with its beautiful lakes, perfumed flowers and picturesque tree-lined streets, Ozersk resembles a suburban 1950s American town – like one of those too-perfect places depicted in The Twilight Zone.
On the side roads, local women sell fruit and vegetables. Only the Geiger counters used to check the produce before it is purchased point to the dark secret that haunts this tranquil urban scene.
The city’s residents know the truth, however: that their water is contaminated, their mushrooms and berries are poisoned, and their children may be sick. Ozersk and the surrounding region is one of the most contaminated places on the planet, referred to by some as the "graveyard of the Earth".
Yet the majority of residents do not want to leave. They believe they are Russia’s "chosen ones", and even take pride in being citizens of a closed city. This is where they were born, got married, and raised their families. It is where they buried their parents, and some of their sons and daughters too.
In this hidden world a mother risks her life to take us inside Russia's largest nuclear city.
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