Chelyabinsk

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History
Fortress Chelyaba, from which the city takes its name, was constructed on the site in 1736; the city was incorporated in 1781. Around 1900, it served as a center for the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway. According to offical statistic population was on 01.01.1913 45.000 inhabitants.

During the Soviet industrialization of the 1930s, Chelyabinsk experienced rapid growth. Several industrial establishments, including the Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant and the Chelyabinsk Metallurgical Plant, were built at this time. During World War II, Joseph Stalin decided to move a large part of Soviet factory production to places out of the way of the advancing German armies in late 1941. This brought new industries and thousands of workers to Chelyabinsk—still essentially a small city. Several enormous facilities for the production of T-34 tanks and Katyusha rocket launchers existed in Chelyabinsk, which became known as "Tankograd" (Tank City). Chelyabinsk was essentially built from scratch during this time. A small town existed before this, signs of which can be found in the centre of the city. The S.M. Kirov Factory no. 185 moved here from Leningrad to produce heavy tanks — it was transferred to Omsk after 1962.

A serious nuclear accident occurred in 1957 at the Mayak nuclear fuel reprocessing plant, 150 km north-west of the city, caused deaths in Chelyabinsk Oblast but not in the city. The province was closed to all foreigners until 1992.

Oh, yeah, the info is out there if anyone is interested ... I also remember reading about an abandoned bio-warfare facility that used to be on an island in the Aral Sea. The 'sea' dried up so much that anyone can drive to that site now.

I have also read that some of the above ground nuclear tests in the US (1950s and 60s) released more radioactivity than Chernobyl.

The main bioweapons facility I've heard of from the Soviets is Stepnogorsk. They did some crazy sh** in that place.

IIRC, the most Notorious Biological Weapons facility was located in Uzbekistan on the (former lakeshore) of the Aral sea and involved antibiotic resistant bacteria as well as airborne hemorrhagic viruses

Stepnogorsk was an illegal facility that dealt with smallpox, drug-resistant bacteria of various kinds (including plague), ebola, and several exotic and scary-as-hell hybrids.

"Illegal" in the sense of violating international law? Or in the sense of being a covert facility whose existence is not acknowledge by the government. Apparently their biolgical weapons research was done mainly in central asia whereas their nuclear research was done in Siberia.