Best Flag: Zheleznogorsk’s Bear Wrestling An Atom
Starting a new job can be a daunting life event. All of a sudden there are a bunch of new people that you have to trick into liking you. You have to make sure that for at least the next three months – you don’t do anything mental.
Some people find this easier than others – I find this more difficult than others. The reason I bring this up is that I recently got a new job. And I am going through the process of sounding out my new colleagues whilst they assess whether I am in any way capable.
One of my new colleagues, however, has unwittingly smoothed this process. He admitted that he is a big fan of flags. Without realising, he has shown himself to be “a bit of a weirdo” too. Who likes flags? What an odd thing to like. Now we are combined. He can not escape me.
So. He showed me the flag above. It’s the flag of Zheleznogorsk in the Krasnoyarsk Krai region of Russia. I’ve come across a lot of good flags in my time, as you know, but this one really takes the biscuit, and the cup of tea, and a pastie.
It’s amazing. IT’S A BEAR WRESTLING AN ATOM.
For the sake of completeness, here’s their coat of arms, too:
Amazing, right?
Zheleznogorsk (population 84,795) is a closed town in Russia. The status “closed town” means you require special dispensation to visit or stay overnight.
Although Russia has slowly been dismantling its clandestine network of secretive towns, it still has at least 44 that are officially acknowledged.
In 1992, Boris Yeltsin eased up the secretive status of many of the towns. Prior to that date, the town was not marked on any map and was referred to as “Krasnoyarsk-26.”
Yeltsin’s decree meant that the town was allowed to use its historic name again.
The town of Zheleznogorsk was predominantly built in the 1950’s to produce weapons-grade plutonium. The nuclear facilities were situated in excavated caverns in the side of a granite mountain on the northern edge of the town.
Zhelenogorsk’s final reactors were shut down in 2008, but the town still houses a nuclear waste handling facility. They held a ceremony when they finally closed down the 47-year-old reactor:
Flowers were laid on top of the reactor itself by the oldest worker at the plant, Evgenii Vakhrusheva, who had been present during the reactors’ commissioning and worked there ever since.
Their largest employer nowadays is JSC Information Satellite Systems. JSC is Russia’s largest satellite producer and to date has designed and constructed over a thousand individual satellites.
I’m basically padding out an article, the sole purpose of which was to show you the flag at the top of the page. But I got into this town. I mean, the idea of a closed town in Russia gets my juices flowing. What does it feel like to live there? What does it look like?
I imagined I wouldn’t be able to find many pictures, and that what I did find would be depressing. But I was kind of wrong.
I found the pics below on one of the reference links from the town’s Wikipedia page. They look like they were taken in the 70’s, left out in the sun for a while, and then photocopied 40 times each. But I love their vibe.
This first pic was entitled “The weakening of the action of cosmic rays due to the location of underground laboratory”:
I became disgruntled with their low-fi quality and decided to search further afield for images.
Google street car hasn’t been allowed in, fair enough, no surprise, but plenty of Zhelenogorsk’s residents seem to have uploaded photos to Google maps. Have a look at these:
It’s not quite as depressing as I thought it would be. So I looked a bit further. I checked out the town’s official website for some additional quality info.
It seems like it’s a pretty chilled place to live. Here are some images from their local “courtyard where I live” competition:
Aaaaaannnnnd…. that’s how you pad out an article about a flag.
MORE AMAZING FLAGS:
