Basic features of Soviet nuclear industrial objects security system

Nuclear weapons and its research-and-production infrastructure concern one of the most sensitive spheres of national security. It is clear that security of nuclear weapons production infrastructure during the cold war was the foreground task not only for authorized authorities but for supreme leadership as well. Effective multilevel system of nuclear weapons security and nuclear industry security had been created in the Soviet Union and at the Siberian Chemical Combine (SCC). It was based on the special regime of closed territories, strict manpower policy, armed guard and hardware, which prioritised man over equipment. In the wider sense the system was reinforced by the authoritarian regime, totalitarian controls of security services and the country's political isolation. In aggregate these conditions formed extremely effective (in respect to it's basic function) nuclear industrial objects security systems that allowed avoiding any significant incidents. For decades of SCC functioning there was plenty of anomalies in material protection, control and accounting system, but not a single case of nuclear material theft. The collapse of the Soviet Union changed most of these internal and external conditions, bringing a number of new challenges. First of all, there was a significant change in personnel performance, including the seriously weakened machinery of the state. Economic problems, lack of a new ideology, social unrest resulted in the fall of labour and service discipline. Specified conditions together with growing motivation to crimes and decline in regime measures changed the human dimension of security. Henceforth it became quite a vulnerable part of nuclear materials security. At the same time the above-listed problems also demonstrated the viability of the soviet security system that even in such critical situation managed to maintain the security of the most powerful nuclear arsenal.

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