Gennadiy N. Lepeshkin: In 1984, Stepnogorsk, which had been built by the Ministry of Middle Machine Construction [responsible for Soviet atomic projects], was a wonderful town, built according to a totally new design. And with regar... unlike other Soviet cities, it was extremely modern. There were only three other cities whose architecture was comparable to that of Stepnogorsk...
Every neighborhood had its own area, had its own school, everything was built and provided for, there were fountains, and three swimming pools were built for this rather modest-sized town. The population was just 60,000 people, but even so, their living conditions were wonderful. The workforce living there was highly educated, mostly they were graduates of colleges and universities in Moscow, Leningrad, Petersburg, Novo... Leningrad, Novosibirsk, Tomsk, Omsk and some other cities... So this was the elite, because the industries that were launched in that town were the most up-to-date, including uranium extraction and processing, biotechnology and metalworking. The ballbearing plant there was very large, there was a mining and chemical plant and the Progress microbiology plant... Those three establishments needed to draw from the new Russian professional elite. And they all came together there. And these were young, talented people.