During the Soviet era, it was known as KB-11 and All-Soviet (All-Union) Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics (also abbreviated VNIIEF) (Russian: Всесоюзный научно-исследовательский институт экспериментальной физики, ВНИИЭФ).
[4] On February 11, 1943, a resolution was adopted by the State Defense Committee to begin work on the creation of an atomic bomb.
According to the memoirs of the academician Yulii Khariton, the place for the future institute was researched carefully: it had to be located at a distance from the cities, since it was required to test various explosive structures so that active plutonium could be compressed and when combined, would exceed critical mass.
Behind the wall of the monastery there was a protected forest (the nature reserve is still very near to the Sarov closed city) for hundreds of square kilometers, where test explosions could be carried out unnoticed.
550 base in the village of Sarov was entrusted to Glavpromstroy by the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the USSR.
The settlement of Sarov was removed from the administrative structure of the Mordovian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic and excluded from all records.
Research laboratories and design departments of KB-11 began to develop their activities directly in Sarov in the spring of 1947.
On June 6, 1950, KB-11 was transferred from the Laboratory of Measuring Instruments of the USSR Academy of Sciences to the direct jurisdiction of The First Main Directorate under the USSR Council of Ministers,[9] on the basis of which, in turn, on July 1, 1953, the Ministry of Medium Machine Building was formed.
[10] In 1967, KB-11 was transformed into the All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics, which became part of the structure of the USSR Ministry of Medium Machine Building.
[11] Since February 1992, it is called the - Russian Federal Nuclear Center - All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics (RFNC-VNIIEF).
[15] Directors: Scientific advisers: As of March 2005, about 24 thousand people worked in the Nuclear Center, of which over 44% were women.