I've heard stories from the Cold War period about towns in the Soviet Union that were imitation American towns where their sleeper agents could be trained to live like an American. I think there was a specific term for these places. Can anyone tell me the word or phrase?
I don't know if the stories are true or not, but that's a discussion for another forum.
"Coca-Cola" City
What could be more American than Coca-Cola?
...KGB bosses are even believed to have built an “American town” in Ukraine so spies could learn how to live secretly in the US.
In the town, the trainee agents apparently drove American cars using American traffic regulations and watched American movies.
The Soviets insisted “Coca-Cola City”, as it became known, never existed but those that attended the academy say otherwise.
Illegals are trained in their own special classes in KGB headquarters and in their fake country of origin, not in "Coca-Cola cities."
So it is not one of those Russian words (like Kompromat) which was adopted into English spy jargon...just a quintessentially American one.
Replica or Mock city would work.
This article describing training in the USA for military operations in the Middle East uses both terms::
A Replica of Afghanistan in the Mojave
...home to several mock villages built to create realistic training environments for troops due to be deployed overseas.
https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2013/09/a-replica-of-afghanistan-in-the-mojave/100593/
I presume that in the USSR, they would have had a Russian term for the setting.
