Former Soviet scientific megastructures captured in striking photos

These colorful photographs capture the remnants of what was once a constellation of Soviet scientific megaprojects, all intentionally designed by the state to replace objects of religious worship.

Photographer Eric Lusito gained access to several of these Soviet sites for his new book, Soviet scientific institutes. Starting out in Ukraine, Lusito spent four years traveling throughout the former Soviet Union, liaising with scientists and visiting many of the places that had remained closed since the fall of the Soviet Union.

The first three sites Lusito visited were in Ukraine, in late 2021, before the Russian invasion began, and reminded Lusito of the comic books of his childhood, like that of Edgar P. Jacobs. Blake and Mortimer and that of Hergé The Adventures of Tintin. “I found these scientific locations very exciting and wanted to see more,” says Lusito. “I was drawn to their mysterious beauty, their history and the way they have evolved over time.”

While many sites were in poor condition, some were beautifully preserved and frozen in time, such as the control room of the Orgov Radio-Optical Telescope in Armenia (below), designed by Soviet scientist Paris Herouni in the 1970s. The beautiful design of rooms like these is no accident; talking to Herouni’s niece, Lusito learned that Herouni had had to fight against Moscow’s scientific administrators to build it.

At their peak, thousands of scientists flocked to the corridors and control rooms of these scientific institutions, each of them recording their clocks on machines like the colorful attendance board. at the Institute of Radiophysics and Electronics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (below).

Some of them were doing important hands-on research, such as in the high-voltage hall of the old building known as the Electrotechnical Institute in Kharkiv, Ukraine (below), where scientists produced bursts of energy to learn how to protect the country’s first unified grid system. A Soviet-era mural, depicting a hand grasping a lightning bolt, can be seen on the back wall.

Others, however, were doing purely fundamental science, as in the MAKET-ANI experiment at the Aragats Cosmic Ray Research Station in Armenia (below), which measured high-energy particles that fall through the sky and settle on the high-altitude snow-capped peaks of Mount Aragats.

Many scientific sites visited by Lusito in Ukraine had to suspend scientific operations after the outbreak of the Russian war in Ukraine, such as the Kharkiv Ionosphere Institute, which houses several parabolic detectors, including a 100-meter antenna (below).

Much of what Lusito saw was abandoned or decommissioned, but there were some green shoots. At the Assy-Turgen Observatory in Kazakhstan, Lusito photographed the 45-meter-high pavilion housing the AZT-20 telescope (main image), construction of which began in the 1980s but ceased after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The project resumed in the 2010s and was completed in 2017, becoming the largest telescope in Kazakhstan and one of the largest in the post-Soviet region.