The 45-metre-high tower housing the AZT-20 telescope at the Assy-Turgen Observatory in KazakhstanSoviet Scientific Institutes, by Eric Lusito, FUEL Publishing, 2026
These colourful photographs capture the remains of what was once a constellation of Soviet scientific megaprojects, all intentionally designed by the state to replace religious objects of worship.
Photographer Eric Lusito gained access to many of these Soviet sites for his new book, Soviet Scientific Institutes. Starting in Ukraine, Lusito spent four years travelling across the former Soviet Union, liaising with scientists and visiting many locations that had remained shuttered since the fall of the Soviet Union.
The first three sites Lusito visited were in Ukraine, in late 2021, before the start of the Russian invasion, and reminded Lusito of comic books from his childhood, such as Edgar P. Jacobs’s Blake and Mortimer and Hergé’s The Adventures of Tintin. “I found these scientific places very exciting and wanted to see more,” says Lusito. “I was drawn to their mysterious beauty, their history and to the way they had evolved over time.”
While many of the sites were in disrepair, some were beautifully preserved and frozen in time, such as the control room for the Orgov Radio-Optical Telescope in Armenia (below), which was designed by Soviet scientist Paris Herouni in the 1970s. The beautiful design of rooms like these were no accident; speaking to Herouni’s niece, Lusito learnt that Herouni had to battle against Moscow’s scientific administrators to get it built.
