It was a wonderful free weekend, and my friend and I rushed to explore this site.

Soon we saw a freshly built fence before us with barbed wire along the perimeter. We turned to the right a little, and on the left there was a wide open gate, as if inviting everyone.

1. Soon after we got to the grounds we saw the following sight. Ongoing demilitarization, obviously.

2. Then we got into the night vision device repair building. The first thing we saw was this nice-looking staircase leading up to the second floor.

3. This building is much better preserved than many others on the site. After walking through this level for a while you find yourself in a small hall.

4. Generally speaking, most of the rooms are workshops, classrooms and storage rooms.

5. And here are some workplaces typical for this building.

6. For example, this is the Soviet Industar-51 camera lens acting as part of some sort of device.

7. And this shot shows the beauty of the architecture of this pre-revolutionary building as well as the state of the workshops.

8. Numerous rooms stuffed with electrical measuring instruments, voltage meters, rectifiers, cables etc.

9.Let’s see the other rooms.

10. Boxes! Many boxes labeled with mysterious acronyms.

13. In this room they used to measure voltage.

14. To make it clearer, here’s the layout of an APN-7 aiming device.

15. And here’s one of such devices that was discovered somewhere in the depths of the building.

16. It is possible to see devices like this one on many tables together with their optical layouts.

17. One more photo of the machinery.

18. Also, they used to repair and tune binoculars in this building. But not just ordinary binoculars — night vision ones.

19. There are various mock-ups whose purpose is unclear on the tables in the workshops.

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21. The calibration workshops are stuffed with equipment and instruments.

22. Another photo of the lens from a different angle.

24. On the first floor you can see a large pile of night vision binocular cases.

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26. The only thing to see here are the remnants of a chemistry lab.

27. And more workshops and storage rooms…

28. But this is not the only building on the site. There are a great many of them, and we didn’t even see them all.

After exploring the first one, we headed to an old building stretched along the river bank. Among other things, there are some large workshops, lens storage facilities, labs and offices.

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30. And to finish the report, here’s my favorite photo

Images @ Alexdoomer