This is, of course, specious bullshit. But instead of taking the publishers to task for their glib marketing strategy — selling books is hard, good luck to them — we are better off investigating what Soviet Ghosts represents: the marriage of trendy post-industrial “ruin porn” with the on-going “othering” of Russia and eastern Europe. Why is it that glossy pictures of dishabilles sanatoriums and explicitly exposed rocket bases have become so popular, and why has the former Soviet Union become a centre for the international ruin industry?

There has been an undeniable boom recently in photography that turns its gaze on the fleshless skeletons of socialist infrastructure, like Nadav Kander’s Chernobyl, Half Life and the forthcoming Dust. The Calvert Journal has itself featured Sasha Mademuaselle and Sergey Kostromin’s work in “abandoned” Abkhazia as well as Sergey Novikov’s photographs of deserted Soviet cinemas. This essay is illustrated by two similar projects Eric Lusito’s Traces of the Soviet Empire (military bases) and Maria Morina’s Atomic Cities (power stations), as well as Soviet Ghosts.