This small lab (as it later turned out, it used to research soil and forest problems) is part of one of the forestry management institutions.

As it is usually the case, it was discovered by pure chance.

We circled the building and realized that life had left these places quite a long time ago.

However, getting inside wasn’t as easy as we had expected, but complicated acrobatics go a long way sometimes 🙂

A short while later we were inside. The building itself consists of an office part, a lab, a materials depot and an accountant department.

1. Opening the door into the first room instantly takes us 20 or 30 years back in time. A Lenin poster, Soviet books on forest law, typical Soviet interiors.

2. However, in the other part of the room newer things can be found, for example, rather modern posters dedicated to the problem of protecting the forests against diseases and parasites.

3. On one of the tables there is a cup that used to belong to one of the workers, apparently awarded for winning a chess tournament.

4. On top of a cabinet there is an A3 sized folder with dozens of survey sheet samples and their copies made by hand with many notes in colored pencil and marker.

5. Let’s not linger here and go on to the other rooms. Here’s the first lab: two vent hoods, a bathroom and remnants of chemical utensils.

Their condition is rather mediocre, and it is obvious that before the lab was shut down it hadn’t been used for a while.

6. Lots of chemical glassware: flasks, tubes and beakers.

7. Crucibles.

8. As the tradition is for institutions like this one, the hallway of the building is lined with posters dedicated to forest works as well as classic ones on the topic of fire safety.

9. The entrance to the office part.

10. Someone had filled a few boxes with stuff preparing for moving out, but they are still here.

12. On the director’s table there are abandoned certificates and, more surprisingly, individual medical records.

16. As it is usual with abandoned sites, there are also Communist Party member cards.

18. Lots and lots of posters with information on the condition of the forests.

20. The last room was a records room with a huge cabinet stuffed with old documents that is about to fall down. In a corner we found a beautiful Soviet radio-gramophone.

21. We return to the room where we started our tour. Lenin gives us and the room a look of reproach. The site is small, but it possesses a certain charm. Finally, we leave the building.

Images by alexdoomer2009, reproduced with permission