I am Russian. I was born in 1989. When I fill in a visa application form I need to write that I was born in USSR, Moscow. I was born in the country, which you can no longer find on a map and in which I only lived for a little more than two years. From the 21st of August 1991 it no longer existed.
Urban exploration (urbex) is popular in many countries. However, it is very specific on the post-Soviet territory. In this particular case we are dealing with the abandonment of a whole country, an almost century-long historic period and a never fulfilled utopia.
These buildings stand as phantoms, often with complicated ownership situation, abandoned and in decay. Although not completely destroyed, they are as if suspended between existence and absence.
Together with my friends I have been practicing urbex, travelling around the former Soviet Union countries, for more than three years now. In this blog I will be constantly sharing with you some of the photos (both by me and my friends) of the abandoned buildings we’ve been to.
an abandoned factory ‘Zarya’, Dzerzhinsk, Russia
Photos by Alisa Oleva
the demolition project 