Eric Lusito

© 2009 Eric Lusito all rights reserved

For almost fifty years the world lived under the shadow of the Cold War, and the fear of
an apocalyptic confrontation between the West and the Soviet Union. But after the rise of
Mikhail Gorbachev to the Soviet leadership there followed a series of tumultuous events
that would eventually culminate in the fall of the regime founded by Lenin and Stalin.

November 1989 saw the fall of the Berlin Wall. The following month, in December 1989,
the communist governments of Czechoslovakia, Romania and Bulgaria also fell. Two years
later it was the turn of the Soviet Union itself, and on Christmas Day 1991, the Hammer and
Sickle was lowered for the last time above the Kremlin, to be replaced by the Russian flag.

Once the Soviet Empire had seemed inviolable. At its heart had been a military system,
exerting huge control and influence which extended throughout the Soviet bloc.
There were military bases in every country.

Eric Lusito has travelled throughout the former Soviet world from East Germany to Mongolia,
from Poland to Kazakhstan, in search of these former Soviet military bases and his photographs
are an extraordinary record. As the USSR crumbled many bases were simply abandoned.
A few still remain – traces of a once powerful Empire – yet over time they too are beginning
to disappear. The military departed but much else was just left behind.

Lusito discovered everything from gas masks to propaganda posters, books and magazines,
instruction manuals and personal photographs. But it is the buildings themselves which are
the most resonant symbols of the fall of a once powerful Empire. A KGB's lecture hall is laid out
with chairs ready, and theatre spotlights still mounted on the walls, yet the ceiling has begun to
collapse; a Navy's swimming pool is full of water but this is stagnant water unchanged for years.
And throughout there remain symbols of the old regime – murals of heroic deeds and national
glories, photographs of political and military leaders, posters exhorting young soldiers to give
their all for their fatherland.

The book includes photographs not only of the bases but also of the murals, posters, books,
instruction manuals etc. that Lusito found abandoned. It is a rich collection of work and illuminates
the once hidden military world of the Soviet Union, last testimonies left by a modern civilization
which is no longer familiar to us, ruins that invite us to construct our own stories.