Research Infrastructures of Russian Laboratories: Before and After Sanctions

The article dives into biographies of Russian scientific labs in the context of infrastructure work, where infrastructure work is taken to mean practical activities aimed at developing scientific infrastructure and solving the problems arising along the process. This helps focusing on mobilization procedures (rather than on “structures”) that are built into relations with institutions of science management, practices of lab operation, material resources, and individual research strategies. I attempt to explore the infrastructural makeup of the Russian scientific lab and the changes it has been undergoing in the period marked by economic and political transformations and alterations in the access to global technological markets as a result of sanction policies. The research draws on the comparative analysis of two case studies based on field interviews with lab managers and staff, conducted in 2012–2024. Trying to trace the biographies of these labs from the point of their origins through the present day, I argue that the infrastructure of the regular Russian lab is essentially prone to instability, which requires specific forms of adaptation to the ever-changing conditions. That adaptation, however, may be seen as instrumental in the success of reshaping lab work – particularly after 2022 when stricter sanctions began to be imposed – and developing new collaborations with Asian institutions. The cases under examination, nevertheless, show that there has been certain shift toward applied studies at the expense of more fundamental studies in the lab work, followed, for instance, by a move away from more traditional research themes in physics or chemistry toward more interdisciplinary medical research.