The facility is notable for containing what is believed to be the world's largest Marx generator, which was originally created to help test lightning insulation in military aircraft.

[1] Originally built sometime in the 1970s, the facility was at first used for a mix of military and scientific testing being maintained by the Moscow Power Engineering Institute.

The building was to be used as an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapons testing facility, with commissioning planned for the fourth quarter of 1985, but construction was never completed: the dome collapsed in the morning of 25 January 1985, and was later demolished.

[4][5] This resulted in I. N. Dmitriev [ru], head of the Construction Department of the CPSU Central Committee, being removed from his post and replaced by Boris Yeltsin in April 1985.

Later a facility called the "Stationary electromagnetic pulse simulator 'Allure'" (Russian: "Стационарный имитатор электромагнитного импульса 'Аллюр'"), or simply "Allure", was built on the former site of the dome.