Thirty years ago, the Russian military allegedly developed plans to build a base on the Moon. According to MosNews, the Novaya Gazeta weekly got the story from the project-deputy general designer of the General Machine Building Design Bureau (KBOM) who was directly involved in the project.
“Soviet scientists considered the Moon to be a very good place for a strategic headquarters as nuclear strikes on its surface would lose most of their destructive force. As the moon has no atmosphere, no shockwave could spread there and the radioactive dust would immediately fall out back on the surface without an atmosphere to carry it.
The designer also said that the USA had also developed a lunar base project and the Soviet scientists had been aware of these plans.”
The source, Aleksandr Yegorov, said the Soviet plan was scrapped because… (surprise!) it was too damn expensive.
Link (to the MosNews article) Link (to a history of Russian lunar base programs)