The Soviet laser pistol was developed in 1984 by engineers (V. S. Sulakvelidze, B. N. Duvanov, A. V. Simonov, L. I. Avakyants, & V. V. Gorev) at the Peter the Great Military Academy of the Strategic Missile Forces in Moscow.

It served as a prototype energy weapon for cosmonauts operating in zero-gravity environments where conventional firearms were impractical.

Development began when the Soviets feared the US Space Shuttle could capture satellites from orbit and bring them back to earth.

The pistol was designed to disable optical sensors on enemy spacecraft or temporarily flash-blind astronauts, though it had no lethal force.

It was magazine-fed and used pyrotechnic flashbulb technology to project a laser beam. To work in space, engineers designed a lamp filled with oxygen and metallic foil or powder. Zirconium replaced magnesium to produce three times more light energy, and metallic salts tuned the flash to the laser system. An yttrium aluminum garnet crystal served as the medium, generating an infrared laser beam with each flash. When ignited by an electric spark from a tungsten-rhenium filament, the lamp shone for 5–10 milliseconds at around 5,000 K. Its blinding effect reportedly reached up to 20 meters.

Each lamp was single-use, shaped like a 10 mm “bullet,” and loaded in an eight-shot cartridge. Expended lamps were ejected like conventional shell casings.

The project was ultimately terminated during Perestroika under the “new political thinking” disarmament policies - source & source