Moscow
| Type | Full Metro |
| Stations | 164 |
| Lines | |
| Length In Subway | |
| Length Topside | |
| Total Length | |
| Year Built | 1935 |
| Address | |
| Links | MOCKOBCKOE
METPO - Art Lebedev's comprehensive Moscow Metro page. Great stuff!
|
I don't know much Russian buth
there's a new page on what appears to be the Moscow subway at this
link as of August 30, 1998.
A 5 km monorail is also
under construction
in Moscow, and scheduled
to open in 2003. The line will connect Botanichesky Sad metro station on the
orange line to Timiryazevskaya station on the gray line.
Monorail article
Official home page
article (in Russian)
with photos
Much has been said about it. Books have been written and "maps" drawn. Constructors keep bumping into it every now and then when developing Mayor Luzhkov's projects, and Muscovites blame occasional street collapses on it. However, officials still feel uneasy when asked about Moscow's underground city and the special "governmental metro system" or "Metro-2," choosing to deny its existence.
Diggers of the Underground Planet, headed by Vadim Mikhailov, self-pronounced king of the subterranean world, claim it's a vast network, some of which they have been lucky to see, and say it should be used for the good of the city. Even in Soviet times, when much was closed to the average citizen by the heavy veil of state secrecy, there were rumors of an underground system and tales of the almost palatial beauty of the hidden bunkers.
Moscow old-timers speak of Josef Stalin's special metro, which could take him into any part of the city. The rumors stemmed from his ability to appear in different places within very short intervals of time. For a long time there have been whispers of a direct line connecting the Kremlin with the government airport, Vnukovo-2.
Residents of Prospekt Vernadskovo have always wondered about the idle plot of land spanning the way to Yugo-Zapadnaya station, an obvious place to be built on which has never been used. Commuters from the Moscow region district of Mytischi, which houses a metro wagon construction plant, have long asked for a metro line, confident there was one anyway as no one had ever seen wagons transported by land.
As construction of the metro began in 1930s, drills and crowbars delved a long way down to provide not only transportation but also shelter in case of bombing, which came in use during WWII. Kirovskaya station (now Chistiye Prudy) was closed off to house the military's headquarters. This was supplemented by a huge network of bunkers of various sizes and functions -- of which the Diggers have counted over 1 million, including 64 main outlets -- the largest being under Myasnitskaya ulitsa (Chistiye Prudy), housing the army command headquarters, and the Ramenki underground city in the southwest of Moscow.
Construction of the bunker system with its connecting channels was kicked off in 1929 under Stalin's orders, along with the public metro, and was later branded by people as "Metro-2." According to Mikhailov, the clandestine lines are not only hooked onto the main metro, but also have access to nearly every ministry, research institute or plant of strategic importance. There are large bunkers under the Rossiya Hotel, the White House and the Christ the Savior cathedral.
Mikhailov, who says he was invited by the Defense Ministry to inspect some of the levels of the underground system, says the web is "very dense and covers most of the city," with bunkers and channels located from 30 to 120 meters down with "30 percent more efficiency than the bunker system in New York."
The system was built to serve a variety of functions, from simple storage rooms to grand halls and studies -- with an ever present statuette of Stalin -- to provide shelter for the party elite in the case of nuclear attack. Mikhailov remembers how during one such venture he found a door leading to a huge dining hall, "obviously for people who worked there." Mikhailov says the system was serviced by as many as 3,000-4,000 people daily.
"Just imagine, they somehow had to get there, so there must have been transportation, there were enormous food store-rooms, concert halls and even experimental greenhouses..." Mikhailov tells with excitement.
The officialdom tend to deny the story. However, a special body has been created to oversee the system -- the 15th Section of the Chief Directorate of Special Presidential Programs. A spokesperson for the Moscow metro said: "We do not know anything about underground cities or this )Metro-2.' Maybe it exists, maybe not, but it has no relation to the public system."
Mikhailov says that with information about the underground tunnels available to only a few, the ministries "very often themselves do not know what is in their cellars." He remembers that during excavation works for the shopping mall on Manezhnaya square, workers came across a wall, behind which was a furnished bunker. A moment later, a high ranking serviceman came from a side passage to tell them off in the best language he could. Within half an hour the bunker was immured and all trace of it vanished.
Russian journalists, foreign correspondents and other adventurous types have descended into the depths of Moscow's innards, often to find only locked doors and blocked passages. With the secret construction slowed down by the 1970s, many tunnels and bunkers have not been used for lack of money and have decayed, filling with water and rubbish, and threatening to collapse -- raising the potential of more accidents such as last year's collapse on Bolshaya Dmitrovka.
Mikhailov has a plan to turn the murky underground into a smart-looking city, with museums and walking tours and underground highways -- plans perhaps worthy of Mayor Yury Luzhkov's imagination. "I have come up with the idea more than once, but as I see it, the situation has to change first," says Mikhailov, who seriously believes that, if he can find his way through the maze of city government politics, one day, all of Moscow will be able to utilize this underground city.
