Secret corners in the Moscow metro

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

There were already classified places in the Moscow metro before his birth in 1935. The project of the second stage included the Sovetskaya station under Sovetskaya Square. between the stations "Teatralnaya" (in those days "Sverdlov Square") and "Mayakovskaya". In the process of construction, by personal order of Stalin, "Sovetskaya" was adapted for the underground control center of the Moscow civil defense headquarters.

The unreasonably long stretch that arose as a result of its closure in the very center of Moscow was liquidated only on 1979-15-07 by the construction of the Gorkovskaya - Tverskaya. The implementation of this project was very expensive, even during the times of stagnation. If you look closely at the section in front of Tverskaya, you can see traces of Sovetskaya.

The next was the pre-war (as well as post-war) project of modernization of "Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya" to connect the Kremlin with both Stalin's bunkers. Before the war, Stalin planned to build the largest stadium not only for the expected Olympics. The idea of a stadium of the USSR (or Peoples) was pushed to him by the massive propaganda events often carried out by the Nazis in Germany for the German people and so beloved by the Fuhrer. Under the future stadium (a piece of which was nevertheless built), a bunker was erected for Stalin with a small performance hall and a tunnel to the stands. Two automobile tunnels were built: to the Kremlin (and the tunnel gates are located exactly under the Spassky Gate) and to the area of the Sokolniki metro station. There is a transition from Izmailovsky Park to the bunker. The middle track at the station, in addition to the planned large passenger traffic, bore the function of Stalin's special route during ceremonies. Notice the graceful light bulbs that illuminate the middle path. They are not on the extreme paths. A similar bunker of Stalin was built under his dacha in Kuntsevo (there is also a car tunnel from the public reception of the Ministry of Defense at Myasnitskaya, 37 through the Kremlin). Only the specialists of the Ministry of Emergency Situations know about it: right above it is the Central Regional Center of this department. Stalin's suspiciousness is known. From the first days of the war, he hesitated whether to stay in the capital or leave with the government to Kuibyshev (now Samara).

When the bombing of Moscow became more frequent, he ordered the construction of a bomb shelter, which was dug in Kuntsevo at a depth of fifteen meters. In order to completely protect the leader, cast-iron rails were used as floors. According to the Colonel of the Ministry of Emergency Situations Sergei Cherepanov, the structure will withstand a direct hit from an aerial bomb today. The entrance to the bunker is an ordinary door, which you will find in any entrance, with a combination lock. A very clean staircase with railings leads underground. The complete feeling is as if you are descending into the basement of an ordinary residential building. Stalin did not go up the stairs. Especially for him, an elevator was launched, where parquet was laid, the walls were sheathed with wooden panels. The elevator connected the bomb shelter with Stalin's dacha, under which the bunker was dug. In order to exclude accidental meetings between Joseph Stalin and service personnel, several corridors were built. In the corridor for diesel operators, cooks and others, the walls were covered with white tiles. Stalin walked from the elevator along the parquet floor and surveyed the marble walls. In the bomb shelter, Joseph Stalin chaired meetings of the Defense Council. For this, a spacious office was set aside - "Generalskaya". Its walls are finished with oak and Karelian birch. In the middle is an oval oak table. By the wall there are tables for officers on duty and stenographers. Eight-arm chandeliers have been preserved in the bomb shelter from the war. And only rectangular modern fluorescent lamps remind that the year is not 1942. A small corridor separated the chief's bedroom from the meeting room. The bedroom is very small. It only contained a bed and a bedside table. Because of this bunker, on 05.04.1953 the mysterious section of the deep foundation "Revolution Square" - "Kievskaya" was launched. Stalin was afraid of a repetition of the incident with an aerial bomb hitting the blocking of a tunnel on the stretch between Smolenskaya and Arbatskaya. The site was completed in record time, in less than two years, despite the fact that the track ran under extremely unfavorable hydrogeological conditions. For the first time, it was necessary to solve the problem of connecting tunnels of two radii - the existing one and the new one, without stopping the normal movement. For this, a tunnel of increased diameter was built, which, as it were, accommodated the existing tunnel. The tunnel behind the "Kievskaya" was passed and further right up to the Victory Park. According to the plan of 1932, the line to Kuntsevo and Krylatskoye was to be completely underground. And it was supposed to pass next to Stalin's dacha. When the new express line to Kuntsevskaya was being built, this tunnel was used. This explains such a strange choice of track.

The first serious information about these metro tunnels appeared in 1992 in one of the issues of "AiF". There, some aunt wrote that her friend worked as a cleaner in the KGB and she was taken to special facilities on special metro lines. AiF replied that this system is described in the US Department of Defense's annual publication on the Soviet Armed Forces for 1991. The weekly published a simplified map and list of lines as of 91.

In 92, other publications took up the topic. With the light hand of the Ogonyok magazine, the system was named Metro-2. Through the efforts of the yellow press, an unrealistic amount of nonsense and tales was put into play, due to which most Muscovites generally doubt the existence of the system. There are a couple of articles that I have not read yet: "In the second circle" in "Moscow News" for 08/02/92 and in "Komsomolskaya Pravda" in one of the Saturday issues of autumn 1992 on page 3. The topic was worked out in 92 in its stories on Saturday TV program "Center". In 1993 and beyond, the topic of Metro-2 almost completely disappeared from the press, someone apparently pressed very seriously.

So Metro-2

Line 1

Commissioned in 1967 (presumably, some part was launched earlier). Length 27 km. Stations:

• Kremlin
• Library named after Lenin (for evacuation to the underground city in Ramenki of all readers who are in the halls at the moment of the signal "Atom"; maybe the Kremlin station and the Library are the same station)
• A yellow house with a turret on Smolenskaya Square designed by Academician Zholtovsky (this is a special house, it has entrances to 2 metro systems: the Filevskaya line and Metro-2; maybe under every nomenclature house in Moscow)
• former residence of the first and last President of the USSR on Lenin Hills
• underground city under Ramenki (maximum capacity 12,00015,000 inhabitants) with a pedestrian tunnel to the main building of Moscow State University (entrance at the checkpoint of zone B)

• The FSB Academy and the Institute of Cryptography, Communications and Informatics of the FSB of Russia (a huge brick building at the entrance to the Olympic village. In one of the rarely open gates in the building, you can see a long corridor going far down, illuminated on the sides by small lamps)

• General Staff Academy
• emergency exit somewhere in Solntsevo
• government airport Vnukovo-2

Line 2

Completed at the beginning of 1987. Length 60 km (it turns out that the world record for metro tunnels). It starts from the Kremlin, then to the south, parallel to the Varshavskoe highway through Vidnoe to the government boarding house "Bor" (there is a reserve command post of the General Staff).

There is a mothballed station on the line, to which the same mysterious passage from the "Tretyakovskaya" Kalininskaya line leads.

It is likely that the line should be extended to the new Voronovo bunker (about 74 km south of the Kremlin). There is still inaccurate information that the line goes somewhere beyond Chekhov. Summer residents from Alachkovo talk about a local military town, that they have an underground structure that goes 30 floors underground, they say, they were on such a training: they stand in a huge hall (the eyewitness could not say the size, but he says "just huge") simple train, they set it on fire from the metro, and then extinguish it. Those living in Kryukovo (which is at Chekhov's) sometimes wake up at night from the fact that a train passes under them. Summer residents in Vidnoye say that in the early 80s they dug something there and very deeply. They remember only in a few places the pits are large and deep, but the walls were reinforced with boards or something else, and the pits were one after another, that is, on the same line.

The construction base of the second line is located somewhere in Tsaritsino.

Line 3

Delivered also at the beginning of 1987. Length 25 km. It starts from the Kremlin, then Lubyanka (maybe there is a station near the Bolshoi Theater, since from the fountain on Teatralnaya square it was possible to get into the Metro-2 tunnel), the headquarters of the air defense of the Moscow military district at Myasnitskaya, 33 (located next to the public reception of the Ministry of Defense on Myasnitskaya, 37, which in turn has a car tunnel to Stalin's dacha in Kuntsevo. During the war, the Kirovskaya station was the location of the General Staff and air defense departments. Trains did not stop there, the platform was fenced off from the tracks by a high plywood wall After the war, traces of this activity were destroyed for a long time. Under the station and the building on Myasnitskaya, 33, a new bunker for the air defense headquarters was built and the Central Command and Control Center for the Air Defense (and in the same place the Main Headquarters of the Air Force and Air Defense) in the Zarya village of the Balashikha region, where the military town with 20,000 inhabitants.

The line runs parallel to Entuziastov highway and through Izmailovsky Park. Most likely, it has a station next to the Red Gate (this one is questionable, but there is definitely a huge Stalinist bunker there - with a hatch exit to the Red Gate platform).

The people working in the Zarya bunker are called "moles". And also - "miners". Every day they enter an inconspicuous-looking brick house and take high-speed elevators down to a depth of 122 meters. The last check of documents, a machine gunner next to a small border post, massive iron doors that slam shut automatically at the first danger - and our heroes find themselves at one of the most secret military facilities in Russia. This underground city is the Central Command Post (CCC) of the Air Defense Forces, the holy of holies of our defensive power. Even the first government officials and important foreign guests cannot get here. Any excursion requires the personal permission of the Minister of Defense. The party ordered our soldiers to bury themselves in the ground back in 1958. All the General Staffs and the Central Command Center were urgently moved to the nearest Moscow suburbs. The "cold" war could turn into a nuclear war at any moment, and the very first bombings of the capital could leave the army without "eyes", "ears" and "tongue". To prevent this, they decided to urgently bury all the most valuable things in the ground and lead the troops from powerful bunkers. The underground city was built in a Stakhanov way: already in the 61st year, the first "moles" celebrated a housewarming party. For this, thanks to Marshal of the Soviet Union Pavel Batitsky and metro builders - they were invited to perform an important task of the Motherland. In the bunker city, everything is provided to survive the end of the world: its own power plants, fire extinguishing systems, water and air purification, sewage, food supplies. They say there are even places where you can sleep comfortably and on white linen. Even the women who work here do not particularly complain about the conditions. The transport problem in the "city" built for 1,100 people has also been resolved. The staff has four lifts - two passenger and two freight.

Line 4

The information about her is almost fictional. The budget of Russia in 1997 included the amount for its construction. Moreover, this fact caused a scandal and a trial in Congress, since they had to build at the expense of American loans. It will start in the Smolenskaya or Kosygin area, as an offshoot from the first line, then under Victory Park (where it will use the infrastructure in conjunction with the planned branch of the regular metro) to the new GO A-50 bunker at 48 Rublevskoye Highway - next to Yeltsin's house on Autumn Boulevard. Then the sanatorium / bunker complex in Barvikha.

The entire Metro-2 system was previously in the 15th department of the KGB (underground workers). This directorate later came under the wing of the FSB. Metro-2 has nothing to do with the Presidential Property Management Department headed by P. Borodin. He was building and is building it some kind of box, where people are recruited from an ordinary metro building. And they live in Odintsovo.

The system is little known, since it is not a government metro, that is, it does not transport top government officials (including Yeltsin) in peacetime. The main function is readiness for evacuation. In addition, economic transportation: cargo, service personnel, etc.

The entire system is single-track (it is stupid to build 2 tracks, because even in the case of an Atom signal - evacuation in case of an atomic war or something else terrible - the entire traffic flow is directed in one direction). Unlike a conventional metro, there are no ventilation shafts from the tunnels. The construction was carried out by a closed method, and without intermediate mines (like a tunnel under the English Channel). The contact rail is not used on long hauls - only on central ones. One of the metro trains of the second or third lines consists of 4 cars - at the ends there are two contact-battery electric locomotives "L", in the center there are 2 saloon cars with curtains Ezh6, made on the basis of the Ezh3 series with new nodes from 81-714. The train underwent scheduled repairs at the Izmailovo metro depot in the early 90s.

There is also information about Metro-2 cars from an informed friend from the Moscow Metro administration. All this was released between 1986 and 1987 in Mytishchi, just when Metro-2 lines 2 and 3 were built:

For the transportation of household goods, trailed platforms UP-2 or MK 2/15 are used.

The tunnels under the Metro-2 station are made of tubing 1.5 times larger than the tunnels. They are reminiscent of the track hall (one third) of an ordinary 3-vaulted deep station. An exception should be the stations under the Lenin Library, the Kremlin and Ramenki.