Each metropolis with a solid history, in addition to the visible part, also has an invisible, underground one. There is also Metro-2 in Moscow, all data about which is covered with a veil of secrecy.
The secret "understudy" differs from the main metro by its desertedness, size, greater depth and austere decoration. How else? Metro-2 should not solve transport problems, but shelter the country's leadership and military command in the event of a nuclear conflict, or facilitate their evacuation to a safe place. It also implies the ability to transfer troops under the ground along with equipment, if hostilities unfold directly on the territory of the capital.
No gloss and no marble
The lines of the secret metro were laid at a depth of 50 to 250 meters, which is explained by the sequence of construction of these communications: first, they began to lay an ordinary metro, and only then part of the technical tunnels began to be used for the needs of the new subway.
If the first Moscow metro in the country also played the role of a kind of front facade of the country, then its secret understudy is tailored for emergencies. Electric locomotives here are simple, but reliable, capable of being powered not only from the contact network, but also from batteries. The stations are not decorated with marble, but are ordinary platforms. The rails are embedded in concrete so that, if necessary, vehicles can also move through the tunnels. There are no contact rails.
It is difficult to estimate the dimensions of Metro-2, apparently, we are talking about four main lines, the length of the largest of them - Chekhovskoy - exceeds 60 kilometers.
In its modern form, these underground communications connect the Kremlin complex with some objects on the Arbat and the building of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Smolenskaya embankment area. Further, they stretch towards Victory Park and the former Stalinist Blizhnyaya dacha in Kuntsevo.
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Star for Andropov
They say that two departments are responsible for Metro-2 - the Special Objects Service of the Main Directorate of Special Programs of the President (which arose on the basis of the former 15th Main Directorate of the KGB of the USSR) and the 9th Central Directorate of the Ministry of Defense. This is understandable: part of the underground city is focused on the implementation of military tasks, and part - on ensuring the security of the top leadership.
The creation of Metro-2 began during the Great Patriotic War. During the Nazi bombing of Moscow at the Kirovskaya station, Stalin was equipped with a bomb shelter with a study, a communications center, a room for members of the Politburo, etc. Ordinary trains did not stop at the station, the platform was separated from the tracks by a plywood wall. This did not suit the protection of the leader; at her insistence, the construction of a special underground line from the Kremlin to Blizhnyaya dacha began, which was completed only in the early 1950s.
The threat of a nuclear war gave impetus to the construction of new lines. Judging by various sources of information (by the way, not officially refuted), one of them is the so-called. Sovminovskaya - starts from the Government House (the former building of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR) and, possibly (but not necessarily), is connected with the Kuntsevskaya branch. Partially passing under Kutuzovsky Avenue, then it crosses the Kievsky railway station, where the communications bunker is located. One of the stations is probably located under the Ukraina hotel. Further, passing under Berezhkovskaya embankment and Mosfilmovskaya street, the line ends in the area of the special vehicle base of the Federal Security Service.
There are versions that in October 1993, part of the defenders of the White House left it precisely through underground communications (but whether Metro-2 is a big question).
The Sovminovskaya line was completed by the summer of 1974. Leonid Brezhnev was shown a government bunker, apartments of up to 180 square meters for each member of the Central Committee with an office, a recreation room, a dining room and a bathroom. Perhaps it was as a result of this visit that Yuri Andropov, the Chairman of the KGB, who supervised the work, was awarded the Star of the Hero of Socialist Labor. Although the official wording sounded more vague: "for great services to the Communist Party and the Soviet state and in connection with the sixtieth anniversary of his birth."
The entrance to the "underworld"
Of the other lines and branches, it is worth highlighting the area starting under Ramenkam, where there are a depot, a service station and a bunker for local residents. According to the former Moscow Mayor Gavriil Popov, this top-secret line leads to the building of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and then to the government airport Vnukovo-2, and it was through it that the GKChP members were evacuated in August 1991.
In Ramenki, at a depth of 180-200 meters, there is also the largest underground bunker in Moscow, designed for 15 thousand people and connected by tunnels with other objects.
An American journalist wrote in 1992: the reserves for this underground city will last for 30 years.
To connect the central regions with the Ramenskoye complex, there is another 25-kilometer line stretching from the General Staff to NIBO "Science". Diggers who got to it from the usual metro stumbled upon double gates and shared their impressions: “It is dark here (between the gates) until 1 am, although two very dusty spotlights are installed at the very second gate, and lamps are running along the ceiling. One searchlight is connected to the working lighting network … The space between the rails is occupied by a reinforcing mesh with two hatches (with locks). There is a drainage grate in front of the very second gate …”.
And in 1996, on the basis of the former Reserve Command Post of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief Stalin, a branch of the Museum of the Armed Forces was opened in Izmailovo. According to the authors of the exposition, the facility is connected to the Kremlin by a 17-kilometer underground road. But it is still wrong to attribute this item to Metro-2.
In fact, it is not possible to get to Metro-2 from any ordinary metro station, which were also built initially and as bomb shelters. And it is not at all a fact that the corridor, which the digger refers to as secret, is not a technical tunnel of an ordinary subway.
Based on information from the perestroika press and reports from its own intelligence, in 1991 the US Department of Defense published a report "Military forces in transition" with an attached diagram of Metro-2, which, of course, is not the ultimate truth. And the term "Metro-2" itself appeared only in 1992, when chapters from the novel "Hell" by Vladimir Gonik were published, which takes place in underground Moscow bunkers.
Then, at the peak of interest in this topic, the dimensions of Metro-2 in journalistic publications began to acquire Homeric dimensions: it was believed that they go far into the suburbs.
The underground city keeps its secrets well. Former head of the Moscow Metro, Dmitry Gaev, when asked: "Does Metro-2 exist?" answered briefly: "I would be surprised if it did not exist."
Governments love depth
Washington, DC, the Capitol buildings are connected by a three-line government subway system, and visitors can only move along it with one of the employees. In Beijing, as underground shelters for the top leadership, as well as to provide military communications, three stations, so called. "Lines-1". Their existence is not classified. And in the capital of the DPRK, Pyongyang, at a depth of about 300 meters, there are secret tunnels for the evacuation of top leaders in case of emergencies.
Magazine: Secrets of the USSR No. 1 / C, Dmitry Mityurin