In the declassified archives of the NKVD for 1939, there is information about the top-secret KUR (Kiev fortified region) for that time. A long-term military field defense complex with engineering barriers was prepared to protect the old borders of the Soviet Union, even before the annexation of the lands of Western Ukraine, Western Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina, according to the non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany.
The dossier mentions that the secret bunker as the central command post of the entire protective fortification fire line on Ukrainian soil was built in an atmosphere of complete secrecy exclusively by the military under the control of the engineering units of the NKVD (People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs). The underground structure was intended for the command post of the most Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the USSR, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin.
According to the preserved old map of the Kiev fortified area, displayed in the showcase of the central museum, the KUR had 257 fortified bunkers (long-term firing points). A whole system of trenches around the area's reinforced concrete fortifications was intended to house artillery and infantry. In some pillboxes, up to a hundred soldiers could fit; in the dugouts built inside, supplies of drinking water and food supplies were stored in case of a long siege. But nowhere, on a single surviving map of that wartime, Stalin's secret bunker is indicated. Is the special bunker near Kiev a myth or a well-thought-out military fortification of the headquarters really created?
The underground structure, the construction of which in accordance with the classified plan of the military department was carried out somewhere near the Ukrainian capital, went underground as much as three floors deep. The bottom floor of the huge three-tiered bunker was at a depth of 47 meters and was physically inaccessible for either artillery shells or aerial bombs. The military complex, according to the technical archival documentation, had its own branched system of air-ventilated passages, corridors, autonomous power supply, telephone connection with the outside world and radio communication.
The archival documents indicate that at the beginning of World War II, valuables and documents were hidden in the ready-made secret command post, which they did not manage to evacuate from Kiev before the surrender of the city to the German Nazis in September 1941.
Around there was a twenty-kilometer mined area in which snipers were supposed to operate. After shelling the enemy, for the partisans to retreat, during the pursuit by the enemy in the minefields, narrow passages were provided in the direction of the forest, and next to them there were camouflaged firing points that, according to the calculations of military engineers, could suddenly hit the pursuers, capturing them in a "fire bag". However, such an optimistic plan existed only on paper, because the fortified area was designed at the beginning of the 20s of the 20th century and by the 40s was hopelessly outdated, due to the fact that both the tactics of fighting and the weapons of the opposing armies had changed. The main offensive force of the enemy was no longer the cavalry, against which machine-gun pillboxes were prepared, but powerful German tanks at that time.
Moving deeper into the country, parts of the fascist army really stumbled upon pillboxes, however, the heroism and stoic courage of the Russian flamethrowers, who stood at their combat post to the end, did not become a particular obstacle to the Nazis. German troops simply took them in the ring for several months, dooming them to painful death from hunger, and steadily moved on.
Unlike similar fortifications, for example, the continuous Mannerheim line in Finland, the French Maginot line or the German solid Siegfried line, Soviet indestructible pillboxes were scattered, and the gap between them sometimes reached 50 kilometers. Due to a series of miscalculations and mistakes in the construction of the fortified area, the Nazis so easily and quickly managed to pass through the Stalinist line of defense.
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Historians suggest that it was from the mysterious underground bunker that signals were sent to radio-controlled explosive devices in the period from September 24, five days after the beginning of the German occupation of Kiev, and until September 28, 1941. At intervals of 15 minutes, mines exploded one after another, before the war secretly planted by special units of the NKVD in hotels, shops, cinemas, buildings of Kiev institutions and residential buildings along Khreshchatyk. The explosions blazed the central city street and the adjacent streets for several days.
This large-scale sabotage led to huge German losses and caused colossal psychological damage to the highest fascist leadership in Germany. Having intercepted the direction of radio signals, the special reconnaissance German units of the Abwehr then looked for a secret bunker during the two years of the occupation of the Ukrainian land, but the search for a dangerous underground Soviet military fortified center was unsuccessful for the Nazis.
The mention of the command post (CP) is also found in the materials from 1939 of the inspection of the construction of structures in the Kiev fortified area along the old state border by the services of the People's Commissariat, the Ministry of Defense and the NKVD. In the protocol №8 / 07-KRS-1939 of the results of the check, there are records of deficiencies in the central command post of this defensive line, located in the village of Svyatoshino. They say that after a second inspection right on the eve of the war, the following deficiencies were still identified in the Svyatoshinsky command post: the command post was not equipped with elevators, water supply, and a diesel power plant was not installed in it. From these documents it follows that the secret bunker and the command post of Stalin, which the Nazis never discovered, really existed. Indeed, the researchers found the legendary underground bunker in the indicated place,but now it is completely abandoned and it is being washed away by groundwater, so soon nothing will remain of the most powerful heroic pre-war project.