None of the Muscovites have ever seen the way the country's leaders got to the stands of the Mausoleum during parades and demonstrations. And this is not surprising. After all, the way there lies through a comfortable tunnel connecting the Kremlin with Lenin's tomb and many other city objects. In fact, underground Moscow looks like a "full of holes" Dutch cheese - it is all cut up by secret passages …
Historical background: The grandmother of Ivan the Terrible, the famous Byzantine princess Sophia Paleologue, began to explore underground Moscow. When she married the Russian tsar, she brought with her in her dowry a two-headed eagle - the coat of arms of Byzantium, which has since become the state coat of arms of Russia, and her personal library. And in order to preserve the priceless scrolls, I ordered Aristotle Fioravanti, a leading specialist in underground structures, from Europe, and ordered him to build a three-tiered white-stone "safe" near Moscow.
Ivan the Terrible, to match his grandmother, became a big fan of underground romance. An entire army of excavators was already working under him. A web of passages stretched from the Kremlin towards the future Zemlyanoy Val, into a remote forest thicket - now the Red Gate, towards the future Myasnitskaya Street …
Later, a whole network of branches was laid from this gallery under the Menshikov tower, under the "Masonic houses", under a whole scattering of buildings in the Khokhlovka - Solyanka - Vorontsov pole triangle, under the former house of Prince Pozharsky, under the former house of the Secret Chancellery …
One of the exits of the underground labyrinth from the time of Ivan the Terrible still exists today and is located in the basement of a house at the corner of Herzen Street and Vosstaniya Square.
Our first encounter with the problem of the existence of the underground Moscow kingdom happened quite by accident.
In the lake of one of the capital's parks, all the fish suddenly died. The management of the park reported indignantly: “The underground plant located under the park is again hooligan. From its accidental emissions, not just a fish, soon half of Moscow will be bent …"
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A second similar object also surfaced unexpectedly. When asked why, with an acute shortage of space for housing, a huge vacant lot was built up with metal garages, the architects explained: "You can't build anything massive there - it will fall into an underground workshop …"
And then a natural task arose: to find out what is hidden under the capital's pavements, except for the world-famous Moscow metro? In search of information, we met stalkers - a group of young treasure hunters who, at their own peril and risk, comb the Moscow dungeons in the hope of finding ancient coins, icons, books …
It was from them that we learned many interesting facts about the secret womb of Moscow.
These very young guys consider themselves followers of the scientist historian and archaeologist Stelletsky, little-known in Russia, and use his development in their searches. Ignatiy Yakovlevich Stelletsky devoted more than forty years of his life to the search for "the library of Sophia Palaeologus", or, as it is often called, "the library of Ivan the Terrible."
At the beginning of the century, he examined many of the Kremlin's underground passages. And after the revolution he applied to the GPU for permission to search for new dungeons. Such permission was granted to him, but on condition that he would never and anywhere publish the results of his research without special permission. Stelletsky agreed to this enslaving agreement.
He worked with the metro builders, studying all the underground corridors that came across the route of the subway. And all his notes and diaries invariably went to the safe of the state security service … After all, under Soviet rule, the underground kingdom of Ivan the Terrible was taken under the guardianship of the KGB Bunker Department.
Bit by bit, the stalkers were gathering information concerning the ancient secret passages. Along the way, they learned about the so-called "new buildings". Employees of the Bolshoi Theater told them about the wide tunnel leading to the Kremlin.
As you know, Stalin liked to hold party conferences at the Bolshoi Theater. During these events, all the props (stands, slogans, etc.) were delivered to the theater in a truck via an underground passage. Having estimated where this path should run approximately, the stalkers tried to get into it from the communication tunnels. But they did not succeed, as they were stopped by tightly sealed metal doors.
But they easily got into the underground garage of the building of the former CMEA. The "little trick" helped: you squeeze the alarm contact roller, fix it with something - and go through any door. In principle, those who are not afraid to descend into the “world of the underground” can get through sewers, cable and other passages into the basement of almost any building in Moscow.
But I must say that this is very unsafe. Stalkers tell:
“The womb of Moscow is populated quite densely. Firstly, homeless people have chosen it. Secondly, mafia groups like to arrange warehouses for illegal products there. And, God forbid, catch their eye! Thirdly, the tunnels are inhabited by feral dogs that hunt rats, each other and, in general, all living things that come their way. And fourthly, if you accidentally get into the "closed zone" of the dungeon, there is a risk of running into a bullet from a guard. After all, there, under the ground, something, and there are enough "secret objects"."
… An inconspicuous hatch at the bottom of the fountain, right behind the back of the monument in the very center of the capital, hides one of the country's most important secrets. Surprisingly, this entrance is not guarded by anyone. Probably because not everyone, a daredevil, dares to descend into the pitch darkness of a thirty-story abyss along the slimy and rusty brackets of a narrow metal staircase.
And yet such people were found. They said that there is an entrance to the mysterious Metro-2 system, the lines of which are not indicated on any diagram. From where and where the trains with the dimmed lights go - one can only guess.
Vladimir Gonik, who worked for six years as a doctor in the Defense Ministry system, claims that these branches serve a huge government bunker, built in case of a nuclear war.
How did he know about this? The fact is that his patients were people who performed special tasks, who were subjected to increased physical and mental stress - pilots, submariners, illegal immigrants who worked abroad …
From time to time, people with surprisingly pale skin came to him, as if they had not seen the sun for years. Bit by bit, they collected information from their individual phrases and short answers, which ultimately formed a fairly complete picture.
If you believe the words of Tonik, then in the south of the capital, a cyclopean structure is hidden deep underground, capable of giving shelter to ten thousand people for many years. Special security guards and staff keep underground “streets”, “houses”, cinemas, gyms with swimming pools there in perfect order …
One of the Moscow newspapers wrote that Boris Yeltsin was simply shocked when he visited a certain underground city located under a huge vacant lot near Vernadsky Avenue. This story surprisingly coincides not only with Tonik's information, but also with a map published in the annual publication of the US Department of Defense “Soviet Armed Forces. 1991.
It depicts three special metro lines linking an underground point under the Kremlin with suburban and city bunkers. The southwestern underground line passes by Vernadsky Avenue and leads to the government airfield Vnukovo (27 kilometers from Moscow), the southern line ends 60 kilometers from the city in the shelter of the General Staff and the country's leadership, the eastern subway stretches 25 kilometers to the air defense command complex.
And in the American collection "Soviet Armed Forces" for 1988, there is even a diagram of the floors and premises of an underground bunker for the Soviet leadership.
But the bunker state security department carefully keeps the secrets of the dungeons from their compatriots. And here's the proof. After the failure of the coup, the former first secretary of the Moscow City Party Committee, Prokofiev, fled from the building of the Central Committee of the CPSU through one of these secret passages, and they could not detain him, since even those who were entrusted with this did not know the secrets of the Bunker Administration.
However, recently the curtain of secrecy that hid the Moscow undergrounds has begun to open under the wind of change. According to the data leaked to the press, it can already be judged that at least fifteen large underground factories, connected by many kilometers of tunnels, are operating in Moscow today.
The journalists have already been allowed into the bunker of the headquarters of the fire department near Smolenskaya Square, the underground building of ITAR - TASS under one of the stations, the bunker of the headquarters of civil defense under Tverskaya Street …
Reluctantly, the heavy doors of the A-type structures also swung open. Huge anti-nuclear bomb shelters for the civilian population began to appear relatively recently - since 1984. Now there are about a hundred of them, and, which is natural in our time, they do not stand idle in anticipation of an unknown war, but regularly serve business.
“Some of them have underground parking lots,” says V. Lukshin, head of the engineering department of the Moscow Civil Defense Headquarters, “others have gyms, shops, warehouses … Not a single square meter was left without work. And there is even a queue for the use of facilities still under construction.
You can't hide underground life here - everything is in plain sight. But the "underground city for the government" is still a mystery with seven seals. And this is understandable: if the underworld exists, then it can serve ten thousand "chosen ones" only on condition that millions of "ordinary" people will not know about it!
