The Moscow Metro is a rapid transit system serving Moscow and the
neighboring cities of Krasnogorsk, Leutov, Lyubeltsi, and Kotelniki
in the Moscow region.Opened in 1935, the Moscow Metro initially had
one branch line that was 11 kilometers long and had 13 stations.
This was the first subway rail system in the Soviet Union.As of
2017, Moscow's subway system, excluding the Moscow Central Ring and
the Moscow Monorail, is the fifth largest in the world with 206
stations and 339.1 km of track length. Most of the system is
underground, with the deepest section being 84 meters below the Park
Pobedy station, one of the deepest in the world.
On June 15,
1931, at the Plenary Session of the CPSU Central Committee (b),
following a report by Lazar Kaganovich, First Secretary of the
Party's Moscow City Committee, it was decided to build the Moscow
Metro in order to improve the traffic situation in Moscow and
partially relieve the tram lines. in November 1931, on Rusakovskaya
Street construction of the first experimental site began. During the
design process, controversy arose over the type of future subway
station (island platforms or side platforms). As a result, it was
decided to stop at a triple-arch station with an island platform.
Escalators were to be used to bring passengers to the surface.
Moscow engineer V.L. Makovsky proved the feasibility and necessity
of laying deep tunnels under the difficult conditions of Moscow
soil.
In 1933, the technical design of the first stage of the
subway was approved, and at the same time the Metrostroy Trust began
major construction work. The route of the first stage was determined
by studying the passenger traffic of the Moscow streetcars.
The sections from Sokolniki to Komsomolskaya and from Lenin Library
to the Cultural Park were constructed in an open system. The tunnel
between the "Alexander Garden" and "Smolenskaya" stations was
constructed by the trenching method. The deep section from Okhotny
Ryad to Dzerzhinsky Square was constructed using the British shield
method. The best workers and engineers from Europe and the U.S.
worked on the underground construction, and the first test train
passed through on February 15, 1935.
On May 15, 1935, the
Moscow metro opened to traffic; the first official passenger was
Pyotr Nikolaevich Latyshev, a labor hero of the Red Proletarian
Factory, who purchased ticket number 1 of the A series at the ticket
office of the newly opened Sokolniki station on May 15, 1935. The
first stage was from Sokolniki station to Park Kultury station,
where there was a branch to Smolenskaya. This branch line became the
Fyrevskaya line and arrived at Kievskaya station in 1937, crossing
the Moscow River on a bridge. Before the outbreak of the Great
Patriotic War, two more lines were opened: in March 1938, the
Arbatkoye line was extended to Kurskaya station (this section is now
part of the Arbatko - Pokrovskaya line); in September 1938, the
Gorkovsko-Zamoskvoretskaya line was extended from Sokol station to
Sverdlov Square station (since 1990, the Teatralnaya station).
During the Great Patriotic War, the subway was used as an
air-raid shelter. During the air raids, 217 children were born in
the subway.
On October 15, 1941, L.M. Kaganovich personally
ordered the Moscow subway closed and a proposal to destroy it within
three hours as strategically important was prepared. The subway was
to be destroyed and the remaining cars and equipment taken away. On
the morning of October 16, 1941, when Moscow was plunged into panic,
the subway did not open for the first time. This was the only day in
the history of Moscow's subway system that it did not work. By
evening, the order to destroy the subway was rescinded.
The
third phase of construction of the Moscow subway began in 1940,
before the Great Patriotic War. Construction was frozen during the
first months of the war, but resumed in May 1942 after the threat of
occupation of Moscow receded; "Sverdlov Square" - "Stalin Factory"
("Avtozavodskaya" since 1956) in January 1943 (a deep tunnel crossed
the Moscow River; "Paveletskaya" and " Novokuznetsk" stations were
later opened in November 1943), and "Krusarskaya" - "Izmailovsky
Park" ("Partizanskaya" since 2005) (opened in November 1943) in
January 1944. Izmailovsky Park" ("Partizanskaya" since 2005) (4
stations). Seven stations built during the war have commemorative
plaques saying that they were built during the Patriotic War.
The first proposals to create a metro in Moscow appeared back in
1875, when the idea arose to lay a line from the Kursk station through
Lubyanskaya and Trubnaya squares to Maryina Roshcha.
In 1902,
engineers P. I. Balinsky and E. K. Knorre proposed a project with an
estimated cost of 155 million rubles, according to which the metro was
supposed to connect Zamoskvorechye with Tverskaya Zastava by an
underground line. However, the City Duma rejected it, passing a
resolution: “Messrs. Knorre and Balinsky will refuse their advances...”.
The public Duma doubted the elaboration of the project, and the tram
lobby that existed at that time also played a role (the tram then
brought a significant part of the profit to the treasury).
In the
same 1902, railway engineers A.I. Antonovich, N.I. Golinevich and N.P.
Dmitriev developed a project for the Moscow city railway. Unlike the
project of Knorre and Balinsky, it provided for both underground (in the
city center) and above-ground lines on the ground or on overpasses - on
the outskirts. Four radial lines and one circular line were planned
along the Kamer-Kollezhsky Val route with transfers.
In 1913, the
Moscow city government developed its own project for an underground
railway, consisting of three underground diameters: Tagansko-Tverskoy
(from Tverskaya Zastava to Kalitnikov); Arbatsko-Myasnitsky (from
Kalanchevskaya Square to Bryansk (Kievsky) Station) and
Vindavsko-Zamoskvoretsky (from Vindavsky (Rizhsky) Station to the
current ZIL platform).
A well-developed project by electrical
engineer M.K. Polivanov dated 1916 is known. Tunnels of three
underground diameters were connected to the tracks of the main railways,
the suburban sections of which were to be electrified.
In 1923,
the German company Siemens Bauunion GmbH began implementing the Moscow
metro project with an estimate of 30 million rubles on a concession
basis - like many infrastructure projects of the NEP period, the Moscow
metro was not a municipal enterprise, but a private investment. By 1925,
the German project, which included 80 km of tunnels and 86 stations, was
ready. However, no money was found for implementation, and the Siemens
Bauunion GmbH project remained on paper. In 1925, the Myasnitsky radius
project was developed, but it was not implemented.
The decision to build the Moscow Metro on June 15, 1931 at the Plenum
of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
after the report of the first secretary of the Moscow City Party
Committee Lazar Kaganovich was prompted by a traffic jam that completely
paralyzed the movement of all transport on January 6 of the same year.
Despite this, Kaganovich himself saw the solution to the transport
problem in the electrification of suburban routes and their use in
Moscow itself, but he had to obey I.V. Stalin. However, in essence, the
implementation of these plans can be observed in modern times in the
form of the MCD, presented in the media and PR campaigns as a metro[.
The regulations on Metrostroy were approved on September 13, 1931 by
the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR, and on October 2 - by
the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR. The first head of
Metrostroy was Pavel Rottert. The basis of the project was a modified
Siemens-Bauunion project, which involved open-pit construction. Where
this was impossible (under houses, railways), the construction of
tunnels from vertical mines was planned.
In November 1931,
construction began on the first experimental site on Rusakovskaya
Street. During the design, a dispute arose about the type of future
metro stations and what platforms they would have to have: island or
coastal ones. We decided to stop at a three-vaulted station with an
island platform. It was planned to use escalators to lift passengers to
the surface. Moscow engineer V.L. Makovsky substantiated the possibility
and necessity of laying deep tunnels in the difficult conditions of
Moscow soil.
In 1933, the technical design of the first stage of
the metro was approved, at which time the Metrostroy trust began the
main construction work. The route of the first stage was developed by
studying the passenger flow of the Moscow tram: they decided to repeat
its busiest routes using the subway.
There were still not enough
people for construction. By decision of the plenum of the Moscow City
Council convened on December 29, 1933, each Moscow enterprise was
assigned a separate section of the metro line. Workers of Moscow
factories and factories were voluntarily and compulsorily sent to many
thousands of subbotniks. Among Muscovites, the construction of the
metro, where a huge amount of money was spent, caused irritation.
When laying sections of the metro, various methods were used. The
construction of sections from the Sokolnikov station to the
Komsomolskaya station and from the Lenin Library station to the Park
Kultury station was carried out using open-pit methods. The tunnels
between the stations “Ulitsa Kominterna” (since 1990 - “Aleksandrovsky
Sad”) and “Smolenskaya” were built using the trench method. In the deep
section from Okhotny Ryad to Dzerzhinsky Square (since 1990 - Lubyanka),
shield penetration was used. When laying transitional (from shallow to
deep) sections from Komsomolskaya to Krasnye Vorota and from Okhotny
Ryad to the Lenin Library, where quicksands met, the builders used the
caisson method using compressed air, freezing and silicification of
soils , artificial water lowering. On October 15, 1934, the first train,
consisting of two cars, was launched along the newly built section of
the line.
At the beginning of the 21st century, there was an
opinion that GULAG prisoners were involved in the construction of the
Moscow metro. This is not confirmed by specialists who study the history
of transport and work with historical documents. They found out that
this opinion goes back to the 2009 work of a culturologist from the
Faculty of Arts of Moscow State University O. A. Zinovieva, who
presented this as her point of view, without backing it up with
anything. The opinion is not confirmed by the fundamental work of the
German sociologist Dietmar Neutatz of the USSR “The Moscow Metro from
the first projects to the great construction of Stalinism,” in which he
examines the social composition of the metro builders.
Initially,
the People's Commissariat of Railways of the RSFSR demanded the
construction of a line along the railway gauge to allow commuter trains
to travel along the metro tracks (similar to the Metropolitan line in
London), but later this was considered inappropriate and cancelled.
The sections from “Sokolniki” to “Komsomolskaya”, from the “Lenin
Library” to the “Park of Culture” and from “Alexandrovsky Garden” to
“Smolenskaya” were constructed using open-pit methods. In the deep
section from Okhotny Ryad to Dzerzhinsky Square, the English method of
shield penetration was used.
Qualified European and American
workers and technicians were involved in finishing work - finishing and
decorative work, laying cable networks, etc.
On February 4, 1935,
the first test train ran, and on February 6, 1935, the Moscow Metro was
put into operation. The driver of the electric train with the leaders of
the party and government was Nikolai Alekseevich Kreitsberg, a civil war
veteran who had previously participated in the launch of the first
trolleybuses in Moscow (in 1936 he was arrested by the NKVD as an enemy
of the people). The metro was opened for ordinary Muscovites on May 15,
1935.
It was originally supposed to open not on May 15, 1935, but
on November 7, 1934.
During the test run of the first train in
February 1935 (planned for January), the signaling devices responsible
for traffic safety were not ready.
The first passenger of the
Moscow Metro was a disabled person from the Russian-Japanese War,
75-year-old pensioner Yu. Kh. Zabrovsky, who later came to the opening
of the Sverdlov Square station, as well as the Kurskaya and Revolution
Square stations in 1938. Metro workers already recognized him and
invited him to the opening of new stations on the Gorky Radius. In the
newsreel, edited from filming from different stations, footage of Yu.
Kh. Zabrovsky was accompanied by a voice-over commentary that this was
the hero of labor from the Red Proletarian plant, Pyotr Nikolaevich
Latyshev, who bought a ticket on May 15, 1935 at the box office of the
newly opened Sokolniki station No. 1 series "A". And the newspaper
“Working Moscow” on May 15, 1935 also published a photograph of Yu. Kh.
Zabrovsky, calling him Pyotr Latyshev.
The launch complex
included 11.2 km of route, 13 stations and 12 trains. The first stage
ran from Sokolniki station to Okhotny Ryad station, then was divided
into two parts: one went to Park Kultury, the other to Smolenskaya. The
second of them, which later became the Filyovskaya line, reached the
Kievskaya station in 1937, crossing the Moscow River on a bridge. Before
the start of World War II, two more lines were opened. In March 1938,
the Arbat Line was extended to the Kurskaya station (now the section
belongs to the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya Line). In September 1938, the
Gorkovsko-Zamoskvoretskaya line opened - from the Sokol station to the
Sverdlov Square station.
During the Great Patriotic War, the
metro was used as a bomb shelter. During the air raids, 217 children
were born in the metro.
On October 15, 1941, L. M. Kaganovich
ordered the closure of the Moscow Metro and within 3 hours to prepare
proposals for its destruction as a strategically important facility. The
metro was supposed to be destroyed and the remaining cars and equipment
removed. On the morning of October 16, 1941, the day of panic in Moscow,
the metro was not open for the first time. This was the only time in the
history of the Moscow metro when it did not work. However, having seen
what this was leading to, the State Defense Committee recognized this
decision as erroneous - a few hours later the order to destroy the metro
was canceled and at 14:12 voltage was applied to the
Kirovsko-Frunzenskaya line, at 18:05 an order was received to resume
traffic, and at At 18:45 the first train left. The same thing happened
on the then Gorky radius (the current Zamoskvoretskaya line), but due to
the greater amount of work required, traffic on it was restarted only on
October 17.
Due to the fact that Moscow was becoming a front-line
city, the evacuation of metro equipment began in the fall of 1941. 179
metro cars were sent to Andijan, and from October 1941 to May 1942, the
rolling stock fleet was only 105 cars.
Construction of the third stage of the Moscow Metro began in
1940, even before the start of the Great Patriotic War. At the
beginning of the war it was frozen, but resumed in May 1942, after
the threat of the capture of Moscow was diverted. Two sections of
the route were put into operation: in January 1943 - “Sverdlov
Square” - “Stalin Plant” (since 1956 “Avtozavodskaya”) (with the
intersection of the Moscow River in a deep tunnel, with the stations
“Paveletskaya” and “Novokuznetskaya” were opened later, in November
1943, and in January 1944 - "Kurskaya" - "Izmailovsky Park" (since
2005 "Partizanskaya") (4 stations). At 7 stations built during
wartime, there are commemorative plaques "Constructed during the
days of the Patriotic War."
After the war, construction began
on the fourth stage of the metro - the Circle Line and the deep part
of the Arbat Line from Revolution Square to Kievskaya. The Circle
Line was originally supposed to be built under the Garden Ring. The
first stage of the line - from Park Kultury to Kurskaya (1950) is
located just under the Garden Ring. Later they decided to build the
northern part of the Circle Line outside the Garden Ring, providing
access to seven of the capital's nine stations. The second stage of
the Circle Line opened in 1952 (“Kurskaya” - “Belorusskaya”), and in
1954 the construction of the line was completed.
The
construction of the deep part of the Arbat line was associated with
the beginning of the Cold War. The deep stations were supposed to
serve as bomb shelters in the event of a nuclear war. After the
completion of the line in 1953, part of the line (from Kalininskaya
to Kievskaya) was closed, but reopened in 1958 as part of the
Filyovskaya line.
Since 1955, in connection with the
resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of
Ministers of the USSR “On the elimination of excesses in design and
construction,” the emphasis in the development of the metro was
placed on increasing the pace of construction by reducing the cost
of building stations. They began to allocate a certain amount for
each station, and it was necessary to meet it. They began to move
from expensive individual projects for each station to cheap
standard projects. The last stations built in the classic Stalinist
style were Frunzenskaya and Sportivnaya, opened on May 1, 1957.
In the late 1950s and 1960s, the concept of radii connected only
to the Circle Line developed: the Riga radius opened in 1958, the
Kaluga radius in 1962, the Zhdanovsky radius in 1966, and the
Krasnopresnensky radius in 1972. In 1971 and 1975, respectively, the
radii were combined into diametrical lines - Kaluga-Rizhskaya and
Zhdanovsko-Krasnopresnenskaya. From the late 1970s to the early
1990s, the Kalininskaya (1979-1986) and Serpukhovsko-Timiryazevskaya
(1983-1994) lines were introduced, which were built according to a
similar project, first as a radius from the ring with a gradual
extension in the opposite direction, through the center, with the
formation of a new diameter. In the mid-1980s, the concept of
high-speed chord metro lines leading to residential areas and
airports outside the Moscow Ring Road appeared. Later, due to a
decrease in metro funding, these plans were postponed indefinitely.
In the last years of the USSR, construction of the Lublin Line
began.