The Ring Line (Koltsovaya) – Part One

The Ring Line is my great favorite. While on the Sokolnicheskaya and Zamoskvarechkaya Lines, at least those constructed before 1950, there seems to be an overall concept for the stations, with bigger or smaller variations, the Ring Line stations are unique and original. The Ring Line’s construction to me is the summit of the underground splendour: The war was over, reconstruction had taken place, and the line itself served necessities not quite as urgent as the former ones. It was, if you like, even more of a luxury than the other ones.

This why this line takes up so much space on this website.

The Ring Line has 12 stations and covers a trajectory of 19,4 kilometers.

It was arbitrary to start with this station. But from now on there is order. The next station clockwise is Novoslobodskaya.

Below Moscow are many abandoned tunnels and stations. They were built for strategic reasons, as the Soviet leaders already in the 30-ies anticipated the problems to come. This way the Moscow Underground’s planning is an interesting feature regarding the question whether the Soviet politicians were prepared for the German invasion: It may be that the exact moment or the direction it came from was unexpected, but they already knew there was war coming some years before it actually started.

Already in 1935 the station ’Sovietskaya’ was planned for the second stage of the underground construction, on the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya Line between ’Teatralnaya’ and ’Mayakovskaya’. As its construction took place during the war it was designed to house the Central Command for Civic Defence instead of serving as an underground station, and therefore it was closed towards the tunnel by walls. Later it occupied a space where a station would have been adequate, and its different destination caused a very long trajectory without station, a disturbing state of affairs that was only ended with the construction of Gorkovskaya (now Tverskaya) Station in the 70-ies.

Sovietskaya Non-Station still exists, though closed to the public. It is still destinated to serve as a shelter in times of war – for the staff of the above located Moscow Authority for Emergency Situations.

Stalin had two bunkers during the war, one near the stations ’Sokolniki’ and ’Ismailovskiy Park’, the other one outside Moscow. The latter was built already during the war with special strong ceiling support bars from cast iron. These bunkers were connected to the Kremlin by tunnels of a size that allowed cars to pass there. These tunnels still exist and belong into the sphere of the Ministry for Disasters.

All the information about the secret tunnels and even secret underground lines running to the dacha and elsewhere only became public after 1991. Strange enough, they were first described in detail in a publication of the US Defence Ministry of 1992, based on a publication by the Soviet Armed Forces in 1991.

Later the Russian yellow press started to publish such an amount of nonsense that most people lost the interest in the topic or thought it was all an invention. The monthly ’Ogonyok’ called these lines ’Underground 2’. Then the theme disappeared again from the press, probably on some important persons’ pressure.

The original secret underground that was constructed still in Stalin’s times, during World War II and taking into account the dangers, bomb attacks and experiences of that war, has one line leading from the Kremlin to the southwest, in the direction of Vnukovo Airport. Along this line the underground headquarters at Ramenkiy, where the General Staff was located during World War II, are situated. Somewhere in the vicinity of the underground station ’Vorobeinye Gory’ there is a tunnel interconnecting the secret underground line with the public Sokolnicheskaya Line.

This line, far from being given up, was extended in the late 80-ies.

Then there is another line leading from the center to the east-northeast: That is the line that originally connected the Kremlin with Stalin’s dacha. It has been extended and after changes in the late 80-ies now leads to other subterranean bunkers and command posts outside Moscow and is, like the other secret lines, inaccessible not only to the ordinary citizen, but to high-ranking politicians, too. It constitutes, just as the buildings and accesses to the ’Underground 2’ and its similiarly secret entrances, a military top secret.

There are two more secret lines existing that were built in 1987 and ’88, preparing for a nuclear war. This is remarkable as by then the Soviet Union was rather broke and these subterranean constructions are very costly: Gorbachov and his cooperators, evidently, were preparing for the worst scenario.