
Going underground: the Moscow metro - e15ctr0n
https://widerimage.reuters.com/story/going-underground-the-moscow-metro
======
Grue3
Ride it everyday, and all the Soviet nostalgia aesthetic is making me sick.
Here are some actually interesting stations:

\- Vorobyovy Gory (the longest station, situated on a bridge over Moscow
River)

\- Dostoyevskaya (decorated with scenes from Dostoyevsky's novels which tend
to be rather... dark)

\- Timiryazevskaya (the only deep single-vault station in Moscow, looks cool)

\- the entire monorail line (just weird)

\- Vystavochnaya (the station under business district Moskva-City, it's just
huge)

\- Arbatskaya, light blue line (one of the smallest, and possibly the most
useless station, very quirky)

Some of the recently built stations (yellow line Ramenki extension, light
green line north of Maryina Roscha, dark blue line north of Strogino) have
pretty interesting designs, if you don't mind travelling to the outskirts of
Moscow.

~~~
arjie
I mean, it's only appealing to those of us not living under an oppressive
regime. If I were in Stalinist Russia I would have been in no mood to
appreciate that style.

~~~
vkou
If you lived through Russia in the unmitigated disaster that was the 90s, you
might be nostalgic for the good old days.

America currently incarcerates almost as many people (Depending on how you
count, more) as the Khrushchev era did, yet that's clearly not the biggest
factor in how people evaluate their quality of life.

Most of all, people want food, shelter, and security - and communism largely
provided that. Poorly, but better then the collapse that followed.

~~~
thriftwy
Well, it was an inevitable ending to communist experiment, I would say baked
in from the beginning.

The real tragedy that the whole communism thing even happened.

Some people also want dignity. That thing was in short supply back then and is
getting thin today.

~~~
vkou
The real tragedy was the system prior to communism, during communism, and
after communism.

Tsarist Russia was highly, and poorly centrally planned, and incredibly
backwards. It ended _serfdom_ in 1861, for Pete's sakes. The first world war
demonstrated exactly how broken that system was.

Market reforms, on the other hand, inflicted immense amounts of suffering on
the population, particularly segments of the population that were unable to
work. (But, as with every economic system, market advocates only want to take
credit for successes.)

Falling from its position as a super-power to a back-water second-world state
was also a huge blow to national dignity. In case you're wondering why
Russians are largely supportive of Putin's aggression, its because they see
him as restoring said national dignity. It's the story of Trump's deplorables
writ large.

~~~
gozur88
>Market reforms, on the other hand, inflicted immense amounts of suffering on
the population, particularly segments of the population that were unable to
work.

That's like saying impact inflicts enormous amounts of suffering for people
who are falling through the air. The market reforms were painful because there
was no other option after the mess that communism made.

~~~
thriftwy
Well, I think we _could_ go without hyperinflation and voucher privatization.

It would still be pretty bad, sure. Most of Soviet enterprises will go belly
up either way. Even in the USA the rust belt suffered during that time. And
Russia was basically one big rust belt.

------
avenoir
Some interesting facts about the Moscow's M.

The Metro could have appeared as early as 1875 in Moscow, but the Russian
Orthodox Church blocked it by claiming that "a man, created in the image of
God, cannot humiliate himself by descending into the underworld."

In the October of 1941, during 2nd world war, the soviet government was
preparing complete liquidation of the Metro. It was supposed to be flooded but
the government order was soon abolished.

The total combined length of the M is 300km or 186 miles.

Source: [https://www.buzzfeed.com/victorstepanov/mscw-
metro](https://www.buzzfeed.com/victorstepanov/mscw-metro)

~~~
negus
The story about Church protest has no proof. At least I tried to find it and
found nothing worthy

~~~
avenoir
According to this source [1] the quote was supposedly from a bishop's letter
to the Patriarch of Moscow at the time.

> Церковники распускали разные, порою до глупости нелепые слухи. Один из
> архиереев писал московскому митрополиту: «Возможно ли допустить сию
> греховную мечту? Не унизит ли себя человек, созданный по образу и подобию
> божию разумным созданием, спустившись в преисподнюю? А что там есть, то
> ведает один бог, и грешному человеку ведать не надлежит». И подобная
> нелепость воспринималась всерьез.

Seems like it was one of many letters, but not the sole factor that forced
Duma to scrap the project.

[1]
[http://www.metro.ru/library/metropoliteny/147/](http://www.metro.ru/library/metropoliteny/147/)

~~~
cat199
Considering the presence of famously well known cave monasteries within the
Russian Empire's borders dating back for 800 or so years even already at that
time, with many famed ascetics, elders, and saints, I would hope that the
letter yielded a sharp rebuke from the patriarch on that particular point..

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiev_Pechersk_Lavra#Caves](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiev_Pechersk_Lavra#Caves)

Not to mention the well known knowledge of Roman Christian persecution and the
related subterranean activities required to survive at that time..

But since the quote is out of context and has no reference to an actual
response, who is to say...

All the better to make the church seem backwards though..

------
scrumper
I tagged along on one of my wife's business trips to Moscow about a decade
ago. I spent a week mostly on my own exploring the city, and consequently much
time on the metro (and more time lost). It certainly helped my ability to read
Cyrillic but I would not call it a relaxing trip.

The metro stations really are breathtaking: emerging into a gilded, be-
chandeliered hall after a near 5 minute escalator ride isn't something I'll
forget.

------
pavel_lishin
Unfortunately, they're not all as beautiful as the ones pictured here. The one
I grew up next to is pretty drab:
[https://flic.kr/p/C6QcXj](https://flic.kr/p/C6QcXj)

Although right outside is a pretty awesome statue of Gagarin:
[https://flic.kr/p/dLU1xg](https://flic.kr/p/dLU1xg)

~~~
simlevesque
Fun fact: This statue is pure titanium.

~~~
cat199
Hmm.. Wondering if this is some sort of post-Stalin reference..

~~~
pandaman
People did not care much about Stalin in 70s-80s. It is symbolic in this case
(space ships in Russia are made from Titanium). Another space-related monument
in Moscow (the Conquerers of Space) is also Titanium. Also, from what I've
heard, steel technology in the USSR was not that great and it might be just
too expensive to build these from steel.

~~~
vkou
In that time period, the USSR produced most of the world's Titanium - a metal
critical for defense and aerospace industries. This was the equivalent of,
say, South Africa commissioning a statue covered with diamonds.

~~~
pandaman
Yes, the main reason for lacking in steel technology probably was the
abundance of Titanium.

------
sAbakumoff
I always thought that the most amusing part of Moscow Metro is people one can
meet there. Just one example :
[https://twitter.com/maxsparber/status/858330495788220416](https://twitter.com/maxsparber/status/858330495788220416)

~~~
richard_shelton
Yeah... Just an another example:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xpr8pvSgqI8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xpr8pvSgqI8)

~~~
sAbakumoff
Owls are the coolest creatures in the known Universe!

------
thriftwy
[https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2017/05/scenes-from-the-
mo...](https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2017/05/scenes-from-the-moscow-
metro/528660/)

A larger set of photos, partially the same, suggested to me by Zen.

