Going underground: the Moscow metro | Hacker News Reader

Going underground: the Moscow metro

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72 pointse15ctr0n38 comments

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.

I think the soviet parts are pretty cute. They are curious remnants of history now, since USSR is long gone and we will probably never see "Socialist realism" style being employed at such a scale ever again.

I see you are an optimist!

As a Russian, I can't really say that. Mr. Putin acts rather strangely for the last few years.

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.

That style was designed specifically to make people appreciate it, to feel the sense of people's victory over fascism and relief from the Great Patriotic War, so if you would live in 1950s, it's quite possible that you'd be impressed and like it.

Some people thrived under Stalinist Russia, and many that didn't at least felt a sort of security. There are people alive who pine for it, much like some people who spent decades in prison miss it, due to alienation from the outside world.

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.

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.

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.

>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.

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.

Incredibly backwards compared to what? To France, sure. To the USA, probably. But if you will take Ottoman Empire or China, Russian Empire doesn't look that backwards.

Could certainly expect better outcome than the ragged, crumbling nation we have today. If not for communism which was a deeply unnatural state for a human being to live in.

You know, "national dignity" is often looked for by people when their regular dignity (family, job and standing in society) fails.

And then people can't really use it in healthy way. "They had fear of us", they say nostalgically. What's good in that? What about money, quality of life, freedom of movement for god's sake? What of that did Soviet Russia have? Even Warsaw Pact countries, even Soviet republic on outskirts (think Georgia) enjoyed more freedom, better quality of life and longer life expectancy.

"Most of all, people want food, shelter, and security"

No personal freedoms at all? You know, you've just described a simple prison.

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

Wow, very literal meaning of liquidating government assets...

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

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/

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

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..

What was the motivation behind the liquidation? A quick search does not provide any details.

Probably the approaching German army. The Germans launched their attack on Moscow in October, 1941, which would line up with the timeline.

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.

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

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

  The one I grew up next to is pretty drab: https://flic.kr/p/C6QcXj

That's still pretty nice to be honest.

Eh, it's kind of drab, especially compared to the ones I'd ride through as I went towards the center. It's about as fun as most of New York's stations, most of which aren't really artistically interesting either.

It's certainly not as ostentatious as the major stations in that article but the ceiling height, apparent quality of materials used (marble on the columns, slate floor, not completely horrendous tile on the subway walls) and the abundance of light make for a functional and safe-feeling environment.

Compare that to the first east-bound station on the Toronto subway line (one of the few stations with sometimes-usable bathrooms). https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/ba/Ki...

That looks a lot like the penultimate stop on the E line in Queens in NYC at first glance.

Nope, just a major subway-bus transfer in the Toronto west-end. Materials used look like leftovers from a 1970s apartment complex construction site. I think even the worst NYC stations have at least some interesting tile or signage preserved from when the original station was built giving it some character even if it's not well-lit or feels too claustrophobic.

Also looks alot like the 60-80's soviet influenced (designed?) czech stations in prague..

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/Praha%2C...

Apparently really people just got cheaper, or were always cheap..

That said, from a national economic perspective, it is much cheaper to build a mass transit system with ornate stations than it is to provide everyone with automobiles, so a rubel saved is a rubel earned in this case..

Fun fact: This statue is pure titanium.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Magnificent. I have a photo buried somewhere of a chap taking his pet eagle for a walk in Moscow. Thing was bigger than his torso, sat right there on his arm looking around at who it wanted to eat.

Yeah... Just an another example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xpr8pvSgqI8

Owls are the coolest creatures in the known Universe!

https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2017/05/scenes-from-the-mo...

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

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