Metro-2
Metro-2 is the informal designation for a clandestine and officially unacknowledged deep underground metro system in the Moscow metropolitan area. It was designed to provide the Soviet leadership with secure wartime evacuation routes, communication hubs, and command posts, including a dedicated bunker for the national command authority. One such bunker is located beneath the Kremlin.
The system was supposedly built, or at least started, during the time of Joseph Stalin and was codenamed D-6 by the KGB. It is supposedly still operated by the Main Directorate of Special Programmes and Ministry of Defence.
Metro-2 is said to have four lines which lie deep. It is said to connect the Kremlin with the Federal Security Service headquarters, the government airport at Vnukovo-2, and an underground town at Ramenki, in addition to other locations of national importance.
In 1994, the leader of an urban exploration group, the Diggers of the Underground Planet, claimed to have found an entrance to this underground system.
Historic evidence however paints a much more conservative picture, with one "line" existing by the late 1960s, from the Kremlin, specifically site 103, to the site 54 south from Moscow State University, with a spur going north-west from there, to the area of the Matveevskaya railway platform and the DV-1 there. Additional lines, i.e. to Vnukovo, are likely a later invention by the enthusiast community, though with the change in generations of the hardened protective structure design in the 1970/80s a redundant back up of this system may have been at least considered. The Vnukovo line, supposed to be built for government emergency evacuation, connected to the Vnukovo International Airport respectively, when originally built, was an airport originally used for military operations during the Second World War but became a civilian facility after the war. Another supposed line, the Ismaylovo line, was apparently built for Strategic Rocket forces and claimed to be at least partially destroyed in the 1970s.
Etymology
In the summer of 1992, the literary and journalistic magazine Yunost published a novel by the author and screenwriter Vladimir Gonik entitled Preispodniaia , set in an underground bunker in Moscow. Earlier, in the spring of that year, excerpts from the novel had been published in the weekly newspaper. In an interview with both the newspaper's editor and Gonik in 1993, the author stated that the term "Metro-2" had been introduced to them, and that the novel had been written based on information collected over the previous 20 years by the two of them on things such as secret bunkers and the underground railways connecting them. Gonik admitted that he had worked on the book between 1973 and 1986, and that some of the more sensitive information had been purposefully misrepresented.In later years, Gonik has argued that the bunkers, and therefore the so-called "Metro-2", had been for use by the leadership of the Politburo and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, along with their families, in case of war. According to him, in the early 1970s the General Secretary of the CPSU, Leonid Brezhnev, personally visited the main bunker, and, in 1974, awarded the Chairman of the KGB at the time, Yuri Andropov, the Gold Star Medal of the Hero of Socialist Labour. Apparently, each member of the Central Committee had a apartment, with a study, lounge, kitchen and bathroom. Gonik claims to have gathered this information working as a doctor in the polyclinic of the Ministry of Defence.
After the publication of the novel in 1992, the subject of a second, secret, underground railway has been raised many times, especially in the Russian media. In particular, the magazine Ogoniok has referred to a "Metro-2" several times.
Confirmed information
Russian journalists have reported that the existence of Metro-2 is neither confirmed nor denied by the FSB or the Moscow Metro administration. However, listed below is evidence for the Metro-2's existence.Studies of declassified Soviet archival materials
In 2021, a book by Dmitry Yurkov was published which covered new research on the history of special fortification in Moscow. Below is a summary of findings.From declassified archival documents, an overall layout of the track system and its main components can be established for the late 1960s. While the system was eventually assembled in the late 1960s by the KGB, originally it was a collection of structures built for a variety of purposes and operators.
Deep single track tunnel
This is the oldest component of Metro-2. Construction began in the mid-1950s, and its design was finalised in 1956. It intended to provide a solution to the challenge of extending the red line southwest, beyond the Sportivnaya metro station and the river. Because of the conflicting requirements—a reasonable cost, a secure river crossing, and a civil defence shelter capacity—the final design included a shallow metro line with a vulnerable bridge backed up by a deep single track tunnel—which spurs from the main line after the Sportivnaya station —and a high-speed elevator shaft.Originally, there were also other intended peacetime uses, such as nighttime train parking.
Order 10-A
Order 10-A is composed out of sites 54 and 54a and was intended to provide protected work spaces for the personnel of the planned Palace of the Soviets behind the Moscow State University campus. The plans for those administrative buildings were tied to the shafts and other features of this underground infrastructure project but the project was never completed.Order 10-A was made by the 9th directorate of the Ministry for Defence, and for it a new construction organisation was set up in 1955. Construction was started in 1956 and completed by 1963.
Site 54 is composed of at least 5 shafts and includes extensive supporting systems such as air filtering stations and power generation, with the latter designed to support the planned above-ground administrative complex in case of emergencies. The site is connected to the deep single track tunnel at the depth of 189m. Shaft R6, which was used during order 10-A construction, still exists in Moscow and is a marker for its overall location.
Sites 100, 101, 103 and "Branch"
Site 103 is a large U-shaped structure built in central Moscow, designed to enhance the legacy World War II infrastructure by providing: site 1A in Kremlin, a protected work spaces for the leadership; site 15N, a communications node; site 100 shelter, a protected work spaces for the KGB. There were links to the existing legacy structures such as sites 25 and 25/2 in Kremlin, and site 201 at Lubyanka. It is also connected to the post-war site 101 at Zaryadie, which was intended to provide protected work spaces for officials working in the 8th Stalin's skyscraper; however, the skyscraper was never built, so site 101 was repurposed to support local Moscow region officials.However, this project was plagued with a number of problems, such as slow construction, and uncertainty of how it could be evacuated after a nuclear attack. The latter was solved by the construction of "Branch", which linked site 103 in the city center to the deep single track tunnel and enabled moving people to the city outskirts.
The remote air intake (DV) network
After some initial work on a network of air filtering and then air regeneration stations, such as site 703, the decision was made to shift towards using several large air filtering stations on the outskirts of the city and pumping this clean air into the rest of the deep metro from there. Those were quite large structures and required extensive supporting infrastructure of their own.While five remote air intakes were planned in Moscow, this was later cut to three, with only two actually being built: "Matveevsky" and "Rizhsky". While the latter was neatly connected to the post-war deep metro line, the former used a proprietary air supply tunnel connecting its location at the Matveevskaya railroad platform to the deep single track tunnel. This air supply tunnel was later retrofitted with track, and joined the network. For construction of this air supply tunnel and other related structures, shaft R6 was transferred from US 10-A.
A related additional structure was the special connector line between the red and circle lines, as it would allow transport of air from the deep and nuclear hardened post-war section of the red line to the similarly protected circle line, bypassing the vulnerable area of the red line, which was built in the 1930s. DV-1 could also have been be used as an evacuation exit for the Moscow Metro, due to its location in the city outskirts at the time.
Leningrad also received a remote air intake, located at Lenin's square.
Move to KGB custody
In the late 1960s, the DV-1 and its related support infrastructure were transferred to the KGB from the Moscow Metro, with a number of modifications being made, such as reworking the deep single track tunnel connection to the red line and adding a hardened hangar for 10 APCs at the DV-1.Possible causes of the naming confusion and myth generation
DV is quite similar to D6, and may be one of the ways this designation came to be used in modern online discussions. The so-called "underground city in Ramenki" is likely the result of urban explorers observing extensive support infrastructure for the DV-1. Alternatively, this term has also been linked to the order 10-A.Report from the U.S. Department of Defense
In 1991, the United States Department of Defense published a report entitled Military forces in transition, which devoted several pages to a secret government underground in Moscow. It also included a diagram of the system superimposed on a map of the city.
"The Soviets have constructed deep-underground both in urban Moscow and outside the city. These facilities are interconnected by a network of deep interconnected subway lines that provide a quick and secure means of evacuation for the leadership. The leadership can move from their peacetime offices through concealed entryways in protective quarters beneath the city. There are important deep-underground command posts in the Moscow area, one located at the Kremlin. Soviet press has noted the presence of an enormous underground leadership bunker adjacent to Moscow State University. These facilities are intended for the national command authority in wartime. They are estimated to be between and deep, and can accommodate an estimated 10,000 people. A special subway line runs from some points in Moscow and possibly to the VIP terminal at Vnukovo Airfield"
—Military forces in transition, 1991, p. 40