The Life Line of Moscow

Metro station in Moscow

Like most major cities in the world, the life line of Moscow is its amazing metro system. It carries around 10 million passengers a day on weekdays and is one of the most elaborate systems you will ever see. With a route length of over 180 miles, 12 different lines and 180+ stations getting to any place in the city is within reach. The complexity of the network takes some times to get used to, especially if you do not know the language, but once mastered reaching any corner of the city becomes super intuitive.

Art work at different metro stations

The connectivity though is not the best attribute of the Moscow Metro system – the stations built as “people’s palace” give a royal feel to the commuters. The Stalin time architecture of Moscow metro (the style got lost in the 1960s to give way to uninspiring concrete structures), is striking for its elegant ornate designs, lavish use of marble, mosaics, sculptures and chandeliers and classic iconography of the rich Soviet history. These luxuriant spaces were designed to double-up as bomb shelters in case of war and a place for important political and tactical meetings.

The Irony…

As a foreigner in Russia, I am super impressed with the wonderful metro system; the irony comes when you talk with people about it. Most of the people would tell you how much they hate the metro system in Moscow, many of them disclose that they rather be stuck in a traffic jam for hours than travel by metro.

Thanks to the population of Moscow and the convenience bestowed by metro, the trains get extremely crowded during peak times on weekdays (no competition to Mumbai local trains though)….but I guess the apathy of the Muscovites towards the metro shouldn’t come as a surprise, after all they are the same people who often responds to “how are you?”, with “too tired” “not good”… for petty reasons (definitely not the most positive group of people*)

Rush Hour (above)
Some of the stations are extremely deep (>80 mts below ground)
as they were built to double up as war time shelter
Escalator to one of the deep stations (right)

Irony of Irony…

Can you imagine that the first phase this huge underground installation was built mainly by volunteers who weren’t paid a dime for crawling around the dirty tunnels, risking their lives nearly every moment? They say money can't buy everything - probably passion is one of them :)

* This is just generalization after observing and interacting with a few people over the past few months and is a definitely a crude inference like all other generalizations

Feel at Home: The Story of Soviet Russian Architecture

As years pass since the collapse of Soviet Union, most of the ancient traces of socialism are slowly getting wiped out from Moscow, but every now and then you see some left over crumbs from history.

Once you get away from the center of Moscow, you can’t ignore some very similar looking buildings scattered all over. These are not aesthetically pleasing structures which make you commend the architect rather “ugly” brick and concrete structures that make you wonder – why do they have so many of them?  

Little bit of enquiry with the locals (who can speak English of course) will lead you to the answer – Khrushchevki (five storey buildings) – one of leftover pieces of Soviet history.



Khrushchevki



With the cities expanding and people coming in from all over in the post war times, there was acute shortage of houses for people. The government started huge project to quickly built thousands of cheap, tiny apartments in five-story buildings, with no balconies, extremely small kitchens (where no more than one person can fit), box-like toilet-and-bathroom spaces and thin walls separating the apartments, allowing residents to hear everything that's going on in their neighbors' places!

 "To add to that...", an old man pointed out, “…there were no choice of selecting your own furniture at that time – there was only one kind of TV unit, one kind of sofa which everyone had at their homes. Not just buildings from outside, but also the homes from inside looked remarkably identical”

Though these unpopular “Khrushchevki”  buildings are soon disappearing from Moscow, it makes me wonder how depressing the city would have looked at that time....“Feel at home” – the common phrase we use to make our guests feel welcome would have had a completely different meaning in Soviet Russia ;)