Sergey Kuznetsov: Moscow Under Attack
[Sergey Kuznetsov is the author of the novel “Butterfly Skin.”]
EVERY time some disaster hits the Moscow subway, I remember that Soviet propaganda used to call this the most beautiful subway in the world.
Incredibly, in this one case, it wasn’t lying: Moscow subway stations are marble palaces with pillars, mosaics and statues of happy swimmers and oarswomen.
Despite all this decoration, I was afraid of the subway as a child. I felt that there was some hidden terror in the gap between the sparkling stations and the dark noisy tunnels with their all-too-obvious symbolism.
Most of my life has been spent along the same subway line. Its official name is Frunzenskaya, but since Muscovites nickname their subway lines according to their color on the map, everybody just calls it Red Line....
...[T]he explosions carried symbolic force: the first station to be bombed was near the former K.G.B. building. “Lubyanka” is an informal term for state security and the symbol of Soviet state terror.
I don’t know why nobody has thus far pointed out that Park Kultury — the Park of Culture and Recreation — is a symbol of the Grand Totalitarian Style, the almost joyous aesthetic of Stalin’s era, represented by those statues of happy swimmers and oarswomen in the station.
In fact, Park Kultury and Lubyanka are two sides of the Soviet epoch. The contrast between them represents the gap between the marble stations and the dark tunnels that frightened me....
Read entire article at NYT
EVERY time some disaster hits the Moscow subway, I remember that Soviet propaganda used to call this the most beautiful subway in the world.
Incredibly, in this one case, it wasn’t lying: Moscow subway stations are marble palaces with pillars, mosaics and statues of happy swimmers and oarswomen.
Despite all this decoration, I was afraid of the subway as a child. I felt that there was some hidden terror in the gap between the sparkling stations and the dark noisy tunnels with their all-too-obvious symbolism.
Most of my life has been spent along the same subway line. Its official name is Frunzenskaya, but since Muscovites nickname their subway lines according to their color on the map, everybody just calls it Red Line....
...[T]he explosions carried symbolic force: the first station to be bombed was near the former K.G.B. building. “Lubyanka” is an informal term for state security and the symbol of Soviet state terror.
I don’t know why nobody has thus far pointed out that Park Kultury — the Park of Culture and Recreation — is a symbol of the Grand Totalitarian Style, the almost joyous aesthetic of Stalin’s era, represented by those statues of happy swimmers and oarswomen in the station.
In fact, Park Kultury and Lubyanka are two sides of the Soviet epoch. The contrast between them represents the gap between the marble stations and the dark tunnels that frightened me....