Moscow Metro Tour: Dark Blue Line
The Arbatskaya Line of the Russian Capitol's Metro
Architectural and artistic highlights, history behind some of stations on the Dark Blue Line of the Moscow Metropolitan, the transport web of the Russian capitol
The Dark Blue Line, or Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya, numbered 3 on the scheme of the Moscow Metro, opened on March 13, 1938—actually before the Green Line, but as a part of the same expansion project, "Stage 2" of Metro construction. For this article, we will explore the central stations of the Dark Blue Line from Kurskaya to Kievskaya. This will allow us to tour two of the original stations opened in 1938, as well as three of the more elaborate "Late Stalinist" stations completed just after his death. These stations were destined to be some of the last of this heavily ornamented type, which would soon, under Khrushchev, be abandoned for the standard, utilitarian stations known as "centipedes," which differ only in the color of their tiles and a limited number of cheap decorations. The early stations of the Moscow Metro are marked by two distinct factors above all others: the rise of a fanatical cult of personality around the figure of Joseph Stalin, and the Great Patriotic War.
Our tour begins at Kurskaya, which bears the classical ornamentation of the late 1930s. Built to serve the Kursk train terminal, this station is a triple-vaulted pylon station faced in gray marble from Ufa, with a mosaic floor of gray, black, rose-tinted and red marble. The arches are pseudo-Italianate, like many of the early stations, and the vents are covered in ornate metal grilles with sconce-lamps protruding from them. The design of this station is simple, and this classicism and simplicity contrasts starkly with the later stations. But before we arrive at them, we must stop at Ploshchad Revolutsii, one of the most famous and beloved Moscow Metro stations of them all.
Ploshchad Revolutsii was designed, like Mayakovskaya, Avtozavodskaya, and other stations, by the architect Dushkin. This gorgeous station is an underground gallery of statues by the sculptor M.G. Manizer. Each figure represents an idealized citizen of the Soviet Union, beginning with the revolution and the Civil War and continuing through to the Stalinist era. There are a current total of 76 statues in the station. Each statue, except for two of them, is repeated a total of four times: twice in each arch, and on both sides of the station. The exposition was meant to begin at the western end of the station, which originally had only one entrance, the one onto Revolution Square. The gallery begins with revolutionaries—a bandoleered worker carrying a grenade and a revolutionary soldier. The next arch shows a peasant in traditional reed sandals with a bolt-action rifle, and a revolutionary sailor with a revolver that is constantly being broken by vandals. Continuing on, we find a female parachutist and a Signalman from the Marat. The next arch has a girl with a rifle displaying her badge for marksmanship, along with a border guard and his dog. You'll notice that the dog's nose is rubbed smooth and shiny from people touching it for good luck. The display goes on with athletes and students, parents and children, all of the pseudo-religious and idealized type common to Soviet Realism.
The next station along the line is Arbatskaya. Arbatskaya opened a month after Stalin's suspicious death. One of the largest of the Moscow Metro stations, second in length only to Vorobevy Gory, the ornamentation of Arbatskaya's white walls and ventillation grills is almost overwhelming, with flowers everywhere and vegetal chandeliers and lamps, a "Stalinist Baroque" masterpiece of the underground that Stalin himself never saw in operation. The station's architecture was recently beautifully restored, and the white walls of the passageways and central platform blend smoothly with the palatial above-ground pavilion. Everything about this station says excess and grandeur, and makes clear Stalin's imperial visions for Russia.
Smolenskya is clearly done in the Empire style, with fluted columns at the four corners of its pylons, decorative classical cornices, and a black-and white marble floor pattern that reminds one of nothing so much as a temple. The western end of the station contains a white marble alto-relievo by Motovilov depicting the Red Army in battle, and clearly seeking to tie Soviet ideology in with earlier classical civilizations, and roman shields and helmets decorate the stations' above-ground pavilions. The triumphal arches leading to the station from the Garden Ring, and the pavilion itself, call to mind Napoleon's neo-classical Parisian structures. Like Arbatskaya, Smolenskya is one of the deeper stations on the line, built during the cold war to serve as a bomb shelter and bunker in the case of nuclear war. Until the construction of Park Pobedy in 2003, this was the deepest station on the Moscow Metro.
The terminal station of the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya line until 2003, Kievskaya is another quasi-Baroque, fanatical masterpiece of late Stalinism, featuring white Ural marble on the walls, patterned tile, and ceiling panels depicting an idealized version of Ukranian life under the Soviet Union. A huge mosaic at the end of the station platform commemorated the 300-year anniversary of the unification of Russia and Ukraine. This station is representative of a number of Moscow Metro themes: Soviet Realism, Pseudo-Religious iconography (not the gold in the background of many panels, making them look suspiciously like church icons) and the idealization of the Soviet Union's ethnic republics.
Here is an article with more general information on the history of the Moscow Metro, and there's plenty more to see on this tour.
