Moscow Metro – Park Pobedy – Lines 3 and 8a

Posted on 17/08/2024 by Michael

Park Pobedy

Moscow Metro – a Socialist Realist Art Gallery

Moscow Metro – Park Pobedy – Lines 3 and 8a

Park Pobedy (Russian: Парк Победы, lit. ’Victory Park’) is a station of the Moscow Metro in the city’s Dorogomilovo District. It is on two lines: the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya line and the Kalininsko-Solntsevskaya line. At 84 metres (276 ft) underground, according to the official figures, it is the deepest metro station in Moscow and one of the deepest in the world.

Construction began in 1986. The initial plans envisaged connections from the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya line to the future Mitino–Butovskaya and the Solntsevo–Mytischinskaya Chordal lines. The former was accommodated in the station’s design, with two additional tracks included parallel to those of the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya line (the latter would have used a third set of track perpendicular to these). However, the 1990s financial crises ended the Chordal projects; the station opened in 2003 as a terminus of the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya line, and in 2008 the Strogino–Mitino extension of the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya line was begun from Park Pobedy. The second set of tracks saw their first use on 31 January 2014 as part of the Kalininsko-Solntsevskaya line’s partial service to Delovoy Tsentr.

This is the only Moscow metro station where all passengers board and alight trains in different locations. A further complication was that only the southern, or inbound, platform had an entrance vestibule, so passengers arriving at the northern, or outbound, platform had to change platforms to leave the station. This, however, changed in March 2017, when the southern platform was connected directly to the entrance by a new escalator tunnel.

At 84 metres (276 ft) underground, Park Pobedy is the deepest station in Moscow and the fifth-deepest in the world by mean depth, after Chongqing Rail Transit’s Hongyancun station, Kyiv Metro’s Arsenalna, Chongqing Rail Transit’s Hongtudi station and Saint Petersburg Metro’s Admiralteyskaya, and is the third deepest station by maximum depth, 97 metres (318 ft). It also contains the longest escalators in Europe, each one is 126 metres (413 ft) long and has 740 steps. The escalator ride to the surface takes approximately three minutes.

The two platforms, the work of architects Nataliya Shurygina and Nikolay Shumakov, are of identical design but have opposite colour schemes. The pylons of the outbound platform are faced with red marble on the transverse faces and pale grey marble on the longitudinal faces. The inbound platform is the exact reverse. The station is adorned with two large mosaics by Zurab Tsereteli depicting the 1812 French Invasion of Russia (at the end of the inbound platform) and World War II (on the outbound platform).

The station has a unique structural design. Instead of traditional cast iron tunnel lining Park Pobedy lining included steel blocks filled with concrete. It significantly reduced amount of structural metal and consequentially overall cost of construction.

Text above from Wikipedia.

Park Pobedy – 02

Park Pobedy

Date of opening;

6th May 2003

Construction of the station;

deep, pier, three-span

Architects of the underground part

N. Shurygina and N. Shumakov

Park Pobedy was opened on May 6, Day of George the Victorious, patron saint of the Russian host. It is the 165th station of the Moscow Metro – first of the new, already the sixth or seventh, generation of stations. It includes a great number of design, engineering, and technical innovations along with architectural novelty and freshness. It was constructed with modern tunnel machinery.

As a result, an enormous complex of two stations and two underground pavilions was constructed..

The stations are parallel and lie at the same level, 64 m deep. Trains of Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya Line arrive to station 1 but depart from station 2. The station halls are elegant, refined, and simple. Compact, upper opening pylons are separated by wider passageways. There is a wide cornice, hiding lamps, over the pylons along the whole station. There are additional ceiling square lamps on the lower part of the cornice, which reflect (when switched on) in the smooth surface of the floor. The level of polishing of decorative stones is higher than elsewhere in the Moscow Metro.

The pylons and walls of station 2 are faced with light marble, ranging from white to bluish-grey. The walls of the passageways and plinths are with unique marble breccia, from yellow-orange to red with very good-looking combination of fragments of different shapes, sizes, and backgrounds. The ceiling is covered with the same smoothly polished plates of red and light-grey granite. Station 1 is the mirror image of station 2. White is replaced by yellow-orange and vice versa. The ceilings are chessboards of black gabbro and light-grey marble. The stations are thematic – the second one is

devoted to the Patriotic War of 1812 and the first one is to the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45. The themes are manifested with great striking panels. The panel of station 2 is in the eastern end, while the panel of station 1 is in the western end. They are the unique works in the Moscow Metro. They are unique in technique (colour enamel on metal) and style. The author of both panels is Z. Tsereteli.

The theme of the western panel is Victory in 1945. It shows the monument of a liberator-soldier

in the Treptov Park on the background of the Kremlin. A triumphant throng is around. Order of Victory is above and the ribbon of Guard is below. Very interesting is the effect inherent only in

the technique of enamel. White colour appears very bright. So, the first thing that one see looking

at the panel is white eyes and teeth in slightly opened mouths. The theme of the eastern panel is Victory in 1812. It shows top officers of the Russian army, which was victorious over Napoleon – M. Kutuzov surrounded by major associates. It is neither the meeting in Fili (no Bagration) nor the meeting after occupation of Paris (no Emperor). It could be the meeting before the Borodino Battle but the generals trample on thrown French standards. It seems the painter has pictured a summoning of the saint army of Christ in the heavens. There are massive benches of marble with large marble balls on the arms located on a small pedestal along the walls.

The stations are connected by bridges through the wall between them. The passageways are also faced with very good looking marble breccia of pastel colours, ranging from cream-coloured to soft pink. The stations are connected with the ground by the longest escalators in Moscow (126 m, 740 steps), which end in the two-level underground hall.

Vestibule of Park Pobedy

This vestibule is an original underground architectural ensemble consisted of three halls. There are

wide doors decorated with a granite panel with metal letters ‘Park Pobedy’ on the side at the corner of the L-type underpass crossing Kutuzovsky Prospect and Ulitsa Barklaya. Behind the doors, there is a wide passageway of white marble, which is cut by the long axis with square columns. The passageway leads to the ticket hall – a rectangular low hall. Behind the turnstiles, a staircase goes down turning twice at right angles and three short escalators end. The staircase leads to the greater escalator hall whose ceiling is supported by columns faced with orange marble breccia. Their cup-shaped metallic caps hide lamps. The vestibule is illuminated with five very large and deep coffers made in the suspension ceiling. The walls are faced with orange marble with an edging of white marble above.

The text above comes from Moscow Metro 1935-2005.

Park Pobedy – 03

The station at Park Pobedy really falls out of my idea of recording the Socialist Realist art on the Moscow (and Leningrad) metro. However, even some of those stations most recently added to the network have interesting designs, even so many years after the end of Socialism in the USSR (which I consider to be the mid-1950s) the tradition of making the public space something that is attractive to the users still persists.

Many of the earlier stations have references to either the Civil War (1918-1921) – following the October Revolution – or the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45 and Park Pobedy follows a military theme as it is the station that serves the park that surrounds Moscow’s Museum to the Great Patriotic War.

As is suggested in the Wikipedia write up above this station is not the easiest to navigate for a first timer. I must have been going down the wrong escalators as I couldn’t find the mosaic that depicts events from the Great Patriotic War. There are a few pictures of the mosaic about the war against the Napoleonic imperialists – hopefully images from the other mosaic will be added in the not too distant future.

The images that are united by the orange and black Saint George ribbon (which was used on a par with the Hammer and Sickle in installations commemorating Victory Day (9^th May) in 2024) line the tunnel sides of the entrance from the street at Victory Park (Park Pobedy) itself. Not sure if these are permanent or were installed for the 9^th May Victory Day celebrations.

Location;

Kutuzovsky Avenue, Dorogomilovo District

GPS;

55.7362°N

37.5182°E

Opened;

6 May 2003

Depth;

84 metres (276 ft)

More on the USSR

Moscow Metro – a Socialist Realist Art Gallery

Murals by Bodorna Hydroelectric Plant, Tbilisi, Georgia

Posted on 16/08/2024 by Michael

Bodorna mural – linemen

Murals by Bodorna Hydroelectric Plant, Tbilisi, Georgia

Try as I might I have been unable to find out any information whatsoever about these murals. They are certainly from Georgia’s Socialist period but why they are where they are is difficult to tell.

The art work consists of a number of panels (ten of which it is possible to get a good view but a couple which have impenetrable undergrowth preventing a close examination) depicting variolous aspects of life in the Socialist Republic of Georgia.

The wall is at the entrance of a hydroelectric plant and one of the panels depicts workers from such a plant so that would seem to be able to give a rough origin date. However, all the information I’ve been able to find is about the plant that was completed in 2018. So whether this means there existed a much smaller one in the past and it was replaced I don’t know. Considering the other images in the murals the specificity of electrical linemen must be relevant to the location.

My speculation is that there was some sort of community centre, sports ground, that was built next to the reservoir. A some time in the relatively recent past the reservoir has been expanded and whatever was there before has been sacrificed. Now all that remains of that centre is the wall that is now being ‘lost’ to the undergrowth.

Bodorna mural – harvest celebration

No idea of the sculptor, although s/he follows the very distinctive Georgian style as can be seen in the mural on the wall of the old telephone exchange in Tskaltubo; the mural of the War Memorial in Gori and even in the Mother of Georgia statue in the hills above old Tbilisi.

So what’s on the panels? All of the panels which it is possible to see clearly follow a similar format. Apart from one panel all of them have four people involved in various activities and, as far as I could make out, all the individuals are distinct, i.e., there’s no repetition of any figure in another panel. And they generally tell a story of everyday life in (mainly) rural Georgia between the Great Patriotic War and the collapse of the Soviet Union at the beginning of the 1990s.

As seems to be a distinctive Georgian style of the period the tableau is made of of blocks of stone which, I think, gives the figures a ‘puppet’ look. In general they seem to be in a good condition – considering that no one, I’m sure, takes any real care of the art work. However, there are a few circumstances where a block is missing, mainly of a few of the faces. Whether general wear and tear or a conscious political ‘statement’ it’s impossible to tell. There’s a little bit of mindless vandalism but considering the isolation of the site surprisingly little.

Bodorna mural – female construction worker

The panels;

four male electrical linemen, working to distribute the power generated from the hydroelectric plant to the surrounding communities. There’s an image of a dam releasing its water in the background;
a group representing the arts, painting, music, theatre and performance. Here there are two men and two women;
an image of construction workers. A metal beam is being lowered above them. The four are all wearing hard hats and one of them is a woman;
a family group consisting of the parents on either side of a toddler, holding and supporting him. Unfortunately the baby has lost its head. Behind that group there are two older children playing a ball game. Interestingly, in the top left hand corner of the panel is an image of an old man holding a model of a house, there’s also a plant growing in the bottom tight hand corner. This is depicted as being something on the wall of their home and, I’m assuming, he represents one of the ancient, mythological deities from Caucasian folklore, one of those who protects the home – although I haven’t been able to identify exactly which guardian angel;

Bodorna mural – protector of the home

a group representing science, physics and chemistry. Here there are three men and a woman. There’s a globe on the ground, scientific symbols in the background and on the left is a man in a space suit (one Georgian cosmonaut went into space as part of the Soviet space programme);
a group of agricultural workers bring in the grape harvest. It should be remembered that wine is supposed to have been invented in Georgia. In the left background there’s a huge, flaming sun. Two of the faces of the figures are missing;
a group of four shepherds – with two of their sheep;
four agricultural workers, two men and two women, who seem to be celebrating the harvest. The man and the woman on the left both hold scythes. A man is playing a stringed instrument that could be either a chonguri or a panduri (a four and three stringed long-neck lute) and the woman on the right is holding a bunch of flowers above her head. Doves fly around in the background;
a group of male and female dancers, partially obscured by the encroaching vegetation;
a group of four male footballers.

Not sure how many other panels there might be as access was impossible due to the shrubbery, but only a couple, I think.

An interesting little sculpture gallery – and basically in the middle of nowhere.

Mother of Georgia – Kartlis Deda – Tbilisi

Telephone exchange mural – Tskaltubo

Location;

Off the eastern side of the ‘military road’ that runs from Tbilisi towards the Russian border near Kazbegi, close to the village of Bodorna and at the entrance to the Bodorna Hydroelectric Plant.

GPS;

42.041950º N

44.745477º E

Special Military Operation – art and posters exhibition on a Moscow street

Posted on 15/08/2024 by Michael

SMO exhibition

More on the USSR

Special Military Operation – art and posters exhibition on a Moscow street

I didn’t know what to expect when I entered Russia from Georgia, in late April 2024, on my way to Moscow. The country had been in a war with the US/UK/NATO/EU proxy for more than two years and although the route from the border to the capital city was not close to the conflict it wasn’t a continent away.

I thought there was a chance I would see troop and equipment movement, either along the motorways or the railway, but there was none of that. In fact, there was nothing at all that indicated the country was in the middle of an ‘existential’ war with the collective ‘West’.

Along the whole route (and even more so in Moscow itself) their were banners and posters in anticipation of the Victory Day celebrations on May 9th. These decorations might well have been more extensive than in previous years but even though these banners etc., had to accept in their imagery that it was the Soviet Red Army that had defeated the Nazis the modern day capitalist rulers of Russia would know how to use the parallel of the two struggles for their own advantage, if necessary.

But I never came across anything in the country that such a propaganda campaign in support of the government in the persecution of the war was really necessary. Yes, some young people had left the country back in 2022 in fear of being conscripted. Whether the majority of them were actually at risk of call-up could be debatable as, apart from volunteers, those called up for service were classified as reservists – who had already been in the military and whose contract specified that in certain circumstances they would be expected to rally to the cause. By all accounts there was no real opposition to this as the majority of the Russian population accept the aims of the ‘West’ even if they hadn’t read a ‘paper’ which was published by the Rand Corporation, a US government-leaning ‘think tank’, in 2019. Entitled ‘Extending Russia – competing from advantageous ground’ it lays out, almost to the letter, the ‘road map’ the ‘West’ has followed up to and since February 2022.

There might have been local opposition to the conflict but I was never aware of such and saw nothing (even overnight graffiti) that indicated real opposition to the Special Military Operation (SMO). Even those opposition groups ‘sponsored’ by the ‘West’, such as the group that Navalny once headed, would find little support for their activities if they came out directly against the war. From all that I’ve been able to learn the majority of the Russian population considered the present situation on a par with that of 1812 (with the invasion of the country by the Napoleonic imperialists) and 1941 (when the German Nazis crossed the western border of the Soviet Union). (Articles, podcasts, etc., with this point of view can be found on the page ‘The war in the Ukraine – what you are not told‘.)

Moscow, not unsurprisingly, was awash with imagery from the Great Patriotic War in readiness for May 9th but I saw nothing that was specifically addressing the SMO in the Ukraine. That was until I was walking along Arbat Street after having visited the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (one of the seven early 1950s Soviet skyscrapers). Almost to the top of this pedestrianised street, just before a large wall mural of Field Marshal Zhukov, (coincidentally?) was an open air exhibition of posters and art works relating to the war with the ‘West’s’ proxy.

Zhukov – Arbat Street

I don’t intend to make much of a comment on the contents other than point out that even though I might consider Russia to have been provoked into this conflict (by having to respond to NATO’s expansion) and can come up with nothing rational that Russia could have done other in the circumstances that existed at the beginning of 2022 I in no way support the ‘road’ Russia has been following since the 1990s. This is a war of one capitalist country against a coalition (although very often somewhat shaky) of other capitalist countries and therefore very different from the situation that existed at the time of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45.

Culturally the country has regressed in the last 30 or so years and although there was some reference to the battle against the Nazis the imagery in these posters took from superstition, religion, ancient Russian mythology and from conflicts with other invaders from Russia’s pre-revolutionary past.

Hopefully, the slide show will provide an idea of how the government was presenting the conflict to its own people. This exhibition was in no way directed at outsiders, not least due to its location – and, anyway, few foreigners from the ‘West’ are presently visiting Russia.

The only other public reference I encountered during my time in Moscow was a room with a large mural commemorating those who were fighting in the Ukraine in the Museum of the Great Patriotic War in Park Pobeda (Victory Park). This installation was accompanied by drawings and paintings, I assume at least some, by combatants. At the time I thought this strange, a museum with an exhibition of a current conflict? But thinking subsequently, after visiting the small museum to the Great Patriotic War in Gori, Georgia, I started to look at Soviet/Russian museums in a different light. Now, I think, I understand they are places to celebrate those who fought and might have died, for the Motherland, that they are ‘shrines’ in a sense, and places of pilgrimage for those who might have lost a relative or friend in a conflict, even one that is still ongoing.