Moscow Metro – Novokuznetskaya – Line 2

Posted on 21/04/2023 by Michael

Novokuznetskaya – Line 2 – by Alex ‘Flostein’ Fedorov

Moscow Metro – a Socialist Realist Art Gallery

Moscow Metro – Novokuznetskaya – Line 2

Novokuznetskaya – Line 2 – 01

Novokuznetskaya (Новокузнецкая) is a Moscow Metro station on the Zamoskvoretskaya Line. The station was opened on 20 November 1943.

Novokuznetskaya – Line 2 – 02

Construction of the station began shortly after the launch of the second stage in 1938. Despite World War II the station was opened on time. Later in 1978 the platform was lengthened. This part is in a more modern style than the rest of the station.

Novokuznetskaya – Line 2 – 03

The station honours the Soviet fighting men with its heavy ornamentation. The architects, I. Taranov and N. Bykova, won a USSR State Prize for their design.

Novokuznetskaya – Line 2 – 04

The decorations include seven octagonal ceiling mosaics by Vladimir Frolov on the theme of wartime industry and bas-reliefs running along the base of the ceiling (by artists N.V. Tomsky, A.E. Zelensky, S.M. Rabinovich, and N.M. Shtamm) depicting the soldiers of the Red Army in combat.

Novokuznetskaya – Line 2 – 05

The pink and white marble pylons are also decorated with cast-bronze portraits of Russian war heroes like Mikhail Kutuzov and Alexander Nevsky. Floor lamps, long since replaced with more up-to-date lighting in other Metro stations, still give Novokuznetskaya an atmosphere of brooding shadow.

Novokuznetskaya – Line 2 – 06

There is an urban legend that the station’s ornate benches were made of Carrara marble taken from the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour just before it was demolished (in 1931), but it is not true, and the marble was from Ural, not Italy.

Text above from Wikipedia.

Novokuznetskaya

Date of opening;

1st January 1943

Construction of the station;

deep, pier, three-span

Architects of the underground part;

N. Bykova and I. Taranov

Architects of the ground pavilion;

V. Gelfreih and I. Rozhin

Sculptors;

A. Zelensky, S. Rabinovich, N. Tomsky and N. Shtamm

Transit to Stations Tretiakovskaya of the Circle Line and Kaluzhsko-Rizhskaya Line

Novokuznetskaya was opened when the Soviet Army beat completely the leavings of the 6th German Army in Stalingrad. However the present-day look of the station was formed in 1971, when the central hall was made much longer during the construction of the transit to the new Kaluzhsko-Rizhskaya Line (now station Tretiakovskaya).

The pylons of the old part of Novokuznetskaya are massive. There are marvellous marble benches in the niches of the pylons on the sides of the hall and platforms. They were proposed by academician I. Zholtovsky who consulted the young authors of the project. There is a story that the benches were made of Carrara marble taken from the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, just before it was demolished. The story is nice but hardly true. In any case, marble is from the Ural not Italy.

There are metal shields above each bench on the side of the central hall rounded with banners and legends ‘Glory to Heroic Defenders of Leningrad’, ‘… Sevastopol , ‘… Odessa’, ‘… Stalingrad’. On the platform sides the shields have the profiles of great Russian military commanders: Alexander Nevsky, Michael Kutuzov, Alexander Suvorov, Minin and Pozharsky, Dmitry Donskoy. The gypsum frieze runs through the whole central hall between the pylons and the vault with figures of soldiers and officers of different forces of the Red Army. There are signalmen, pilots, tank men, infantrymen, marines, and cavalrymen. They all either plan operations or attack and no one retreats. The sculpture groups are separated with Orders of the Great Patriotic War. There is a shield wording ‘Glory to Brave Soldiers of the Great Patriotic War’ above the exit to the city.

Bykova and Taranov used the geometrical picture of the Roman Tomb of the Valeries as a model for decorating the vault of station (adopted by Zholtovsky) but placed six smalt mosaics along its main axis. They were designed by A. Deineka and made by Leningrad craftsman V. Frolov. After his death during the siege of Leningrad, the panels were brought from the city by the Road of Life. The mosaics present absolutely peaceful scenes on the background of the blue sky (only one panel has no sky at all). The first one, starting from the northern end, shows girls harvesting peaches. The second – foundry. The third – workers moving a tractor by an assembly line. It is interesting that the lamps in the panel are similar to those used in the first metro lines and that the ceiling of the workshop is made of glass. The forth panel – builders. The fifth – a pilot takes his place in an airplane. The last panel has the most dynamic scene. Early morning. A girl-skier looks at a blue steam locomotive running by a viaduct and a pink airplane flying in the sky.

All the mosaics are illuminated by the torchieres placed along the main axis of the central hall. Till 2005 the shades and lamps were not bright, so the station seemed dark and the panels were poorly seen. Now it is the past, so one, sitting on a bench, can admire the sky through upward ‘windows’. The idea to establish such lamps was also supported by Zholtovsky. Various stones were used for the decoration of the station, pylons, walls, and floors. The old part of the station was faced white, yellowish, and ivory-coloured marble of the Prokhorovsko-Balandinskoye Deposit (Sverdlovskaya Oblast).

There are inserts of very original marble from the Agvenarskoye Deposit (Armenia) in the niches of the pylons below the light backs of the benches shapes as half-unfolded rolls. This pink to delicate lilac and light violet stone is speckled with a dense network of thin but bright pink, violet, and brown veins. The walls of the new part of Novokuzhetskaya are entirely faced with this stone. The floor of the station is made of the same light and warm marble of the Prokhorovsko-Balandinskoye Deposit with geometrical inserts of dark grey Karkodinsky marble (Ural) and black Khorviransky marble (Armenia). The poles and pedestals of the torchieres are decorated with fancy dark limestone from the Uzbek Almalyk Deposit and red limestone from the Georgian Shrosha Deposit.

Ground pavilion

The pavilion of Novokuznetskaya is the first in Moscow rotunda with a massive flat Romanesque dome and colonnade around. The vault of the dome is adorned with Frolov’s seventh mosaic – ‘Parade of Athletes’.

Text from Moscow Metro 1935-2005, p74/5

Location:

GPS:

55.7415°N

37.6295°E

Depth:

37.5 metres (123 ft)

Opened:

20 November 1943

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Moscow Metro – a Socialist Realist Art Gallery

Moscow Metro – Komsomolskaya – Line 5

Posted on 15/04/2023 by Michael

Komsomolskaya – Line 5 – by A Savin

More on the USSR

Moscow Metro – a Socialist Realist Art Gallery

Moscow Metro – Komsomolskaya – Line 5

Komsomolskaya (Комсомо́льская) is a Moscow Metro station in the Krasnoselsky District, Central Administrative Okrug, Moscow. It is on the Koltsevaya line, between Prospekt Mira and Kurskaya stations.

The station is located under the busiest Moscow transport hub, Komsomolskaya Square, which serves Leningradsky, Yaroslavsky, and Kazansky railway terminals. Because of that, the station is one of the busiest in the whole system. It opened on 30 January 1952 as a part of the second stage of the line.

Komsomolskaya – Line 5 – 04

Evolution of the design

Stations on the first southern segment of the Koltsevaya line were dedicated to the victory over Nazi Germany, while those on the northern segment (Belorusskaya-Koltsevaya to Komsomolskaya) were dedicated to the theme of post-war labour. Komsomolskaya was designed by Alexey Shchusev as an illustration of a historical speech given by Joseph Stalin November 7, 1941. In the speech, Stalin evoked the memories of Alexander Nevsky, Dmitry Donskoy and other military leaders of the past, and all these historical figures eventually appeared on the mosaics of Komsomolskaya.

Komsomolskaya – Line 5 – 06

The early roots of the station’s design can be traced to a 1944 draft by Shchusev implemented in pure Petrine baroque, a local adaptation of the 17th century Dutch Golden Age. However, after the end of World War II the drafts of 1944 were discarded and the stations of the Koltsevaya line were completed in the mainstream late Stalinist style of the period. Shchusev, who died in 1949, retained his baroque nonce order.

Komsomolskaya – Line 5 – 07

Komsomolskaya remained Shchusev’s first and only metro station design. The station was initially planned as a traditional deep pylon type. Later, Shchusev replaced the heavy concrete pylons with narrow octagonal steel columns, riveted with marble tiles, creating the larger open space.

After Shchusev’s death, the station was completed by Viktor Kokorin, A. Zabolotnaya, V. Varvarin and O. Velikoretsky and Pavel Korin, the creator of the mosaics.

Komsomolskaya – Line 5 – 01

Architecture and decoration

Beginning with the large vestibule located among the former of the two train stations, the building features a large octagonal dome topped by a cupola, and a spire crowned by a large star and imposing full-height portico with stylised Corinthian columns. Inside amid the Baroque-style ornaments, rich torchères and chandelier lights, two escalators descend, one leading to the old 1935 Komsomolskaya-Radialnaya station, and the second to this one.

On the platform level, there is a Baroque ceiling, with accompanying friezes, painted yellow. Supporting the enlarged barrel vault are 68 octagonal columns faced with white marble, and topped with baroque pilasters. The platform is lit up by chandeliers and additional concealed elements in the niches of both the central and platform halls.

Komsomolskaya – Line 5 – 02

The theme of the design, the Historical Russian fight for freedom and independence, is expressed in eight large ceiling mosaics by Pavel Korin. Korin said that the inspiration came from Joseph Stalin’s speech at the Moscow Parade of 1941, where he inspired the soldiers amid the catastrophic losses in the early period of World War II to remember the historical heroics of their Russian forefathers. The idea to design the art as a mosaic came from the Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kiev, where Korin saw that such artforms could last for eternity. Chronologically the mosaics are as following:

1242: Alexander Nevsky after the Battle on the Ice.
1380: Dmitry Donskoy after the Battle of Kulikovo.
1612: Kuzma Minin and Dmitry Pozharsky after the end of the Time of Troubles.
1799: Alexander Suvorov after the Crossing of the Alps.
1812: Mikhail Kutuzov after the Battle of Borodino.
1945: The original mosaic here was of Red Army troops on Red Square receiving the Guards banner from Soviet army command, but because it contained images of some commanders whose careers and legacy would later be re-evaluated (including Joseph Stalin) most of the mosaic was replaced with that of Vladimir Lenin addressing a meeting in Red Square, thus moving the date of the artwork to a period between 1917 and 1922.
1945: Soviet Troops on the Reichstag building after the Battle of Berlin (according to some, the original banner had superimposed profiles of Lenin and Stalin: the latter was removed to leave just Lenin remaining).

1945: The original image was of a Victory parade with Soviet soldiers throwing captured Nazi banners in front of Lenin’s mausoleum. However, for the same reason as the sixth image, this image was retouched on several occasions. When Lavrenty Beria was arrested in 1953, his glasses were erased and then the whole figure was removed. Then in 1957, after the political crisis saw the end of the careers of Vyacheslav Molotov and Lazar Kaganovich, their images followed suit. Finally, after 1961 brought the end of Stalin’s personality cult, in early 1963 the whole panel was taken down, and Korin redesigned it by placing a maiden (symbolising Mother Russia) standing on the Nazi banners in front of the same mausoleum, holding a hammer and sickle in one hand and a palm branch in the other. This mosaic is made of more than 300,000 tiles, takes up 31.5 square metres (339 sq ft) and weighs more than three tonnes.

In between each of the main mosaics there are smaller ones made of gilded smalt depicting various weaponry and armour. One set is focused on ancient Russian equipment, a second on the Napoleonic era, and the third on World War II. At the end of the platform is a bust of Vladimir Lenin under an arch decorated with gilt floral designs and the Coat of arms of the Soviet Union.

Komsomolskaya – Line 5 – 05

In the centre of the red granite covered platform are two passageways, surrounded by marble balustrades with escalators that descend into a lobby with a main escalator tunnel upwards to the Sokolnicheskaya line’s Komsomolskaya station. On the wall opposite the escalator is a large fluorescent mosaic, also of Pavel Korin, depicting the Order of Victory surrounded by red and green banners and Georgian colours.

Komsomolskaya – Line 5 – 02

In 1951 both Pavel Korin and Alexey Schusev were posthumously awarded the Stalin Prize for their work on the station, and on 30 January 1952 the station was opened to the public as the first on the second stage of the Koltsevaya line. In 1958 the station was awarded the Grand Prix (‘Grand Prize’) title of Expo ’58 in Brussels.

Text above from Wikipedia.

Komsomolskaya – circle line

Date of opening;

30th January 1951

Construction of the station;

deep, pier, three-span

Architect of the underground part;

A. Shchusev (died 1949), co-authors of the project, V. Kokorin and A. Zabolotskaya

Transition to Komsomolskaya of the Sokolnicheskaya Line

Komsomolskaya is a peak of the great Stalin emperor style characterised by mightiness, pomposity, combination of classicism, Empire style, and Moscow baroque. Painter P. Korin, an equal co-author of the architect, in this case, contributed much to the creation of the station.

Komsomolskaya cardinally differs from other stations of the Circle Line. Instead of usual massive pylons, there at a greater depth, at complicated geological conditions, an original load-carrying structure was used, absolutely new for that time. There are arcades – 34 columns on each side – linked by elegant arches. They carry the common entablature with a cornice stretching throughout the station. The entablature carries the basements of the vaults of the central hall and two track tunnels. The vault of the central hall is half as much high as the side halls. All this, simplicity and height, creates the feeling of open space, which extends by the rhythmic step of the arches running to perspective. The station is light, elegant, and harmonic.

The decoration of the station is concentrated on its main vault. The vaults of the track tunnels are simply white, winding with narrow transversal belts slightly in relief.

There are eight smalt mosaics along the main axis of the central hall and 16 more golden mosaics in pseudo-pendentives highlighted with mouldings. The mosaic panels are located in a chronological order starting from the blind end of Komsomolskaya. The end wall of the station carries a mosaic coat of arms of the USSR, gold on the claret-coloured background rounded with florid ornament. A small marble bust of V. Lenin is beneath the coat of arms.

The first panel is devoted to the victory of Prince Alexandre Yaroslavich in the Battle on the Neva. The Prince holds a banner in his hands with half-covered Christ’s face on it. On the pendentives – criss-cross swords, pole-axes, and quivers on the background of the coat of arms with George the Victorious. The second panel shows Dmitiy Donskoy before the Kulikovskaya Battle. The Prince holds a banner in his hands with Christ’s face. Peresvet and Oslyabya on horseback are in front. The third panel shows Prince Pozharsky and citizen Minin summoning people’s army in the Red Square. The Cathedral of the Cover is on the background. On the pendentives – criss-cross unicorn guns, sabres, pikes, and bayonets on the background of cuirass and shako with double-headed eagle. The forth panel shows Suvorov in The Alps. His marvellous heroes are in front. The fifth panel shows Kutuzov in the Borodino Field. There are Orthodox crosses on banners. On the pendentives – criss-cross sickle, hammer, and submachine guns on the background of Order of Victory. The sixth panel shows Lenin speaking at the parade of the Red Army before their journey to battle against Kolchak’s. The seventh panel show the capture of Berlin. Soldiers carry a banner with Lenin’s face. The eighth panel shows the Victory Parade in Moscow.

A barefooted lady with an olive branch in her left hand and sickle and hammer in her right hand tramples on fascist banners thrown to the basement of the mausoleum. All the panels are set off with wide mouldings inspired by Russian mansion ‘grass’ painting. The similar moulding forms separate geometrical shapes, such as belts, frames, and edgings.

There is a staircase at the end opposite to the blind end, which leads to a cupola hall. The vault is adorned with a red star with golden rays and 16-branch circle chandelier. A short passageway whose walls are decorated with meat-red marble leads to an escalator to the ground hall.

Text from Moscow Metro 1935-2005, p54-57