Moscow Subway: A Moving Museum

□ Article / Pictures Tian Jianmin Tr. by Han Fanglan

Moscow Subway: A Moving Museum

□ Article / Pictures Tian Jianmin Tr. by Han Fanglan

Preface: On November of 1995, an agreement of being sister city was signed between Zibo City, Shandong Province, China and Novgorod City, Russia.Both municipal governments pay a high attention to their relations and believe that the cooperation is in a great potentiality. Besides, Zibo City and Bratsk are sister cities and the government of the former investigated the investment environment and the potentiality of economic and trade cooperation with a delegation of entrepreneurs in December of 2015. After that, I went to Russia twice for a friendly communication and an activity of promoting the bilateral exchanges in economy and trade respectively.

From the perspective of time in building metros, Moscow is not the earliest, they, nine countries and seventeen cities,had built the subway in the latter half of 19th century and at the beginning of 20th century. But in the following respects,like traf fi c and transportation, national defense, history, art,literature and style of architectures etc., metros of Moscow are the classical work combined much wisdom. It is one of the metros with large-scale in the world, and it is recognized as the most beautiful one titled “The Underground Art Palace”. An award was given to its amazing design plan in the New York International Exhibition in 1938, which made the Mayakovsky Metro Station be the world-class one.

It is the fi rst thing for tourists who come to Russia to realize this country by taking the subway, because it is a moving museum. Based on the heavy industry during the First Fiveyear Plan (1928-1932) of Union of Soviet and Socialist Republics (USSR), to build the underground railway was determined out of the military affairs and traffic pressure.In 1932, thousands of passionate youths took part in this work. In 1935, the fi rst metro (Line 1) remarked with a red line started to work. The underground railway could be used as a shelter for more than 400 thousand residents by considering the defense requirements during the war.About 200 names of metro stations are related with Russian celebrities, historical events and political affairs, such as the Victory Square Station, the Marxists Station, the Red Guards Station, the Lenin Avenue Station and the Communist Youth League Station and so on. Many important historical events happened in Russia and USSR can be found on metros’ body, like the resist of Napoleon’s Invasion in 1812 and the outbreak of the October Revolution etc., which record that tough period and show the historical pictures that are full of enthusiasm to us perfectly, and it deserves the title of a historical museum.

The construction of metro stations is different in shape and elegant in style. Every station was designed by the domestic famous designers and showed each one’s own characteristics. On the ground of lobbies in a metro station, there are full of marbles and various minerals more than 20 varieties, which are from Ural Mountain, Altay, Central Asia, Caucasus and Ukraine etc. It makes the metro station be an art museum and a construction museum with its magnificence and elegance, which includes the elegant art sculptures and reliefs of marbles, the classical ceiling lamps, the fl owers spliced by glass and the mosaic paintings on the roof showing the artistic mastery.

Metros of Moscow are a museum of literature and art with the atmosphere of literature everywhere. A lot of subway stations are named by great writers in Russia,like Pushkin, Chekhov and Turgenev etc., in which the most famous station is the Mayakovsky Station. It was a memorial for Mayakovsky, a revolutionary poet in USSR, and his statue with a deep sight is at the entrance of this subway station. The style of this station is categorized as the Neoclassicism of Stalin, and it expresses the romance with its avant-garde designing idea and classical decoration elements. Moscow’s subway displays more than 100 classical literature works for people without charge, and passengers can review the virtual bookshelves from the library by scanning the code with their cell phones or iPad. There is no other sound except the voice from the male broadcaster when it runs clockwise and the female when it runs anticlockwise as well as the rumble when it runs, most passengers read a newspaper quietly and nobody talks loudly.

The avant-garde design and magni ficent construction express the patriotism of people and the ideal of revolution, which let people have an artistic enjoyment during waiting the subways, and get the spiritual bene fi ts from their hearts. The theme of sculptures in the Revolution Square Station is the victory of October Revolution and the Anti-fascist War of Red Army of Soviet. They, red army who charged forward during the war and the sentry who guarded on duty, were in a freeze frame in those passionate years. We can still see the slogan from the Soviet Union: “Stalin instructs us that we need to be loyal to our county, and make efforts to our great career!” at the Kursk Station, the center of Moscow. There are eight giant reliefs pieced by colorful glass and stones on the ceiling of The Communist Youth League Metro Station, in which six reliefs depict the famous national heroes in all ages,they are Alexander, the Neva King (13th century),Dmitry, the Don King (14th century), Minin and Pozharsky, the liberators of Moscow (17th century),Suvorov (18th century) and Kutuzov (19th century).About the other two, one of them describes Russia and the other is a sculpture of Lenin. All of these sculptures objectively reflect the whole progress of Russians to struggle to be independent.

A large number of castles in Moscow belong to Tsars,but metros are a palace for people and they can go in freely according to the proud words of some Moskvich.People in Moscow fi rstly celebrated the festival falling on May 25, 2013, the birthday of the capital metro.At this day, there are concerts and exhibition of paintings held by literary celebrities, and some senior revolutionaries, who participated the construction of subway and the Soviet Union’s Great Patriotic War,tell the history of metros and effects that subway had brought etc. It has 81 years’ operation for Moscow’s metro, and everyone who took the subway would praise the magnificence of Russia, because they made a normal transportation tool become a moving museum and a class for patriotism; praise their literacy,because they treasure and protect the historical relic well, making this palace be in its prime still.

(The author works in Overseas Chinese Affairs Of fi ce of People’s Government, Zibo City, Shandong Province.)