The subways in Moscow and Saint Petersburg (formerly Leningrad), built during the Soviet regime, are well known for their efficiency, extension and imposing stations, considered among the most beautiful in the world.
But until the Russians’ “blitzkrieg” against Ukraine last Thursday, few knew about the Kiev metro, the third to be built in the Soviet Union (USSR), as well as the architecture, urbanism and mosaics of the Ukrainian capital. , in the process of being occupied by the Russian Army.
It is no accident that some of Kiev’s metro stations are serving as a shelter for civilians from the horrors of bombings and the Russian war against the former Soviet republic.
The most spectacular is Arsenalna, the deepest metro station in the world, situated at a depth of 105.5 meters. In addition to serving, from a hill, a line that crosses the Dnieper River underground, which is up to 400 meters wide, the station may have been conceived as a refuge from a nuclear catastrophe, as there were simpler technical solutions.
While there may be topographical and geological reasons, the expensive alternative of building deep stations appears to have been a deliberate policy of the Soviet regime during the Cold War, fearing a nuclear attack.
The main cities of the former USSR have the deepest subway stations and lines in the world, equipped with exhaust fans and radiation meters. In St. Petersburg, not only for geological reasons, a very deep subway line was implemented, where the Admiralteyskaya station is located, 102 meters below the surface.
In Moscow, the Park Pobedy station is 84 meters below ground level. In Pyongyang, capital of North Korea, a country that was part of the USSR’s area of ​​influence, the Puhung station, among several very deep ones, is more than 100 meters from the surface.
To give you an idea of ​​what these depths mean, the São Paulo subway station Paulista, with its six interminable stairways, is 55 meters below ground level, half of Arsenalna, which, like Admiralteyskaya, has huge escalators.
Although of debatable artistic value, Kiev’s monumental stations deserve to be known, which will only be possible, in person, in an uncertain future and if, after the war, the Ukrainians do not definitively eliminate all symbols and references to the Soviet past, the that has been going on since the collapse of the USSR and that will certainly intensify if Ukraine maintains its independence.
The implementation of subway networks in the main cities of the USSR was a priority of the communist regime that, in addition to meeting an essential urban need and impacting the quality of life, built stations as propaganda monuments, with an architecture that recalls a modernized classicism, with art deco elements and decor inspired by socialist realism.
Until its dissolution in 1991, the Soviet Union implemented metro networks in at least 16 cities. A system to be envied: Moscow has 327.5 km and 196 stations, and St. Petersburg (a city of 5 million inhabitants, 40% of São Paulo) has 113 km and 67 stations.
The Soviet regime built subway networks in four Ukrainian cities. In Kiev, today with 2.9 million inhabitants, the metro network is 52 km long and has 50 stations. The newly occupied city of Kharkov (Kharkiv), the second in the country, with 1.4 million inhabitants, has three lines, with 38 kilometers and 30 stations.
Kryvyi Rih, an industrial center with 650,000 inhabitants, has a network of 18.7 km and 15 stations. Dnipro (Dnipropetrovsk), with one million inhabitants, has only one line, but 5 of its 6 stations are 70 meters deep, reinforcing the perception that the implementation of the metro had a clear defensive objective.
As in Moscow and Leningrad, socialist realism was very present in Kiev. Founded on a rigid and limited visual language, it spanned a thematic spectrum with popular scenes, rural and urban landscapes, from the daily activities of the proletariat or the Red Army and portraits of characters that the regime sought to exalt, always expressing physical strength and power.
The Kiev Metro, which began to be built in 1949, still expresses a lot of Soviet times. In older stations, such as Vokzalna or Universytet, the presence of socialist realism is stronger, although some symbols with the hammer and sickle have been removed from the mosaics.
At Shulyavska station, the mosaic represents a factory and two workers, with one holding an axe, the other an atom, symbolizing the union between work and science. The stations built in the 1980s, such as Minska, when the political and economic crisis shook the USSR, are simpler and have a more modern language, with Art Deco elements.
The Zoloti Vorota station, considered one of the most beautiful in the world, stands out. From a circular central hall, corridors with vaulted roofs and arched passages depart, resembling a palace, as was common in Soviet stations. But the decoration is at odds with socialist realism, as the mosaics are reminiscent of the Byzantine style.
In the urban landscape of Kiev, several blind facades of buildings decorated with mosaics stand out, extolling the revolution, the strength and musculature of the workers and the belief in science, represented by the atom. They are not without artistic interest, such as a high-relief mosaic from 1980, somewhat removed from a propaganda language, which is superimposed on an interesting corner modernist building, occupied by the Institute of Hygiene and Ecology.
The presence of USSR symbols in Kiev, when art was a propaganda tool for a regime that oppressed Ukraine and provoked a genocide like the Holomodor, would be reason enough for many to want to destroy them. Question that relates to the removal of monuments of bandeiristas in São Paulo.
As the nationalist protests of 2013 and 2014, which overthrew a government allied to the Russians, also generated murals and monuments extolling the so-called Orange Revolution, this issue could be repositioned, in the opposite direction, if a pro-Russia government is established as an offshoot of the war.
The immense subway networks in Soviet cities, although they were instruments of the regime’s propaganda and, perhaps, also thought of as refuges from a nuclear attack, left a relevant legacy that still positively structure urban mobility in Ukraine’s main cities.
