Mayakovskaya Metro Station

This is a modern image of the Mayakovskaya Metro Station hallway. 

The Mayakovskaya metro station is yet another stop on our tour. It can be accessed via the circle line metro from Belorruskaya. Being among one of the most famous metro stations in the world, we can only accurately assume that this is a product of Stalinist architecture, which would be correct. This metro station was erected in 1938, just three years before the beginning of World War II for the Soviet Union. Just like the artist it was named for, the station itself is poetic. With mosaics scattered across its ceiling, the metro station is a piece of art that was made with the purpose of functioning as a bomb shelter (1). It surely did fulfill its purpose as the station goes as deep as 100ft. and secured hundreds of thousands of civilians. On November 6^th, a day prior to the anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, Stalin made the decision to hold the city’s regular festivities underground and went on to give a riveting speech that rallied Moscow’s support in the country’s efforts to defeat Germany (2). Stalin was quite outspoken during the war and rarely held back when it came to professing the pride of the Soviet Union, as a proud leader should. However, much of this war went undocumented for a long time under the leadership of Stalin (3).

“It should be noted that no statistical data concerning the correlation of forces were mentioned in the first 25 years after the war, not even in scientific classified works…Numbers were first mentioned during the second half of the 1960s, with the revival of Stalin and Stalinism, but the figures were manipulated in various ways to accord with Stalin’s words in summer 1941….It was only in 1988 and 1989 that the first articles appeared showing that the sides had been evenly matched and that, with regard to tanks, the numbers had even tended to favor the Soviets.”

-       Nurit Schleifman, “Moscow’s Victory Park”

Beautiful mosaics cover the ceilings of the metro station. 

In the 1940s, the metro station served as a bunker for Soviet civilians. 

In order to avoid possible shame, Stalin and other members of the Soviet government purposely hid vital statistics about the status of Soviet efforts in order to come off as if the Soviet Union was overcoming more than they were projected to. This is just on example of how information was manipulated and widely misrepresented during the times.