Everybody knows that the Soviet Metro has been named after Vladimir Lenin, but quite a few symbols of Stalin have been used there over the years; everything about the Metro has to do with the personality cult. In this posting we are going to compare the Metro at the time of opening with the Metro at the moment of Soviet government change.
Advertisement:
Belorussian Metro Station – used to have a large Stalin’s profile
Partisanskaya Metro station, there is Stalin’s profile and a quote “Defense of the country is a sacred duty of every person” behind the sculpture
Electrozavoskaya Metro Station
Semenovskaya Metro Station – used to be called Stalinskaya Metro Station, after renaming Stalin’s portrait above the arch has been taken off
Dobrininskaya Metro station
Dobriniskaya Metro station after Gagarin’s space flight.
Kurskaya Metro Station
Paveletskaya Metro Station – the horns are honoring nothing – the image in the middle is gone
Semenovskaya Metro Station inside – the quote on the banners states, “Glory to Our Red Army (Stalin)”
Semenovskaya Metro Station today
Avtozavodskaya Metro Station
At the same Metro Station there used to be a quote, “Labor in the USSR is the business of glory, the business of honor, the business of valor and heroism (Stalin)”
Today the quote is gone.
In the escalator area of this Metro Station there used to be a large mosaic portrait of Stalin, made by a sculptor G. Opryshko. One night in 1955 a group of people dressed as common civilians has arrived to the station and has destroyed the picture immediately. The author of the portrait has requested to keep at least the head of Stalin in place, but he was denied his request. Now they have a decorative frame in place there.
Another portrait at Dobryninskaya Metro Station
The same place today
Kievskaya Metro Station
Kievskaya Metro Station right now – notice the people have changed
Kievskaya Metro Station again – here the person on the flag has been removed
Krasnopresnenskaya Metro Station
The same sculpture from the end of the room, but enlarged. Nowadays there is a transfer corridor to the radial Metro line in place of the sculpture.
Novokuznetskaya Metro Station back in the days
Novokuznetskaya Metro Station today
Paveletkaya Metro Station. There is a profile of Stalin on the banner
Paveletskaya Metro Station today
Taganskaya Main Circle Metro Station. Today in place of this relief there is a transfer corridor to the radial metro line.
first…
See, this is why Stalin wasn’t a Marxist or Communist. There is no cult of personality in Marxism; there is no nationalism in Marxism; there is no terrorism (1937) in Marxism.
I will give you that. He was a Bolshevik at first, but he descended into being just a common tyrant concerned more with his own power than the collective good of the people. Then again, any time you concentrate that much power in a single entity, be it a government or a business, the result is always the same: Tyranny of the few or one over the many. Any system without openness is therefore doomed to eventual failure. For only in openness can tyranny have a chance of being avoided. However, openness is a concept that was foreign to all but two Soviet leaders. One was deposed and the other led to the disintegration of the whole thing because the whole thing had been a lie all along.
The major flaw in Marxism and Communism is you can’t change human nature. Those systems have no checks and balances that prevent a tyrant. You have to brainwash every bit of individualism and competition out of humans to accomplish the ultimate result.
Then we’re no better than ants or honey bees.
Yeah, and Hitler wasn’t a
i love moscow metro… miss all the gr8 stations…
Yeah, and Hitler wasn’t a nazi either. It’s a little bit cheap the tendency of self proclaimed marxists to cherry pick their past. Just grow up and face the facts: even if Stalin wasn’t a marxist – which is a very doubtful statement – it was a by Marx inspired political system that created him. Every marxist has to be aware to what the ideas of Marx possibly can lead.
This comment was a reaction on Sovmarxist1924′s comment, of course.
Very true
Marxism, communism, socialism, nazism (national socialism), progressivism, whatever… All of them share liberal/leftist roots. You have to be either dumb or evil to think these failed ideologies are any good.
Lex, your information is bad. If you want to reduce things at the absurd, you might as well look at the origin of the terms leftist and rightist:
rightist = pro-monarchist
leftist = pro-democracy, pro-republic
That’s not quite what they mean these days, but your definitions are even more reductionist and mis-representative. Someone’s been filling your ears with misinformation. You can’t just redefine “leftist” as anything you don’t like.
I am sorry Leo, but you are the one being confused here. The term ‘leftist’ was coined during the French revolution, and has been applied to a number of movements, especially socialism, anarchism, and communism. Everyone knows what a leftist is. I like the urbandictionary definition:
1)a lazy, self serving, communistic, marxist, anti-christian, islamist loving weasel
The elegance of Joseph Stalin.
i love moscow and kremlin with metro!