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In the Soviet era, subterranean Moscow was filled with secret tunnels and nuclear bunkers. But Josef Stalin's paranoid underground facilities are about to be overtaken and dwarfed in scale by the high priests of Russia's prevailing religion: capitalism.
In a move that has alarmed geologists and preservationists, Moscow's city fathers have announced plans to gouge out 80 per cent of the land beneath Moscow to create a city beneath a city.
Many of Moscow's main public squares and roads would get underground "doppelgangers". Shopping centres, entertainment complexes, sports halls, parking facilities, roads, museums and warehouses would be built beneath the city's surface. The authorities have identified 25 sites where they want construction to begin. The aim is to build 3 million sq m of facilities in the next three years.
The project is being driven by Yuri Luzhkov, Moscow's powerful Mayor who has a taste for grandiose schemes with an eye on the historical legacy he will leave to a city he has governed with an iron fist since 1992. Luzhkov has complained that only 8 per cent of the land beneath the city has been developed and wants that raised to 80 per cent.
Geologists and preservationists have warned that the ground beneath some buildings has already been dangerously weakened by existing subterranean shopping centres and car parks. Incidences of the ground beneath people's feet simply falling in are becoming increasingly common.
Part of the problem is that subterranean Moscow is criss-crossed with underground rivers, shifting ground waters, and unstable subsoil. Last September an entire section of the Leningradsky Prospekt - one of the main arteries - collapsed, leaving a 10m crater that swallowed a lorry.
- INDEPENDENT
