The Stalinist Metro in Kyiv

2007, National Television Company of Ukraine. The documentary film ‘Kyiv. Tunnels into the Unknown’ is dedicated to the unfinished railway tunnels under the Dnipro River.

The video features: opening credits, fragments of the pre-war tunnel system, historical black-and-white newsreels, footage of pre-war tunnel construction, drawings and maps of the tunnels, Nikita Khrushchev at the construction site, footage of pre-war and modern Kyiv.

The history of the creation of the Pidruslyv tunnels is told by: Georgy Yasev, head of the Kyiv City Historical and Patriotic Club ‘Search’; Vyacheslav Dzivalovsky, head of the Department of Military and Patriotic Education of Youth in the Svyatoshinsky District; tunnel builder Ivan Mishchenko, who witnessed the post-war restoration of the tunnel system.

Reference: The ‘Stalin Metro’ (official name — Construction No. 1 NKShS; other names: Sub-channel railway in the Kyiv area, Object No. 1) is a system of tunnels and railway structures in Kyiv, built in the late 1930s and early 1940s as part of a strategic military project under the Dnipro River. They were intended to serve as a military facility in case of war and to ensure the crossing and movement of military equipment between the banks of the Dnipro. The project was never completed, leaving only a few concrete structures and unfinished tunnels.

Author: Andriy Dmytruk.