Moscow Guide
Krasnaya Presnya, Fili and the southwest
The Metro Museum
Address: Near the Sportivnaya metro station
Telephone: 622 73 09
Opening time: Mon 11am–6pm, Tues & Fri 9am–4pm
The intriguing Metro Museum (muzey Moskovskiy Metropolitan) is hidden away above the Sportivnaya station's Militia post. Its exhibits are as old as the metro itself. Photos of the construction of the earliest lines in the 1930s highlight the role of Komsomol volunteers and gloss over that of slave-labourers, twenty thousand of whom perished so that the regime didn't have to import costly machinery after opting for the deep tunnelling method that caused less disruption on the surface and allowed deeper stations that could serve as bomb shelters. The project was led by Lazar Kaganovich, in honour of whom the whole metro system was named until 1957, when he was ousted from the Politburo by Khrushchev, who had been his deputy twenty years earlier and felt that his own contribution to the metro had never been acknowledged. History aside, you can check out a driver's cab and get a good idea of how the metro is controlled from various working models.