The Moscow Metro, being the main public transport hub of the capital, has several other functions. In addition to a powerful means of protecting the population and carrying out operations for the general civil defense of the city, the Moscow metro is also a very valuable cultural monument of our country, clearly demonstrating the history of development and the stages of the formation of society.
Main exhibition of the USSR
The Exhibition of Achievements of the National Economy of the USSR (VDNKh of the USSR) got its name in 1959. Initially, its name sounded like "All-Union Agricultural Exhibition". The complex was opened in Moscow in 1939 on a vast territory between the Main Botanical Garden and the Ostankino Recreation Park and worked until 1941. After the war, the exposition was opened only in 1954, and in 1992 it was renamed the All-Russian Exhibition Center (VVC). In the pre-war years, a similar exhibition was held on Sparrow Hills and since 1923 was called"All-Russian agricultural and handicraft-industrial exhibition".
A year before the renaming into VDNKh, the metro opened its doors to the visitors of the complex, making it much closer to the people in the truest sense of the word. The territory of VDNH also includes the monument "Worker and Collective Farm Girl", sculptor Vera Mukhina, fountains "Friendship of the Peoples of the USSR" and "Stone Flower", 14 fountains of the central alley, three elegant arches of the Central, Main and Southern entrances, as well as about ninety pavilions built on exhibition complex area.
What to name?
The metro station "VDNKh" was launched on May 1, 1958 as the terminal station of the Riga radius "Prospect Mira" - "VSHV". Prior to the assignment of a new name to the exhibition, during the year the station was called similarly to the exhibition complex located above it - "VSHV". In 1992, after the renaming of VDNKh into the All-Russian Exhibition Center, it was also proposed to change the name of the station, but this project was abandoned. Other projects to assign new names to the station have not been published either: Vystavochnaya, Rostokino, Kosmicheskaya - these names have forever remained on paper.
Orange branch
Rizhsky radius, launched in 1958, consisted of only four stations: Botanical Garden (now Prospekt Mira), Rizhskaya, Mir (aka Shcherbakovskaya and Alekseevskaya) and VSHV (now VDNKh). How to get by metro to the city center or to an exhibition of a union scale, from that time on it has ceased to be a problem. Previously it was possibledo only on land transport of the capital.
Four years later, in 1962, the Kaluga branch line was put into operation. It connected the central part of Moscow with new buildings in the southwest and stretched to the Novye Cheryomushki station. It is noteworthy that the Shabolovskaya station was put into operation only in 1980, although it was taken into account in the project from the very beginning. The station "Kaluzhskaya" at first was located in the depot (Traction part number five "Kaluzhskoye"). In 1974, it was closed, putting into operation a new platform of the same name.
Line Development
The two directions were combined in 1972, the name of the newly formed full-fledged branch was given the name "Kaluga-Rizhskaya Line" by the name of each of the former radii. In 1978, the line was extended to Medvedkovo station, the fourth station north of VDNKh. The metro in Moscow develops every year, wrapping its web of underground hauls in more and more new areas of the capital. In the 1980s, the line was pulled to the southwest, and in 1990 the terminal station Bitsevsky Park (now Novoyasenevskaya) was opened with turnaround dead ends. In 2014, it was made a transfer station, giving passengers the opportunity to transfer to the light metro line L1.
Pride of the Nation
Despite its Soviet origin, the name of the station is still synonymous with the proud word Moscow. VDNKh, the metro next to it, a huge exhibition site of the Soviet Union, the Cosmos Hotel, as well as the notorious monument "Worker and Collective Farm Girl" - will forever remain a symbol of developed socialism within the capitalour state. Today, this station is no longer just a stopping point of one of the Moscow metro lines. It is also a historical monument, demonstrating the architectural and engineering power of that time.
Station decoration
"VNDH" - a deep station. The underground level of minus fifty-three and a half meters makes it one of the deepest stations of the Moscow metro. The three-vaulted design of the station has a length of nine pylons (eighteen in total). The platform cannot boast of a special decorative decoration, since it was built during the years of serious savings. Initially, it was planned to decorate the tops of the pylons with a green ornament framed with gilding on the theme of Florentine mosaic motifs. The artist Vladimir Andreyevich Favorsky was even specially invited for this work.
After some time, he created a special drawing for the VDNKh station. The metro of the fifties was distinguished by the dissimilarity of the design of each station. And there were few stops at that time. Just recently, the war ended, the main forces of the working people were thrown into the restoration of the country's economy. However, they approached the creation of the interior of the metropolitan subway in detail. Not bypassed and "VDNKh". The interlacing of oak leaves and ribbons organically decorated the first pylon of the station under construction. However, shortages and savings took their toll. The mosaic was plastered and painted over with green paint not only the first of the supporting structures, but also each of the supports.
To the region and beyond
Currently thisthe underground station is one of the busiest transfer hubs in the Moscow region. A significant role in this is played by the fact that it is located next to the territory of the huge exhibition complex "VDNKh" metro.
The map of the Moscow rapid transport system of the city does not reflect and does not convey the fullness and scale of the daily passenger flows passing through the station. The presence of a suburban transport hub adds a significant part of the people who use VDNH to get on the metro in the morning and leave it after the end of the working day, getting home. Mytishchi, Korolev, Sergiev Posad, Pushkino, Ivanteevka, Lesnye polyany - this is not a complete list of cities near Moscow, to and from which can be reached by bus from TPU to VDNKh. At the same time, the Moscow metro serves as a logical continuation of the transport artery both to the center of the capital and in the opposite direction.
Don't forget about the residents of nearby areas, where the Moscow metro has not yet managed to throw its branching networks. Ostankino, Rostokino, Maryina Roshcha, Yaroslavl district - most of the people living here use the VDNKh station to get to work or to the center of the capital. Free buses to major shopping centers such as Golden Babylon in Rostokino or XL in Mytishchi near Moscow also contribute to increasing the load on the station. Potential visitors to shopping and entertainment galleries from all districts of Moscow are attracted by the possibility of free travel by land transport to the place of shopping.
Exit from the station
Until mid-1997, the only northern above-ground lobby in the form of a rotunda, opened back in 1958, functioned. However, its capacity was clearly not enough to cope with the daily increasing load of the VDNKh metro station. The exits on both sides of Prospekt Mira were opened on August 25, 1997. The southern vestibule takes passengers to the underground passage under the highway and offers to climb to the surface from the side of the alley of Cosmonauts, or from the side of the Temple of the Tikhvin Icon of the Mother of God in Alekseevsky.
In June 2013, the North Lobby was closed for almost a year to repair the escalators that had served their purpose and were already pretty worn out. The new lifting mechanisms went into operation on June 1, 2014. Modern devices have not only increased bandwidth, but also meet all ISO9001-2011 safety standards.
In closing
VDNKh metro station has been and remains a symbol of development and a historical monument in the hearts of Russians. Tourist excursions on the Moscow metro for foreign travelers pass daily through its underground vaults. More than 150,000 people step onto the cold granite of her domain every day. The station has been immortalized in many literary works, for example, in Dmitry Glukhovsky's novel "Metro 2033" as "the last stronghold of culture and the northern outpost of civilization on the Kaluga-Riga line."
