Deep underground in a Cold War-era nuclear bomb shelter, guide Alexei Alexandrov did his best to set a spooky mood, starting with his 1960s Soviet army uniform. “Please don’t split away from the group,” he somberly warned visitors to the labyrinth of tunnels shaped into cavernous rooms and lengthy hallways, “or you may get lost in the dark and end up shot by a guard by mistake.”
At the budding Moscow tourist attraction called the Confrontation Cold War Museum, historical remembrance and a touch of make-believe mix in an ambiguous but thought-provoking cocktail. With Washington and Moscow recently trading harsh rhetoric and some analysts warning of a possible slide back toward Cold War attitudes, the shelter serves as a reminder of what that period was like — and of the fact that similar facilities still function in both countries despite the disappearance of old fears.
The still-unfinished museum doesn’t exactly preach. But it aims to send a message. A sign in the entryway declares: “It’s important which questions a person asks himself after visiting the complex, which fears worry him, and what he’s pondering”.
Also known as the Tagansky Underground Command Centre, the 75,000-square-foot facility was built 200 feet below ground level as a communications complex meant to survive a US nuclear attack on Moscow. Work on it began in 1952, when Josef Stalin was still the Soviet dictator, and it went into service four years later.
The site was in operation through the 1970s, with a staff of 2,500, of whom 1,500 could be on duty at any one time. In the event of a nuclear war, it would have been sealed, with enough stored food for three months, and systems to purify the air. A planned 1980s renovation was abandoned as tensions between the Soviet Union and the West eased, and the site was declassified in 1995. Now the whole thing has been bought by a private company, which is converting it to a museum and entertainment complex that mixes advocacy of world peace with displays of Russian patriotism, and what sometimes seems like a touch of nostalgia for Soviet power.
The addition of more displays to enhance the atmosphere is still planned. But the mostly empty rooms and hallways, with some half-century-old communications equipment and a variety of Soviet-era posters, themselves evoke a chill. The wall posters include one that is almost touching in its naivete, labelled “Actions of a Soldier During the Flash of a Nuclear Explosion”. It shows the mushroom cloud of a nuclear blast, one soldier hiding behind a tree stump and others in trenches.
LA Times