Josef Stalin

Moscow’s Metro system was one of the greatest prestige projects of Josef Stalin. Many of the stations in the city centre are built in palatial style, with marble-clad walls, frescoes, mosaics, chandeliers and statues, many lauding the 1917 Bolshevik revolution

In August 2009, Moscow unveiled a refurbished Metro station decorated with an inscription heaping praise on Stalin, sparking outrage from Opposition and human rights groups

The chandeliered, mosaic-covered vestibule in central Moscow’s Kurskaya station bears a line from an old version of the Soviet national anthem: “Stalin brought us up to be loyal to the nation, inspired us to labour and great deeds”

The Mayakovskaya station was used as an air raid shelter during World War II

The Moscow Metro has 298.8km of route length, 12 lines and 180 stations; on a normal weekday it carries over 7 million passengers. Calcutta Metro is 23km long

The first known attack inside the Metro came during the time of Leonid Brezhnev, when a bomb planted in a carriage in January 1977 by Armenian separatists killed seven people and injured another 37

Construction of the Moscow Metro began in the 1930s. The first line opened in May 1935 between Sokolniki and Park Kultury with a branch to Smolenskaya which reached Kievskaya in April 1937

Construction continued throughout the 1930s and throughout World War II. As Moscow was besieged in late 1941, the Metro stations were used as air raid shelters

Nikita Khrushchev

The council of ministers moved its offices to the platforms of Mayakovskaya station, where Stalin made several public speeches

The stations on the Arbatsky (or Arbat) line, constructed during the Cold War, were planned as shelters in the event of a nuclear war with the US

During the late 1950s, the architectural extravagance of new metro stations was significantly reduced, under the orders of Nikita Khrushchev. He championed a more simple or standard layout, which quickly became known as Sorokonozhka or Centipede because of the columns aligned in rows down either side of the platform

A bracket at the Byelorusskaya metro station in Moscow

In the mid-1970s, architectural extravagance was restored, and original designs once again became popular. Construction of new stations continues to this day

The marble used in the Moscow Metro was brought from all over the former Soviet Union

Black marble from the Urals, Armenia and Georgia decorates the walls of the Byelorusskaya, Ploshchad Revolutsii, Elektrozavodskaya and Aeroport stations. Deep-red marble from Georgia adorns the Krasnye Vorota Metro station