State Security Building at Lubyanka

House of Society "Russia"

In the XVIII century, a large property opposite the Lubyanka Square belonged to the princes Dadiani . According to the plan of 1772, in the depth of the plot there was a spacious stone two-storey manor. The structure had mixed baroque and classic forms. On the border there were corps that occupied various shops. The complex suffered during the fire of 1812 , and the breeder Fyodor Semyonovich Mosolov bought the burned buildings at auction. He had a large collection of paintings by Peter Rubens , Antonio Correggio , Harmens Rembrandt , Anthony Van Dyck , Diego Velasquez and others. According to the testimony of playwright Stepan Zhikharev , Mosolov placed his collection in the acquired Moscow estate ^{[4] [6]} .

After the death of the owner in 1840, the estate in Lubyanka was inherited by his widow, and in 1857 , by the nephew of Semyon Nikolaevich Mosolov. He arranged a private gallery within the walls of the house, where he arranged a collection of engravings and paintings. After the death of Mosolov in 1880, his son Nikolay Semyonovich received the collection and the estate. During this period, there were several buildings on the site, occupied by furnished rooms, a grocery store, the Warsaw Insurance Company, the Friedrich Möbius photographic studio and a tavern ^[6] . The publicist Vladimir Gilyarovsky in the book “ Moscow and Muscovites ” describes the apartment building as follows:

The rooms were all monthly, occupied by permanent residents. <...> Narrow, like a tunnel, corridors, with a specific "numeric" smell. In the corridor, incessantly inaudible steps were running with poorly tinned and uncleaned samovars in clouds of steam, with frenzy, into the rooms and back. <...> Little by little, to the place of extinct landlords, the rooms were settled by new tenants, and always for many years. The writer S.N. Filippov and Dr. Dobrov lived here for many years, Muscovite actors lived in a word, calm, not rich people who loved comfort and silence ^[7] .

In April 1894, the estate of Nikolai Mosolov with a total area of ​​over a thousand square fathoms was bought by the insurance company "Russia" for 475 thousand rubles ^{[1] [8]} . According to the Zodchiy magazine, the office’s management, together with the French International Society of Sleeping Cars and Large European Hotels, intended to build a hotel on this site. It was assumed that the complex will become a competitor to the premium hotel " National ", located nearby. The work was to be led by architect J. Shedan. Nevertheless, in parallel with this, the insurance company arranged an open architectural competition in Moscow to create a hotel project, to which, among others, A.V. Ivanov, P.K. Bergstresser, A.A. Gimpel, N. M. Proskurnin and others. The board of the insurance company preferred the joint idea of ​​Bergstresser, Gimpel and Proskurnin. But in the same period, in the course of negotiations with the French side, they made the final decision to entrust the development of the drawings to Shedan. In Moscow, Alexander Ivanov was to lead the work with the participation of Nikolai Proskurnin ^{[9] [6]} .

Soon after the foundation of the new house was erected, the relationship between the Russian and French partners went wrong, so the “Russia” society leadership reassigned the work to the Russian architects Proskurninina, Ivanova and Velichkin. At the same time, part of the built walls had to be dismantled, the rest was adapted for a new project: instead of the hotel, they decided to build a five-story apartment building in the eclectic style. Construction work was completed in 1898 (according to other data, in 1900 ^{[9] [10]} ). From the side of the square, the facade was decorated with the inscription: “Insurance Society of Russia”. The attic was decorated with turrets, on one of which a massive clock was installed. On the sides of them were sculpted female figures " Justice " and " Consolation " ^{[1] [2]} .

The first floors were occupied by the Naumov bookshop, the Popova sewing machine shop and other shops, the upper ones were for rental apartments. There were 51 furnished apartments, designed for wealthy guests, the rental price could reach four thousand rubles a year. The total annual income of the company from rent exceeded 160 thousand rubles. At various times, the pianist Konstantin Igumnov and the geneticist Vladimir Efroimson lived in the walls of the house, the women's gymnasium N. Ye. Spiss ^{[2] [6] [11] was located} .

In 1902, to the right of the building across the street Malaya Lubyanka , a four-story building was built by the project of architect Alexander Ivanov in a couple to the first. It housed the office of the cargo company " Caucasus and Mercury ". In the courtyard there was a separate building that was occupied by the Imperial Hotel ^{[2] [6]} .

State Security Building

By a decree of the Council of People's Commissars of 1918, private insurance organizations were liquidated, their property and property nationalized . In May 1919, the building was transferred to the jurisdiction of the Moscow Council of Trade Unions . However, a few days later the order was canceled, and after the last tenants were evicted, the house occupied the Special Section of the Moscow Cheka . For several months, the entire central apparatus of the Cheka under the control of Felix Dzerzhinsky ^{[5] [2] [10]} moved to the premises. In 1920, a separate building in the courtyard was converted into an inner prison. The entire complex was under the direct authority of the Lubyanka quarterly economy, which owned more than a hundred houses by 1921 ^[12] .

In the future, the state security bodies repeatedly transformed and renamed: since 1921, the OGPU , which in 1934 became part of the NKVD . The building also housed the NKGB and the MGB during the existence of separate state security departments. In 1946, the NKVD was transformed into the Ministry of Internal Affairs , on the basis of which the KGB of the USSR functioned since 1954. After the collapse of the USSR , the main Russian special services were located in the building on Lubyanskaya Square, which also changed their official names several times. Since 1996, the complex has been occupied by the FSB ^{[2] [13]} .

The apparatus of state security bodies was constantly expanding. If in 1928 about 2.5 thousand people worked in the office, by January 1940 the state already numbered 32 thousand ^[14] . As the number of employees grew, room expansion was required. In 1932–33, architects Arkady Langman and Ivan Bezrukov built an additional building in constructivism style behind the former home of the insurance society. It had the shape of the letter “Ш”, its rounded corners of the house took to the streets of Bolshaya and Malaya Lubyanka. From the side of Furkasovsky lane, the main facade was decorated with rustication and tiled with a black Labrador , the coat of arms of the USSR was placed above the entrance. Contemporaries pointed to the architectural flaws of the corpus: a violation of the integrity of the ensemble and the lack of a uniform style ^{[15] [16]} . The ground floor of the newly built house was connected with the former complex of the insurance company "Russia" ^[17] . The premises were occupied by the foreign, transport, accounting and statistical departments, the General Directorate of the Border Guard , the archive, the library and other services ^[14] . According to the new numbering, the newly built building received number 4, the demolished buildings previously had numbers 6 and 10, so they are no longer listed on Bolshaya Lubyanka Street ^{[18] [19] [6]} . In the same period, the building of the inner prison was built on four floors ^[2] .

In 1939, architect Alexei Shchusev was instructed to reconstruct the old buildings. Initially, the project of a six-story building richly decorated in the upper part was assumed. However, later made the design more modest. The sketch was approved by the people's commissar Lawrence Beria back in 1940, but construction work was postponed due to the Great Patriotic War . During this period, most of the apparatus was evacuated to Kuibyshev , but the Chekists remained in the city, carrying out sweeps during the defense of the capital . According to the "Moscow plan" of the NKVD, the complex in Lubyanka was mined and was subject to demolition in the event of the seizure of the city. Mines were extracted only in 1942 ^{[18] [2] [6]} .

The reconstruction of the complex under the direction of Shchusev was able to begin in 1944 ^[9] . The architect proposed to interrupt Malaya Lubyanka in order to merge the two buildings into one and build a second courtyard. The lower floor of the building was decorated with gray granite , the upper tiers of a simple order structure were covered with beige-pink plaster . It was combined with the color of pilasters made from Bolnis tuff . The architectural composition has received positive reviews from contemporaries. Some researchers point to the similarity of the project with the Palazzo della Cancellaria in Rome . Schusev himself is credited with the following statement about the design of the house: "They asked me to build a dungeon, so I built them a more cheerful prison" ^{[20] [21] [22]} .

By 1948, only the right side of the complex was reconstructed, retaining the design of the rear facade. Also erected the central sector of the house, decorated with a loggia over the main entrance. The main facade was decorated with watches dismantled from the Lutheran Church of Peter and Paul in Starosadsky Lane ^[23] . On the left, close to the building, the old building of the insurance company, which was built on two floors, but retained much of the design, adjoined. The buildings were united by a single facade only in 1983-1985 by decree of Secretary General Yuri Andropov ^{[24] [5]} . At the same time, the former house of the insurance company was completely reconstructed under the guidance of architect Gleb Makarevich ^{[14] [2] [6]} .

In parallel with the reconstruction of the old complex in 1979-1982 on the opposite side of the Big Lubyanka, a group of architects under the command of Makarevich erected a new building where the leadership of the KGB of the USSR moved. However, the old complex continued to be used to house the administrative services of the state security organs. As of the 2018th, the house belongs to the Federal Security Service of Russia ^{[3] [1] [18]} .

Device and Memories

Since 1920, an internal prison operated on the territory of the complex, greatly expanded by architect Arkady Langman a decade later. The cells contained "the most important counter-revolutionaries and spies while they are investigating, or when, for well-known reasons, it is necessary for the arrested to be completely cut off from the outside world, to hide his whereabouts." Presumably, the first prisoners were the children of landowner Nikolai Yegorovich Lenin, Sergei and Olga. In 1923, Patriarch Tikhon was kept in the building on Lubyanka ^[10] . At various times, there were revolutionary Nikolai Bukharin , Lev Kamenev , actor Vsevolod Meyerhold , military leaders Mikhail Tukhachevsky , Vasily Blucher , Alexander Kutepov , aircraft designer Andrei Tupolev , politician Bela Kun , writers and poets Osip Mandelshtam , Alexander Solzhenitsyn , a number of a number of actor, Alexander Solzhenitsyn , etc. other public and cultural figures ^{[25] [3]} .

As of 1936, there were 118 cells in prison, 94 of which were solitary. In total, the complex once contained up to 350 prisoners. Also in the building acted kitchen, shower, dekkamera , ware and grocery warehouses, a library. At the same time, the numbering of the premises was specially confused so that the detainees could not determine the location of their cell. Most of the rooms had “seven steps in length and three steps in width”. According to some data, the inner walls were made hollow to eliminate the possibility of knocking . However, a number of researchers believe that during one of the reconstructions the builders took for the cavities special plaster ventilation grilles, which were installed by the architect Langman, trying to solve the problem of the vulnerability of the ventilation ducts. A closed walking yard was equipped on the roof, where freight elevators went up and separate staircases led. In the corridors there was a special escort system, which excluded the chance meeting of the interrogated ^{[9] [26]} . The rules and atmosphere of the prison in Lubyanka are described in many books. Thus, references to it are found in the artistic and historical novels “ Life and Fate ”, “ The GULAG Archipelago ” “ In the First Circle ” and others ^{[27] [28]} . In addition, there are many memories of former prisoners about imprisonment in the walls of Lubyanka:

At the plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) of 1937, Nikolai Yezhov , the General Commissioner of State Security, emphasized the need for “openwork searching”, and also expressed ideas for strengthening the “ class struggle ” at the meeting. In this regard, the number of repressed has increased ^[31] . According to accounting journals, only in 1937, 2857 people were put in prison on the Lubyanka, 24 of whom were released. After interrogation, the bulk of those arrested were transported to prisons in Butyrka or Lefortovo ^{[32] [33] [6]} .

According to the instructions of a number of historians and the memories of prisoners, the leadership of the internal prison actively applied the system of oppression of the psyche during interrogations. Thus, continuous inquiries for several days were distributed. However, different approaches were applied to individual prisoners. Nikolai Bukharin was allowed to continue his work, and after his imprisonment in the inner prison he wrote four manuscripts. Aircraft designer Nikolay Polikarpov , staying at Lubyanka, developed the designs of the I-16 fighter-monoplane ^{[34] [35]} . The closed regime of the object caused the appearance of assumptions about the existence of ten-storyed basements under the house, where prisoners were shot and a crematorium operated. Information about the underground floors and the crematorium was not confirmed. The prison was originally founded as an investigative isolator , from where prisoners were transported in accordance with the sentence. However, some prisoners confirmed that they actually executed the cellars ^[36] . In the entire history of the building on the Lubyanka not a single prisoner escaped ^{[37] [33] [38]} .

Evacuation and execution of prisoners

October 16, 1941 in Moscow imposed a state of siege . By decision of the State Defense Committee , Kuybyshev was announced as a reserve capital, where, among others, they decided to take out the most important political prisoners in separate cars. On the personal instructions of the head of the NKVD Lavrentiy Beria, the head of the investigative unit for particularly important cases, Lev Vlodzimirsky , within a day, prepared a list of prisoners of the inner prison who were to be shot in Kuibyshev. The list was approved by Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Bogdan Kobulov and agreed with the prosecutor Viktor Bochkov . On October 18, Lawrence Beria signed an extrajudicial secret order for the execution of 25 prisoners. It was published in 2000 in the collection "The organs of state security of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War" ^{[39] [40]} :

With the receipt of this, you are invited to go to Kuibyshev and execute the sentence - the death penalty (shot) against the following prisoners ^[40] :

1. Stern Grigory Mikhailovich
2. Loktionova Alexander Dmitrievich
3. Smushkevich Yakov Vladimirovich
4. Savchenko Georgy Kosmich
5. Rychagov Pavel Vasilyevich
6. Sakrier Ivan Filimonovich
7. Zasosov Ivan Ivanovich
8. Volodina Pavel Semenovich
9. Proskurov Ivan Iosifovich
10. Sklizkov Stepan Osipovich
11. Arzhenukhin Fedor Konstantinovich
12. Kayukova Matvey Maksimovich
13. Sobornov, Mikhail Nikolaevich
14. Taubin Yakov Grigorievich
15. Rozov David Aronovich
16. Pink-Egorova Zinaida Petrovna
17. Goloschekin Philip Isaevich
18. Bulatov Dmitry Alexandrovich
19. Nesterenko Maria Petrovna
20. Fibiha-Savchenko Alexandra Ivanovna
21. Weinstein Samuil Gertsovich
22. Belakhov Ilya Lvovich
23. Anna Slezberg (Hai) Yakovlevna
24. Dunaevsky Evgeny Viktorovich
25. Kedrov Mikhail Sergeevich

Jail closure

After the death of the secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, Joseph Stalin, mass arrests were reduced, and by the mid-1950s, only 66 cameras operated ^[38] . By order of the head of the KGB Vladimir Semichastny in 1961, the inner prison was liquidated. The last prisoner was an American pilot Gary Powers , who was accused of espionage. There is evidence that the prison was closed four years earlier, and Powers was kept in one of the surviving cells only while waiting for a meeting with the US ambassador ^{[41] [14] [5]} . Most of the cells in the inner prison were converted into offices and a canteen. The six remaining rooms were equipped with a museum, which can be accessed by having access to secret documents ^{[37] [33] [18]} .

In 2008, the wing of the house from Myasnitskaya Street received the status of an object of cultural heritage . In 2011, it underwent a reconstruction. During this period, information appeared on the installation on the roof of the helipad house. According to the head of Rosokhrankultura, Viktor Petrakov , it has existed for a long time. Although the roof of the building did not belong to the subject of protection, representatives of the Moscow Heritage Authority stated that the project was not approved and the reconstruction was carried out without appropriate documentation ^[42] . Details of the restoration of the facades, which took place in 2013–2014, were not disclosed because of the secret status of the object ^{[43] [44]} .

Thanks to the activities of state bodies working in the building, the toponym "Lubyanka" became a household name. At different times, idioms associated with the house appeared. In 2015, before the opening of the reconstructed Detsky Mir , which is located opposite, they released a stylistic advertisement: “Do you like a child? Take to the Lubyanka. ” She caused a strong negative reaction in society. ^{[45] [46]} . Near the walls of the FSB building and the Solovetsky Stone monument located nearby, meetings and pickets regularly take place. Thus, in October 2018, the house held indefinite single meetings in support of prisoners for the New Greatness and Network organizations ^{[47] [48]} . In November 2016, artist Peter Pavlensky held a rally - the arson of the main entrance of the building as a protest "against continuous terror". He was fined for damage to a cultural heritage site, although it later turned out that the original door had been removed long ago ^{[49] [50] [51]} .

• In 1958, a monument to Felix Dzerzhinsky was erected in front of the building according to a design by sculptor Yevgeny Vuchetich ^[14] . During the August 1991 coup, by order of the Moscow City Council, the monument was dismantled with a large crowd of people ^{[52] [18] [6]} . He was transferred to the “ Museon ” park, and in the future, there were several proposals to return the sculpture to Lubyanka Square ^{[53] [54] [55]} .
• After the death of the KGB chairman Yuri Andropov, a memorial plaque was installed on the wall of the house where he worked. It was dismantled during the events of the August putsch, but eight years later the bas-relief was returned to its place ^[56] .
• On the side of Myasnitskaya Street there is a memorial tablet on the wall of the house dedicated to the architect Shchusev ^[44] .
• In memory of the victims of political repression in 1999, a “Solovetsky Stone” memorial was erected on Lubyanka Square, brought from the territory of the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp ^{[57] [18]} .

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• Лубянка: правда или вымысел
• Поджог здания на Лубянке
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• Здание органов госбезопасности в проекте «Моспрогулка»