Less than two years ago, Object No 2, a gigantic bomb shelter built underneath Samara’s vast Kubyshev Square, was being considered by Russian tourism officials as a museum site.
The original design and decor of the 1940s shelter, built on orders from Joseph Stalin about 40 metres underground with office furniture and other details from the pre-nuclear age, would have been a logical addition to the city’s subterranean attractions. As the Soviet Union’s reserve capital during the second world war, the city sits on top of a huge complex of underground bunkers, of which Object No 2 is thought to be one of the largest.
“The so-called Stalin’s Bunker, which may already have become the main attraction of Samara, is a pathetic cellar by comparison,” is how Igor Makhtev, a local historian, described the shelter, which he first visited in 2002.
Photos of one section show a dimly lit, seemingly endless corridor with benchesfor hundreds of Soviet officials to sit out a potential bombardment or chemical attack. Original elements, like electrical shielding made of marble, have been preserved.
But with the launch of the invasion of Ukraine and an order by Vladimir Putin to start civil defence preparation in regions across the country, thousands of Russian bomb shelters are being reviewed for refurbishment and renovation in the still unlikely – but for a while unthinkable – case of missile strikes on the Russian heartland.
For years, Samara’s bunkers, by some estimates the third most developed in Russia after Moscow and St Petersburg, have generated a cult following among the city’s urban historians and diggers, who illegally tunnel under the city, and have become the source of numerous urban legends.
One was that Stalin managed to build the underground bomb shelter Object No 1 without anyone in the flats above noticing the construction. Another is that Nikita Khrushchev, the former Soviet leader, was forced to flee angry crowds booing and throwing tomatoes at him through Object No 2. Yet another was that some of the key bomb shelters, named after leading figures such as Stalin, Mikhail Kalinin, and Lavrentiy Beria, were all connected by a secret underground passageway that has never been found.
Despite the border being more than 500 miles away from Samara the war in Ukraine has reinvigorated interest in the bunkers.
“People are much, much more interested in the bunkers,” says Ekaterina, a tour guide leading a packed excursion through Object No 1, the “Stalin bunker”, a bomb shelter built 36 metres underground in 1942 for the Kremlin high command. Parts remain an active shelter under control of Russia’s emergencies ministry, she said.
Underground, it feels a bit like being caught inside a municipal building with no windows, with fading paint and wood-panelled boardrooms and offices.
“Everyone is interested in these kinds of structures. They’re thinking about them more and more carefully. They’re thinking about protection.”
“We’ve had many times more people visiting,” she said, as three tours were being held simultaneously in mid-February.
A former city official and a regional historian in Samara, the regional capital, told the Guardian that the much larger “Kalinin bunker” almost certainly would be considered under a recent order by Putin to prepare for civil defence. And reports by 63.ru, a local news site, said: “The giant bomb shelter under Kubyshev Square will be prepared to protect the population.”
Makhtev, a local historian, described descending into the bomb shelter’s communication shaft and being shocked by “the scale of the structure”.
There is “an inconspicuous entrance in the courtyard of the theatre, several transitions down the usual concrete stairs and more than 30 meters underground by elevator”, he told the Guardian.
Much of the technology there was still working then, he said, which was outfitted for the staff of the Red Army and passes to a nearby military headquarters.
“I was very surprised that phones made obviously in the same years when the bunker was being built were working,” he said. “I even managed to call my office.”
Even then, however, the construction was ageing, he noted. “It definitely hasn’t gotten any better,” he said.
A member of Samara’s community of “diggers” who has been in the bunker about five times said he had gone through another entrance, lowering himself into the underground structure using ropes through a ventilation shaft near Kubyshev Square. There are actually two structures underneath the square, including a communications headquarters and then a larger, main shelter, referred to as Object No 2.
He also described the structure as enormous but unserviced, adding that it didn’t appear it was actively looked after or cleaned in recent years. Still, he said, climbing into the underground tunnels connected to some of Samara’s most sensitive sites carried its risks.
“Everyone knows about it but it’s still maybe secret, it’s hard to know where the line is,” he said. “You have to plan carefully and not get caught.”
The location of Russia’s bomb shelters, and Russia’s plans to protect the population in case of a full-scale war, are considered a matter of national security, so local officials have been careful answering journalists’ questions about the preparations.
“In the Samara region, following the instructions of the Russian president, full-scale work is being carried out in relation to civil defence protective structures to implement measures to protect the population. Before the completion of the activities, comments on this category of structures is premature,” said a local representative of the federal agency for state property management, 63.ru reported.
Late last year, the Moscow Times reported that four current and former Russian officials had confirmed that upgrades were taking place on orders from the government in Moscow.
Even more surprisingly, money was actually being invested in the updates. In the Samara region, a 3.8m ruble (£38,000) tender for waterproofing work on a bomb shelter in Samara region was listed in November, the report said.
In another case in Samara, a lawsuit was filed against a local company forcing it to update its bomb shelter, with a filing saying that the structure itself was “unsuitable for a quick transition from daily activity to protecting the population”.
Local bomb shelters across Russia, of which there are thousands, many built during the 1940s and 1950s, are commonly rented out for commercial purposes, often as warehouses.
Yet the long history behind Samara’s bomb shelters for the elite, which were once meant to allow Kremlin and Red Army staff to continue working even under bombardment while ordinary people were evacuated to the countryside, attract special attention.
Petr Yakubson, another local historian, said that less than two years ago, Samara tourism officials held meetings to discuss making the shelter into a museum.
“What’s located underground in the centre of our city is already very old, it was built during the great patriotic war,” the local term for the second world war, he said. “Not everything there meets modern standards. It is a museum, the structure itself. Without any status. Just by its age. The things down there, the artefacts. The doors, the furniture. It’s a readymade museum that’s been preserved and very little has been changed.”
But even 80 years later, he said, preparing them for civil defence would not be a complicated task.
“The thing is that these sites are ready,” he said. “You can go hide there now. They don’t really need any preparation … it looks normal. It’s not being used for its main purpose, but its condition is fine.”
