Komsomolskaya

This guide to Komsomolskaya metro station in Moscow starts with workers on scaffolding after midnight, quietly reworking a dictator's face above an empty platform. It traces back to artist Pavel Korin's eight gilded mosaic panels, built in the old technique of Russian icon painters, illustrating a speech Stalin gave on November 7, 1941, invoking historic commanders like Alexander Nevsky and Dmitry Donskoy as German troops closed in on Moscow. After Khrushchev denounced Stalin's cult of personality, two of those panels became a problem overnight crews had to solve. Look up at architect Alexey Shchusev's sixty-eight marble columns and the golden vault they hold.