You're reading: Stalin saw underwater tunnel as World War II secret weapon

To Soviet leaders Josef Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev, it was one of two top secret underwater tunnels being built to connect the banks of the Dnipro River, a possible ace-in-the-hole to help win World War II for the Allies.

If the Nazis bombed all of the river bridges, this tunnel would be counted on to move soldiers and supplies.

To the more than 12,000 employees working under tight watch, it was a part of “Object No.1,” since using the word “tunnel” in a conversation was enough to get sent to a labor camp for 10 years.

Yet in today’s high-tech world of satellites that could spot a dime on a city sidewalk, there’s nothing secretive about the unfinished caisson in the Obolon district. Its GPS coordinates are: 50°29’56”N 30°31’26”E.

The watertight chamber was going to be used for underwater construction work. Now, it occupies riverfront space flanked by newly built residential buildings, townhouses and a golf driving range. You can find it walking along the river away from the golf center towards the Moscow Bridge. The monolithic Soviet remnant appears taciturn and out of place covered in green overgrowth and graffiti.

But back in 1936, Khrushchev was the tunnels’ project leader. They were supposed to extend 6.5 kilometers underwater, be built in nine years and go as deep as 32 meters, according to Kyiv historian Arseniy Fineberg.

Khrushchev at the time headed Moscow’s vast subway construction project. He was also the first secretary of the Communist Party’s central committee.

The northern tunnel was supposed to link what was then uninhabited marshland in Obolon with today’s Troyeshchyna neighborhood on the left bank. The southern tunnel was supposed to connect Zhukiv Island with Osokorky, then sparsely populated and still yet unincorporated into Kyiv.

Coupled with removable railroads, the tunnel was supposed to allow for the movement of tanks, soldiers and supplies underwater in case the city’s bridges got blown up during war. But, by 1941, when Germany and its allies invaded the Soviet Union, the construction was only 10 percent completed. That amounted to a 15-meter diameter caisson buttressed inside by a 0.5 x 10-meter brick wall.

Historians today are still unclear whose idea the tunnels were. Krushchev visited the site. Kyiv employees, mainly from the state company Hidroshliakhbud, worked there, while management came mostly from Moscow’s subway works.

Even at the outset of the war, no one working in the project was sent to the front to presever secrecy. Instead, they were placed in the army reserves.

The head of construction was engineer Mikhail Terpyrovyev. The project’s head engineer was Konstantin Kuznetsov, who headed up the future St. Petersburg’s subway project.

Today the tunnel in Obolon is often used as a playground by children who like swinging while holding on to a trapeze attached to a suspended bungee rope. The broken beer bottles that litter the interior are a testament that it’s not your average night spot. It is also a frequent stop on excursion tours around Kyiv’s secret landmarks.

Kyiv Post staff writer Mark Rachkevych can be reached at [email protected].