Secret, useful, dangerous: Moscow underground in contemporary urban legends

Abstract

Folklore about Moscow subway constitutes a significant part of the city’s urban legends, yet it has been underresearched so far. This paper dwells upon the typical plots and motifs of contemporary narratives concerning Moscow subway (giant rats, secret “Metro-2”, etc.) and analyses their contents. There are several thematic groups of narratives: firstly, legends of a hidden/mysterious sign in the subway space; secondly, ideas of secret harm of the subway, namely, narratives about saboteurs in the subway, of subway tunnels dwellers, dangers of the subway design itself and of being underground, of looped subway time; and thirdly, stories of a hidden purpose of constructing the subway. The data was gathered during unstructured interviews conducted by the author in December 2017 - February 2018; the paper also relies upon the subway legends archive by E. Korovina and K. Rozova (September - November 2010), the results of the “Dangerous Soviet things” poll by A. Arkhipova and A. Kirzyuk, and other data. According to the perception of urban legends as a way of sublimation and canalization of social tension and fears, the legends about Moscow subway can also be classified according to the types of fears they express. Moreover, according to the pragmatics and social milieu of the texts’ distribution, one can distinguish between legends told by passengers and those told by professional tour guides.