Metro 2033

‘The Hanseatic League ’ was the name of the ‘Concord of Ring Line Stations.’ These stations were located at the intersection of all the other lines, and, therefore of all the trade routes. The lines were linked to one another by tu

The thing was, Artyom’s stepfather told him, the Sokol line was always sort of special. When you glance at the map, your attention is immediately drawn to it. First of all, it’s a straight line, straight as an arrow. Secondly, it was marked in bright red on metro maps. And its station names contributed too: Krasnoselskaya, Krasne Vorota, Komsomolskaya, Biblioteka imena Lenina and Leninskie Gori. And whether it was because of these names or because of something else, the line would draw to itself everyone who was nostalgic for the glorious Soviet past. The idea of a resurrection of the Soviet state took easily there. At first, just one station returned to communist ideals and a socialist form of rule, and then the one next to it, and then people from the tu

But it didn’t go any further.

When the Red Line had formed itself and had ideas about spreading itself through the metro, patience quickly wore thin at other stations. Too many people remembered the Soviet era. Too many people saw the agitators that were sent by the Interstational throughout the metro as a tumour that was metastasising, threatening to kill the whole organism. And as much as the agitators and propagandists promised electricity for the whole metro, that by joining with the Soviet powers they would experience real communism (it was unlikely that this had come from any actual slogan of Lenin’s – it was so exploitative), people beyond their boundaries weren’t tempted. The Interstational sloganeers were caught and thrown back to their Soviet territory. Then the Red leadership decided that it was time to act more resolutely: if the rest of the metro wouldn’t take up the merry revolution flame then they needed to be lit from underneath. Neighbouring stations, worried about the strengthening communist propaganda, also came to the same conclusion. Historical experience demonstrates well that there isn’t a better way of injecting communist bacilli into an area than with a bayonet.

And the thunder rumbled.

The coalition of anti-communist stations, directed by the Hansa, broke the Red Line and wanting to close the Ring circle took up the call. The Reds, of course, didn’t expect the organized resistance and overestimated their own strength. The easy victory they had anticipated couldn’t even be seen in their distant future. The war turned out to be long and bloody, wearing on and on – meanwhile, the population of the metro wasn’t all that large… It went on for almost a year and a half and mostly consisted of battles for position involving guerrilla excursions and diversions, the barricading of tu

Sometimes, it seemed that one side was gaining an edge, would take over an adjacent station, but their opponent resisted, mobilized additional forces – and the scales were tipped to the other side.

But the war exhausted resources. The war eliminated the best people. The war was generally exhausting. And those that survived grew tired of it. The revolutionary government had subtly replaced their initial problems with more modest ones. In the begi

Great leaders of the past started their parades there. Current leaders aspired to it. Also, they say that from the offices of the Revolution Square station there are secret passages to the covert laboratories of the mausoleum, which lead directly to the coffin itself.

The Reds still had Prospect Marx, formerly Okhotnyi Ryad, which was fortified and had become a base from which attacks on Revolution Square were launched. More than one crusade was blessed by the revolutionary leadership and sent to liberate this station and its tomb. But its defenders also understood what meaning it held for the Reds and they stood to the last. Revolution Square had turned into an unapproachable fortress. The most severe and bloody fights took place at the approach to the station. The biggest number of people was killed there. There were plenty of heroics, those that faced bullets with their chests, and brave men who tied grenades to themselves to blow themselves up together with an enemy artillery point, and those that used forbidden flame-throwers against people… Everything was in vain. They recaptured the station for a day but didn’t manage to fortify it, and they were defeated, retreating the next day when the coalition came back with a counterattack.