Editing Moscow Metro (section)

==== ''Bright future'' and literal brightness in the Metro of Moscow ====
The Moscow Metro was one of the USSR's most ambitious architectural projects. The metro's artists and architects worked to design a structure that embodied ''svet'' (literally "light", figuratively "radiance" or "brilliance") and ''svetloe budushchee'' (a well-lit/radiant/bright future).<ref name="Cooke 1997 137–160">{{cite journal |last=Cooke |first=Catherine |title=Beauty as a Route to 'the Radiant Future': Responses of Soviet Architecture |journal=Journal of Design History |year=1997 |volume=10 |series=Design, Stalin and the Thaw |issue=2 |pages=137–160 |jstor=1316129 |doi=10.1093/jdh/10.2.137}}</ref> With their reflective marble walls, high ceilings and grand chandeliers, many Moscow Metro stations have been likened to an "artificial underground sun".<ref name="Bowlt 2002 34–63">{{cite journal |last=Bowlt |first=John E. |title=Stalin as Isis and Ra: Socialist Realism and the Art of Design |journal=The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts |year=2002 |volume=24 |series=Design, Culture, Identity: The Wolfsonian Collection |pages=34–63 |jstor=1504182 |doi=10.2307/1504182}}</ref>

This palatial underground environment<ref name="Bowlt 2002 34–63" /> reminded Metro users their taxes were spent on materializing ''bright future''; also, [[Stalinist architecture|the design]] was useful for demonstrating the extra structural strength of the underground works (as in Metro doubling as [[bunker]]s, bomb shelters).

The chief lighting engineer was Abram Damsky, a graduate of the Higher State Art-Technical Institute in Moscow. By 1930 he was a chief designer in Moscow's Elektrosvet Factory, and during World War II was sent to the ''Metrostroi'' (Metro Construction) Factory as head of the lighting shop.<ref name="Damsky 1987 90–111">{{cite journal |last=Damsky |first=Abram |title=Lamps and Architecture 1930–1950 |journal=The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts |date=Summer 1987 |volume=5 |issue=Russian/Soviet Theme |pages=90–111 |jstor=1503938 |doi=10.2307/1503938}}</ref> Damsky recognized the importance of efficiency, as well as the potential for light as an expressive form. His team experimented with different materials (most often cast bronze, aluminum, sheet brass, steel, and milk glass) and methods to optimize the technology.<ref name="Damsky 1987 90–111" /> Damsky's discourse on "Lamps and Architecture 1930–1950" describes in detail the epic chandeliers installed in the Taganskaya Station and the Kaluzhskaia station (''Oktyabrskaya'' nowadays, not to be confused with contemporary "Kaluzhskaya" station on line 6). The work of Abram Damsky further publicized these ideas hoping people would associate the party with the idea of ''bright'' future.

{{blockquote|The Oktyabrskaya Station (originally named Kaluzhskaya) was designed by the architect [Leonid] Poliakov. Poliakov's decision to base his design on a reinterpretation of Russian classical architecture clearly influenced the concept of the lamps, some of which I planned in collaboration with the architect himself. The shape of the lamps was a torch – the torch of victory, as Polyakov put it... The artistic quality and stylistic unity of all the lamps throughout the station's interior made them perhaps the most successful element of the architectural composition. All were made of cast aluminum decorated in a black and gold anodized coating, a technique which the Metrostroi factory had only just mastered.
The Taganskaia Metro Station on the Ring Line was designed in...quite another style by the architects K.S. Ryzhkov and A. Medvedev... Their subject matter dealt with images of war and victory...The overall effect was one of ceremony ... In the platform halls the blue ceramic bodies of the chandeliers played a more modest role, but still emphasised the overall expressiveness of the lamp.<ref name="Damsky 1987 90–111"/>|Abram Damsky|Lamps and Architecture 1930–1950|multiline=true}}