Metro-2 (Russian: Метро-2) is the informal designation for a clandestine and officially unacknowledged deep underground metro system in the Moscow metropolitan area.

It is said to connect the Kremlin with the Federal Security Service (FSB) headquarters, the government airport at Vnukovo-2, and an underground town at Ramenki, in addition to other locations of national importance.

[10][11] Additional lines, i.e. to Vnukovo, are likely a later invention by the enthusiast community, though with the change in generations of the hardened protective structure design in the 1970/80s a redundant back up of this system may have been at least considered.

In an interview with both the newspaper's editor and Gonik in 1993, the author stated that the term "Metro-2" had been introduced to them, and that the novel had been written based on information collected over the previous 20 years by the two of them on things such as secret bunkers and the underground railways connecting them.

[13] In later years, Gonik has argued that the bunkers, and therefore the so-called "Metro-2", had been for use by the leadership of the Politburo and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), along with their families, in case of war.

According to him, in the early 1970s the General Secretary of the CPSU, Leonid Brezhnev, personally visited the main bunker, and, in 1974, awarded the Chairman of the KGB at the time, Yuri Andropov, the Gold Star Medal of the Hero of Socialist Labour.

From declassified archival documents, an overall layout of the track system and its main components can be established for the late 1960s (this is limited by the source material officially released so far).

While the system was eventually assembled in the late 1960s by the KGB, originally it was a collection of structures built for a variety of purposes and operators.

It intended to provide a solution to the challenge of extending the red line southwest, beyond the Sportivnaya metro station and the river.

Because of the conflicting requirements—a reasonable cost, a secure river crossing, and a civil defence shelter capacity—the final design included a shallow metro line with a vulnerable bridge backed up by a deep single track tunnel—which spurs from the main line after the Sportivnaya station (the initial part of this spur is seen on normal track maps)—and a high-speed elevator shaft.

Order 10-A is composed out of sites 54 and 54a and was intended to provide protected work spaces for the personnel of the planned Palace of the Soviets behind the Moscow State University campus.

In the late 1960s, the DV-1 and its related support infrastructure (i.e. the deep single track tunnel) were transferred to the KGB from the Moscow Metro, with a number of modifications being made, such as reworking the deep single track tunnel connection to the red line and adding a hardened hangar for 10 APCs at the DV-1.

The so-called "underground city in Ramenki" is likely the result of urban explorers observing extensive support infrastructure for the DV-1.

Alternatively, this term has also been linked to the order 10-A (i.e. with the CIA map drawing a large rectangular box with the known shaft R6 in the center).

In 1991, the United States Department of Defense published a report entitled Military forces in transition, which devoted several pages to a secret government underground in Moscow.

Soviet press has noted the presence of an enormous underground leadership bunker adjacent to Moscow State University.

A special subway line runs from some points in Moscow and possibly to the VIP terminal at Vnukovo Airfield(...)" —Military forces in transition, 1991, p. 40 In 1992, in an interview with Time, Deputy Director Broadcaster Igor Malashenko (ru) spoke about the existence of Sofrino-2, about 30 km (19 mi) to the north-east of Moscow's television broadcasting centers, built at great depths in case of nuclear war.

In the days of Stalin, who was very afraid of assassination attempts, there was in fact a single-track underground railway line running from the Kremlin to his so-called "Nearby Dacha" in Volynskoye.

[17] "Currently, the Kremlin subway cannot be called a transportation artery, and, as far as I know, for its continued operation it required major repairs: for among other things there are a lot of underground utilities which will eventually decay."

In 2008, in an interview in Argumenty i Fakty, the head of the Moscow Metro independent trade union, Svetlana Razina, admitted:[18] "Several years ago, among the drivers of the Izmailovo depot there was a recruiting for a service on secret routes, and although there were many willing, they were to select only one.

[22] A complex of buildings of the research base of Association "Science" (NEBO "Nauka"), built to a depth of between 180 m (590 ft) and 200 m, is the largest underground bunker in Moscow.

Its article refers to a source named a "KGB officer", who claims he took part in the construction of a large underground facility in Ramenki.

The facility was named by the journalist as the "Underground City", which was supposedly intended to give refuge to 15,000 people for 30 years in the event of a nuclear attack on Moscow.

[citation needed] Most likely this is the sites 54, 54a of the order 10-A due to the location, time of construction (1956–1962), depth (189m at the connection to the deep single track tunnel) matching.