World War II Database

Contributor: C. Peter Chen

ww2dbaseThe large building at Lubyanka Square in Moscow, Russia was designed by Alexander Ivanov in 1897, and was built in the following year. It was the headquarters of the All-Russia Insurance Company until the Soviets siezed the building to house its intelligence services. During the WW2 era, it was the headquarters of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (Narodnyy Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del), or NKVD for short. The Lubyanka building was expanded in the 1940s to house the rapidly expanding staff. The building was infamous for the prison within, where uncooperative suspected enemies of the state were tortured and were often sentenced to forced labor camps in Siberia. A dark joke told by Muscovite had it that the Lubyanka building was the tallest structure in Moscow, for that one could see Siberia from it. During the war, Lavrentiy Beria held his office on the third floor of the building. In 1983, the building was renovated to remedy the assymetric appearance resulted from the 1940s war time expansion. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the building continued to serve as a government building, housing the headquarters Border Guard Service, a directorate of the Federal Security Service, and the Lubyanka Prison.

Lubyanka Building Interactive Map

Photographs

Lubyanka Building Timeline