The entrance is in a nondescript building, behind a green gate now decorated with a large red star.
"In the 1950s and 1960s, none of the people who lived in this area even guessed what was under their feet," Arkharova said. "The site was designed to ensure the necessary communications to run the country during time of war. It can protect from a nuclear strike."
Alexandrov painted a picture of high tension for employees.
"Every time, when people who worked here were saying goodbye to their relatives before going on duty, they thought that they were seeing their family for the last time," he said. "So tense and dramatic the situation was. So troubled the atmosphere."
Nina Borodina, 21, a university student, said that "these haunting shafts" made her think of how her grandmother "lived all her life feeling the danger of being bombed any second."
"She told me how terrified they were of an imminent nuclear war back in the 1960s," Borodina said. "Now I can understand a little of what she lived through. I don't think there is any danger of nuclear war now. We are friends with the West."
She said she was convinced that, whatever complaints the two sides may voice about each other, Putin "is leading the country along the way of real cooperation with the United States and other Western countries, and they will never be our enemies again."
"But it was good to come down here," she added. "It gives you a sense of what horrors we were saved from."
david.holley@latimes.com
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Times staff writer Sergei L. Loiko contributed to this report.
