Lubyanka

Stand still for a moment and listen. Traffic circles the square in a steady roar, and engines idle at the lights. Above the noise rises a long facade of grey and ochre stone. Its windows are many and even, and almost none of them show any movement. This is Lubyanka. To many Russians the word means far more than a place on a map. It is a square, a building, and a memory that many families still carry.

Start with the building itself, because it did not begin as anything sinister. It was built at the end of the nineteenth century as the headquarters of the Rossiya insurance company. The company was one of the largest insurers in the Russian Empire. Back then, the ground floor held shops, and the upper floors held offices and rented apartments. Picture clerks with ledgers, tenants carrying shopping up the stairs, and an ordinary commercial street outside.

That ordinary life ended with the revolution. In 1918 the Bolshevik government moved the capital from Petrograd to Moscow. The new secret police, known as the Cheka, needed a home. They took over the insurance building. Over the following decades the agency changed its name many times: the OGPU, the NKVD, and later the KGB. Today the building belongs to the FSB, Russia's Federal Security Service. The names changed, but the address stayed the same.

Here is the first detail many visitors miss. Look closely at the facade and compare its two halves. The building was enlarged and rebuilt in the mid-twentieth century, and the work went forward in stages. For decades, one part had the new, heavy Soviet style, while another part kept the older look. The asymmetry lasted until the 1980s, when the front was finally made uniform. The calm, even face you see now hides a long and uneven story of construction.

Behind those walls, during the worst years of Soviet terror, there was an internal prison. Prisoners were held and questioned here, especially during the Great Purge of the late 1930s. Some of the best-known people of their time passed through these corridors. Many never came out. This is why the building became so heavy in the public imagination. For a generation, a knock on the door at night could lead to this address.

The fear produced dark humour, as fear often does. A Soviet joke asks which building is the tallest in Moscow. The answer is Lubyanka, because from its basement you can see Siberia. It is only a joke, but it says a great deal. People could not speak openly about the camps, so they spoke in riddles. Laughter was a quiet way to name what everyone already knew.

Now turn your attention to the open centre of the square. For more than three decades, a tall bronze statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky stood here. Dzerzhinsky founded the Cheka, and the square itself carried his name for most of the Soviet period. The statue was the work of the sculptor Yevgeny Vuchetich and went up in 1958. It stood on a high pedestal, facing the traffic, like a guard watching the city.

In August 1991, a group of hardliners tried to seize power and failed. Crowds gathered here in the days that followed. That night, with the help of a crane, the statue was lifted from its pedestal and taken away. Many people still remember the images. The figure did not vanish completely, however. Today it stands in Muzeon, a sculpture park in Moscow where many fallen Soviet monuments now rest.

Walk toward the small garden beside the Polytechnic Museum, and you will find a very different kind of memorial. It is a plain, rough boulder. It is called the Solovetsky Stone. It was brought from the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea, where one of the first Soviet prison camps operated. The human rights society Memorial placed it here in 1990. Its position matters. It sits within sight of the building where so many arrests began.

The stone has its own ritual. Russia marks a day of remembrance for victims of political repression on the thirtieth of October. For years, people gathered at the stone on the eve of that day. One by one, they read aloud the names of people who were shot, along with their age and profession. The event was called Returning the Names. In recent years, the gatherings have faced restrictions, and Memorial itself was closed by the courts. Still, you may see fresh flowers here.

The square holds more than grief, and that contrast is part of its strange character. Across the traffic stands a large department store for children, known as Detsky Mir, or Children's World. It opened in the 1950s, and for generations of Soviet children it was a place of wonder. After a long renovation, it reopened with a giant mechanical clock inside. Families with toys and balloons walk past, only a few steps from the security service headquarters.

The name Lubyanka itself is older than all of this. One popular account says it comes from settlers from Novgorod in the late fifteenth century, who named the area after a street in their home city. Historians debate the details, so treat it as a story rather than a settled fact. Either way, the name was here for centuries before the secret police arrived. Only in the twentieth century did it gain its darker meaning.

Before you leave, look once more at the building. Notice the clock set high in the centre of the facade, and the rows of quiet windows. Then look back at the small grey stone in the garden. These two objects face each other across one square. One represents state power. The other represents memory. As you walk away, toward the metro or the old streets of Kitay-gorod, you carry both of them with you.