How Stalin's favourite hotel hid a tonne of explosives

[emad]

Nick Paton Walsh in Moscow
Saturday July 16, 2005
The Guardian

For more than six decades it was the social hub of the Soviet elite. A domineering hotel metres away from the walls of the Kremlin, it was the designated posting house of party luminaries, and Stalin liked to celebrate his birthday in its plush restaurant.

But this week it has emerged that the guests of the hotel Moskva were literally sitting on a timebomb. Workmen demolishing the structure found more than a tonne of explosives in its foundations, city police revealed this week.

They said the explosives had probably been planted by the NKVD - the KGB's predecessor - to be detonated if the Nazis took the capital during the second world war.
Police insisted the 58 boxes, each containing 20kg (44lb) of explosives, had not been rigged to a detonator and posed no threat. Sappers cleared the explosive on Monday.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/russia/article/0,2763,1529832,00.html

[no_hypocrisy]

1. Well, nobody wants to say "The earth moved . . . " based on that fact.