full contact haunted house gresham

House Of Shadows In Oregon Is So Scary You Have To Sign A Waiver

Catherine Armstrong

Writer, editor and researcher with a passion for exploring new places. Catherine loves local bookstores, independent films, and spending time with her family, including Gus the golden retriever, who is a very good boy.

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With Halloween season fully in swing, lovers of thrills and chills all across the state are visiting haunted houses and attractions to be scared out of their wits. You’ll find plenty of options when it comes to Halloween horrors, but there’s one place that is so scary that they’ll make you sign a waiver before you go in. Check out House of Shadows:

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Visit the House of Shadows website to get your tickets, and make sure to follow the attraction’s Facebook page to see what’s new there. Have you visited House of Shadows? Tell us and our readers about your experience in the comments!

Not all terrifying things involve actors and stage makeup – some horrors are real. Read our story about the Molalla Forest Killer, who kept Oregonians up at night in the 1980s .

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House of shadows.

The Nightmare After Christmas event is sooo much fun. It's all in black light with lots of strobes and great character actors. You're meant to talk, interact, take pictures and even dance with them. It takes as long as you want to get through based on how long you want to interact. What I love most is the actors stayed in character the entire time. Great for all ages, with a few small jump scares. As they say life is no fun without a good scare.

Super awesome, so stimulating, like a R rated scray movie come to life! You get up so close you can feel them and smell them! Many rooms, many people working, highly detailed themed rooms, outfits and makeup. Well worth a $30 spot. And for this to be in my town makes me so proud to be a local!

They ARE full-contact, if you aren't prepared to be touched, grabbed, pulled away by monsters, pushed against the wall, getting your clothes dirty and bloody, foul language, etc...this isn't the haunted house for you. They warn that you can get hurt in there, so be prepared for anything. My experience was good and the actors were great at making it a truly frightening experience without being overly aggressive or inappropriate. It was a unique and interesting haunted house, definitely gave me a good scare. One downside is I just don't think it was worth $30 a ticket so I probably won't be going through again, but I am glad I decided to check it out.

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HAUNTED HOUSES IN GRESHAM, OR

Find Scariest Haunted Houses in gresham, Oregon. The Biggest, Scariest and Best Haunted House in the city of gresham, OR from haunted attractions, haunted hayrides, corn mazes, paintball zombie hayrides, to massive screamparks can all be found here at Hauntworld.com . Hauntworld will introduces a new Haunted House in gresham this Halloween Season!

Here's a list of the top Haunted House in gresham, Oregon. Take a look and find the Best and Scariest Haunted Attractions near you: Haunted House in Oregon

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This year Oregon's only Full Contact Terror Experience is "Going To Hell"..... With 8 levels of hell to scare, well.... "The Hell Out Of You!!!" Oh and keep your eyes open as you might see "It" in here...

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Fright Town is the biggest, the scariest, and the best haunted house in Portland Oregon and Hauntworld reviews and gets you all the details about this scary haunted attraction. Hauntworld helps you learn all the details behind one of the best haunts in the entire state of Oregon if not the entire country.  Click here to read all the details about Frighttown in Portland Oregon. 

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Home » Travel Guides » United States » Oregon (OR) » 15 Best Things to Do in Gresham (Oregon)

15 Best Things to Do in Gresham (Oregon)

The fourth largest city in the state of Oregon , Gresham is nestled between the majestic Columbia Gorge and Mount Hood, and is certainly blessed when it comes to a wealth of natural attractions. The area is studded with parks and nature trails for visitors to enjoy and there are over 17 acres of community landscapes just in Gresham itself.

As well as the great outdoors, this city also has a whole host of other activities to keep you entertainment on a visit here. Gresham was established in the days of the pioneers, and with that in mind you can take in several museums and historical buildings that tell the story of Gresham from the days of yore until the present.

There are other fun activities here like community theaters and farmers markets, and if you want to take in the surrounding area this is also very easy to do. The Springwater Corridor runs for over 40 miles past Gresham, and links it to other areas in Oregon via a paved path that is perfect for walking, hiking, or jogging.

Lets explore the best things to do in Gresham :

1. Gradin Community Sports Park

For some outdoor fun in Gresham you need to head to the Gradin Community Sports Park where you will find over 30 acres of prime land that is a firm favorite among locals in the area. There is a new sports field at the park that regularly hosts soccer and softball games, so if you want to take in some of these all-American sports then this is the place to do it. There is also a skate park here where you can try out some skate moves as well as restful picnic areas located on the many grassy knolls dotted around the park.

2. Mt. Hood Community College Planetarium

If you want to learn all about the night sky over Oregon then you need to head to the Mt. Hood Community College Planetarium. Here you will find a sky theater that is open to the general public and provides viewings on selected days of the week. The show will tell you all you want to know about the solar system and will take you through the night sky on a whistle-stop tour of the galaxy. There are also interactive programs here that you can join so make sure to ask what’s on when you are in town, especially if you have an interest in astronomy.

3. Gresham Main City Park

The main park in Gresham, this wide open space is known for being a favorite for families looking to relax and there are several areas here dedicated to children. Younger guests can try out the skate park at Gresham Main City Park, or play at one of the two play areas that have a range of rides and games that are perfect for children from toddlers to pre-teens. If you are travelling with a family in Gresham then definitely make sure not to miss this great family play center.

4. Mt. Hood Theatre

Anyone looking for some entertainment in Gresham should think about heading to the Mt. Hood Theatre. The theater is known not only for its large screens and range of movies on offer, but also for its food and beverage experience. Here you can expect to find favorites such as Italian sodas and coffees, and there are often offers here for families that make this a great option if you are travelling in a group.

5. Bella Vista Park

Bella Vista Park stretches over 8 acres in the city and is known for its dominating green fields and wide open spaces. The park is also home to woodlands that make it an ideal location to check out some of the local flora and fauna, and you can indulge in bird watching here if the mood takes you. Other attractions in the park include basketball courts as well as walking trails around the park that will let you enjoy the natural Oregon scenery. There are also picnic areas if you fancy something to eat as you make the most of the great outdoors in Gresham.

6. House of Shadows

For something a little different in Gresham, consider heading to the House of Shadows. This haunted house is known as a ‘full contact venue’, so it is certainly only for the bravest of visitors. Here you will find a haunted house set up complete with a cast of characters in haunted garb who will take you through a terrifying evening of interactive storytelling where you will become part of the plot. There are also set pieces of action for guests to enjoy and the haunted house takes the form of a walking tour as you move through the different sections. Certainly this is not for the faint of heart, but if you are an adrenalin junkie then this is one of the best spots in Gresham.

7. Nadaka Loop Trail

For a mellow and relaxing walk in Gresham head to the Nadaka Natural Area off Glisan Street where you will find the Nadaka Loop Trail. The loop here is made of soft-surface gravel which means that it makes an easy afternoon stroll for those who want to get out and about and explore the flora and fauna in this part of Oregon. To that end, you will find a range of indigenous plants here including vine maples, huckleberrys, snowberry, and trilliums.

8. Gresham History Museum

Gresham History Museum first opened its doors in 1976 and was established as a place to learn all about the history of the Gresham area. The museum is filled with exhibits that paint a picture of Gresham from the past until the present, and you can expect to find photographs, archive exhibits, and other interactive galleries that will appeal to visitors both old and young. You can also learn all about the first residents of Gresham as well as the history of the Columbia River. There are also special events held here to promote the history of Gresham throughout the year, so make sure you pop in to see what’s on when you are in town.

9. Downtown Gresham Memory Mural

Commissioned by the Center for the Arts Foundation, the Downtown Gresham Memory Mural was painted by well known muralist Lee Lauritzen. The mural is located in downtown Gresham and is a colorful depiction of the city though the years. The mural depicts family life in this city as well as taking the viewer through a history of Gresham that also explains the cultural significance of this city. Certainly if you are looking to take in the local arts scene in this city then this is not to be missed.

10. Butler Creek Trail

Nestled to the southwest of Gresham is Butler Creek, known for its gorgeous vistas and beautiful Oregon landscapes. Along the side of the creek runs the Butler Creek Trail which was first constructed in the 1980s thanks to a host of local volunteers. The trail connects with the Springwater Trail in downtown Gresham and takes in a host of sights along the water such as Butler Creek Park, Binford Lake, as well as areas of forests and woodlands. It also goes over a bridge that crosses Johnson Creek and spans 135 feet.

11. Zimmerman House Museum

The Zimmerman House Museum houses thousands of artifacts from the days of the Gresham pioneers, and the building itself is also something of a historical relic. The farmhouse was built in 1874 and is such an important cultural and historical landmark in Gresham that it is even listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The house belonged to one of the founding families of Gresham, the Zimmerman family, and was used as a diary farm in the days of old. The farm sprawled for 600 acres along the banks of the majestic Columbia River, and this is certainly the place to come if you want to learn all about how Gresham would have been in the days of old.

12. Children’s Fountain

If you happen to visit Gresham during the summer months and are looking for a way to cool off in the warm Oregon heat, then head to NE Second Street which is famous for its Children’s Fountains. Here you will find two large municipal fountains that are designed so that children of all ages can play. One is reserved for toddlers while the other can be enjoyed by older children, and the fountains are powered by jets that send water towering into the sky to cool off young visitors. The fountains are fully chlorinated to provide a safe environment for children to play in and are the perfect place to come on a hot day.

13. Gresham-Fairview Trail

Come to the Gresham-Fairview Trail if you want to explore some urban wetlands in Oregon, which will also take you through the center of the city. Despite its urban setting, the Gresham-Fairview Trail showcases some of the best nature in the city and stretches for over 3 miles. The trail is paved and so it lends itself well to bicycling, jogging, skateboarding, and skating, and there are gorgeous indigenous trees and other shrubs to spot along the way.

14. Gresham Farmers’ Market

Gresham Farmers’ Market was started as a venue where the local community could gather to share the best of the produce from the area. The market has grown steadily in recent years and you can shop here and enjoy the wonderful array of fruits and vegetables on offer. As well as local produce you will also find items such as baked goods, honey, cheeses, and even meats, and there are also flowers from the Oregon area and even hand-made arts and crafts items which make great souvenirs of a trip here.

15. Springwater Trail

The Springwater Trail actually stretches from Boring to Portland, and on the way passes through Gresham. The Gresham stretch of the trail is absolutely not to be missed if you are in tow and sprawls for 16.5 miles until it meets downtown Portland. The trail is known for its abundance of wildlife and the indigenous plants and animals here offer fantastic bird and animal watching opportunities. You can hike along the trail or there are also jogging routes available. Picnic spots are dotted along the way and there is also the option of going horseback riding here.

15 Best Things to Do in Gresham (Oregon):

• Gradin Community Sports Park
• Mt. Hood Community College Planetarium
• Gresham Main City Park
• Mt. Hood Theatre
• Bella Vista Park
• House of Shadows
• Nadaka Loop Trail
• Gresham History Museum
• Downtown Gresham Memory Mural
• Butler Creek Trail
• Zimmerman House Museum
• Children’s Fountain
• Gresham-Fairview Trail
• Gresham Farmers’ Market
• Springwater Trail

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Ghosted is episode 4 of  season 4  of  Fuller House .

Summary [ ]

Stephanie performs at her first children's' party to increase her income for her future family.

Ramona 's new friends decide to ghost her at dinner and the movies, but Stephanie is able to teach them a lesson, helping her realise she will be a good mother.

Kimmy and Fernando prompt a competition between D.J. and Steve, encouraging them to both give each other extravagant gifts for their two-week-iversary.

• Candace Cameron-Bure as D.J. Tanner-Fuller
• Jodie Sweetin as Stephanie Tanner
• Andrea Barber as Kimmy Gibbler
• Michael Campion as Jackson Fuller
• Soni Bringas as Ramona Gibbler
• Elias Harger as Max Fuller
• Dashiell and Fox Messitt as Tommy Fuller Jr.
• Sydney Mikayla as Ashlyn
• Chloe Ray Warmoth as Coco
• Vegetables are our Friends performed by Jodie Sweetin

Gallery [ ]

Ghosted Gallery

For all screencaps from  Ghosted  see  here

• 1 Rocki Mahan
• 2 Natasha Bure
• 3 CJ Harbenberger

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• User reviews

The Haunted House

With help from a 102-year-old goblin dwelling beneath their haunted apartment building, two siblings deal with ghosts and take on spooky mysteries. With help from a 102-year-old goblin dwelling beneath their haunted apartment building, two siblings deal with ghosts and take on spooky mysteries. With help from a 102-year-old goblin dwelling beneath their haunted apartment building, two siblings deal with ghosts and take on spooky mysteries.

• Anna Cummer
• Natasha Strickey
• Megan Baldrey
• 2 User reviews

Episodes 22

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• Security Guard

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Top 13 places in Russia where you may face a ghost

1. Kusovnikov House in Moscow

In the 19 th   century house № 17 on Myasnitskaya street in central Moscow was inhabited by a rich, but very greedy couple – Pyotr and Sofya Kusovnikov, who scrimped on almost everything. Extremely suspicious, they used to hide money from their servants in different places. Once they hid some in the fireplace, but the janitor accidentally burned it when lighting the fire. When she found out, Sofya died instantly of a broken heart, her husband passed away a little later. Since then, the ghost of a hunched old man in a coat has routinely appeared on the street near the house – this is Pyotr Kusovnikov mourning his lost money.

2. Sokol metro station

During WWI, not far from the modern Sokol station of the Moscow metro, a cemetery for fallen soldiers was located. In 1918, mass executions of White officers and priests by the Reds were held there. All this led to the appearance of ghosts in the dark tunnels of the station. Early in the morning diaphanous figures with festering wounds can be seen there.  

3. St. Michael’s Castle in St. Petersburg

This castle was a royal residence built by order of Tsar  Paul I. On March 21, 1801, he was killed there by a group of conspirators. It is considered that the restless spirit of the tsar was unable to leave the castle. It appears there in the corridors with a burning candle in its hand.

4.   Znamenskaya Tower in Yaroslavl

During the Civil War in Russia (1917-1922), a group of White troops held positions in the Volkovsky theater in Yaroslavl. The Red commissar in command of the siege promised to spare their lives. However, he lied and all the Whites were executed at the Znamenskaya Tower. Since then, the ghost of the commissar who didn’t keep his promise has been seen at the place of his crime.

5. Igumnov House in Moscow

The house at 43 Bolshaya Yakimanka Street in Moscow, also known as “Igumnov House,” serves today as the residence of the French ambassador. It was built at the request of the industrialist Nikolay Igumnov in the late 19 th   century. He settled his young mistress here, but one day caught her with a lover. The lover was kicked out, but the girl was never seen again. It is believed that the outraged Igumnov bricked her up in a wall. During Soviet times, people often saw the ghost of a young girl walking through the walls with deep, plaintive sighs.     

6. House of Rasputin in St. Petersburg

The flat on the second floor at 64 Gorokhovaya street in St. Petersburg is today a usual residential apartment. However, in the early 20th century it was home to one of the most mystical figures in Russian history – Grigory Rasputin. His ghost sometimes appears here, scaring inhabitants with its clunking steps and grunting in dark corners.

7. House on the Embankment

This house at 2 Serafimovicha Street, simply known as “House on Embankment,” is among the most famous in the Russian capital, known as the place of residence for the Soviet   crème de la crème : writers, artists, actors, generals, athletes. However, it also has a dark history. During the Great Purge, a campaign of political repressions in the USSR, dozens of the house’s inhabitants were arrested and executed. Today, the house is full of the ghosts of those victims, who sometimes appear in their old dwelling place. 

8. Tower of the old hospital in Ryazan

Among the high-rise modern buildings at 15 Gorky Street in Ryazan is an old tower – all that remains of the old hospital. At night, a lonely dark figure can be seen walking in this tower. This is the ghost of Alexander Smitten, who administered the hospital more than a century ago.

9. Griboyedov Canal in St. Petersburg

During a misty night in March, one can see the ghost of a young girl near the Griboyedov Canal in St. Petersburg. Her face is blue because of asphyxiation, and there is a big red mark on her neck caused by a rope. This is famous revolutionary Sophia Perovskaya, who assassinated Tsar Alexander II and was hanged for her deed. To meet this ghost is a bad omen, and can cost nocturnal pedestrians their lives.

10. Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin

There is a legend that when the Kremlin in Nizhny Novgorod was being built, the constructors were unable to finish one of the towers. It kept falling down. In the end, they decided to make a sacrifice and to build the tower on the blood of the first person who passed by. It happened to be a pregnant woman hurrying to the river for water. She was seized and bricked up in the tower alive. The ghost of a pale woman holding a baby has appeared near this place ever since.

11. Oldenburg Palace near Voronezh

Built in the late 19th century, the palace belonged to Princess Eugenia of Leuchtenberg. Today her ghost rises from the deep casemates of the palace to wander through its rooms and corridors. There is also another ghost there, much older — the ghost of a young peasant girl. It is even said that Princess Eugenia saw it when she was alive.

12. Stalin’s country house near Sochi

Stalin’s ghost can be seen at his country house, located today within the Green Groove hotel near Sochi. The “father of the nations” walks in his white jacket, smoking his trademark pipe.

13. Psychiatric hospital near Nizhny Novgorod

Near the modern psychiatric hospital in the village of Lyakhovo near Nizhny Novgorod, one can see an abandoned old building. Several dozen years ago a young girl hanged herself there because of unrequited love. At night it is possible to see a white silhouette and hear the moaning and cries of the “love-stricken schoolgirl” as the locals call her.

And if you want to see a UFO, here are several places in Russia where you will have a chance.

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Three decades after the Soviet era, this Moscow street echoes what was.

And hints where russia is heading., welcome to tverskaya street.

MOSCOW — Thirty years ago, the Soviet Union ceased to be. The flag was lowered for the last time on Dec. 25, 1991. That moment still raises deep questions for the U.S.S.R.’s heirs: “Who were we as Soviets, and where are we going as Russians?”

Many of the answers can be found on Moscow’s main thoroughfare — named Gorky Street, after writer Maxim Gorky, from 1932 to 1990, and renamed Tverskaya Street, a nod to the ancient city of Tver, as the Soviet Union was awash in last-gasp reforms.

It was the Soviet Union’s display window on the bright future that Kremlin-run communism was supposed to bring. It was where the KGB dined, the rich spent their rubles, Vladimir Lenin gave speeches from a balcony, and authorities wielded their power against one of the most famous Soviet dissidents, Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

In the 1990s, Tverskaya embodied the fast-money excesses of the post-Soviet free-for-all. In later years, it was packed with hopeful pro-democracy marchers. And now , under President Vladimir Putin, it is a symbol of his dreams of reviving Russia as a great power, reliving past glories and crushing any opposition to his rule.

Join a tour of Moscow’s famed Tverskaya Street.

Hotel National: Where the Soviet government began

The window in Room 107 at the Hotel National faces Red Square and the Kremlin. It offers a perfect view of Lenin’s tomb — fitting, since he was Room 107’s most famous guest.

The Kremlin was damaged during the Russian Revolution in 1917. So Lenin and his wife moved into Room 107 for seven days in March 1918, making the hotel the first home of the Soviet government.

The Hotel National in Moscow, from top: Artwork in the Socialist Realist style — which artists were ordered to adopt in the 1930s — still adorns the hotel; Elena Pozolotina has worked at the hotel since 1995; the hotel, which contains a restaurant, was built in 1902; the National has hosted notable guests, including Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin, then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and actor Jack Nicholson. (Photos by Arthur Bondar for The Washington Post)

The National, built in 1902 during the era of Imperial Russia, also accommodated other Soviet leaders, including Leon Trotsky and Felix Dzerzhinsky, chief of the secret police. The building continued to be used by the Soviet government as a hostel for official party delegates and was renamed First House of Soviets in 1919.

Guests can now stay in the same room Lenin did for about $1,300 a night. In more recent years, the hotel has hosted notable guests including Barack Obama (when he was a senator) and actor Jack Nicholson.

“This hotel feels a little like a museum,” said Elena Pozolotina, who has worked at the National since 1995.

“We have rooms that look onto Tverskaya Street, and we always explain to guests that this is the main street of our city,” Pozolotina said. “This corner of Tverskaya that we occupy, it’s priceless.”

Stalin’s plan: ‘The building is moving’

When Soviet leader Joseph Stalin demanded a massive redevelopment of Moscow in 1935, an order came to transform modest Gorky Street into a wide, awe-inspiring boulevard.

Engineer Emmanuel Gendel had the job of moving massive buildings to make way for others. Churches and monasteries were blown up, replaced by newspaper offices and a huge cinema.

The Moscow Central Eye Hospital was sheared from its foundation, rotated 97 degrees, jacked up, hitched on rails and pushed back 20 yards — with surgeons operating all the while, or so official media reported at the time.

Gendel’s daughter, then about 8, proudly stood at a microphone, announcing: “Attention, attention, the building is moving.” Tatiana Yastrzhembskaya, Gendel’s granddaughter and president of the Winter Ball charity foundation in Moscow, recalls that Gendel extolled communism but also enjoyed the rewards of the elite. He drove a fine car and always brought the family the best cakes and candies, she said.

The largest Gorky Street building Gendel moved was the Savvinskoye Courtyard. The most difficult was the Mossoviet, or Moscow city hall, with a balcony where Lenin had given speeches. The building, the former residence of the Moscow governor general, had to be moved with its basement. The ground floor had been a ballroom without central structural supports.

Moving buildings on Gorky Street in 1940, from left: A mechanic at a control panel regulates the supply of electricity while a house is being moved; a postal worker passes a moving house; a specialist unwinds a telephone cable during a building move to maintain uninterrupted communication; 13 rail tracks were placed under a house, on which 1,200 metal rollers were laid. (Photos by RGAKFD)

Gendel’s skills were used all over the U.S.S.R. — straightening towers on ancient mosques in Uzbekistan, inventing a means to drag tanks from rivers during World War II and consulting on the Moscow Metro.

Like many of the Soviet Union’s brightest talents, Gendel found that his freedom was tenuous. His ex-wife was called by the KGB internal spy agency in 1937 and asked to denounce him. She refused, and he avoided arrest.

“I believe he was not arrested and sent to the camps because he was a unique expert,” said Yastrzhembskaya. World War II, known in Russia as the Great Patriotic War, interrupted the Master Plan for Gorky Street.

Aragvi restaurant: A haunt of the KGB

In the 1930s, the head of the elite NKVD secret police, Lavrenty Beria, one of the architects of the Stalin-era purges, ordered the construction of a state-owned restaurant, Aragvi, to showcase food from his home republic of Georgia.

One night, NKVD agents descended in several black cars on a humble Georgian canteen in Moscow that Beria had once visited. The agents ordered the chef, Longinoz Stazhadze, to come with them. The feared NKVD was a precursor to the KGB.

Stazhadze thought he was being arrested, his son Levan told Russian media. He was taken to Beria, who said that he had agreed with “the Boss” (Stalin) that Stazhadze would run Aragvi. Stazhadze had grown up a peasant, sent to work in a prince’s kitchens as a boy.

Aragvi opened in 1938. It was only for the gilded set, a reminder that the “Soviet paradise” was anything but equitable. The prices were astronomical. It was impossible to get a table unless the doorman knew you or you could pay a hefty bribe.

Aragvi, at No. 6 Tverskaya, was a favorite of the secret police; government officials; cosmonauts and pilots; stars of theater, movies and ballet; directors; poets; chess masters. Beria reputedly dined in a private room. Poet Sergei Mikhalkov said he composed the lyrics of the Soviet national anthem while sitting in the restaurant in 1943.

It was privatized in the 1990s and struggled, before closing in 2002. It reopened in 2016 after a $20 million renovation. But the new Aragvi closed abruptly in 2019 amid reports of a conflict between its owner and the building managers.

“You put your entire soul into cooking,” said the former head chef, Nugzar Nebieridze, 59, celebrated for his khinkali, a meaty dumpling almost the size of a tennis ball. He was devastated to find himself unemployed. But other doors opened. He now prefers to travel, giving master classes around Russia.

Stalin’s funeral: A deadly street crush that never officially happened

On March 6, 1953, the day after Stalin died of a stroke, an estimated 2 million Muscovites poured onto the streets. They hoped to catch a glimpse of his body, covered with flowers and laid out in the marbled Hall of Columns near Red Square.

Yulia Revazova, then 13, sneaked from her house with her cousin Valery without telling their parents. As they walked toward Pushkin Square, at one end of Gorky Street, the procession turned into a scene of horror. They saw people falling and being trampled. Some were crushed against metal fences. Valery, who was a few years older, grabbed Yulia by the hand and dragged her out of the crowd.

“He held my hand really tight and never let it go, because it was pure madness,” she recalled recently. “It took us four or five hours to get out of there. People kept coming and coming. I couldn’t even call it a column; it was just an uncontrollable mass of people.”

“I still have this feeling, the fear of massive crowds,” added Revazova, 82. “To this day, if I see a huge group of people or a really long line, I just cross the street.”

Neither Revazova nor her cousin knew about Stalin’s repressions.

“People were crying. I saw many women holding little handkerchiefs, wiping away tears and wailing,” she recalled. “That’s the psychology of a Soviet person. If there is no overarching figure above, be it God or Lenin, life will come crashing down. The era was over, and there was fear. What will we do without Stalin?”

Officials never revealed how many people died that day. The Soviet-approved archival footage of the four days of national mourning showed only orderly marches and memorials.

No. 9: The ruthless culture minister

The Soviet culture minister, the steely Yekaterina Furtseva, was nicknamed Catherine the Third, after the forceful Russian Empress Catherine the Great. Furtseva destroyed writers, artists or anyone else who challenged Soviet ideas. She lived at an elite 1949 apartment building for government officials at No. 9 — an ultra-prestigious address with a view of the Kremlin.

Furtseva, a former small-town weaver, made sure that No. 9 was only for the cream of party officials and other notables, such as famous Soviet actress Natalia Seleznyova, scientists, conductors and architects.

Riding the coattails of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, Furtseva was the only woman in the Politburo and later became the Soviet Union’s cultural gatekeeper despite her provincial sensibilities. She once infamously mixed up a symphony with an opera, and critics were quick to notice.

“She had little in common with the artistic leaders of her country except a liking for vodka,” Norwegian painter Victor Sparre wrote in his 1979 book on the repression of dissident Soviet writers, “The Flame in the Darkness.”

Furtseva was famous for previewing performances and declaring anyone even subtly critical of Soviet policies as being anti-state. Director Yuri Lyubimov described one such visit to Moscow’s Taganka Theater in 1969, when she turned up wearing diamond rings and an astrakhan coat. She banned the play “Alive,” depicting a cunning peasant’s struggle against the collective farm system. She “was livid, she kept shouting,” he told L’Alternative magazine in 1984. She stormed out, warning him she would use her influence, “up to the highest levels,” against him.

He was expelled from the party and in 1984 was stripped of his citizenship. She vehemently denounced Solzhenitsyn, and banned the Bolshoi Ballet’s version of “Carmen” in 1967 over prima ballerina Maya Plisetskaya’s sensual performance and “un-Soviet” costumes that did not cover enough leg.

“The ballet is all erotica,” she told the dancer. “It’s alien to us.” But Plisetskaya, whom Khrushchev once called the world’s best dancer, fought back. The ballet went on with some excisions (the costumes stayed) and became a legend in the theater’s repertoire.

Furtseva was nearly felled by scandal in 1974, ordered to repay $80,000 spent building a luxurious dacha, or country home, using state labor. She died months later.

Where Solzhenitsyn was arrested

The Nobel Prize-winning Solzhenitsyn exposed the Soviet system’s cruelty against some of its brightest minds, trapped in the gulag, or prison camps.

Solzhenitsyn was given eight years of hard labor in 1945 for privately criticizing Stalin, then three years of exile in Kazakhstan, a Soviet republic at the time. His books were banned. After release from exile in 1956, he was allowed to make only 72-hour visits to the home of his second wife, Natalia, at 12 Gorky St., Apt. 169. Solzhenitsyn had to live outside the city.

“People knew that there were camps, but not many people, if any, knew what life was like in those camps. And he described it from the inside. He had been there himself, and that was shocking to a lot of people,” said Natalia Solzhenitsyna during a recent interview at the apartment, which became a museum in 2018.

“Many people say that he did make a contribution to the final fall of the Soviet Union.”

Solzhenitsyn, who died in 2008, called Russia “the land of smothered opportunities.” He wrote that it is always possible to live with integrity. Lies and evil might flourish — “but not through me.”

The museum displays tiny handwritten copies of Solzhenitsyn’s books, circulated secretly; film negatives of letters smuggled to the West; and beads made of compacted bread that he used to memorize poems in prison.

“He spent a lot of time here with his children. We were always very busy. And we just enjoyed ourselves — being together,” Solzhenitsyna said. They had three sons.

No. 12 Gorky St., from top: Natalia Solzhenitsyna lived in the apartment for years, and her husband, Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn, was allowed only short visits; the site now houses a museum displaying items connected to him, such as negatives containing a copy of a novel he wrote; another exhibit includes Solzhenitsyn’s clothes from when he was sent to the gulag and beads made of compacted bread that he used to memorize poems; the Nobel Prize-winning writer’s desk is featured at the museum. (Photos by Arthur Bondar for The Washington Post)

Because of KGB bugs, if the couple were discussing something sensitive, they wrote notes to each other, and then destroyed them. Two KGB agents usually roosted in the stairwell on the floor above, with two more on the floor below.

“The Soviet authorities were afraid of him because of his popularity among intellectuals, writers, people of culture and the intelligentsia.”

Her favorite room is decked with black-and-white photos of dissidents sent to the gulag, the Soviet Union’s sprawling system of forced labor camps. “It’s dedicated to the invisibles,” she said, pointing out friends.

Sweden planned to award Solzhenitsyn’s 1970 literature prize in the Gorky Street apartment, but the writer rejected a secret ceremony. A Swedish journalist in Moscow, Stig Fredrikson, was Solzhenitsyn’s smuggler. He carried Solzhenitsyn’s Nobel lecture on tightly rolled film disguised as a battery in a transistor radio, and he took other letters to the West and transported photos taped to his back.

“I felt that there was a sense of unfairness that he was so isolated and so persecuted,” Fredrikson said in a recent interview. “I got more and more scared and more and more afraid every time I met him.”

In 1971, the Soviet Union allegedly tried to poison Solzhenitsyn using a secret nerve agent, leaving him seriously ill. Early 1974 was tense. The prosecutor subpoenaed him. State newspapers railed against him.

The morning of Feb. 12, 1974, the couple worked in their study. In the afternoon, he walked his 5-month-old son, Stepan, in the yard below.

“He came back here, and literally a minute later, there was a ring at the door. There were eight men. They immediately broke the chain and got in,” his widow said. “There was a prosecutor in his prosecutor’s uniform, two men in plainclothes, and the rest were in military uniform. They told him to get dressed.”

“We hugged and we kept hugging for quite a while,” she recalled. “The last thing he told me was to take care of the children.”

He was deported to West Germany. The couple later settled in Vermont and set up a fund to help dissident writers, using royalties from his book “The Gulag Archipelago.” About 1,000 people still receive money from the fund, according to Solzhenitsyna.

When the writer and his wife returned to Russia in 1994, they traveled across the country by train. Thousands of people crushed into halls to hear him speak.

Solzhenitsyn abhorred the shock therapy and unchecked capitalism of the 1990s and preferred Putin’s tough nationalism. He died of heart failure at 89 in August 2008, five months after a presidential election in which Putin switched places with the prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, in a move that critics saw as a ploy to get around constitutional term limits.

No. 6: ‘Feasts of thought’

Behind a grand Stalin-era apartment block at 6 Gorky St. sits an ornate 1907 building famous for its facade, art nouveau glazed blue tiles, elegant arches and baroque spires. Once a monastery dormitory, it was a staple of pre-Soviet postcards from Moscow. But in November 1939, the 26,000-ton building was put on rails and pushed back to widen the street.

Linguists Lev and Raisa Kopelev lived in Apt. 201 on the top floor. Their spacious dining room became a favored haven for Moscow’s intelligentsia from the 1950s to the 1980s.

“People gathered all the time — to talk. In this apartment, like many other kitchens and dining rooms, at tables filled more often than not with vodka, herring and vinaigrette salad, feasts of thought took place,” said Svetlana Ivanova, Raisa’s daughter from another marriage, who lived in the apartment for nearly four decades.

Solzhenitsyn and fellow dissident Joseph Brodsky were Kopelev family friends, as were many other artists, poets, writers and scientists who formed the backbone of the Soviet human rights movement of the 1960s.

As a writer and dissident, Kopelev had turned his back on the Communist Party and a prestigious university position. The onetime gulag prisoner inspired the character Lev Rubin in Solzhenitsyn’s novel “In the First Circle,” depicting the fate of arrested scientists.

“The apartment was a special place for everyone. People there were not afraid to speak their mind on topics that would be considered otherwise risky,” Ivanova said. “A new, different spirit ruled in its walls.”

Eliseevsky: Pineapples during a famine

The Eliseevsky store at No. 16 was a landmark for 120 years — born in czarist Russia, a witness to the rise and fall of the Soviet Union, a survivor of wars, and a bastion during eras of shortages and plenty. It closed its doors in April.

Eliseevsky fell on hard times during the coronavirus pandemic, as international tourists dwindled and Russians sought cheaper grocery-shopping alternatives.

In the palace-like interior, two chandeliers hang from an ornate ceiling. Gilt columns line the walls. The front of the store, looking out at Tverskaya Street, has a row of stained glass.

The Eliseevsky store, which opened in 1901, is seen in April, with a few customers and some archival photos, as it prepared to close as an economic victim of the coronavirus pandemic. (Photos by Arthur Bondar for The Washington Post)

Denis Romodin, a historian at the Museum of Moscow, said Eliseevsky is one of only two retail spaces in Moscow with such pre-revolutionary interiors. But Eliseevsky’s level of preservation made it “one of a kind,” he said.

The building was once owned by Zinaida Volkonskaya, a princess and Russian cultural figure in the 19th century. She remodeled the house into a literary salon whose luminaries included Russia’s greatest poet, Alexander Pushkin.

St. Petersburg merchant Grigory Eliseev opened the market in 1901. It quickly became a hit among Russian nobility for its selection of European wines and cheeses.

Romodin said it was Russia’s first store with price tags. Before Eliseevsky, haggling was the norm. And it was also unique in having innovative technology for the time: electric-powered refrigerators and display cases that allowed goods to be stored longer.

Even in the Soviet Union’s hungriest years, the 1930s famine, Eliseevsky stocked pineapples.

“One could find outlandish delicacies here, which at that time seemed very exotic,” Romodin said. “It was already impossible to surprise Muscovites with wine shops. But a grocery store with luxurious interiors, and large for that time, amazed and delighted Muscovites.”

The First Gallery: A glimpse of openness

In 1989, in a dusty government office by a corner of Pushkin Square, three young artists threw off decades of suffocating state control and opened the Soviet Union’s first independent art gallery.

That April, Yevgeny Mitta and two fellow students, Aidan Salakhova and Alexander Yakut, opened First Gallery. At the time, the Soviet Union was opening up under policies including glasnost, which gave more room for public debate and criticism.

Artists were ordered to adopt the Socialist Realist style in 1934, depicting scenes such as happy collective farmworkers. Expressionist, abstract and avant-garde art was banned. From the 1970s, underground art exhibitions were the only outlets to break the Soviet-imposed rules.

The First Gallery, from top: Yevgeny Mitta, Aidan Salakhova and Alexander Yakut opened the Soviet Union’s first independent art gallery in 1989 and received media attention; Mitta works on a painting that he displayed at his gallery; Mitta recalled recently that he “felt we had to make something new”; an undated photo of Mitta at his gallery in Soviet times. (Photos by Arthur Bondar for The Washington Post and courtesy of Yevgeny Mitta)

“I just felt we had to make something new,” recalled Mitta, 58, who kept his interest in contemporary expressionism a secret at a top Moscow art school in the 1980s.

“It was like nothing really happened in art history in the 20th century, like it stopped,” he said. “The Socialist Realism doctrine was invented and spread to the artists as the only one, possible way of developing paintings, films and literature.”

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, artists had to “learn how to survive, what to do, how to work and make a living,” he said.

McDonald’s: ‘We were not used to smiling’

In the Soviet Union’s final years, a mania raged for all things Western. Estée Lauder opened the first Western-brand shop on Gorky Street in 1989, after meeting Raisa Gorbachev, the wife of reformist Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, in December 1988.

The Soviet Union’s first McDonald’s, located across Pushkin Square on Gorky Street, opened on Jan. 31, 1990 — a yellow-arched symbol of Gorbachev’s perestroika economic reforms. Pizza Hut opened later that year. (In 1998, Gorbachev starred in a commercial for the pizza chain.)

Karina Pogosova and Anna Patrunina were cashiers at the McDonald’s on opening day. The line stretched several blocks. Police officers stood watch to keep it organized.

The Soviet Union’s first McDonald’s opened in 1990 and eager customers lined up to enter; Karina Pogosova, left, and Anna Patrunina were cashiers at the fast-food restaurant on Gorky Street then, and they are senior executives with the company today. (Photos by Peter Turnley/Corbis/VCG/Getty Images and Arthur Bondar for The Washington Post)

“The atmosphere was wonderful. The first day I had to smile the entire day and my face muscles hurt,” Patrunina said. “This is not a joke. Russians do not smile in general, so we were not used to smiling at all, not to mention for more than eight hours straight.”

Pogosova and Patrunina were students at the Moscow Aviation Institute when they learned McDonald’s was hiring through an ad in a Moscow newspaper. Interview questions included: “How fast can you run 100 meters?” It was to gauge if someone was energetic enough for the job.

Pogosova and Patrunina are still with the company today, as senior vice president of development and franchising and vice president of operations, respectively.

“I thought that this is the world of opportunities and this new world is coming to our country, so I must be in this new world,” Patrunina said.

The smiling staff wasn’t the only culture shock for customers. Some had never tried the fountain sodas that were available. They were unaccustomed to food that wasn’t eaten with utensils. The colorful paper boxes that Big Macs came in were occasionally saved as souvenirs.

McDonald’s quickly became a landmark on the street.

“I remember very well that the street and the entire city was very dark and McDonald’s was like an island of light with bright signage,” Pogosova said. “The street started to change after McDonald’s opened its first restaurant there.”

Wild ’90s and a missing ballerina

The end of the Soviet Union uncorked Moscow’s wild 1990s. Some people made instant fortunes by acquiring state-owned enterprises at throwaway prices. Rules were being written on the fly. The city was pulsing with possibilities for those with money or those desperate to get some.

“It was easy to get drunk on this,” said Alex Shifrin, a former Saatchi & Saatchi advertising executive from Canada who lived in Moscow from the mid-1990s until the late 2000s.

It all was on full display at Night Flight, Moscow’s first nightclub, opened by Swedish managers in 1991, in the final months of the Soviet Union, at Tverskaya 17. The club introduced Moscow’s nouveau elite to “face control” — who merits getting past the rope line — and music-throbbing decadence.

The phrase “standing on Tverskaya” made its way into Russian vernacular as the street became a hot spot for prostitutes. Toward the end of the 2000s, Night Flight had lost its luster. The club scene in Moscow had moved on to bigger and bolder venues.

Decades before, No. 17 had been famous as the building with the dancer: a statue of a ballerina, holding a hammer and sickle, placed atop the cupola during Stalin’s building blitz.

Muscovites nicknamed the building the House Under the Skirt.

“The idea was to have Gorky Street as a museum of Soviet art. The statues represented a dance of socialism,” art historian Pavel Gnilorybov said. “The ballerina was a symbol of the freedom of women and the idea that, before the revolution, women were slaves. It is as if she is singing an ode to the regime.”

The crumbling statues were removed by 1958. People forgot them. Now a group of Muscovites, including Gnilorybov, are campaigning for the return of the ballerina.

“It’s an idea that we want to give the city as a gift. It’s not political,” he said. “It’s beautiful.”

Pushkin Square: For lovers and protesters

Pushkin Square has been Moscow’s favorite meeting place for friends, lovers and political demonstrations.

In November 1927, Trotskyist opponents of Stalin marched to the 27th House of Soviets at one end of Tverskaya Street, opposite the Hotel National, in one of the last public protests against the Soviet ruler.

In December 1965, several dozen dissidents gathered in Pushkin Square to protest the trials of two writers. It became an annual event. People would gather just before 6 p.m. and, on the hour, remove their hats for a minute.

In 1987, dissidents collected signatures at Pushkin Square and other locations calling for a memorial to those imprisoned or killed by the Soviet state. The movement evolved into Memorial, a leading human rights group. Memorial was declared a “foreign agent” in 2016 under Putin’s sweeping political crackdowns.

In January 2018, left, and January 2021, right, protesters gathered at Pushkin Square. (Photos by Arthur Bondar for The Washington Post)

Protests in support of opposition leader Alexei Navalny were held at Pushkin Square earlier this year. And it is where communists and liberals rallied on a rainy September night to protest 2021 parliamentary election results that gave a landslide win to Putin’s United Russia party despite widespread claims of fraud.

Nearly 30 years after the fall of the U.S.S.R., Putin’s Russia carries some echoes of the stories lived out in Soviet times — censorship and repressions are returning. Navalny was poisoned by a nerve agent in 2020 and later jailed. Many opposition figures and independent journalists have fled the country. The hope, sleaze and exhilaration of the 1990s have faded. Tverskaya Street has settled into calm stagnation, waiting for the next chapter.

Arthur Bondar contributed to this report.

Correction: A map accompanying this article incorrectly spelled the first name of a former Soviet leader. He is Vladimir Lenin, not Vladmir Lenin. The map has been corrected.

About this story

Story editing by Robyn Dixon and Brian Murphy. Photos and videos by Arthur Bondar. Archival footage from the Russian State Documentary Film and Photo Archive at Krasnogorsk; footage of Joseph Stalin’s funeral from the Martin Manhoff Archive, courtesy of Douglas Smith. Photo editing by Chloe Coleman. Video editing by Jason Aldag. Design and development by Yutao Chen. Design editing by Suzette Moyer. Maps by Dylan Moriarty. Graphics editing by Lauren Tierney. Copy editing by Melissa Ngo.

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Companies Linked to Russian Ransomware Hide in Plain Sight

Cybersecurity experts tracing money paid by American businesses to Russian ransomware gangs found it led to one of Moscow’s most prestigious addresses.

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By Andrew E. Kramer

MOSCOW — When cybersleuths traced the millions of dollars American companies, hospitals and city governments have paid to online extortionists in ransom money, they made a telling discovery: At least some of it passed through one of the most prestigious business addresses in Moscow.

The Biden administration has also zeroed in on the building, Federation Tower East, the tallest skyscraper in the Russian capital. The United States has targeted several companies in the tower as it seeks to penalize Russian ransomware gangs, which encrypt their victims’ digital data and then demand payments to unscramble it.

Those payments are typically made in cryptocurrencies, virtual currencies like Bitcoin, which the gangs then need to convert to standard currencies, like dollars, euros and rubles.

That this high-rise in Moscow’s financial district has emerged as an apparent hub of such money laundering has convinced many security experts that the Russian authorities tolerate ransomware operators. The targets are almost exclusively outside Russia, they point out, and in at least one case documented in a U.S. sanctions announcement, the suspect was assisting a Russian espionage agency.

“It says a lot,” said Dmitry Smilyanets, a threat intelligence expert with the Massachusetts-based cybersecurity firm Recorded Future. “Russian law enforcement usually has an answer: ‘There is no case open in Russian jurisdiction. There are no victims. How do you expect us to prosecute these honorable people?’”

Recorded Future has counted about 50 cryptocurrency exchanges in Moscow City, a financial district in the capital, that in its assessment are engaged in illicit activity. Other exchanges in the district are not suspected of accepting cryptocurrencies linked to crime.

Cybercrime is just one of many issues fueling tensions between Russia and the United States, along with the Russian military buildup near Ukraine and a recent migrant crisis on the Belarus-Polish border.

The Treasury Department has estimated that Americans have paid $1.6 billion in ransoms since 2011. One Russian ransomware strain, Ryuk, made an estimated $162 million last year encrypting the computer systems of American hospitals during the pandemic and demanding fees to release the data, according to Chainalysis, a company tracking cryptocurrency transactions.

The hospital attacks cast a spotlight on the rapidly expanding criminal industry of ransomware, which is based primarily in Russia. Criminal syndicates have become more efficient, and brazen, in what has become a conveyor-belt-like process of hacking, encrypting and then negotiating for ransom in cryptocurrencies, which can be owned anonymously.

At a summit meeting in June, President Biden pressed President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to crack down on ransomware after a Russian gang, DarkSide, attacked a major gasoline pipeline on the East Coast, Colonial Pipeline , disrupting supplies and creating lines at gas stations.

American officials point to people like Maksim Yakubets, a skinny 34-year-old with a pompadour haircut whom the United States has identified as a kingpin of a major cybercrime operation calling itself Evil Corp. Cybersecurity analysts have linked his group to a series of ransomware attacks, including one last year targeting the National Rifle Association. A U.S. sanctions announcement accused Mr. Yakubets of also assisting Russia’s Federal Security Service, the main successor to the K.G.B.

But after the State Department announced a $5 million bounty for information leading to his arrest, Mr. Yakubets seemed only to flaunt his impunity in Russia: He was photographed driving in Moscow in a Lamborghini partially painted fluorescent yellow.

The cluster of suspected cryptocurrency exchanges in Federation Tower East, first reported last month by Bloomberg News, further illustrates how the Russian ransomware industry hides in plain sight.

The 97-floor, glass-and-steel high-rise resting on a bend in the Moscow River stands within sight of several government ministries in the financial district, including the Russian Ministry of Digital Development, Signals and Mass Communications .

Two of the Biden administration’s most forceful actions to date targeting ransomware are linked to the tower. In September, the Treasury Department imposed sanctions on a cryptocurrency exchange called Suex, which has offices on the 31st floor. It accused the company of laundering $160 million in illicit funds.

In an interview at the time, a founder of Suex, Vasily Zhabykin, denied any illegal activity.

And last month, Russian news media outlets reported that Dutch police, using a U.S. extradition warrant, had detained the owner, Denis Dubnikov, of another firm called EggChange, with an office on the 22nd floor. In a statement issued by one of his companies, Mr. Dubnikov denied any wrongdoing.

Ransomware is attractive to criminals, cybersecurity experts say, because the attacks take place mostly anonymously and online, minimizing the chances of getting caught. It has mushroomed into a sprawling, highly compartmentalized industry in Russia known to cybersecurity researchers as “ransomware as a service.”

The organizational structure mimics franchises, like McDonald’s or Hertz, that lower barriers to entry, allowing less sophisticated hackers to use established business practices to get into the business. Several high-level gangs develop software and promote fearsome-sounding brands, such as DarkSide or Maze, to intimidate businesses and other organizations that are targets. Other groups that are only loosely related hack into computer systems using the brand and franchised software.

The industry’s growth has been abetted by the rise of cryptocurrencies. That has made old-school money mules, who sometimes had to smuggle cash across borders, practically obsolete.

Laundering the cryptocurrency through exchanges is the final step, and also the most vulnerable, because criminals must exit the anonymous online world to appear at a physical location, where they trade Bitcoin for cash or deposit it in a bank.

The exchange offices are “the end of the Bitcoin and ransomware rainbow,” said Gurvais Grigg, a former F.B.I. agent who is a researcher with Chainalysis, the cryptocurrency tracking company.

The computer codes in virtual currencies allow transactions to be tracked from one user to another, even if the owners’ identities are anonymous, until the cryptocurrency reaches an exchange. There, in theory, records should link the cryptocurrency with a real person or company.

“They are really one of the key points in the whole ransomware strain,” Mr. Grigg said of the exchange offices. Ransomware gangs, he said, “want to make money. And until you cash it out, and you get it through an exchange at a cash-out point, you cannot spend it.”

It is at this point, cybersecurity experts say, that criminals should be identified and apprehended. But the Russian government has allowed the exchanges to flourish, saying that it only investigates cybercrime if Russian laws are violated. Regulations are a gray area in Russia, as elsewhere, in the nascent industry of cryptocurrency trading.

Russian cryptocurrency traders say the United States is imposing an unfair burden of due diligence on their companies, given the quickly evolving nature of regulations.

“The people who are real criminals, who create ransomware, and the people working in Moscow City are completely different people,” Sergei Mendeleyev, a founder of one trader based in Federation Tower East, Garantex, said in an interview. The Russian crypto exchanges, he said, were blamed for crimes they are unaware of.

Mr. Mendeleyev, who no longer works at the company, said American cryptocurrency tracking services provide data to non-Russian exchanges to help them avoid illicit transactions but have refused to work with Russian traders — in part because they suspect the traders might use the information to tip off criminals. That complicates the Russian companies’ efforts to root out illegal activity.

He conceded that not all Russian exchanges tried very hard. Some based in Moscow’s financial district were little more than an office, a safe full of cash and a computer, he said.

At least 15 cryptocurrency exchanges are based in Federation Tower East, according to a list of businesses in the building compiled by Yandex, a Russian mapping service.

In addition to Suex and EggChange, the companies targeted by the Biden administration, cyberresearchers and an international cryptocurrency exchange company have flagged two other building tenants that they suspect of illegal activity involving Bitcoin.

The building manager, Aeon Corp., did not respond to inquiries about the exchanges in its offices.

Like the banks and insurance companies they share space with, those firms are likely to have chosen the site for its status and its stringent building security, said Mr. Smilyanets, the researcher at Recorded Future.

“The Moscow City skyscrapers are very fancy,” he said. “They can post on Instagram with these beautiful sights, beautiful skyscrapers. It boosts their legitimacy.”

An earlier version of a picture caption with this article misstated the year in which Colonial Pipeline was hacked. It was 2021, not 2020.

How we handle corrections

Andrew E. Kramer is a reporter based in the Moscow bureau. He was part of a team that won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting for a series on Russia’s covert projection of power. More about Andrew E. Kramer

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