Moscow's GUM kept its famous initials by swapping one word
For most of the Soviet era the shopping arcade on Red Square had a single vendor, the state itself. When it was privatized, the new owners changed the first word of its name from state to main, so the three letters GUM survived intact while the meaning quietly shifted.
The building stretches 242 metres along the eastern edge of Red Square, facing the Kremlin. It went up between 1890 and 1893 as the Upper Trading Rows, with Alexander Pomerantsev handling the architecture and Vladimir Shukhov the engineering. Earlier trade halls had stood on the spot: one designed for Catherine II by the Italian Giacomo Quarenghi burned in the Moscow fire of 1812, and its replacement by Joseph Bove gave way to the present structure when it opened in 1894.
Shukhov's glass roof was the marvel. It looks delicate, yet more than 50,000 metal parts hold it together firmly enough to bear heavy Moscow snow, and its arched skylights contain upward of 20,000 panes. Russian medieval styling on the outside, finished in red Finnish granite, marble and limestone, wraps around a steel frame much like the great Victorian railway stations of London. Inside, arcades rise three levels, joined by concrete walkways.
Politics shaped the store's fortunes. By 1917 it housed around 1,200 shops; the Bolsheviks nationalized it and, in the 1920s, tried to use it as a showcase for socialist retail. Stalin turned it into offices for his first Five Year Plan in 1928. After it reopened as a store in 1953 it became one of the rare Soviet shops without shortages, and lines of shoppers could stretch clear across the square. Mikhail Suslov, who disliked having a shop opposite Lenin's tomb, repeatedly schemed to make it a museum, but Leonid Brezhnev blocked him each time.
Privatized after the Soviet collapse, GUM passed through several owners before Bosco di Ciliegi, a luxury retailer, bought a 50.25 percent stake in May 2005. By 2021 it held more than 100 brands alongside cafes and restaurants, now as the Main Universal Store.
Source: GUM (department store)
