Moscow’s imposing subway stations can sometimes look like underground art museums. Many station platforms are decked-out with impressive mosaics, murals, statuary and ornate chandeliers. Most Muscovites take the artwork for granted,but this summer the newly openned Dostoevskaya Station, which commemorates the famed proto-Existentialist writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky, has created a tempest.

Murals that surround the subway platform capture memorable scenes from Dostoyevsky’s novels The Idiot, Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment. It’s artist Ivan Nikolayev’s depiction of Raskolnikov holding an ax over a woman’s head that has Russian psychologists disturbed. Some have complained that the intense images will create fear among subway passengers and possibly induce homicidal or suicidal impulses.