Moscow (city, Russia)

V

Recreation

About 30 percent of Moscow’s territory is occupied by parks and public gardens, which were important elements of Soviet city planning. Gorky Park, which provides activities such as amusement rides and boating, sits on the right bank of the Moscow River; the park’s display of a retired Soviet space shuttle dominates the riverside. The Moscow Zoo is located just west of the city center. The Botanical Gardens, administered by the Russian Academy of Sciences, offers a diverse display of plant life. In 1980 Moscow hosted the XXII Summer Olympics, held in part at the city’s Luzhniki Park sports complex.

VI

Economy

Moscow is the largest industrial center in Russia. More than half of its highly skilled industrial workforce is employed in engineering and metalworking industries that produce cars, trucks, ball bearings, and machine tools. The centuries-old textile industry is the city’s second largest employer. In the early 1990s the largest sectors of employment for Moscow’s workforce were industry (24 percent), science and associated services (20 percent), construction (11 percent), and trade (10 percent).

Moscow has attracted an enormous amount of foreign investment in its retail, wholesale, and construction sectors since Russia made the transition to a market economy in the early 1990s. State-run stores selling subsidized domestic goods to long lines of consumers have been largely replaced by joint-venture firms selling plentiful imported goods at market prices. New Western-style office buildings and hotels are under construction, and numerous nightclubs have opened. A huge new underground shopping complex complete with parking garage is located under Manezhnaya Square, near the Kremlin. The city is also the center of Russia’s banking, insurance, and financial industries.

Moscow’s location on the Moscow River provides access to five seas—the Baltic, White, Black, and Caspian seas and the Sea of Azov—via tributaries and canals, most notably the Moscow Canal connecting to the Volga River. This accessibility makes Moscow a gateway for goods entering and leaving Russia by ship and the primary port for goods being transferred from land-based to water-based forms of transportation. Railroads provide the most common method of travel between Moscow and other cities. Nine mainline railroad stations, located in Moscow’s central metropolitan area, serve as the main connection points for routes to and from other parts of Russia and other countries. Moscow has an international airport called Sheremetyevo II and four additional airports that provide service within Russia and to other former Soviet republics.

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Forms of transportation in Moscow include the Metro (subway), trolleys, trams, buses, taxis, and automobiles. The first line of Moscow’s Metro was completed in 1935. In the following years the subway system was expanded to serve most of the inner city. Since the 1970s construction of new Metro lines to the city’s outskirts has often lagged behind residential development. The Metro is known for its ornate stations, often decorated with marble, chandeliers, and statues.

VII

Government

Moscow is a separate subject of the Russian Federation (official name of Russia), and its administration reports directly to the federal government. The city is governed by a mayor, who is popularly elected for a four-year term, and by a 35-member Duma (assembly) that functions as a city legislature. The Duma is elected from 10 prefectures (administrative districts) that were established in 1993. These are divided into 125 smaller neighborhood units, which elect local councils. The mayor retains line-item veto power over Duma actions and can legislate by executive order.

As Russia’s capital, Moscow is the seat of the national government. The Kremlin palaces house most national offices. The prime minister’s offices are in the House of Government of the Russian Federation, also known as the White House, located northwest of the Kremlin.

VIII

Contemporary Issues

Crime in Moscow increased enormously during the early and mid-1990s, due in part to the rise of organized criminal groups. Drug trafficking is a growing concern, as Moscow is used increasingly as a gateway for illegal drugs being smuggled from Central Asia to Europe; in 1996 approximately 5 percent of the city’s reported crimes were drug related. In an attempt to address the problem of crime in Moscow, the national government added Interior Ministry troops to the municipal police force to help patrol the city’s streets.

Traffic congestion has worsened in Moscow as the market economy has allowed many more Muscovites to own automobiles, at a rate that has outpaced driver training, traffic enforcement, and modernization of roads. Moscow’s environment has long suffered from industrial pollution; however, about 60 percent of the city’s air pollution now comes from automobiles. Radioactive waste sites, unauthorized trash dumps, and deforestation of the Green Belt that surrounds the city are being addressed by federal and local agencies, but results are slow because of limited financial resources.

After the collapse of the USSR in 1991, economic difficulties left Moscow’s infrastructure without needed funds for operation and maintenance. Public transportation and other services had been heavily subsidized during the Soviet period, and when the subsidies were eliminated, city officials found that the taxes and fares being collected from residents were insufficient. In recent years, transit fares in Moscow have increased dramatically.

IX

History

Human settlement on Moscow’s territory dates from the Stone Age, which began about 2.5 million years ago and lasted in this region until about 4000 bc. By ad 1100 Moscow was a small town at the confluence of the Neglinnaia and Moscow rivers. Records from 1147 show the city as a possession of Yuri Dolgoruki, prince of the Vladimir-Suzdal’ principality in Kievan Rus, the first significant East Slavic state. Still a relatively minor city, Moscow survived the Mongol invasions of the 13th century, when all of Kievan Rus fell under the rule of the Tatar khanate, or empire, known as the Golden Horde. Moscow prospered under the Moscow princes during Tatar rule, which ended in the late 14th century. In its favored position at the intersection of trade routes, Moscow expanded in size and importance. The capital of its own principality from the 14th century, it became the capital of a unified Russian state in the 15th century. In 1589 it became the ecclesiastical capital of the Russian Orthodox Church.

In 1712 Russian emperor Peter the Great ordered that Russia’s seat of government be moved from Moscow to Saint Petersburg. However, Moscow remained sufficiently important to be a target of conquest by French emperor Napoleon I. In 1812 Napoleon’s troops defeated Russian forces at Borodino, near the outskirts of Moscow. As French troops advanced, Muscovites evacuated the city, setting fire to many buildings as they left. Napoleon and his troops occupied the largely deserted city for 39 days, until food shortages forced them out. The fire destroyed more than two-thirds of Moscow’s buildings. In 1813 a commission was appointed to rebuild the city, and plans and designs executed over the next 30 years changed the face of Moscow dramatically.

Preceding the Russian Revolutions of 1917, Moscow was the site of revolutionary activities against the imperial government, and, once the monarchy was overthrown, of further activities against the Provisional Government set up in its place. During the October (or November, in the Western, or New Style, calendar) phase of the revolution, the Bolsheviks (radical socialists) succeeded in taking the Kremlin after a weeklong struggle. This, along with a similar Bolshevik victory in Petrograd (as Saint Petersburg was then known), toppled the Provisional Government and allowed the Bolsheviks to establish a socialist regime. In 1918 the Bolsheviks moved the seat of government to Moscow. When they founded the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1922, the city officially became the Soviet capital.

During World War II (1939-1945) Moscow was the military headquarters of the Soviet government. In October 1941 German Nazi troops approached the city, but they were unsuccessful in capturing it. On December 6 the Soviet army launched a counterattack that was successful in forcing the Nazi troops to retreat from Moscow, renewing the spirit of the Soviet forces. The city increased its production of weapons, enabling it to give more aid to the front, and new military units and hospitals were organized. Industries that the Soviet government had relocated to more protected locations in the country’s interior gradually returned, and the economy began to recover. Moscow’s postwar years were marked by increased migration into the city and steady urban growth. In 1960 Moscow’s boundaries were expanded to the Outer Ring Road, more than doubling the city’s area. In the 1980s the Zelenograd district outside this boundary was brought under the administrative control of the city government as well.

In 1991 Moscow was the scene of a coup attempt by Communist hard-liners opposed to the democratic reforms of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Citizens took to the streets of Moscow to fight the attempted takeover. Although the coup failed, Gorbachev resigned soon afterward, and the USSR was formally dissolved later that year. Since then, the emergence of a market economy in Russia has produced an explosion of Western-style retailing, services, architecture, and lifestyles in Moscow.

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