Moscow History

History

Cops in the Kremlin

In December 1999, Boris Yeltsin delivered his customary televised New Year's greeting to the nation. On this occasion, the burly president shocked his fellow countrymen yet again by announcing his resignation from office and retirement from politics. The once combative Yeltsin had grown weary from a decade full of political adversity and physical infirmity.

Yeltsin turned over the office to his recently appointed prime minister, Vladimir Putin. As an aide to the president, Putin had impressed Yeltsin with his selfless dedication, shrewd mind and principled resolve. It was Yeltsin's plan to spring this holiday surprise on the unprepared political opposition to bolster Putin's chances in the upcoming presidential election. The plan worked. In March 2000, Putin became the second president of the Russian Federation.

Mystery surrounds the cop in the Kremlin: he is a former KGB chief, but an ally of St Petersburg's democratic mayor; well-heeled in European culture, but nostalgic for Soviet patriotism; diminutive in stature, but a black belt in karate.

In his first term, Putin's popular approval ratings shot through the onion domes. He brought calm and stability to Russian politics after more than a decade of crisis and upheaval. The economy finally bottomed out and began to show positive growth. The improved economic situation led to budget surpluses for the first time since the 1980s, and wages and pensions were paid in full and on time.

Putin vowed to restore the authority of the Moscow-based central state, engineering a constitutional reform to reduce the power of regional governors and launching a second war against radical Chechen separatists. His main opponent in the 2000 election, Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, took note and hastily allied his political machine with Putin's new 'Unity' party.

Putin was re-elected in 2004. His second term accelerated the disturbing trend toward a more authoritarian approach to politics. Former police officials were named prime minister and speaker of the parliament. Restraints on mass media, civil society and nongovernmental agencies were further tightened. Russia's big business tycoons were cowed into submission after independent-minded oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky was jailed for tax evasion.

Where Russia's young tycoons failed, its senior citizens succeeded. Putin's 2005 attempt to scrap the existing system of subsidised social services was met with unexpected resistance from protesting pensioners. Thousands filled Moscow's streets, denouncing the pension reforms and forcing Putin to back off his plan.

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Terror in the capital

Though the origins of the Russian-Chechen conflict date to the 18th century, it is only in recent times that Moscow has felt its consequences so close to home. In September 1999, mysterious explosions in the capital left more than 200 people dead. Chechen terrorists were blamed for the bombings, although the evidence was scant. Conspiracy theorists had a field day.

In 2002, Chechen rebels wired with explosives seized a popular Moscow theatre, demanding independence for Chechnya. Nearly 800 theatre employees and patrons were held hostage for three days. Russian troops responded by flooding the theatre with immobilising toxic gas, disabling hostage-takers and hostages alike and preventing the worst-case scenario. The victims' unexpectedly severe reaction to the gas and a lack of available medical facilities resulted in 120 deaths and hundreds of illnesses. The incident refuelled Russia's relentless and ruthless campaign to force the Chechens into capitulation

Chechen terrorists have responded in kind, with smaller scale insurgencies taking place regularly; and Muscovites are all-too-aware of the ongoing conflict. The strike closest to home occurred in February 2004, when a bomb exploded in a metro carriage travelling between Avtozavodskaya and Paveletskaya stations, killing 39 and injuring over 100.

Other incidents have served as unnerving reminders, including a series of attacks that coincided with the horrific school siege in Beslan, which resulted in 331 deaths. A couple of days earlier, in late August 2004, two planes that took off from Moscow exploded almost simultaneously in mid-air, killing all 90 passengers, including the suicide bombers on board. Soon after, a suicide bomber failed to enter Rizhskaya metro station, but still managed to kill 10 and injure 50 people on the street.

Meanwhile, Chechens living in Moscow have endured increased harassment, both officially and unofficially. They complain of increasing difficulty obtaining residency permits and constant and unwarranted attention from Moscow police. No less damaging is the growing mistrust between Russians and Chechens, as the racial tension continues to mount.

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The party after the party

Since 1999, Russia has recorded positive economic growth. With the devaluation of the rouble, domestic producers are more competitive and more profitable. A worldwide shortage of energy resources has heaped benefits on the economy. The Russian oil boom, going strong since 2000, has enabled the government to run budget surpluses, pay off its foreign debt and lower tax rates.

Moscow, in particular, has prospered. The city's congested roadways are replete with luxury driving machines. The new economy has spawned a small group of 'New Russians', who are alternately derided and envied for their garish displays of wealth. According to Forbes magazine, the Russian capital boasts the largest contingent of resident billionaires in the world. (Russia ranks second only to the US in total billionaires.) And in 2005, Yelena Baturina, property magnate and wife of Mayor Luzhkov, became Russia's first female billionaire.

Apart from this elite, Russia's transition to the market economy came at enormous social cost. The formerly subsidised sectors of the economy, such as education, science and healthcare, were devastated. For many dedicated professionals, it became close to impossible to eke out a living in their chosen profession. Sadly, many of the older generation - whose hard-earned pensions were reduced to a pittance - paid the price for this transformation. Many have been forced to beg and scrimp on the margins of Moscow's new marketplace.

Following decades of an austere and prudish Soviet regime, Muscovites revelled in their new-found freedom. Liberation, libation, defiance and indulgence were all on open display. Those reared in a simpler time were no doubt shocked by the immodesty of the younger generation.

In the 21st century, the rhythms of the city seem to have steadied. Decadence is still for sale, but it has become more corporate; espresso coffees have replaced five-for-one drink specials. Moscow, however, remains the most freewheeling city in Russia; for the cynics there are no surprises, and for the ambitious there are no limits.

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From the beginning

The hilly terrain of the region has supported human inhabitants for at least 5000 years. Its earliest occupants were forest-dwelling hunter-gatherer tribes that lived off the plentiful bounty of the woodlands and waters. More than 2500 years ago, small agricultural settlements started sprouting up along the many rivers and lakes in the region. These first farmers were descendants of the Ugro-Finnic tribes that long ago populated the northern Eurasian forests.

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Early settlement & founding

Around the 10th century, eastern Slav tribes began to migrate to the region from the Kyivan Rus principality further west, eventually assimilating or displacing the earlier inhabitants. They came to cultivate hardy cereal crops in the abundant arable land and to escape the political volatility of the fractious principality.

The Krivich tribe settled in the north, while the Vyatich tribe relocated to the south. Present-day Moscow grew up on the Vyatich side as a trading post between these two Slav tribes, near the confluence of the Moscow (Moskva) and Yauza Rivers. For a brief time, these outlying communities enjoyed an autonomous existence away from the political and religious powers of the medieval Kyivan Rus state.

Anxious to secure his claim of sovereignty over all the eastern Slavs, Vladimir I, Grand Prince of Kyivan Rus, made his son Yaroslav the regional vicelord, who oversaw the collection of tribute and undertook the conversion of pagans. Upon his death, in 1015, Vladimir's realm was divided among his sons, leading to a protracted and often violent period of family feuds. In this conflict, the descendants of Yaroslav inherited the northeastern territories of the realm, wherein they established the Golden Ring of towns, fortresses and monasteries.

Political power gradually shifted eastward. Under Vladimir Monomakh, Yaroslav's grandson, the Vladimir-Suzdal principality became a formidable rival in the medieval Russian realm. When Vladimir ascended the throne as Grand Prince, he appointed his youngest son, Yury Dolgoruky, to look after the region.

Legend has it that Prince Yury stopped at Moscow on his way back to Vladimir from Kyiv (Kiev). Believing that Moscow's Prince Kuchka had not paid him sufficient homage, Yury put the impudent boyar (high-ranking noble) to death and placed Moscow under his direct rule.

Moscow is first mentioned in the historic chronicles in 1147, when Yury invited his allies to a banquet there: 'Come to me, brother, please come to Moscow.' Moscow's strategic importance prompted Yury to construct a moat-ringed wooden palisade on the hilltop and install his personal vassal on site.

With its convenient access to riverways and roads, Moscow soon blossomed into a regional economic centre, attracting traders and artisans to the merchant rows just outside the Kremlin's walls. In the early 13th century, Moscow became the capital of a small independent principality, though it remained a contested prize by successive generations of boyar princes.

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Mongol yoke & the rise of Muscovy

Beginning in 1236, Eastern Europe was overwhelmed by the marauding Golden Horde, a Mongol-led army of nomadic tribesmen, who appeared out of the eastern Eurasian steppes and were led by Chinggis (Genghis) Khaan's grandson, Batu.

The ferocity of the Golden Horde raids was unprecedented, and quickly Russia's ruling princes acknowledged the region's new overlord. The Golden Horde's khan would constrain Russian sovereignty for the next two centuries, demanding tribute and allegiance from the Slavs.

The Mongols introduced themselves to Moscow by razing the city and killing its governor. Their menacing new presence levelled the political playing field in the region, thereby creating an opportunity for a small Muscovite principality.

The years of Mongol domination coincided with the rise of medieval Muscovy in a marriage of power and money. After Novgorod's Alexander Nevsky thwarted a Swedish invasion from the west, Batu Khan appointed him Grand Prince of Rus and moved Nevsky's throne to Vladimir, where he could be watched more closely. Meanwhile, Alexander's brother, Mikhail, was charged with looking after Moscow. The Golden Horde was mainly interested in tribute, and Moscow was more conveniently situated to monitor the river trade and road traffic. With Mongol backing, Muscovite officials soon emerged as the chief tax collectors in the region.

As Moscow prospered economically, its political fortunes rose as well. In the late 13th century, a new dynasty was created in Moscow under Prince Daniil. His son Yury Danilovich won the khan's favour and in the early 14th century, Moscow - for the first time - held the seat of the Grand Prince. Yury's brother, Ivan Danilovich, earned the moniker of Moneybags (Kalita) because of his remarkable revenue-raising abilities.

Ivan Kalita used his good relations with the khan to manoeuvre Moscow into a position of dominance in relation to his rival princes. By the middle of the 14th century, Moscow had absorbed its erstwhile patrons, Vladimir and Suzdal.

Soon Moscow became a nemesis rather than a supplicant to the Mongols. In the 1380 Battle of Kulikovo, Moscow's Grand Prince Dmitry, Kalita's grandson, led a coalition of Slav princes to a rare victory over the Golden Horde on the banks of the Don River. He was thereafter immortalised as Dmitry Donskoy. This feat did not break the Mongols, however, who retaliated by setting Moscow ablaze only two years later. From this time, however, Moscow acted as champion of the Russian cause.

Visitors to Moscow during the early 15th century said it was 'awesome', 'brilliant' and 'dirty', comparable to Prague or Florence, and twice as large. Toward the end of the 15th century, Moscow's ambitions were realised as the once diminutive duchy evolved into an expanding autocratic state. Under the long reign of Grand Prince Ivan III (the Great), the eastern Slav independent principalities were forcibly consolidated into a single territorial entity. The growing influence of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the west forced Ivan to take action. In 1478, after a seven-year assault, Ivan's army finally subdued the prosperous merchant principality of Novgorod and evicted the Hansa trading league.

After Novgorod's fall, the 'gathering of the lands' picked up pace as the young Muscovite state annexed Tver, Vyatka, Ryazan, Smolensk and Pskov. In 1480 Poland-Lithuania's King Casimer conspired with the Golden Horde to join forces in an attack on Muscovy from the south. Casimer, however, became preoccupied with other matters, and Ivan's army faced down the Mongols at the Ugra River without a fight. Ivan now refused outright to pay tribute or deference to the Golden Horde and the 200-year Mongol yoke was lifted. A triumphant Ivan had himself crowned 'Ruler of all Russia' in a solemn Byzantine-style ceremony.

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Ivan the Terrible

At the time of the death of Ivan the Great, the borders of Muscovy stretched from the Baltic region in the west to the Ural Mountains in the east and the Barents Sea in the north. The south was still the domain of hostile steppe tribes of the Golden Horde.

In the 16th century, however, the Golden Horde fragmented into the Khanates of Crimea, Astrakhan, Kazan and Sibir, from where they controlled vital river networks and continued to raid Russian settlements. At this time, Ivan the Great's grandson, Ivan IV (the Terrible), led the further expansion and consolidation of the upstart Muscovy state. In the 1550s, Muscovy conquered the Kazan and Astrakhan Khanates, thus securing control over the Volga River. Two decades later, a Cossack army commissioned by Ivan defeated the Khan of Sibir, opening up a vast wilderness east of the Urals. Ivan was less successful against the Crimean Tatars, who dominated the southern access routes to the Black Sea.

On the home front, the reign of Ivan IV spelt trouble for Moscow. Ivan came to the throne in 1533 at age three with his mother as regent, though she died only five years later. Upon reaching adulthood, 13 years later, he was crowned 'Tsar of all the Russias'. (The Russian word 'tsar' is derived from the Latin term 'caesar'.) Ivan IV's marriage to Anastasia, a member of the Romanov boyar family, was a happy one, unlike the five that followed her early death.

In 1547 the city was consumed by fire. The tragedy provoked hysteria when a crowd became convinced that the inferno was the work of Ivan's grandmother, a suspected witch. The mob stormed the Kremlin and killed Ivan's uncle.

The year in which his beloved Anastasia died, 1560, marked a turning point for Ivan. Believing her to have been poisoned, he started a reign of terror against the ever-intriguing and jealous boyars, earning himself the sobriquet grozny (literally 'dreadfully serious', but in his case translated as 'terrible'). Later, in a fit of rage, he even killed his eldest son and heir to the throne.

Ivan suffered from a fused spine and took mercury treatments to ease the intense pain. The cure, however, was worse than the ailment; it gradually made him insane.

The last years of Ivan's reign proved ruinous for Moscow. In 1571 Crimean Tatars torched the city, burning most of it to the ground. Ivan's volatile temperament made matters worse by creating political instability. At one point he vacated the throne and concealed himself in a monastery.

Upon his death, power was passed to his feeble-minded son, Fyodor. For a short time, Fyodor's brother-in-law and able prime minister, Boris Godunov, succeeded in restoring order to the realm. By the beginning of the 17th century, however, Boris was dead, Polish invaders occupied the Kremlin and Russia slipped into a 'Time of Troubles'. Finally, the Cossack soldiers relieved Moscow of its uninvited Polish guests and political stability was achieved with the coronation of Mikhail as tsar, inaugurating the Romanov dynasty.

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Peter the Great & the spurned capital

Peter I, known as 'the Great' for his commanding frame (reaching over 2m) and equally commanding victory over the Swedes, dragged Russia kicking and screaming into modern Europe. Born to Tsar Alexey's second wife in 1672, Peter spent much of his youth in royal residences in the Moscow countryside, organising his playmates in war games. Energetic and inquisitive, he was eager to learn about the outside world. As a boy, he spent hours in Moscow's European district; as a young man, he spent months travelling in the West. In fact, he was Russia's first ruler to venture abroad. Peter briefly shared the throne with his half-brother, before taking sole possession in 1696.

Peter wilfully imposed modernisation on Moscow. He ordered the boyars to shave their beards, imported European advisers and craftsmen, and rationalised state administration. He built Moscow's tallest structure, the 90m-high Sukharev Tower, and next to it founded the College of Mathematics and Navigation.

Yet, Peter always despised Moscow for its scheming boyars and archaic traditions. In 1712 he startled the country by announcing the relocation of the capital to a swampland, recently acquired from Sweden in the Great Northern War. St Petersburg would be Russia's 'Window on the West', and everything that Moscow was not - modern, scientific and cultured. Alexander Pushkin later wrote that 'Peter I had no love for Moscow, where, with every step he took, he ran into remembrances of mutinies and executions, inveterate antiquity and the obstinate resistance of superstition and prejudice.'

The spurned former capital quickly fell into decline. With the aristocratic elite and administrative staff departing for marshier digs, the population fell by more than a quarter by 1725. The city suffered further from severe fires, a situation exacerbated by Peter's mandate to direct all construction materials to St Petersburg.

In the 1770s, Moscow was devastated by an outbreak of bubonic plague, which claimed more than 50, 000 lives. It was decreed that the dead had to be buried outside the city limits. Vast cemeteries, including Danilovskoye and Vagankovskoye, were the result. The situation was so desperate that residents went on a riotous looting spree that was violently put down by the army. Empress Catherine II (the Great) responded to the crisis by ordering a new sanitary code to clean up the urban environment and silencing the Kremlin alarm bell that had set off the riots. By 1780, St Petersburg's population surpassed that of Moscow.

By the turn of the 19th century, Moscow had recovered from its gloom. The population climbed back to over 200, 000, its previous high point. Peter's exit had not caused a complete rupture. The city retained the title of 'First-Throned Capital' because coronations were held there. When Peter's grandson, Peter III, relieved the nobles of obligatory state service in 1762, many returned to Moscow. Moreover, many of the merchants had never left Moscow and, after the initial shock, their patronage and wealth became visible again throughout the city.

The late 18th century also saw the construction of the first embankments along the Moscow River, which were followed by bridges. In the 1700s, Russia's first university, museum and newspaper were started in Moscow. This new intellectual and literary scene would soon give rise to a nationalist-inspired cultural movement, which would embrace those features of Russia that were distinctly different from the West.

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Napoleon & the Battle of Moscow

In 1807 Tsar Alexander I negotiated the Treaty of Tilsit. It left Napoleon in charge as Emperor of the west of Europe and Alexander as Emperor of the east, united (in theory) against England. The alliance lasted until 1810, when Russia resumed trade with England. A furious Napoleon decided to crush the tsar with his Grand Army of 700, 000 - the largest force the world had ever seen for a single military operation.

The vastly outnumbered Russian forces retreated across their own countryside throughout the summer of 1812, scorching the earth in an attempt to deny the French sustenance, and fighting some successful rearguard actions.

Napoleon set his sights on Moscow. In September, with the lack of provisions beginning to bite the French, Russian general Mikhail Kutuzov finally decided to turn and fight at Borodino, 130km from Moscow. The battle was extremely bloody, but inconclusive, with the Russians withdrawing in good order. More than 100, 000 soldiers lay dead at the end of a one-day battle.

Before the month was out, Napoleon entered a deserted Moscow. Defiant Muscovites burned down two-thirds of the city rather than see it occupied by the French invaders. Alexander, meanwhile, ignored Napoleon's overtures to negotiate.

With winter coming and supply lines overextended, Napoleon declared victory and retreated. His badly weakened troops stumbled westward out of the city, falling to starvation, disease, the bitter cold and Russian snipers. Only one in 20 made it back to the relative safety of Poland. The tsar's army pursued Napoleon all the way to Paris, which Russian forces briefly occupied in 1814.

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The 19th century

Moscow was feverishly rebuilt in just a few years following the war. Monuments were erected to commemorate Russia's hard-fought victory and Alexander's 'proudest moment' - a Triumphal Arch, inspired by their former French hosts, was placed at the top of Tverskaya ulitsa on the road to St Petersburg. The sculpture of Minin and Pozharsky, who had liberated Moscow from a previous foreign foe, adorned Red Square. And the immensely grandiose Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, which took almost 50 years to complete, went up along the river embankment outside the Kremlin.

The building frenzy did not stop with national memorials. In the city centre, engineers diverted the Neglinnaya River to an underground canal and created two new urban spaces: the Alexandrovsky Garden, running alongside the Kremlin's western wall; and Theatre Square, featuring the glittering Bolshoi Theatre and later the opulent Metropol Hotel. The rebuilt Manezh, the 180m-long imperial stables, provided a touch of neoclassical grandeur to the scene.

Meanwhile, the city's two outer defensive rings were replaced with the tree-lined Boulevard Ring and Garden Ring roads. The Garden Ring became an informal social boundary line: on the inside were the abodes and amenities of the merchants, intellectuals, civil servants and foreigners; on the outside were the factories and dosshouses of the toiling, the loitering and the destitute.

A post-war economic boom changed the city forever. The robust recovery was at first led by the big merchants, long the mainstay of the city's economy. In the 1830s, they organised the Moscow Commodity Exchange. By mid-century, industry began to overtake commerce as the city's economic driving force. Moscow became the hub of a network of new railroad construction, connecting the raw materials of the East to the manufacturers of the West. With a steady supply of cotton from Central Asia, Moscow became a leader in the textile industry. By 1890, more than 300 of the city's 660 factories were engaged in cloth production and the city was known as 'Calico Moscow'. While St Petersburg's industrial development was financed largely by foreign capital, Moscow drew upon its own resources. The Moscow Merchant Bank, founded in 1866, was the country's second-largest bank by century's end.

The affluent and self-assured business elite extended its influence over the city. The eclectic tastes of the nouveaux riches were reflected in the multiform architectural styles of their mansions, salons and hotels. The business elite eventually secured direct control over the city government, removing the remnants of the old boyar aristocracy. In 1876, Sergei Tretyakov, artful entrepreneur and art patron, started a political trend when he became the first mayor who could not claim noble lineage.

The increase in economic opportunity in the city occurred simultaneously with a decline of agriculture and the emancipation of the serfs. As a result, the city's population surged, mostly driven by an influx of rural job seekers. By 1890, Moscow could claim over one million inhabitants. That number would increase by another 50% in less than 20 years. Moscow still ranked second to St Petersburg in population, but, unlike the capital, Moscow was a thoroughly Russian city - its population was 95% ethnic Russian.

By 1900, more than 50% of the city's inhabitants were first-generation peasant migrants. Some stayed for only short stints in between the planting and harvesting seasons, others adjusted to the unfamiliar rhythm of industrial society and became permanent residents. They settled in the factory tenements outside the Garden Ring and south of the river in the Zamoskvorechie district.

The influx of indigents overwhelmed the city's meagre social services and affordable accommodation. At the beginning of the 20th century, Moscow's teeming slums were a breeding ground for disease and discontent. The disparity of wealth among the population grew to extremes. Lacking a voice, the city's less fortunate turned an ear to the outlawed radicals.

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Revolutionary Moscow

The tsarist autocracy staggered into the new century. In 1904 the impressionable and irresolute Tsar Nicholas II was talked into declaring war on Japan over some forestland in the Far East. His imperial forces suffered a decisive and embarrassing defeat, touching off a nationwide wave of unrest.

Taking their cue from St Petersburg, Moscow's workers and students staged a series of demonstrations, culminating in the October 1905 general strike, forcing political concessions from a reluctant Nicholas. In December, the attempt by city authorities to arrest leading radicals provoked a new round of confrontation, which ended in a night of bloodshed on hastily erected barricades in the city's Presnya district.

Vladimir Ilych Ulyanov (Lenin) called the failed 1905 Revolution the 'dress rehearsal for 1917', vowing that next time Russia's rulers would not escape the revolutionary scourge. Exhausted by three years of fighting in WWI, the tsarist autocracy meekly succumbed to a mob of St Petersburg workers in February 1917. Unwilling to end the war and unable to restore order, the provisional government was itself overthrown in a bloodless palace coup, orchestrated by Lenin's Bolshevik Party (which was eventually renamed the Communist Party). In Moscow, regime change was not so easy, as a week of street fighting left more than 1000 dead. Radical socialism had come to power in Russia.

Fearing a German assault, Lenin ordered that the capital return to Moscow. In March 1918, Lenin set up shop in the Kremlin and the new Soviet government expropriated the nicer downtown hotels and townhouses to conduct affairs. The move unleashed a steady stream of favour-seeking sycophants on the city. The new communist-run city government authorised the redistribution of housing space, as scores of thousands of workers upgraded to the dispossessed digs of the bourgeoisie.

The revolution and ensuing civil war, however, took its toll on Moscow. Political turmoil fostered an economic crisis. In 1921 the city's factories were operating at only 10% of their prewar levels of production. Food and fuel were in short supply. Hunger and disease stalked the darkened city. The population dropped precipitously from two million in 1917 to just one million in 1920. Wearied workers returned to the villages in search of respite, while the old elite packed up its belongings and moved beyond the reach of a vengeful new regime.

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Stalin's Moscow

In May 1922, Lenin suffered the first of a series of paralysing strokes that removed him from effective control of the Party and government. He died, aged 54, in January 1924. His embalmed remains were put on display in Moscow. St Petersburg was renamed Leningrad in his honour, and a personality cult was built around him - all orchestrated by Josef Stalin.

The most unlikely of successors, Stalin outwitted his rivals and manoeuvred himself into the top post of the Communist Party. Ever paranoid, Stalin later launched a reign of terror against his former Party rivals, which eventually consumed nearly the entire first generation of Soviet officialdom. Hundreds of thousands of Muscovites were systematically executed and secretly interred on the ancient grounds of the old monasteries.

In the early 1930s, Stalin launched Soviet Russia on a hell-bent industrialisation campaign. The campaign cost millions of lives, but by 1939 only the USA and Germany had higher levels of industrial output. Moscow set the pace for this rapid development. Political prisoners became slave labourers. The building of the Moscow-Volga Canal was overseen by the secret police, who forced several hundred thousand 'class enemies' to dig the 125km-long ditch.

The brutal tactics employed by the state to collectivise the countryside created a new wave of peasant immigrants that flooded to Moscow. Around the city, work camps and bare barracks were erected to shelter the huddling hordes who shouldered Stalin's industrial revolution. At the other end, Moscow also became a centre of a heavily subsidised military industry, whose engineers and technicians enjoyed a larger slice of the proletarian pie. The Party elite, meanwhile, moved into new spacious accommodation such as the Dom Naberezhnya (House of the Embankment), across the river from the Kremlin.

Under Stalin, a comprehensive urban plan was devised for Moscow. On paper, it appeared as a neatly organised garden city; unfortunately, it was implemented with a sledgehammer. Historic cathedrals and bell towers were demolished in the middle of the night. The Kitay Gorod wall was dismantled for being 'a relic of medieval times'. Alexander's Triumphal Arch and Peter's Sukharev Tower likewise became victims of unsympathetic city planners, eager to wrench Moscow into a proletarian future.

New monuments marking the epochal transition to socialism went up in place of the old. The first line of the marble-bedecked metro was completed in 1935. The enormous Cathedral of Christ the Saviour was razed with the expectation of erecting the world's tallest building, upon which would stand an exalted 90m statute of Lenin. This scheme was later abandoned and the foundation hole instead became the world's biggest municipal swimming pool. Broad thoroughfares were created and neo-Gothic skyscrapers girded the city's outer ring.

In the 1930s, Stalin's overtures to enter into an anti-Nazi collective security agreement were rebuffed by England and France. Vowing that the Soviet Union would not be pulling their 'chestnuts out of the fire', Stalin signed a nonaggression pact with Hitler instead.

Thus, when Hitler launched 'Operation Barbarossa' in June 1941, Stalin was caught by surprise and did not emerge from his room for three days.

The ill-prepared Red Army was no match for the Nazi war machine, which advanced on three fronts. By December, the Germans were just outside Moscow, within 30km of the Kremlin. Only an early, severe winter halted the advance. A monument now marks the spot, near the entrance road to Sheremetyevo airport, where the Nazis were stopped in their tracks. Staging a brilliant counteroffensive, Soviet war hero General Zhukov staved off the attack and pushed the invaders back.

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Post-Stalinist Moscow

Stalin died in March 1953. His funeral procession brought out so many gawkers that a riot ensued and scores of mourners were trampled to death. The system he built, however, lived on, with a few changes.

First, Nikita Khrushchev, a former mayor of Moscow, tried a different approach to ruling. He curbed the powers of the secret police, released political prisoners, introduced wide-ranging reforms and promised to improve living conditions. Huge housing estates grew up around the outskirts of Moscow; many of the hastily constructed low-rise projects were nicknamed khrushchoby, after trushchoby (slums). Khrushchev's populism and unpredictability made the ruling elite a bit too nervous and he was ousted in 1964.

Next came the long, stagnant reign of ageing Leonid Brezhnev. Overlooking Lenin's mausoleum, he presided over the rise of a military superpower. Brezhnev provided long sought-after political stability and material security. Most Russians, even today, say that their living standard was higher in Brezhnev's time.

During these years, the Cold War shaped Moscow's development as the Soviet Union enthusiastically competed with the USA in the arms and space races. The aerospace, radio-electronics and nuclear weapons ministries operated factories, research laboratories and design institutes in and around the capital. By 1980, as much as one-third of the city's industrial production and one-quarter of its labour force were connected to the defence industry. Moscow city officials were not privy to what went on in these secretly managed facilities. As a matter of national security, the KGB discreetly constructed a second subway system, Metro-2, under the city.

Still, the centrally planned economy could not keep pace with rising consumer demands. While the elite lived in privilege, ordinary Muscovites stood in line for goods. For the Communist Party, things became a bit too comfortable. Under Brezhnev, the political elite grew elderly and corrupt, while the economic system slid into a slow, irreversible decline. And the goal of turning Moscow into a showcase socialist city was quietly abandoned.

Nonetheless, Moscow enjoyed a postwar economic boom. The city underwent further expansion, accommodating more and more buildings and residents. Brezhnev showed a penchant for brawny displays of modern architecture. Cavernous concrete-and-glass slabs, such as the now defunct Hotel Rossiya, were constructed to show the world the modern face of the Soviet Union. The cement pouring reached a frenzy in the build-up to the 1980 Summer Olympics. However, Russia's invasion of Afghanistan caused many nations to boycott the Games and the facilities mostly stood empty.

Appreciation for Moscow's past, however, began to creep back into city planning. Most notably, Alexander's Triumphal Arch was reconstructed, though plans to re-erect Peter's tall Sukharev Tower were not realised. Residential life continued to move further away from the city centre, which was increasingly occupied by the governing elite. Shoddy high-rise apartments went up on the periphery and metro lines were extended outward.

The attraction for Russians to relocate to Moscow in these years was, and continues to be, very strong. City officials tried desperately to enforce the residency permit system, but to no avail. In 1960 the population topped six million, and, by 1980, it surpassed eight million. The spillover led to the rapid growth of Moscow's suburbs. While industry, especially the military industry, provided the city's economic foundation, many new jobs were created in science, education and public administration. The city became a little more ethnically diverse, particularly with the arrival of petty-market traders from Central Asia and the Caucasus.

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The Communist collapse

The Soviet leadership showed it was not immune to change. Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in March 1985, with a mandate to revitalise the ailing socialist system. Gorbachev soon launched a multifaceted programme of reform under the catchphrase 'perestroika' (restructuring). Gorbachev recognised that it would take more than bureaucratic reorganisations and stern warnings to reverse economic decline. He believed that the root of the economic crisis was society's alienation from the socialist system. Thus, he sought to break down the barrier between 'us and them'.

His reforms were meant to engage the population and stimulate initiative. Glasnost (openness) gave new voice to both a moribund popular culture and a stifled media. Democratisation introduced multicandidate elections and new deliberative legislative bodies. Cooperatives brought the first experiments in market economics in over 50 years. Gorbachev's plan was to lead a gradual transition to reform socialism, but in practice, events ran ahead of him. Moscow set the pace.

In 1985 Gorbachev promoted Boris Yeltsin from his Urals bailiwick into the central leadership as the new head of Moscow. Yeltsin was given the assignment of cleaning up the corrupt Moscow Party machine and responded by sacking hundreds of officials. His populist touch made him an instant success with Muscovites, who were often startled to encounter him riding public transport or berating a shopkeeper for not displaying his sausage. During Gorbachev's ill-advised antialcohol campaign, Yeltsin saved Moscow's largest brewery from having to close its doors.

More importantly, Yeltsin embraced the more open political atmosphere. He allowed 'informal' groups, unsanctioned by the Communist Party, to organise and express themselves in public. Soon Moscow streets, such as those in the Arbat district, were hosting demonstrations by democrats, nationalists, reds and greens. Yeltsin's renegade style alienated the entire Party leadership, one by one. He was summarily dismissed by Gorbachev in October 1987, though he would be heard from again.

Gorbachev's political reforms included elections to reformed local assemblies in the spring of 1990. By this time, communism had already fallen in Eastern Europe and events in the Soviet Union were becoming increasingly radical. In their first free election in 88 years, Muscovites turned out in large numbers at the polls and voted a bloc of democratic reformers into office.

The new mayor was economist Gavril Popov, and the vice-mayor was Yury Luzhkov. Popov immediately embarked on the 'decommunisation' of the city, selling off housing and state businesses and restoring prerevolutionary street names. He clashed repeatedly with the Soviet leadership over the management of city affairs. Popov soon acquired a key ally when Yeltsin made a political comeback as the elected head of the new Russian Supreme Soviet.

On 18 August 1991, the city awoke to find a column of tanks in the street and a 'Committee for the State of Emergency' claiming to be in charge. This committee was composed of leaders from the Communist Party, the KGB and the military. They had already detained Gorbachev at his Crimean dacha and issued directives to arrest Yeltsin and the Moscow city leadership.

But the ill-conceived coup quickly went awry and confusion ensued. Yeltsin, Popov and Luzhkov made it to the Russian parliament building, the so-called White House, to rally opposition. Crowds gathered at the White House, persuaded some of the tank crews to switch sides, and started to build barricades. Yeltsin climbed on a tank to declare the coup illegal and call for a general strike. He dared the snipers to shoot him, and when they didn't, the coup was over.

The following day, huge crowds opposed to the coup gathered in Moscow. Coup leaders lost their nerve, one committed suicide, some fell ill and the others simply got drunk. On 21 August, the tanks withdrew; the coup was foiled. Gorbachev flew back to Moscow to resume command, but his time was up as well. On 23 August, Yeltsin banned the Communist Party in Russia.

Gorbachev embarked on a last-ditch bid to save the Soviet Union with proposals for a looser union of independent states. Yeltsin, however, was steadily transferring control over everything that mattered from Soviet hands into Russian ones. On 8 December, Yeltsin and the leaders of Ukraine and Belarus, after several rounds of vodka toasts, announced that the USSR no longer existed. They proclaimed a new Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a vague alliance of fully independent states with no central authority. Gorbachev, a president without a country or authority, formally resigned on 25 December, the day the white, blue and red Russian flag replaced the Soviet red flag over the Kremlin.

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Rebirth of Russian politics

Buoyed by his success over Gorbachev and coup plotters, Yeltsin (now Russia's president) was granted extraordinary powers by the parliament to find a way out of the Soviet wreckage. Yeltsin used these powers, however, to launch radical economic reforms and rapprochement with the West. In so doing, he polarised the political elite. As Yeltsin's team of economic reformers began to dismantle the protected and subsidised command economy, in early 1992, the parliament finally acted to seize power back from the president. A stalemate ensued that lasted for a year and a half.

The executive-legislative conflict at the national level was played out in Moscow politics as well. After the Soviet fall, the democratic bloc that had brought Popov to power came apart. In Moscow, a property boom began, as buildings and land with no real owners changed hands at a dizzying rate with dubious legality. Increasingly, the mayor's office was at odds with the city council, as well as the new federal government. Popov began feuding with Yeltsin, just as he had previously with Gorbachev.

In June 1992, the impulsive Popov resigned his office in a huff. Without pausing to ask him to reconsider, Vice-mayor Yury Luzhkov readily assumed the mayor's seat. The city council passed a vote of no confidence in Luzhkov and called for new elections, but the new mayor opted simply to ignore the resolution.

Throughout 1993, the conflict between President Yeltsin and the Russian parliament intensified. Eight different constitutional drafts were put forward and rejected. In September 1993, parliament convened with plans to remove many of the president's powers. Before it could act, Yeltsin issued a decree that shut down the parliament and called for new elections.

Events turned violent. Yeltsin sent troops to blockade the White House, ordering the members to leave it by 4 October. Many did, but on 2 and 3 October, a National Salvation Front appeared, in an attempt to stir popular insurrection against the president. They clashed with the troops around the White House and tried to seize Moscow's Ostankino TV centre.

The army, which until this time had sought to remain neutral, intervened on the president's side and blasted the parliament into submission. In all, 145 people were killed and another 700 wounded - the worst such incident of bloodshed in the city since the Bolshevik takeover in 1917. Yeltsin, in conjunction with the newly subjugated parliament, put together the 1993 constitution that created a new political system organised around strong central executive power.

Throughout the 1990s, Yeltsin suffered increasingly from heart disease. Come 1996, however, he was not prepared to step down from his 'throne'. Insider deals reached a peak in the 1996 presidential election. Russia's newly rich financiers, who backed Yeltsin's campaign, were rewarded with prized state-owned assets in lucrative, rigged privatisation auctions, and policy-making positions in the government. In a scene reminiscent of the medieval boyars, the power grabs of these 'oligarchs' became more brazen during Yeltsin's prolonged illness.

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Economic prosperity

In the New Russia, wealth was concentrated in Moscow. While the rest of Russia struggled to survive the collapse of the command economy, Moscow emerged quickly as an enclave of affluence and dynamism. By the mid-1990s Moscow was replete with all the things Russians had expected capitalism to bring, but which had yet to trickle down to the provinces: banks, shops, restaurants, casinos, BMWs, bright lights and nightlife.

The city provided nearly 25% of all tax revenues collected by the federal government. Commercial banks, commodity exchanges, big businesses and high-end retailers all set up headquarters in the capital. By the late 1990s, Moscow had become one of the most expensive cities in the world.

When the government defaulted on its debts and devalued the currency in 1998, it appeared that the boom had gone bust. But as the panic subsided, it became clear that it was less a crisis and more a correction for a badly overvalued rouble. In the aftermath, Russian firms became more competitive and productive with the new exchange rate. Wages started to be paid again and consumption increased.

Above all else, Moscow remains a centre of power - the seat of the president, government and legislature. While it may be true, in general, that power and wealth tends to find each other, this is especially the case in postcommunist Russia, where politicians have enormous control over the redistribution of economic resources. The hallways of the Duma and the offices of the White House magnetically attract favour seekers and fortune hunters.

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