History

At some point in the year 1147, Prince Dolgoruki invited a group of nobles from Novgorod to a grand feast at his lodge overlooking the Moskva river. That location became the Kremlin - the power center of an emergent Russian state. The surrounding area gradually evolved into a vast metropolis and one of the world's great capital cities.

The Mongols arrived during the first half of the 13th century, decimating the already crumbling remnants of the declining Kievan civilization. Mongol domination lasted until the reign of Ivan the Great at the end of the 15th century. The Mongols took a relatively hands-off approach to the governance of their vast conquered territory, extracting tribute from approved princes rather than administering the areas directly. During this time the principality of Muscovy assumed importance thanks both to its advantageous position on a confluence of trade routes and the location of the Orthodox church in Moscow.

By 1480, Tatar (Mongol) domination was sufficiently weakened to allow Ivan III (the Great) the pleasure of tearing up the regime's symbol of authority in the Assumption Cathedral. He then proceeded to subdue both the pesky Lithuanians and the proud civilization of Novgorod to the north. To celebrate his achievements, he invited Italian architects to do up the Kremlin, which had become the center of a now-flourishing city.

Ivan the Terrible's reign was characterized by the consolidation – in famously brutal fashion – of Moscow and the territory it governed. Ivan was obsessed with the possibility of treason and brooked no mercy for those who fell under his suspicious gaze. He died in 1584, and the years up until 1613 were marked by a series of accession crises known as the Time of Troubles. This ended with the dawn of the Romanov dynasty, which was to last until the revolution of 1917.

Peter the Great's reign saw both the creeping emergence of backward Russia on to the European stage, but also the eclipse of Moscow by Peters's pet project: the new northern capital of St Petersburg. Peter despised the conservative, backward, holy Russia, which had traumatized his childhood. He traveled to Europe on his Great Embassy, learning about western European technologies, philosophies and economies. On his return he was determined to drag Russia into the mainstream of European nations. By 1712, the Imperial court had been transferred to what became the capital of the Russian empire until the imperatives of war returned that title to Moscow in 1917. Until then, Moscow was consigned to a secondary role in Russian history as Russia played out its European aspirations from St Petersburg.

In June 1812, Moscow was largely destroyed by fire and looting in the wake of the Napoleonic invasion. The French were eventually chased all the way back to Paris, but Moscow was in dire need of complete reconstruction. Much of modern central Moscow dates from this period.

During the 19th century, whispers of discontent about Tsarist autocracy (fanned by the influence of Western ideas) became louder, but the Imperial regime - despite acts like the abolition of serfdom in 1861 - was far from becoming more lenient. The end of the 19th century saw a growth both in underground revolutionary movements and dissent within the aristocracy itself. With the coming of WWI and the devastation it brought with it, ruling by the Romanovs was soon to be history, and Russia's last tsar - Nicholas II - abdicated. Soon afterwards in October 1917, the Bolshevik Revolution ushered in over 70 years of Communism.

Lenin and the Bolsheviks consolidated their power by ceding huge territory to the Germans as part of a peace deal and then by exterminating remaining opposition to their regime during a three-year civil war. In March 1918, the capital was transferred from St Petersburg back to Moscow. Though this was done because St Petersburg was still under threat from the Germans, it was at the same time a suitable accompaniment to the sea change that was under way as Russia moved from Imperial to Soviet power.

A brief period of economic liberalization followed the restrictive 'War Communism' of the civil war period. After Stalin took the helm following Lenin's death in 1924, he started isolating potential opponents and began the process of mass industrialization as well as mass terror.

During the 1930s, millions of people died in the countryside where enforced collectivization brought production to its knees and as the Great Terror gathered pace, countless numbers of people were arrested, tortured, killed or exiled to labor camps. The offices of Stalin's secret police at the Liubianka have never quite shed their symbolism as the center of Stalinist repression. Party members were bumped off left, right and center as Stalin's paranoia grew ever greater. Show trials held in the House of Unions poured vitriol on former Party faithful now condemned to death after dubious confessions of alleged wrongdoing.

The terror was also accompanied by a period of mass construction. The first line of Moscow's impressive metro system was constructed and opened in 1935.

The Second World War or the Great Patriotic War as it is known in Russia broke out on June 22 1941 when German forces broke a previous Nazi-Soviet pact and mounted a full-scale invasion. The initial stages of the war were disastrous for the Soviet side and it took a while for Stalin's forces, somewhat crippled by his military purges, to begin the difficult process of repelling the fascists. Both Moscow and St Petersburg came under close threat of capture. As German forces approached Moscow in October, 450 000 people were put to work digging trenches. The Germans were finally defeated, but up to 30 million Soviet citizens died in the effort. On June 24th, Red Square witnessed a deeply symbolic moment as high-ranking soldiers rode their horses onto Red Square and trampled swastika banners in front of Lenin's Mausoleum on Red Square.

Post-war Moscow was subject to a flurry of construction activity, including the start of work on Stalin's skyscrapers (sometimes known as the Seven Sisters), a series of buildings intended to make the city look sufficiently grand, fit for a capital of world Communism.

Stalin died in 1953 and was followed by Krushchev, whose Secret Speech to the 20th Party Congress acknowledged Stalin's crimes. Thus began the Thaw, a period of (very) relative political and cultural relaxation after Stalin's rule by terror.

The distinctly undynamic Brezhnev took the country listlessly through a period of stagnation, which was followed by self-proclaimed fix-it man Gorbachev. His policies of glasnost (open public discourse) and perestroika (economic reconstruction) aimed to rejuvenate the ailing socialist state, but it was beyond help and by the late 1980s the authority of the Communist Party was under threat. The charismatic (this was before the drink got to him) leader Boris Yeltsin rose from campaigning Moscow Party boss to become the spearhead of movements against the authority of Gorbachev. He ripped up his Party membership card on TV.

A failed hard line coup could not stop the momentum towards the fall of Soviet Communism. On Christmas day of 1991 Gorbachev resigned and the Russian tricolor was raised above the Kremlin.

Through the small matter of violent conflict between the President and the parliament in 1993 and some shaky elections along the way, Yeltsin led Russia into the brave new world of Capitalism. Since the fall of Communism, Moscow has attracted more than the lion's share of foreign capital and new development, to the extent that it is often spoken of by outsiders (normally in disparaging terms) as a different country. It's architectural life has been embellished by a few projects pushed by populist mayor Luzhkov, most notably the Church of Christ the Saviour, a remake of an original building swept away by the Communists.