Moscow: Difference between revisions

Moscow, capital city of Russia. Москва (Moskva) is the Russian name.

 

* Suburbs, divided into near suburbs that actually border Moscow and are divided from is only by MKAD (Khimki, Mytischi, Krasnogorsk, Balashikha, Reutov) and far suburbs that are separated from the city by a stretch of forest and villages and are usually reached by railroad or car(Korolev, Pushkino, Elektrostal, Serpuhov and so on).

* Zelenograd. It looks like a far suburb, walks like a far suburb and talks like a far suburb, but is legally a part of Moscow, not a separate town.

 

Moscow is a mostly round city, so its internal divisions are organised by several concentric beltways. At the very centre lie the Kremlin, Red Square and the ancient neighbourhood of Kitay-gorod (in modern Russian it means "Chinatown", but it got that name long before Russians started calling China "Kitay", so it has no connection to the Chinese diaspora; in Old Russian, Kitai-Gorod stood for Basket-town, since the walls were originally made of baskets filled with clay). The beltways that surround it are the incomplete Boulevard Ring (the innermost), the Garden Ring, the 3rd Ring Road and the MKAD (the outermost). When people say "central Moscow" they usually mean "within the Garden Ring". The areas between it and the 3rd ring, as well as some areas to the latter's immediate north, are mostly old industrial neighbourhoods, while most of the neighbourhoods between the 3rd ring and the MKAD are residential. A fourth ring road, between the 3rd and the MKAD is currently under construction. Moscow, however, is split with railways and rivers along radii, so the picture is not so beautiful. Until 1984 the MKAD was the city border, but then Moscow annexed several towns on the outside. Despite that the MKAD still serves as a cultural border between Moscow and its suburbs, and Muscovites are often stereotyped to believe that all of Russia beyond the MKAD is complete wilderness, except for the aforementioned Rublevo-Uspenskoe and St. Petersburg.

In [[Tsarist Russia]], Moscow was ruled by a mayor or governor appointed by the tsar. In the [[Soviet Union]] era, Moscow was ruled by the First Secretary of the Moscow Communist Party and the Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Moscow City Council. The Moscow secretary was the most powerful local politician in the USSR, and both Khrushchev and Yeltsin held this post. Now, in [[The New Russia]], Moscow is ruled by a mayor again. The first mayor, Gavriil Popov, was elected in 1990, but resigned in 1992, so Yuri Luzhkov was elected mayor. Luzhkov was the mayor until 2010, when he was fired by President Dmitry Medvedev for insulting the President. Medvedev appointed Sergei S. Sobyanin to replace him, and Sobyanin remains the Mayor of Moscow as of 2012.

 

[[California Doubling|Moscow must be one of the most doubled cities in the world]]. It is usually depicted as cold, grey and oppressive.

** And for 5 of them it is hot, grey and oppressive.

*** When it's not raining, of course.