IRINA POPPINS VISITS MOSCOW, THE CAPITAL OF RUSSIA

Irina Poppins in Gorky Park, Moscow

Irina Poppins is visiting Moscow, the capital of Russia. She's an international famous dancer and she has wanted to visit one of the cities where dancing is more appreciate. She wants to tell us some interesting things about the history of this amazing city.

Москва́ or Moscow is the capital and most populous city of Russia, with 13.2 million residents within the city limits and 17.1 million within the urban area. Moscow has the status of a Russian federal city. Moscow is a major political, economic, cultural, and scientific centre of Russia and Eastern Europe, as well as the largest city entirely on the European continent.

More information: Moscow

Moscow is situated on the Moskva River in the Central Federal District of European Russia, making it Europe's most populated inland city. The city is well known for its architecture, particularly its historic buildings such as Saint Basil's Cathedral with its brightly coloured domes.

Saint Basil's Cathedral, Moscow

The city has served as the capital of a progression of states, from the medieval Grand Duchy of Moscow and the subsequent Tsardom of Russia to the Russian Empire to the Soviet Union and the contemporary Russian Federation.

Moscow is the seat of power of the Government of Russia, being the site of the Moscow Kremlin, a medieval city-fortress that is today the residence for work of the President of Russia. The Moscow Kremlin and Red Square are also one of several World Heritage Sites in the city. Both chambers of the Russian parliament, the State Duma and the Federation Council, also sit in the city. Moscow is considered the centre of Russian culture, having served as the home of Russian artists, scientists and sports figures and because of the presence of museums, academic and political institutions and theatres.

More information: UNESCO

The name of the city is thought to be derived from the name of the Moskva River. Finno-Ugric Merya and Muroma people, who originally inhabited the area, called the river Mustajoki. It has been suggested that the name of the city derives from this term. However there have been proposed several theories of the origin of the name of the river. The most linguistically well-grounded and widely accepted is from the Proto-Balto-Slavic root *mŭzg-/muzg- from the Proto-Indo-European *meu- wet, so the name Moskva might signify a river at a wetland or a marsh. Its cognates include Russian: музга, muzga pool, puddle, Lithuanian: mazgoti and Latvian: mazgāt to wash, Sanskrit: majjati to drown, Latin: mergō to dip, immerse.

Irina Poppins inside Pushkin Café

There has been as well a scholastic etymology that connected the name of Mosoch, a son of Japheth, with the name of the city, so that it was thought that the biblical figure was a forefather of Russians as well as other Slavs. The surface similarity of the name Russia with Rosh, an obscure biblical tribe or country, which is mentioned alongside with Mosoch in Ezekiel (38:2–3, 39:1), strengthened up such etymologies.

The oldest evidence of humans on the territory of Moscow dates from the Neolithic, Schukinskaya site on the Moscow River. Within the modern bounds of the city other late evidence was discovered, the burial ground of the Fatyanovskaya culture, the site of the Iron Age settlement of the Dyakovo culture, on the territory of the Kremlin, Sparrow Hills, Setun River and Kuntsevskiy forest park.

More information: Lonely Planet

In the 9th century, the Oka River was part of the Volga trade route, and the upper Volga watershed became an area of contact between the indigenous Finno-Ugric such as the Merya and the expanding Volga Bulgars, particularly the second son of Khan Kubrat who expanded the borders of the Old Great Bulgaria, Scandinavian -Varangians- and Slavic peoples. The earliest East Slavic tribes recorded as having expanded to the upper Volga in the 9th to 10th centuries are the Vyatichi and Krivichi.

Irina & the Tsar Bell, Moscow Kremlin

The first known reference to Moscow dates from 1147 as a meeting place of Yuri Dolgoruky and Sviatoslav Olgovich. At the time it was a minor town on the western border of Vladimir-Suzdal Principality.

Daniel I ruled Moscow as Grand Duke until 1303 and established it as a prosperous city which would eclipse its parent principality of Vladimir by the 1320s. In 1462 Ivan III, known as Ivan the Great (1440–1505) became Grand Prince of Moscow.

In 1571 the Crimean Tatars captured Moscow, burning everything except the Kremlin. The annals record that only 30,000 of 200,000 inhabitants survived.

When Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812, the Moscovites were evacuated. It is suspected that the Moscow fire was principally the effect of Russian sabotage. Napoleon’s Grande Armée was forced to retreat and was nearly annihilated by the devastating Russian winter and sporadic attacks by Russian military forces. As many as 400,000 of Napoleon's soldiers died during this time.

More information: History.com

Following the success of the Russian Revolution of 1917, Vladimir Lenin, fearing possible foreign invasion, moved the capital from Saint Petersburg back to Moscow on 5 March 1918. The Kremlin once again became the seat of power and the political centre of the new state. With the change in values imposed by communist ideology, the tradition of preservation of cultural heritage was broken. A new anti-religious campaign, launched in 1929, coincided with collectivization of peasants; destruction of churches in the cities peaked around 1932.

More information: History.com

Irina Poppins and Red Square, Moscow

In November 1941, German Army Group Centre was stopped at the outskirts of the city and then driven off in the course of the Battle of Moscow. Many factories were evacuated, together with much of the government, and from October 20 the city was declared to be in a state of siege. Its remaining inhabitants built and manned antitank defences, while the city was bombarded from the air.

In 1959 Nikita Khrushchev launched his anti-religious campaign. By 1964 over 10 thousand churches out of 20 thousand were shut down, mostly in rural areas, and many were demolished. Of 58 monasteries and convents operating in 1959, only sixteen remained by 1964; of Moscow's fifty churches operating in 1959, thirty were closed and six demolished.

More information: World War II Database-Battle of Moscow

When the USSR was dissolved in 1991, Moscow remained the capital of the Russian SFSR. Since then a market economy has emerged in Moscow, producing an explosion of Western-style retailing, services, architecture, and lifestyles.

More information: The Guardian

Russia is now very far from being a communist country, but when I walked around Moscow, I kept glimpsing these haunting images. There were statues of Lenin and some neon signs of the hammer and sickle. I remembered myself then as a little girl, living under that oppression. 

Martina Navratilova