Moscow Nights

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Moscow Nights

Russian plans for the future, quite daring for a country that is said to have a set of difficulties of its own, most of them economic and social in nature, include the Russian Silicon Valley at Skolkovo, a project aiming at the development of the Russian family and increase of natality, and now the expansion of the capital city, the bright and outstanding Moscow.
Keeping up with the ambitious plan to become the most important economic hub in these parts of the world, laid down by the government, the City Hall of Moscow announced that the city will be expanding by 16,000, mostly to the south of the city.
The new expansion will include Skolkovo, the Russian high tech HQ, and the Rublevo-Arkhangelskoe village, where the Russian international financial center will be.
This way, the city will grow 2.35 times the actual size, and will reach “monstrous sizes,” as one of the prestigious newspaper in Russia says.
Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin says that the plan will have to go through parliament, and all the formalities will require at least two years.

Moscow's New Boundaries

President of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev spoke of this idea for the first time in June in an address at the Economic Forum in Sankt Petersburg. He said that the idea came after 10 years of debate between Moscow city hall and Moscow district, after an agreement was reached on the matter.
The idea of what has come to be called “Greater Moscow” was inspired by the desire of Russian authorities to move the state institutions at the outskirts of the city.
The new project speaks of 10 million residential buildings being built during the next 10 years, which could show the scope of this ambitious endeavor, that will bring Moscow even more fame than it already has.
Moscow is one of the oldest cities in Europe, the first reference to its existence dating back to 1147, when it was the residence of prince Yuri Dolgorukyi.
It was burnt down by the Mongols, in 1237, during the great invasion of this fascinating nomad tribe that conquered almost the entire known world at the time.
It recovered in 1327, when it was rebuilt, and since then it became the city around which revolved the construction of the Grand Duchy of Moscovy, also known as Muscovy Duchy, which expanded in the centuries to come until it became the Russian empire and then the Russian Federation.
Moscow was Russia’s capital city until 1712, when the tsar Peter the Great wanted to built a new capital northwards and chose the swamps of the Neva River’s delta, on which he built Sankt Petersburg, the most magnificent city of the north, a capital fit for a new empire, with a different way of life.

National History Museum

Moscow was burnt down by the Russian themselves in 1812, when Napoleon Bonaparte had the very bad idea of invading Russia, an adventure that cost him 400,000 French lives, killed by the Russian winter, the depleted city and the attacks of the Russian army. The Russian adventure Napoleon had in Russia was no doubt influential of his grim destiny later on.
Russia acquired the status of capital of an world power in the days of the Soviet, when it became the capital city of the mighty military power of the Socialist bloc, and the iconic figure of this power.
As all the roads were leading to Rome for the ancient world, so all the roads were now leading to Moscow in the days of the Communist rule for more than a half of the population of the globe, the countries in the so called non-alignment movement, which were all depending on it, and still do, if one is to take into consideration the stance of the Russian Federation on the situation of the countries in the Arab world, most of them with ties with the Soviet regime, protected by its Iron Curtain cast upon Europe, and still friends of the Russian Federation leadership.

Church In Kremlin

In 1980, Moscow hosted the World Olympics, boycotted by the United States after the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan a year earlier. In 1991, a failed coup happened in Moscow against Mikhail Gorbachev, considered even today a traitor of the Soviet and the one who brought destruction to the Russian might.
The most famous building in Moscow is the Kremlin (“fortress”), the city of the tsars, of the Soviet “fathers of all nations,” and of the current gas and oil tycoons that make up the new leadership of Russia.
The Kremlin was built in 1156, at first as a wooden wall and then it was rebuilt by the Muscovy princes as a symbol of their might. Being the designation of a fort, the Kremlin in Moscow is not the only one, this kind of Kremlins being in many other Russian cities, the most important one after the one in Moscow being the one in the city of Kazan.

Saint Basil's Cathedral and Kremlin's Spasky Tower

Moscow is a city of many impressive buildings that illustrate its political might but also the religious standard of its inhabitants, some of the most pious Christians in the history of the Eastern Orthodox Christianity.
Moscow is considered by Russians in special as the major heir of Byzantium. Since Byzantium was the “second Rome,” proclaimed as such by Emperor Constantine in 330, when it was inaugurated, it is only natural that Moscow be proclaimed by its tsars as the “third Rome.”
It comes as no surprise then that some of the most fascinating cathedrals in all Christianity are in this city. Saint Basil’s Cathedral, the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, or the Church of Saints Michael and Gabriel in Kremlin are some of the most renowned such places.

Moscow State University

Moscow is also a place where literature has spawned and it was described by the very impressive Russian novelists and poets. It was the great Aleksander Pushkin, the Russian national poet to make Moscow one of the most beautiful declarations of love in Russian history: “Moscow, I dreamt of you again! Moscow… what depth of fascination/ Live in the name, what echoes start/And sound in every Russian heart” (Eugene Oneghin, chap. VII, 35). And the words sound much better in Russian.
The stillness of the Moscow nights has been caught by the poets and musicians in the famous Moscow nights, that made Russian music sound on every ear on the face of the planet.
Some of the most fascinating things that were built in Moscow during the Soviet regime were: the metro, a combination of science and pure art; the Ostankino Tower, built in 1967, the fourth-tallest such construction in the world, the Seven Sisters, seven skyscrapers built at approximately the same distance from Kremlin, are at the same time important institutions in the country: Moscow University, Hotel Ukraine, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Hilton Moscow Hotel, Kudrinskaya Square, and others two square buildings (one was never finished).

Moscow Metro

One of the most important construction in the modern Moscow is the Moscow Rings, also known in Russia as MKAD (Moskovskaya Koltsevaya Avtomobilnaya Doroga, Moscow Automobile Ring Road).
MKAD appeared as a necessity at the beginning of the 1950s, when traffic increased. The Rings had four lanes and run 108 km along the city border.
Until the 1980s, the MKAD was considered the outer border of the city. Then Moscow began expanding and in 2002 the first metro station was opened outside the rings.

Moscow's Pushkin

Between 1995-1997, the road acquired ten lanes and the status of freeway. The slow-moving vehicles were banned the circulation on NKAD in 2001. Bridges were built to accommodate pedestrians. There are three such ring roads: Garden Ring Road, Boulevard Ring, Third Ring Road.
Speaking of rings, northeast of the Russian capital there is the Golden Ring, a ring of cities that developed in the medieval age and had an enormous role in the history of political and religious Russia.
The designation of “open air museums” speaks for itself when it comes to describing these beautiful medieval cities.
As we can see from these rings, every Russian ring revolves around Moscow, which is no doubt the heart of the extended Russian Federation.
Moscow is considered the seventh-largest city in the world with a population of 10 million people, most of them Russian, but with many visitors every year. The city is also listed among the most expensive cities for tourists.
If the plan of the mayor hall of Moscow becomes reality than the city stands a chance of becoming the most important megalopolis in the world (excepting maybe Chinese cities, and assuming that the current megalopolises won’t have their own growth plans). Assuming that the expansion by 2.3 times will also include population, Moscow can look at at least 23 million people living in it, which would make it alone able to compare to the seven most populous country in the European Union, Romania, whose population at the time of admission to EU was of 23 million.
The plan to build a greater Moscow is bound to make all Russians proud, but it could be a terrible mistake, unless the Russian administration develops other cities as well.

Future Moscow Palace Building

First off, if Moscow grows this big, most of the resources of the country will be concentrated here, leaving the remote zones extremely vulnerable to severe poverty.
Then, there will be a discrimination related to the place of origin, since the city will become more and more important and consequently more and more expensive, which will make it exclusive for more and more Russians, who will feel like they don’t belong into this 23d century capital of the country, especially as they come from distant zones. In Pushkin’s words, there is a risk that the city may not resound in all Russian hearts as it used to.
There is of course the problem of pollution, which will have to be dealt with as the expansion goes along, otherwise it will never be dealt with again.
But the most important mistake the Russian authorities can make is create a hub where all important parts of the country’s economy and security are in one place.
There is a financial adagio that says “Never put all the fruits in one basket.” Russian leadership is about to do just that. By massing the high tech center, the financial center and the political decision-making center in one city, no matter how large it is, they render the entire Russian Federation helpless in case of an attack on Moscow.
It doesn’t even have to be a nuclear bomb. Let’s say for instance that the Russian forests begin burning again, like they did last year, and a cloud of unbreathable smock engulfs the city of “greater Moscow.” That very moment activity stops in Russia at any level, and the heart of the country stops, at least temporarily, with devastating consequences for economy and security.
Not to mention that the terrorists will be twice as motivated to attack Moscow, knowing that by doing so, they will stop all activity in the country and will damage the Federation irreparably.
The United States has vital institutions spread all over the nation: the economic hub is in New York City, the political one is in Washington, DC, the security agencies, including the military, are in Virginia, the Silicon Valley in California, and so on. If one point is attacked, like it was on 9/11, the others can survive and fight back. If greater Moscow has to deal with something the size of 9/11, it could be shut down completely.
So, if the Russian leaders went as far as to turn their capital into a world capital, they must take the project to the next step, that is of elevating other large cities to a comparable level, so that the country may develop in harmony and security.
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