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PTPI Moscow, Russia PTPI's Moscow Chapter started its activity at the beginning of 2005. It is based in Moscow, Russia's capital city and its political, economic, commercial and cultural center.
Moscow - past and presentAs often as Moscow has been threatened, besieged and destroyed, its inhabitants have rebuilt their city. Moscow of the 21th century, which lies on the Moskva River, finally blossomed into Russia's undisputed centre and into one of the largest cities in the world. The first settlers inhabited the area around the Kremlin in the 11th century. Yuri Dolgoruki, the Prince of Susdal, is said to have founded Moscow in 1147. Ninety years later, the Tartar hordes burnt the wooden fortress on the Moskva to the ground for the first time. The inhabitants rebuilt the city but were forced to pay tolls to the Tartars, until the Great Duke Ivan III came to power and drove out the invaders from the east. Ivan III succeeded in uniting the Russian principalities in the mid-15th century, making the Muscovite Empire into the strongest power in Eastern Europe. In the mid-16th century, the city blossomed under the rule of Ivan IV (Ivan the Terrible). This period also saw the construction of the famous St. Basil’s Cathedral on the Red Square, still the city’s most famous landmark. The population grew to about 100,000 inhabitants. Difficult times followed. In 1571, the Crimean Tartars burnt the city to the ground again on one of their plundering raids. Inheritance disputes, famines and occupation by Polish troops followed, until in 1612 the Russian army reconquered Moscow and Mikhail Romanov was crowned tsar. When Tsar Peter the Great moved the Russian capital to the newly founded St. Petersburg in 1712, Moscow’s importance declined. But it remained significant enough to be the main goal of Napoleon’s Russian campaign in 1812. On the night the French entered the city a great fire destroyed much of it. The winter was bitter cold and when the occupiers withdrew, the city was rebuilt in lightning speed. The population grew from 340,000 in the 1840s to 4,000,000 in 1914. After the Revolution, the Bolsheviks moved the capital back to Moscow, which became the centre point of an empire and gained some fittingly grandiose architecture. Stalin’s “Seven Sisters”, the skyscrapers designed to the dictator’s taste, are merely the pinnacle of a communist craze for huge and spectacular edifices during that time. In the Second World War, Hitler’s troops advanced to the outskirts of the Soviet capital but were beaten back. The city grew rapidly from the 1950s onward, with a huge grey belt of residential buildings developing around the centre. Inevitably, Moscow was the epicenter of the political change that took place in the Soviet Union in the 1980s and led eventually to the new Russia. Since the end of Soviet rule, Moscow has changed more than any other part of the country and is probably enjoying the most splendid period in its history. Moscow is Russia’s economic and political centre and with its 11 million inhabitants the biggest city of mainland Europe. While the losers of the reforms are easily spotted elsewhere in the country, in Moscow everyone seems to be a winner - or at least a wannabe winner. Moscow is Russia's New York, a city that never sleeps, where everything is possible. It is the melting pot of a collapsed empire, both European and Asiatic. Skyscrapers shoot up like mushrooms, the city centre is being mercilessly renovated and new temples to consumerism open their portals daily. Yet there is another Moscow, away from the Garden Ring and Kremlin. Cozy cafés, narrow alleys, hidden artists’ studios and idyllic parks are as much a part of the city’s fabric as the huge Stalinist wedding cake buildings, expensive fashion stores and McDonald’s restaurants. Moscow is a monster, but a charming one.
Famous Sights in Moscow
Chapter Prsident: Diana Belan Admirala Lazareva, App. 23 bldg.19/1 117042 Moscow Russia Phone: + 7 499 743 5903 +7 495 334 0502 Email address: dianeb@mail.ru
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