AUSTERLITZ
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''Moscow... how many strains are fusing in that one sound, for Russian hearts! what store of riches it imparts!'' -Alexander Pushkin
Moscow,Russia's great capital - 'The Third Rome' or 'The First throne' , both past and present is history by itself.The rus people may have begun in Kiev,but Russia began in Moscow.From here the mongol yoke was overthrown,Russia united and began a gigantic expansion across eurasia.It is one of Russia's great cultural and religious centres.It is also the graveyard of conquerors.Here 2 would be world conquerors ,drawn by the lure of the legendary city met failure and ultimately total defeat.For much of the 20th century ,particularly during the cold war it was the boogeyman's city -the ultimate symbol and source of soviet power and authority.Today it is Russia's capital and still politically , economically , culturally enormously relevant.
(Cathedral of the Assumption)
Moscow began as a tiny trading outpost on the moskva river during the 12th century Kievan rus period.While under the mongol yoke,it began its first expansion under Duke Daniel,son of Alexander Nevsky the great medieval russian hero.By 1300 it had outstripped its parent principality of Vladimir and became its capital.Moscow soon attained the status of sole tax collector for the mongol khan in the region,seen by them as a useful counterbalance to Lithuania.Moscow leading the russian principalities made its first attempt at independence with the great victory at Kulikovo in 1380 under Dmitri Donskoy,but it was short lived as the mongols returned 2 years later and burned the city forcing the Grand duchy back into vassalage.Over the next century Moscow first recovered and then grew rapidly even as the mongols were weakening.Finally in 1480 in the great stand at Ugra river ,Ivan III 'the great' defeated the mongols and the Grand duchy of Muscovy emerged independent.Through conquest,marriage and bribery he was able to absorb or curtail all the smaller rus duchys.From this time the idea of Moscow as the Third Rome,the last great bastion of orthodox christianity and defender of the faith began to take shape.
(Eagle of Byzantium and Russia)
''Two Romes have fallen.The third stands.There shall not be a fourth.None shall replace your christian tsardom'' -Monk Philotheus
He married the the last Byzantine princess and with this declared Moscow to be the Third Rome and the heir to Byzantium.He also adopted the double headed eagle of byzantium as his royal embelm.Hereafter Moscow was the seat of the Russian Patriarch and the head of the russian orthodox church,and still is today.To celebrate and announce his new elevated status Ivan built the Church of the Assumption hiring a master renaissance italian architect.Today it is the mother church of Russia.Kremlin walls were also renovated by him.
(St.Basil's Cathedral)
His grandson,Ivan IV the 'terrible' transformed the Grand Duchy of Muscovy into the Russian Empire and became the first Tsar of Russia.His visionary but paranoid and often brutal reign was marked by great successes as well as calamities.Ivan was determined to remove the Tatar threat and campaigned in force against the Kazan khanate.The defeat of Kazan and the capture of its capital ,opened up the whole Volga route to russian expansion as the russian army could now be easily transported and supplied on the river route and soon after the Bashkir Khanate along with modern day Volgagrad(stalingrad) and then Astrakhan fell which also greatly reduced the slavic slave trade.Ivan built the iconic St.Basil's Cathedral in the Kremlin in Moscow to commemorate his victory.The defeat of the kahnates opened up the Urals and then siberia to russian expansion and colonization in the future.
This was also a time of calamity for Moscow .In 1547 a great fire killed over 50,000 citizens.Throughout the 1560s there was sporadic epidemic of plague.In 1571 came the worst. As Ivan and his veteran army were busy fighting the lithuanians and livonian order in the west,a new enemy - the crimean tatars supported by the ottomans launched a giant raid that burned the largely undefended city -killing 50,000 and enslaved perhaps another 100,000.Only 1/4th of the population escaped.However the next year, another tatar army reinforced with janissaries intending to consolidate its conquest was decisively crushed by Ivan at Molodi,which ended any further attempts at northward turkish expansion though raids continued.A last great attack in 1591 was repulsed by the newly built rings of walls around Moscow.
(Pozharsky and Minin)
The beginning of the 17th century was disastrous yet again,with a great famine in 1601-1602 killing half the city's population.Russia was facing its Time of Troubles with civil war after the death of the last tsar of the Rurik dynasty.The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth took advantage to occupy large chunks of territory including Moscow between 1610-12 before they were expelled in a popular uprising led by Prince Pozharsky and the Guild leader Minin who became thereafter celebrated as saviours of Russia.With the Romanov dynasty in power in 1613 Russian power now began to consolidate itself and they expanded West at the expense of a commonwealth surrounded by other enemies and facing its own internal problems during the 1650s as well as moving into siberia.Despite several deadly plagues,the population of moscow during the 17th century was roughly 200,000.But culturally and technologically Russia remained a backward backwater compared to Europe.
(Napoleon begins his retreat from Moscow)
This would change with Peter the great whose sweeping westernization reforms created a modern powerful russian state and touched every aspect of its society.But his obsession with a an warm water port for Russia led him to found his new capital at St.Petersburg which became the seat of the empire.For much of the Romanov period Moscow was thus relegated to a second city as great infrastructure projects were concentrated on St.Petersburg , where the royal court resided and the nobility lived.Moscow came to the forefront during Napoleon's massive invasion of Russia in 1812.The Russians followed a scorched earth policy ,retreating into the hinterland and Napoleon was unable to pin them down for a decisive victory.The Battle of Borodino only resulted in a pyrrhic french victory and Napoleon entered Moscow only to find it empty and in flames(citizens evacuated).Realising Russia wouldn't surrender and with the onset of winter he was forced into his infamous retreat where his hitherto invincible grand armee was largely destroyed by the brutal russian winter and harassing attacks by the shadowing russian army and cossack cavalry.It would be the beginning of his end.Napoleon's defeat before Moscow thus changed the face of Europe and subsequently the world.
(Moscow metro)
Moscow returned to prominence in 1918 after the Bolshevik revolution,when Lenin shifted the capital back to the city due to its much stronger defensible strategic position compared to the exposed Petrograd/ St.Petersburg(soon Leningrad). Hereafter until the end of the USSR in 1991 the word Moscow would be synonymous with the soviet state and its communist regime.Due to its highly centralized nature ,Moscow became the epicentre of Soviet Russia being the one indispensable city -the hub of its entire transport network,home to large industries and latest facilities and to its elite.With industrialization,end of serfdom and urbanization,population exploded.The soviets modernized the city with considerable infrastructure in sanitation and high rise apartments.This era also saw the construction of the USSR's first underground railway service.The Moscow Metro is today the busiest in Europe,one of the largest and uniquely beautiful.
(Show of Defiance - Moscow 1941 parade , troops went straight into battle from the parade)
The city's darkest hour and greatest moment of triumph came in 1941,with Operation Barbarossa -Nazi Germany and her allies attacked the USSR with the largest invasion force in human history with 3 and a half million men, thousands of tanks and aircraft.The German blitzkrieg rapidly overran the soviet frontier armies with a colossal 5-6 million casualities in the first 6 months of the war.During a certain phase of the campaign the wehrmacht had annihilated its opposing armies on the central front on the road to moscow,which appeared open.Here,Hitler took a oft debated decision to turn his victorious forces in the centre to help his right and left,which were getting bogged down.This won him huge victories at Kiev,but the moment had passed and by the time the germans returned to the offensive in the central sector they found themselves bogged down by the mud of the rainy season and then redeployed soviet defensive forces.Whether taking Moscow would have won Hitler the war at that juncture remains highly questionable as his wings would have been bogged down and centre overextended that way,prone to being cut off and Russia had no intention to surrender.The other side argues Moscow's importance as the hub of all transportation and its psychological shock would have collapsed soviet resistance.By November 1941 finally Hitler amassed all his forces -more than half the entire strength of the Eastern front for a great assault on the city in Operation Taifun.In perhaps the most decisive battle of world war 2 and indeed of history ,the outnumbered(the only time they were so) Soviet Red army under Marshal Zhukov was able to withstand the german pincer attack and then with fresh reserves built up in the rear and reinforcements from siberia began the famous counterattack. This surprise assault (Hitler thought Russia was finished) coincided with the onset of the russian winter devastated the wehrmacht and dealt it its first great defeat.With it ended Hitler's dream of conquest of the Russian Capital,and began the process that would end in Berlin four years later.Moscow throughout the war remained the HQ of Soviet High Command and the captured Nazi standards today can still be seen in the museum in the kremlin.
Location -
Moscow's location has been historically a great boon.It is located in a central position in European Russia and is indeed the focal point of the entire russian transportation network.Early on its position was also advantageous for controlling the riverine trade of the region.All roads(and rail) lead to Moscow.Its great strength is in defensive depth,rather than natural obstacles.Its located deep into the Russian heartland,not accessible by sea like St.Petersburg or Sevastopol/Ukraine.To cover the great distances needed to reach the capital is in itself a huge logistical feat,made more insurmountable by limited transport infrastructure,and restricted campaigning seasons due to mud and winter.The vast spaces require huge amounts of men of an invasion force to cover adequately,and the more men there are, the greater the stress on logistics.It is partly to add depth and security to its vital central core that russian doctrine from the time of Ivan IV continually stressed extended buffer zones to the West,and a backup resource base beyond the Urals.
Today Moscow is the 2nd largest city in Europe,the coldest megacity on the planet with 17 million inhabitants. It is a commercial and cultural hub,the seat of the russian orthodox patriarch and a popular tourist destination.Russia's continuing importance in global political affairs means it retains part of its forboding aura,particularly in the west.
The kremlin is home to the Russian houses of parliament ,while the city itself hosts several technical and scientific institutes.It is also the best protected city on the planet with 128 nuclear tipped interceptors(detonate incoming nukes by firing a small tactical nuke instead of physical interception,thus requiring more than 128 warheads to target moscow to overwhelm defenses)The great writers of russian history -Pushkin and Dostoevsky were born here.With the Orthodox church rapidly increasing in popularity in the post- soviet era,Russia is returning to tradition and Moscow - the Third Rome stands at the centre of it.
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