Moscow

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

Moscow is one of the world's most populous cities and the only city in the world with a dedicated missile defence system (permitted under the 1972 ABM Treaty). The area is also a no-fly zone, bar parades.

The most famous part of Moscow is Red Square. The name actually predates the October Revolution, the Russian word "krasnaya" ("red") previously meaning beautiful. It's smaller than it was, with some of the churches that were bulldozed by the Communists now rebuilt. It is a pedestrian area all year round, bar parades.

The other most notable features are St. Basil's Cathedral and the Moscow Kremlin (Kremlin meant "citadel" in Russian and can be applied to other such places, but this meaning is almost forgotten) -- the two are often conflated in the minds of Westerners because of their proximity to one another. The latter, the seat of the Russian government, is highly recognisable (not so much as St. Basil and its onion domes, though) and has formed an Establishing Shot for many movies.

The Moscow Metro is also world famous.

Other places of interest:
 * Moscow State University, located on the Sparrow (formerly Lenin) Hills. The main building is one of five 'Stalinskie visotki's, five skyskrappers built in Stalin times. The other four are roughtly similiar in design, but their placement made them much less attracrive for photographers. MSU lies on Sparrow Hills, wich gives great view. It also features excelent observing point to get panoram of Moscow.
 * The Lubyanka Building, former HQ of the Soviet secret police (now the Federal Security Bureau HQ) on Lubyanka Square. This square was known as Dzerzhinsky Square from 1926 to 1990, after the founder of the Cheka, Felix Dzerzhinsky.
 * The GUM department store.
 * The VVTs exhibition center (now less an exhibition center and more a big mall). Also the Awesome but Impractical monorail line that goes near it.
 * The Gorky Park. A large luna park with a lot of attractions, along the quay of Moskva River.
 * The Rublevo-Uspenskoe Road (aka "Rublevka"). It's a suburb of posh mansions owned by Corrupt Corporate Executives, Obstructive Bureaucrats and other bigwigs of the city.
 * Moscow-city -- a new district of skyscrapers to be used as office buildings, partially under construction.
 * Ostankinskaya (this means "in distinct Ostankino") television tower -- one of the tallest buidings in the world and definitely the tallest one from USSR times.
 * Shukhovskaya (this means "engineered by Shukhov") television tower -- known for its unique design. It still looks futuristic despite being constructed in 1922.
 * The Zoo.
 * Museums and theatres. A lot of them. Really. Some of museums, though, belongs to organisations, that do not care about public access, and so are hard to visit.
 * Old Arbat Street. A traditional place for street artists and souvenir shops.
 * New Arbat Street. A notorious example of constructivism style, traffic artery and shop street.
 * The Moscow River, specifically "river trams".
 * Snej.com - an all-seasons mountain skies center. Located in near suburbs of Moscow.
 * The "New Moscow" - a lot of suburban area recently included into the city's limits, still mostly forest and villages. It made the city large enough to border two federal subjects (Moscow Oblast and Kaluga Oblast).
 * 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.

Moscow also doesn't have enough roads and rapid transportation, so existing systems are overused to the breaking point. Flats are also extremely expensive, so things are even worse, such many employers come from near and not so near suburbs. Avoid metro at rush hours at all costs, you may be flattened. If you don't know what you are doing, avoid the use of buses, trams and other road transport at rush hours as well (ironically, it is most part of working days) In addition to the risk of flattening you may lose several hours in a traffic jam. Railroads, metro and your legs (so-called 'number eleven') are your best friends here...

Moscow is sometimes referred as Default City in Russian segment of Internet (Yes, in English, but usually transliterated in Cyrillic). If Russian internet users don't see any specific city named, they think Moscow. "Well, this is the only real city in Russia!" they say. And there is some truth in this, as Moscow is the largest one. Another, pre-Internet nickname for Moscow is "the Big Village".

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.

Moscow in fiction

Moscow must be one of the most doubled cities in the world. It is usually depicted as cold, grey and oppressive.
 * Well, for 7 months of the year it IS cold, grey and oppressive.
 * And for 5 of them it is hot, grey and oppressive.
 * When it's not raining, of course.
 * With the winter that ended just now (April 2010) having record-breaking levels of snow.
 * And following summer (especially July-August 2010) is all-time-record-breaking hot. Ever wonder what Дождь is?
 * Aww, cut the crap, the climate is not as bad as it seems. I mean, there's people from Polar Siberia, hello?
 * Post-Soviet Moscow is generally a typical City Noir.
 * Even Russian movies sometimes have to double Moscow when the setting is "Old Moscow", which could mean either Soviet Moscow before World War II, Imperial Moscow before the Revolution, or wooden Moscow before the Empire. St. Petersburg is most commonly used for the first two, while the third is usually doubled by one of the Golden Ring cities.

Examples actually filmed in Moscow:
 * The Russia House
 * The season seven opener of Spooks
 * Well, many Soviet and Russian films, you know.