Moscow in the Soviet period

In March 1918 Lenin and the Soviet government moved to Moscow, which thereby resumed its former status as capital. This status was formally ratified on Dec. 30, 1922, when the first All-Union Congress of Soviets met in the Bolshoi Theatre and passed the legislation setting up the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. In the civil war period Moscow, like other Soviet cities, suffered greatly, with grave food shortages, loss of population (falling to 1,027,300 in 1920), and reduction of industry. In the years following the final establishment of Soviet power and peace, recovery was swift, and the beginning of the series of five-year plans in 1928 brought great industrial progress. The city's existing plant and labour force formed one of the main springboards for industrialization elsewhere in the U.S.S.R. Between the censuses of 1926 and 1939, Moscow once more doubled its population, from 2,029,425 to 4,182,916 (within the 1959 boundaries). Priority in investment went to industry, and housing construction was very limited; as a consequence, exceptional overcrowding of existing housing developed, with extremely high population densities.

During World War II, the Germans in late 1941 reached the outskirts of Moscow, less than 25 miles from the Kremlin. Many factories were evacuated, together with much of the government. From October 20 the city was declared to be in a state of siege. Its remaining inhabitants built and manned antitank defenses, while the city was bombarded from the air. A desperate counterattack on December 6 threw the German forces back from the outskirts and saved Moscow. Recovery was quick after the war, with further growth of the city's economy. Two major events have marked the city's progress: in 1947, two years after the war's end, Moscow celebrated its 800th anniversary, and in 1980 it hosted the Summer Olympic Games.

In the postwar period, immigration to Moscow caused a housing shortage that reached grave proportions in the 1950s; the population density within the Garden Ring surpassed 132,000 persons per square mile (51,000 per square kilometre) by 1959. Under Khrushchev a major construction program was initiated. Much of the old housing, often single storied and made of wood, was cleared, and extensive new tracts of large apartment buildings sprang up around the historic core of the city. Considerable urban renewal took place in the central areas, and high-rise buildings now dominate the skyline.

In 1935 a far-reaching development plan for Moscow was formulated; but the plan devised in 1960, in which adjacent satellite towns were incorporated into the city, was even more ambitious than the earlier plan. Under this plan urban growth was to be contained within the Moscow Ring Road, and residential and industrial zones and greenbelts were carefully designated. Implementation of this plan was instrumental in alleviating housing shortages, reducing traffic congestion, and improving air quality in the city centre. By the late 1970s, however, urban growth had outstripped original predictions, and in the 1980s planned urban expansion was initiated beyond the Ring Road.

In August 1991 Moscow was the scene of a coup attempt by hard-line Communists against a reform-minded president, Mikhail Gorbachev. The coup failed but was followed within months by the dissolution of the U.S.S.R.