Services Commerce and finance

As the capital and largest city of Russia, Moscow not surprisingly is the country's chief commercial and financial centre. The privatization of the Russian economy spurred the development of a substantial financial sector, including several banks and securities exchanges. Most foreign investment in the Russian economy passes through Moscow's financial institutions. As the hub of Russia's transportation network, Moscow also enjoys unchallenged supremacy as the country's centre for domestic and foreign commerce.

Moscow is Russia's leading educational and research centre, and its educational institutions furnish skilled workers for its important engineering and aerospace sectors. It is also the centre of Russia's publishing industry.

The city's retailing facilities are heavily used, not only by the inhabitants of Moscow itself and its satellite towns but also by people throughout the nation. Its shops offer a wide range of goods and are always crowded with customers. Many of the stores are fairly large, particularly the department stores (univermagy). The most important of the department stores are Children's World (Detsky Mir); the Central Department Store (TsUM); the Moscow (Moskovsky) Department Store, close to three main railway stations; and, best known and most heavily patronized, GUM, the direct descendant of the medieval trading rows. An important part of Moscow's retail trade is carried on at farmers' markets, where farmers and small-scale traders sell fruit, vegetables, meat, liquor, and other goods.

Tourism

As a world-renowned capital, Moscow is a principal focus for foreign visitors. Free-market reforms have encouraged the construction of new, modern hotels and the modernization of existing hotels in the city. The government also opened new tourist offices and refurbished many cultural attractions.

Moscow has thousands of eating places, many of them inexpensive cafeterias serving the city's workers. The city's more exclusive dining venues include Chinese, Indian, American, Italian, and other ethnic restaurants that opened during the 1990s.

Transportation Rail

Russia is heavily dependent for freight transport on its railways. The hub of this network is the capital. Trunk lines radiate out from the city in all directions. The first in operation was the St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad) line, opened in 1851. Others include the Savyolovo line, running north to the Volga and on as a secondary route to St. Petersburg; the Yaroslav line, which is connected by way of the Trans-Siberian route to Vladivostok; the Nizhny Novgorod line, linked to Kirov; the Kazan line, the most direct route to the Urals and Siberia; the Ryazan line, leading to Central Asia and the Caucasus; the Pavelets line, a secondary route to the European south and the Caucasus; the Kursk line, the main route south to the Crimea; the Kiev line to the southwest; the Smolensk line to Minsk, Warsaw, and Berlin; and the Riga line to the Baltic. The most heavily used of these lines are now electrified—notably those to St. Petersburg, Kiev, the Donbass, and the Trans-Siberian—as are all suburban-zone lines, which carry the heavy commuter traffic. To link the radial lines the Moscow Little Ring Railway was built in 1908 within the city; this has been supplemented by the Greater Moscow Ring Railway at a distance of some 25 to 40 miles from the city.