Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Imperial Moscow
The Spurned Capital
Peter I, known as 'Peter the Great' for his commanding frame (reaching over 2m) and
equally commanding victory over the Swedes, dragged Russia kicking and screaming into
modern Europe. Peter spent much of his youth in royal residences in the Moscow coun-
tryside, organising his playmates in war games. Energetic and inquisitive, he was eager to
learn about the outside world. As a boy, he spent hours in Moscow's European district; as a
young man, he spent months travelling in the West. In fact, he was Russia's first ruler to
venture abroad. Peter briefly shared the throne with his half-brother, before taking sole pos-
session of it in 1696.
Peter wilfully imposed modernisation on Moscow. He ordered the boyars to shave their
beards, imported European advisers and craftspeople, and rationalised state administration.
He built Moscow's tallest structure, the 90m-high Sukharev Tower, and next to it founded
the College of Mathematics and Navigation.
Yet Peter always despised Moscow for its scheming boyars and archaic traditions. In
1712 he startled the country by announcing the relocation of the capital to a swampland, re-
cently acquired from Sweden in the Great Northern War. St Petersburg would be Russia's
'Window on the West' and everything that Moscow was not - modern, scientific and cul-
tured. Alexander Pushkin later wrote that 'Peter I had no love for Moscow, where, with
every step he took, he ran into remembrances of mutinies and executions, inveterate an-
tiquity and the obstinate resistance of superstition and prejudice'.
The spurned former capital quickly fell into decline. With the aristocratic elite and admin-
istrative staff departing for marshier digs, the population fell by more than a quarter in the
first 25 years. The city suffered further from severe fires, a situation exacerbated by Peter's
mandate to direct all construction materials to St Petersburg.
In the 1770s, Moscow was devastated by an outbreak of bubonic plague, which claimed
more than 50,000 lives. It was decreed that the dead had to be buried outside the city limits.
Vast cemeteries, including Danilovskoye and Vagankovskoye, were the result. The situation
was so desperate that residents went on a riotous looting spree that was violently put down
by the army. Empress Catherine II (the Great) responded to the crisis by ordering a new san-
itary code to clean up the urban environment and silencing the Kremlin alarm bell that had
set off the riots.
By the turn of the 19th century, Moscow had recovered from its gloom; Peter's exit had
not caused a complete rupture. The city retained the title of 'First-Throned Capital' because
