ABSTRACT
MOSCOW is the foremost industrial, political and cultural centre of the Soviet Union. It is also the historic capital of Russia. Ever since II47, when the name of Moscow first appears in the Russian chronicles, the natural advantages derived by the city from its central situation enabled it to playa leading part in the building up of a centralized state in Russia, and on three famous occasions to act as the centre of national resistance to the foreign invader: in the fourteenth century when the Moscow prince Dmitri Donskoi defeated the Tartar hordes at Kulikovo; in 1612 when the Polish-Lithuanian army reduced the greater part of the city to ashes before being driven out; and in 18I2 when the city was again largely destroyed in resisting the Napoleonic invasion. Even after Peter the Great had made St. Petersburg his capital in 1713, Moscow remained the principal commercial and cultural centre of Russia, and an important textile industry grew up from an early date. The historical traditions of the city are preserved in the beautiful churches, palaces and fiftcenthcentury walls of the Kremlin; in the severely classical buildings of the eighteenth century; and in the 'Empire' style mansions erected after the Napoleonic wars. I Thus the transfer of the capital back to Moscow immediately after the 1917 revolution restored the city to the position it had always occupied in the eyes of the Russian people.
