The city of Moscow gradually grew around the Moscow Kremlin, beginning in the 14th century. It was the capital of the Grand Duchy of Moscow (or Muscovy), from 1340 to 1547 and in 1713 renamed as the Tsardom of Russia by Peter I "the Great" (when the capital was moved to Saint Petersburg). Moscow was the capital of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic from 1918, which then became the Soviet Union (1922 to 1991), and since 1991 has served as capital of the Russian Federation.

Situated on either bank of the eponymous Moskva River, the city during the 16th to 17th centuries grew up in five concentric divisions, formerly separated from one another by walls: the Kremlin ("fortress"), Kitaigorod ("walled town", but interpreted as "Chinatown" by folk etymology), Bielygorod ("white town"), Zemlianoigorod ("earthworks town"), and Miestchanskygorod ("bourgeois town") outside the city walls.

After the fire of 1812, the city ramparts were replaced with the Boulevard Ring and Garden Ring roads, replacing the walls around Bielygorod and Zemlianoigorod, respectively. The city's population grew from 250,000 to over a million in the 19th century, and from one to ten million in the 20th century, putting it among the top twenty of the world's most populous cities today.

The oldest evidence of humans on the territory of Moscow dates from the Neolithic (Schukinskaya site on the Moscow River). Within the modern bounds of the city other late evidence was discovered (the burial ground of the Fatyanovskaya culture, the site of the Iron Age settlement of the Dyakovo culture), on the territory of the Kremlin, Sparrow Hills, Setun River and Kuntsevskiy forest park, etc.

The name of the city is thought to be derived from the name of the Moskva River. There have been proposed several theories of the origin of the name of the river. Finnic Merya and Muroma people, who were among the several pre-Slavic tribes which originally inhabited the area, called the river supposedly Mustajoki, in English: Black river. It has been suggested that the name of the city derives from this term.

In the 9th century, the Oka River was part of the Volga trade route, and the upper Volga watershed became an area of contact between the indigenous Uralic peoples such as the Merya and the expanding Turkic (Volga Bulgars), Germanic (Varangians) and Slavic peoples.

The earliest East Slavic tribes recorded as having expanded to the upper Volga in the 9th to 10th centuries are the Vyatichi and Krivichi. The Moskva River was incorporated as part of Rostov-Suzdal into the Kievan Rus in the 11th century. By CE 1100, a minor settlement had appeared on the mouth of the Neglinnaya River.

When the USSR was dissolved in the same year, Moscow became the capital of the Russian Federation. Since then a market economy has emerged in Moscow, producing an explosion of Western-style retailing, services, architecture, and lifestyles.

Even with Russia's population shrinking by 6 million after the fall of the USSR, Moscow has continued to grow during the 1990s to 2000s, its population rising from below nine to above ten million. Mason and Nigmatullina argue that Soviet-era urban-growth controls (before 1991) produced controlled and sustainable metropolitan development, typified by the greenbelt built in 1935. Since then however, there has been a dramatic growth of low-density suburban sprawl, created by a heavy demand for single-family dwellings as opposed to crowded apartments. In 1995–1997 the MKAD ring road was widened from the initial four to ten lanes. In December 2002 Bulvar Dmitriya Donskogo became the first Moscow Metro station that opened beyond the limits of MKAD. The Third Ring Road, intermediate between the early 19th-century Garden Ring and the Soviet era outer ring road, was completed in 2004. The greenbelt is becoming more and more fragmented, and satellite cities are appearing at the fringe. Summer dachas are being converted into year-round residences, and with the proliferation of automobiles there is heavy traffic congestion.


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