MOSCOW, September 5 (Itar-Tass) — Moscow City Day celebrations passed without incidents, the events were attended by 2.5 million people, the press service of the Russian Interior Ministry’s main department for Moscow told Itar-Tass on Monday.
“Over two days, 2.5 million Muscovites and guests of the capital took part in festive events that were held in various parts of the city. There were no incidents and violations,” an interior source said.
During the events in Moscow 16,000 police officers and Interior Troops ensured law and order in the RF capital.
“A laser show on the Vorobyovy Gory (Sparrow Hills) attracted the largest audience. More than 800,000 people attended it,” the Moscow main police department noted.
City Day that is believed to coincide more or less with Moscow’s ‘birthday’.
Traditionally, the beginnings of Moscow’s history are traced to the year 1147, under which it was mentioned for the first time in a monastery chronicle. The chronicler said that ‘Moskov’, a small town in the northeast Russian principality of Vladimir and Suzdal, had become the venue of a meeting between the Duke of Kiev, Yuri the Long Arms, and his friend and ally, Prince Svyatoslav Olgovich from Novgorod-Seversky.
Scholars believe, however, that the actual history of the city is at least three or four centuries longer.
Moscow displays an instance of an urban centre that kept growing territorially and economically throughout centuries in spite of numerous incursions by foreign troops, fires, destruction and devastation. Suffice it to recall that foreign invaders burned it down to ashes six times and the list of historical ‘celebrity personages’ whose troops would come close to it or seize it in different epochs includes Tamerlane, Batu Khan, Polish King Zigmunt III, and Napoleon.
In the fall of 1941, Nazi troops approached the city suburbs to stop at a distance where the Wehrmacht generals could see the towers of the Kremlin in their field binoculars.
Still, each major invasion or calamity would eventually bring about an expansion of the city, incorporation of nearby towns into it, construction of new residential areas, and powerful economic growth.
Today Moscow occupies a territory of 1,081 square kilometres. It has 10 major administrative districts and 125 local districts. This city makes up a separate constituent entity of the Russian Federation, and sociology experts say its population is likely to get over the 11 million mark soon.