ancient cities

(with a projected service life of 25 to 30 years),
brought long-awaited relief to bunkhouse dwellers
throughout the Soviet Union. In Moscow they constituted
the bulk of residential units built in between
1960 and 1985. A typical two-room single-family
flat had 45 square meters. For many people, this
was a significant improvement in living conditions.
Other important developments include the MKAD.
Constructed in 1961, the outer circular highway has
formally designated the administrative boundary of
Moscow.
A new 20-year master plan was adopted in 1971
under Secretary Leonid Brezhnev to incorporate a
target population of 8 million (with about 7 million
in 1970) and with a goal of improving living conditions,
particularly living space per capita, removing
dirty industry, and implementing stricter zoning
policies. In 1980, Moscow hosted the Summer
Olympics, and the Moscow Soviet executed a redevelopment
program. Events of the late 1980s made
the master plan for the most part impracticable,
and Olympic construction essentially remained the
last Moscow reconstruction before 1991.
Soviet Moscow endured the radical sweeping
away of the old social and cultural fabric of the
city and an immense population increase. State-led
development and forced imposition of artificially
created symbolic landscape were coupled with
destruction of old local communities, including the
erasure of whole districts of the old city. Formation
of new localities was strongly discouraged in favor
of allegiance to the Communist Party. Nevertheless,
the core of old Moscow as well as the radial pattern
of development survived and, in 1991, entered
the new epoch.
Moscow After Socialism
Moscow was the locus of many events surrounding
the fall of the Soviet Union and the beginning of
post-Soviet Russia. The current system of Moscow
governance came into being in 1993. The legislative
branch is the elected Moscow Duma (parliament).
The Moscow government is the executive
branch. Since 2004, the mayor of Moscow is no
longer elected but nominated by the president of
the Russian Federation for appointment by the
Moscow Duma. Following the short tenure
(1991–1992) of Gavriil Kh. Popov, Yuri M. Luzhkov
was appointed the city mayor in 1992 and still held
the post in 2009. The present city consists of ten
Moscow, Russian Federation
519
wards (Administrativnye Okruga, AO). Each is
divided into several districts (Rayons). In 1991,
Zelenograd, a city of 200,000 people established in
between 1958 and 1962 as a center of microelectronic
research and industry, was incorporated into
Moscow as the 10th Okrug, becoming an exclave.
In the 1990s, the profile of Moscow has drastically
shifted. Widespread industrial decline coincided
with booming growth of the service economy,
particularly financial and business services linked
to Russia’s natural resource exports. A showcase
development is the Moscow City, a cluster of stateof-the-art
skyscrapers in the center of Moscow
near the White House. It is planned to become one
of the largest business centers in the world. While
employment and wages in science and high technology
industry plummeted in the 1990s, higher
education swelled, with hundreds of establishments
providing education in newly popular professions
such as economics, law, and finance.
Acute polarization in lifestyle and income between
Moscow and the rest of Russia and abolishment of
official residence restrictions (replaced by a semilegal
registration system) led to further population
increases. Official statistics indicate that, between
1990 and 2006, the population grew from slightly
less than 9 million to 10.5 million people. Moscow
traditionally was home to significant populations
of ethnic Belarusians, Ukrainians, and Jews as well
as Armenians, Georgians, and many other ethnic
groups. The recent inflow of guest workers of non-
Slavic origin (including migrants from ethnic
regions of Russia and from ex-Soviet countries of
Central Asia) has increased ethnic diversity and led
to growing tension and recent outbreaks of hate
crimes and ethnic violence. It is likely that ethnic
enclaves will eventually form on the fringes of the
city. However, no reliable data are available on the
real size of newly immigrant population and its
ethnic constitution. According to some estimates,
the metropolis may actually house more than 14
million people.
A number of terrorist acts occurred between
1999 and 2004 (notably the Chechen separatist
fighters taking hostages in a theater in 2000). These
added to the usual list of security threats such as
crime, ethnic violence, and civil unrest. Security
measures were tightened in response, to the extent
that in the late 2000s, special police forces were
routinely deployed for patrolling important public
places, subway, and transportation hubs.