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 timber fort na Moskvě "on the Moscow river" was inherited by Daniel,[6] the youngest son of Alexander Nevsky, in the 1260s, at the time considered the least valuable of his father's possessions.

Daniel came of age in the 1270s and became involved in the power struggles of the principality with lasting success, siding with his brother Dmitry in his bid for the rule of Novgorod.

Daniel ruled Moscow as Grand Duke until 1303 and established it as a prosperous city which would eventually eclipse its parent principality of Vladimir by the 1320s.

Ivan I eventually defeated Tver to become the sole collector of taxes for the Mongol rulers, making Moscow the capital of Vladimir-Suzdal.

In 1380, prince Dmitry Donskoy of Moscow led a united Russian army to an important victory over the Mongols in the Battle of Kulikovo.

In the time of Ivan III, the Red Square, originally named the Hollow Field (Полое поле) appeared.

The Crimean Tatars attacked again in 1591, but this time were held back by new defense walls, built between 1584 and 1591 by a craftsman named Fyodor Kon.

In 1592, an outer earth rampart with 50 towers was erected around the city, including an area on the right bank of the Moscow River.

Three square gates existed on the eastern side of the Kremlin wall, which in the 17th century, were known as: Konstantino-Eleninsky, Spassky, Nikolsky (owing their names to the icons of Constantine and Helen, the Savior and St. Nicholas which hung over them).

In 1612, the people of Nizhny Novgorod and other Russian cities conducted by prince Dmitry Pozharsky and Kuzma Minin rose against the Lithuanians occupants, besieged the Kremlin, and expelled them.

The term meshchane (мещане) acquired pejorative connotations in 18th-century Russia and today means "petty bourgeois" or "narrow-minded philistine".

[10] Moscow ceased to be Russia's capital (except for a brief period from 1728 to 1732 under the influence of the Supreme Privy Council) when Peter the Great moved his government to the newly built Saint Petersburg on the Baltic coast in 1712.

When Catherine II came to power in 1762, the city's filth and smell of sewage was depicted by observers as a symptom of the disorderly lifestyles of lower-class Russians recently arrived from the farms.

National political and military successes from 1812 through 1855 calmed the critics and validated efforts to produce a more enlightened and stable society.

However, in the wake of Russia's failures in the Crimean War in 1855–56, confidence in the ability of the state to maintain order in the slums eroded, and demands for improved public health put filth back on the agenda.

[13] Then Vladimir Lenin, fearing possible foreign invasion, moved the capital from Petrograd (Saint Petersburg) back to Moscow on March 12, 1918.

[14] During the Great Patriotic War, the Soviet State Committee of Defense and the General Staff of the Red Army were located in Moscow.

On 6 December 1941, German Army Group Centre was stopped at the outskirts of the city and then driven off in the course of the Battle of Moscow.

On May 8, 1965 due to the actual 20th anniversary of the victory in World War II Moscow was awarded a title of the Hero City.

The MKAD marked the administrative boundaries of the city of Moscow until the 1980s, when outlying suburbs beyond the ring road began to be incorporated.

More than that it was a Stalinist device to awe and control the populace[citation needed], and give them an appreciation of Soviet realist art.

Lazar Kaganovich was in charge; he designed the subway so that citizens would absorb the values and ethos of Stalinist civilization as they rode.

[16] Soviet workers did the labor and the art work, but the main engineering designs, routes, and construction plans were handled by specialists recruited from the London Underground.

[17] The paranoia of Stalin and the NKVD was evident when the secret police arrested numerous British engineers for espionage—that is for gaining an in-depth knowledge of the city's physical layout.

Engineers for the Metropolitan Vickers Electrical Company were given a show trial and deported in 1933, ending the role of British business in the USSR.

The most inspiring metro stations of the Stalin's era are Revolution Square, Kievskaya, Beloruskaya, Mayakovskaya, Novoslobodskaya, Dostoevskaya, Prospekt mira, Komsomolskaya and Taganskaya.

Since then a market economy has emerged in Moscow, producing an explosion of Western-style retailing, services, architecture, and lifestyles.

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.

The ubiquitous presence of legal and illegal permanent and temporary migrants plus merging suburbs raise the total population to about 13.5 million people.