Two Moscows: The Metaphysics of the Capital

Rustam Rakhmatullin is an essayist, local historian, who has been studying the history of Moscow for many years, and he reinterprets the knowledge of Moscow studies in a new way. The author resorts to unexpected comparisons and conclusions, leading the reader through both the visible and invisible capital. By comparing it to Rome, Jerusalem, Constantinople, as well as to St. Petersburg and other Russian cities, he sees Moscow as a wonder of the manifestation of the Higher Design, embodied over many centuries in the events of history, in artistic monuments, in urban topography, in the symbolic space of city monasteries and former country estates. In the times of the Grand Duchy of Moscow and the Russian Empire, during the Petersburg era and in the 20th century. In the deeds of Ivan Kalita and the holy Metropolitan Peter, Ivan III and Ivan the Terrible, the first printer Ivan Fedorov and Prince Pozharsky, Peter I and Catherine II, architects Bazhenov and Kazakov and many other heroes of the book.