6. Conclusion: The Nature of the Moscow Political

This chapter summarizes key ideas and results and outlines future research of the topic. The chapter outlines the way that political Moscow has long been represented by the triad of “antagonism – agonism – Platonism.” This has become the expression of one of the main challenges to the state throughout its history—the deadlock of paternalism. The chapter concludes by arguing that Russia is in a trap of a super centralization process throughout its history, it was being built within a centrally peripheral logic. During the Russian Federation, Moscow in the 1990s favored Federalism’s growth, but in the early 2000s, the tendency to make universal decisions based on the Center’s interests began to accelerate. The Moscow agglomeration was growing in size territorially, demographically, and financially. This chapter argues that in Moscow’s political history from the late 1980s to 2018, three completed political cycles are identified. The new political cycle that began at the end of 2018 and has not come to an end yet. The chapter concludes that the liberalism and oppositionism of the federal government represented Moscow’s characteristics as a political community that contrasted it with the rest of Russia. Moscow remained one of the most vulnerable links in Vladimir Putin’s political configuration.