2. Moscow as a Space of the Political in Russian History: The Moscow and Petersburg Epochs

This chapter discusses the nature and evolution of the Moscow political from the period of Russian history, which was given the name of the Moscow epoch (thirteenth-very beginning seventeenth centuries) to end of the Petersburg epoch (very beginning seventeenth-beginning of twentieth centuries). It discusses several reasons for the upsurge of Moscow in pre-Mongolian times, causes and consequences of Moscow’s Rise in the thirteenth-fifteenth centuries. The chapter explores the dilemmas and tensions within the Moscow political under Ivan IV (the Terrible), the Time of Troubles and under the First Romanovs. It is argued that in the Moscow epoch Moscow acquired the specific essence that enabled it to assume the functions of the country’s political capital, became a city-state, a national spiritual center. The Moscow political acquired the form of a triad: antagonism—agonism—Platonism. In the Petersburg epoch, an opposition of the two capital cities arose, but Moscow did not alter the formula of its political legitimacy. The Moscow elites considered the situation of “the two capitals” a politically temporary one. The Moscow political remained Platonic till one of the key events within the Petersburg epoch, the Revolutionary Period (1905–1917), caused triumph of antagonism.