Agriculture has been much influenced by its nearness to the great population centre at Moscow. Before cheap corn was imported from the newer grain-growing regions, grain was grown for the Moscow market in spite of poor soil conditions and low yields per acre, but a marked diminution then set in and in 1909 1913, the area under grain crops was a very small proportion of that in 1887. A many field grass system now prevails in place of the old three field system, and much attention is devoted in the regions near the towns to the production of potatoes, cucumbers, cabbages and onions, and also to fruit growing, especially cherries, raspberries, strawberries, gooseberries, currants and plums. Some collective agricultural artels exist.
Intensive dairying is carried on for the town markets, and pig breeding is developing in dependence on it. Flax, which demands much labour, is diminishing rapidly in spite of the factory market, because available peasant labour tends to be absorbed in the factories. The chief grain crops are rye and oats, with a little buckwheat.
The chief towns are Moscow, Orekhovo-Zuevo, Serpukhov, Bogorodsk, Egorievsk (Yegorievsk), Sergiev and Pavlovo-Posad, qq.v. Communications are the best in the country; a network of navigation, railway routes and roads concentrates on the town. This fact and the lessened costs of transit from Siberia, the Central Asiatic region, the Caucasus, and the productive regions of the south enabled the industries of the province to survive the development of St. Petersburg (Leningrad) as an industrial centre.
The district has been inhabited since the Stone Age, though bronze implements are rare. In some places stone, bone and iron implements have been found together. Burial mounds of the oth and 12th centuries seem to be of Finnish origin. Finnish tribes certainly occupied the district at the time of its colonisation by the Slays, and some racial intermixture took place, thus some what emphasizing the difference between Great Russians and Little Russians, the latter of whom have intermingled with the Tatars.