Manufactures, Commerce, Communica Moscow is the second manufacturing city in the empire, and of late years its indus trial and commercial activity has greatly in creased. The manufacturing establishments give employment to more than 125,000 workmen and annually turn out goods to the value of about $150,000,000. The principal establish ments are for textile fabrics, chiefly cotton, woolen and silk, besides manufactures of met als, railway trucks, looms, fibrine, paper, leather and other articles. The enamelware in dustry owes its beginning to an American, Henry Hiller. The machinery employed in the factories is generally of the most improved description, and though partly made in the city largely comes from Britain and elsewhere. From its central position Moscow is the great entrepOt for the internal commerce of the em pire and toward which six railway lines con verge. Great facilities for this commerce are given by water communication, which extends on one side to the Baltic, on another to the Caspian and on a third to the Black Sea; and by the railways to Saint Petersburg, Yaroslav, Nijninovgorod, Siberia, etc. In winter the traffic over the snow in sledges is enormous. Tea, silk, indigo and cotton are important ar ticles of trade.
Administration, Moscow is under the immediate charge of a general governor and a i military governor. It is the seat of important civil and criminal courts, and of various super intending boards of police, manufactures, trade, etc.; and has a number of literary, scientific and other societies of different kinds. Pop. (1891) 822,397; (1897) 977,269, with suburbs 1,035,664; (1913) 1,817,100, nearly all Great Russians of the Orthodox Greek Church, males greatly preponderating.
History.-- Moscow is said to have been founded in 1147 by George Dolgoruki, Prince of Kiev. Its nucleus was the Kremlin, which at first was nearly surrounded by a palisade, and formed an important military station. For a long time it continued to be a dependency of the principality of Vladimir; and in 1238, when Batou-Khan devastated Russia, it was sacked and burned. In 1293 it was again sacked, and
the inhabitants were dragged away into by Khan Nagai. Ivan Danilovitch of Vladimir took the title of grand prince of Moscow in the early part of the 14th century and from that time it remained the seat of government until the beginning of the 18th, when the admin istration was transferred by Peter the Great to Saint Petersburg. Moscow was plundered by the Lithuanians and the Tartars of Tamerlane in the latter part of the 14th century, and was nearly consumed by fire in 1536, in 1547 and again in 1571, when the Tartars set fire to the suburbs, a large part of the population perish ing on that occasion. During the insurrections caused by the pseudo-Demetrius (1605-12), when the Poles and Cossacks took the city, it was again partly destroyed. In 1812 it was entered by the French under Marat on 14 Sep tember, and on the 15th by Napoleon, who took up his residence in the Terem Palace in the Kremlin. The city, deserted by its inhabitants, was set on fire by order of the governor, Count Rostoptschin, compelling Napoleon to leave on 19 October and to take his final departure on the 23d, and resulting in the disastrous retreat of the French army. The greater part of the city was then destroyed, notwithstanding the efforts of the French to stay the progress of the flames. It was rebuilt within a few years. The railway to Saint Petersburg was opened in 1851. The chief of modern events are the coronations in 1856 of Alexander II and in 1896 of the late Nicholas II, at the latter cere mony 2,000 people being crushed to death, and hundreds injured, during the distribution of gifts. On 17 Feb. 1905 the Grand Duke Scr ipts was assassinated in the Kremlin, and there were revolutionary disturbances in that and the succeeding year. On 14 March 1918 the Peo ple's Commissioners (the new Russian Soviet Government) left Petrograd for Moscow, which thus became the centre and capital of the New Russia. Consult Wirt Gerrare, 'The Story of Moscow> (London 1900); Grove, H. M., 'Moscow> (New York 1912).