The book aims to trace and explain the historical evolution of Moscow, the capital of the Tsardom of Russia, Soviet Union and Russian Federation, as a political entity and political community, and to understand what place Moscow occupied within the Russian political space and what role it played in Russian political life for centuries until 2018. The authors consistently examine the dramatic political history of the contemporary Russian capital in the Moscow (13th - 17th centuries) and St. Petersburg (18th - 19th centuries) epochs, in the Soviet period, in the post-Soviet era, and identify its key points and the most pivotal events.