Moscow: Technologically Decentralized
As the geographically largest country on the globe, Russia plays a massive role in the global market and network because of its vast access to natural resources and its uncommon trait of neighboring so many other nations. At the heart of this massive country, Russia’s capital, Moscow, is uncannily global and worldly despite the fact that it is surrounded by hundreds of kilometers of Russian countryside on all sides. Understanding globalization in Moscow is perhaps best looked at through the infrastructure built during the Russian Empire, the period when Russia first began to expand into the global arena.
In the Omeka exhibit “Moscow’s Railway Stations: Imperial Russia’s International Aspirations,” the concept of globalization is discussed through the lens of Moscow’s seven railway stations built throughout the nineteenth century (1). With Moscow as the hub and the railways as the spokes, Russia’s culture was able to radiate outward from Moscow and reach far parts of the country and globe. In her essay, Sassen discusses the key role that technology has played in creating global cities for its ability to decentralize influence across large swathes of land (2). However, when discussing technological advances, Sassen primarily refers to telecommunications and completely ignores older technology which was similarly revolutionary, like railways.
Moscow’s railways played exactly the same role in Imperial Russia as improved telecommunication technology plays in today’s global cities; these routes connected the seat of national power to far stretches of the globe and provided a means to decentralize and expand. Looking at two railway lines in particular, those leading from Rizhsky station and Yaroslavsky station, really sums up this argument well. Moscow built Rizhsky station as the terminus for a railway line that led to Latvia and an ice-free port to expand into the global market via trade of the nation’s abundant natural resources. Similarly, Yaroslavksy station was the beginning of the extraordinarily long Trans-Siberian railway which ended thousands of kilometers from its start on the Sea of Japan. Both of these railway stations act as termini which push Moscow into the global network and allow it to expand its influence across the globe.
In Joseph Brodsky’s “Guide to a Renamed City” we implicitly see this characteristic global city nature of Moscow by looking at its sister city, St. Petersburg. When discussing why Lenin first went to Petersburg as opposed to Moscow, Brodksy writes “Petersburg was merely the seat of imperial rule, and not the mental or political locus of the nation-since the national will can’t be localized by definition” (3). Through this statement, Brodsky makes the claim that Moscow is the inherent locus of Russia as a nation; despite a political decree and a better geographic footing, Petersburg, “the most premeditated place in the world,” could not outcompete Moscow as the seat of Russian power (3). This argument is a huge endorsement of Sassen’s belief that global cities are necessarily drawn to specific loci. Despite its central location away from ports and other nations, through its railway stations and decentralization of cultural values, Moscow was able to expand its influence into the global foray and become a global city during Tsarist rule far before Sassen’s period of interest.