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Podcast: History Unplugged Podcast
Episode: From Big Village to Global Power: The Thousand-Year Rise of Moscow, Russia's Fortress Capital
Description: When St. Petersburg nobility mockingly called Moscow a "big village," in the 19th century – a time when they lived in all the excess found in a Tolstoy novel -- they couldn't have imagined the provincial fortress would become the heart of a nation spanning eleven percent of Earth's landmass and eleven time zones. It had a long warm-up time to get there. For nearly a millennium, Moscow has endured Tatar Mongols, Swedish armies, Napoleon, Hitler, devastating fires that never stopped burning even in snow and rain, and the Soviet destruction of its sacred churches—each catastrophe reinforcing the city's iden...