Moscow Suburbs Research Articles

Criteria and methods to assess the ecological status of soils in relation to the landscaping of urban territories

The ecological status and functioning of soils in urban ecosystems are considered. A series of criteria and simple methods of their determination are suggested to assess soil suitability for landscaping purposes. Their practical application is shown by the example of the ecological assessment and monitoring survey of different urban territories in the southwestern, western, and northwestern administrative districts of Moscow and in Moscow suburbs. It is shown that the main damage to the soils of actively used territories in Moscow is due to the artificial salinization induced by the application of deicing substances and fertilizers. The second factor of soil degradation is the soil compaction. An unfavorable water and air regime (a deficit or excess of soil moisture) is a factor that manifests itself sporadically in time (during the extremely dry years) and in space (at the sites with an increased soil compaction and soil water evaporation). A considerable decrease in the potential biological activity of urban soils, including the soils of newly built residential areas, in comparison with their natural analogues attests to the disturbance of their functioning under the impact of chemical pollution and an unfavorable physical status.

History of the cultural layer in Moscow and accumulation of anthropogenic substances in it

Urban soils in the central part of Moscow consist of a thick layer of municipal waste (the cultural layer). Its thickness varies from 2 to 5 m and can reach 20 m in depressions. It has been affected by pedogenic processes and also contains archaeological artefacts. Thus, it is simultaneously a soil, a sediment and a cultural layer. It is very stony, has a strongly alkaline reaction and is enriched in organic matter (30-fold increase in comparison with surface soils of Moscow suburbs), carbonates, phosphorus compounds (20–200-fold increase) and various microelements (Pb, Cu, Zn, As, 100–1000-fold increase).

Effect of Frost Heaving on the Failure of Deep Structures

frost. At the outset of the 1950s, a small single-story commercial brick building was constructed in th e northern suburbs of Moscow. This building was in normal service until the beginning of the 1990s. It wa s then preserved. In 1997, a 24-m long and 7-m wide area, which was oriented from east to west with respec t to length, was graded in front of the facade. The area abuts a 6-m-wide highway carrying rather heavy traffic . A shallow sand-gravel cover layer was placed on the surface of the site. Snow was carefully removed from the area from the outset of the winter of 1997-1998, and stored o n its western side. In mid-December 1998, a water line running parallel to the highway failed beneath the site . This suggests that deep freezing of the soils in the roadway bed is frequently responsible for the failure o f water-supply lines near these roads. A cast-iron water-supply pipe 250 mm in diameter was placed at a depth of 2.5 m in morainic claye y loams. The water table is located at a depth of 18 m. Rupture of the pipe occurred at a distance of 5 m to th e east of the snow pile. As in the previous year, snow was removed from the site from the outset of the winter of 1998-1999 , and in March 1999, a second failure of the pipeline was observed at a distance 6 m to the east of the prev i ous year’s failure. A third failure of the water line beneath this site was observed at the beginning of Febr u ary 2000. Nonuniform heaving of cohesive soils, which results in the failure of highway pavement, is one of th e most dangerous forms of deformations of an earth roadbed in regions with seasonal frost and unfavorable we t ting conditions . The number of these emergency situations has recently increased considerably in the towns and vi l

Doing Film History in the Soviet Union: A Research Note

I recently spent three months each in Moscow and Leningrad viewing movies and finishing a book on Soviet popular culture, including cinema, fiction, music, and stage entertainment since 1900. Through the good offices of IREX, I was able to use my Academy of Sciences exchange status to study at the All-Union Research Institute for Film Studies (VNIIKI) in Moscow, even though there is no affiliation between the two Soviet institutions. What follows is a note about the practical aspects of movie-viewing in the USSR for historians, based on my experiences. In Moscow, I watched movies in four places. The first and most important was VNIIKI, located at Degtiarnyi Pereulok, 5, not far from the Rossiia movie theater. The building is under construction and the amenities are few, but they include what is important: a filmography reading room, a small reference library, a projection room, and a theater. Since my interests ranged over the whole history of Soviet cinematography from 1908 to the present, I submitted a list of the films I wanted to see, with dates, grouped chronologically so that I could take account of the context of each era. The organizer of showings, Anatolii Shumlianskii, ordered these from Gosfilmofond, the film depository at Belye Stolby in the suburbs of Moscow and the most complete collection of Russian-Soviet films in the world. Gosfilmofond sent five or six films a week to the Institute, and they usually were shown on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. My films often had to be sandwiched between the Institute's own showings of new films, Soviet and foreign. This was no inconvenience, for I wanted to see recent films as well and this saved me time in trying to catch them in local theaters.

Urban Uprisings in Russia During the First Half of the Seventeenth Century ('30s-'40s)

…We know that the territory of seventeenth-century Moscow consisted of the Kremlin, the Kitai, and Belyi and Zemlianoi towns encircling it along the line of today's Sadovoe Ring. Roads radiated from the center to various corners of the country, and Moscow's suburbs [slobody — also settlements, or quarters — D. H. M] extended along them. Seventeenth-century Moscow numbered 11 sotni, 3 half-sotni, 2 quarter-sotni, and 30 suburbs.1 If one accepts the calculations of S. K. Bogoiavlenskii, according to whom each household consisted of up to six persons of both sexes and the number of households was 27,000, the resulting figure is enormous — about 200,000 persons. According to the calculations of P. P. Smirnov, this represented one third of the urban population of all of Russia. By medieval standards it was an enormous city, yielding only to Paris and Constantinople.2

A Source of Inspiration and Joy

Last month I happened to be in a sanatorium in the Moscow suburbs. There I was in daily contact with people in various professions and fields of endeavor: workers and collective farmers, Party functionaries, scientists and technicians. Every evening movies were shown. For the most part these were recent releases from various studios in our own country. And not infrequently after a showing dozens of eyes would be trained on me, the film expert, and what I saw in the faces around me was incredulousness, doleful surprise and outright reproach. The films did not live up to the viewers' expectations, they did not create the mood which my new friends had expected.

Obituary, Alexander A. Breese (Bryzgalov)

ALEXANDER A. BREESE ( A. A. BRYZGALOV) was born in Moscow, Russia, January 29, 1888. His father was a civil engineer employed on the Petrograd‐Moscow Railway. After graduating from the private Real High School of Voskresensky in 1908, he entered the Moscow Agricultural College located in Petrovsko‐Razumovskoye in the suburbs of Moscow. This was the oldest agricultural college in Russia with the best laboratories, greenhouses, and experimental field‐equipment for studying all branches of agriculture, forestry, and fisheries. Among the prominent teachers of BREESE were L PRIANISHNIKOV, Professor of Agricultural Chemistry and Field Crops, V. R. WILLIAMS, Professor of Soils, Irrigation, and Drainage, V. A. MICHELSON, Professor of Physics who constructed an actinometer, and A. F . FORTUNATOV, Professor of Agricultural Economics. His classmates were N. I. VAVTLOV, famous agricultural explorer and plant‐breeder, and A. V. CHAPANOFF, agricultural economist.