the capital of Russia, located at the center of European Russia, on the Moskva River; population 10,470,300 (est. 2008). It became the capital when Ivan the Terrible proclaimed himself the first tsar in the 16th century. Peter the Great moved his capital to St. Petersburg in 1712, but, after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, Moscow was made the capital of the new Soviet government, with its center in the Kremlin. Russian name Moskva