The Reconstruction of Moscow

WIDE, WELL-KEPT, BEAUTIFUL STREETS In old Moscow the Revolution found a capital with ex- tremely narrow, crooked and short streets, with frequent turnings and crossings, with sharp windings and with a host of blind alleys, laiies and bye-ways. In the symposium Moscow Today (published in Rus- sian in 1912) we read: "The thoroughfares of the city cover 18 per cent of the total area of Moscow. The very relation of the area of the thoroughfares to the total area of the city shows that the width of the Moscow streets is far from suf- ficient. As a matter of fact, the average width of the big Moscow streets does not exceed 8.5 sazhens (18.1 metres) and of the pereuloks — 5.5 sazhens (11.7 me- tres) . The total length of all the streets in Moscow comes to 576 versts, which is made up of the following categories: 393 streets, 1,031 pereuloks, 87 blind al- leys, 38 boulevards and 30 embankments. 5J Such was> old Moscow. Streets 12-18 metres wide and a great jumble of pereuloks and blind alleys, outnumber- ing the streets three times over. In accordance with the decision on the reconstruction of Moscow, the Moscow Soviet has set itself the task first

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