Calendar Briefs

110 years ago Moscow’s Trams

April 6, 1899, the first electric tram was inaugurated in Moscow, on Nizhnaya Maslovka street. Seven years previous, the first electric tram in the Russian empire was installed in Kiev, followed a few years later by cars in Nizhny Novgorod, Yekaterinoslav  (now Dnepropetrovsk) and Kursk. Trams were not introduced to St. Petersburg (then the capital) until 1907. Horse-drawn rail cars – konki – had been in use since the 1870s, but they were proving unable to keep up with growing demand for reliable and swift public transport. Over the next half-century, trams secured themselves a treasured place in Muscovites’ hearts, often the subject of romantic poems and songs.

80 years ago
Southern Poet