section_path: History/Soviet period (1917–1991)
section_name: Soviet period (1917–1991)
paragraph_text: Soviet period (1917–1991)
  
  In November 1917, upon learning of the uprising in Petrograd, Moscow's Bolsheviks began their uprising. On November 2 (15), 1917, after heavy fighting, Soviet power was established in Moscow. Vladimir Lenin, fearing invasion, moved the capital back to Moscow on March 12, 1918. The Kremlin once again became the seat of power, political centre of the new state.
  
  With the change in values imposed by communist ideology, the tradition of preserving cultural heritage was broken. Independent preservation societies, even those that defended only secular landmarks, were disbanded by the end of the 1920s. A new anti-religious campaign, launched in 1929, coincided with the collectivization of peasants; the destruction of churches in the cities peaked around 1932. In 1937 letters were written to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to rename Moscow to "Stalindar" or "Stalinodar". Stalin rejected this suggestion.
  
  During World War II, the Soviet State Committee of Defence and the General Staff of the Red Army were located in Moscow. In 1941, 16 divisions of the national volunteers (more than 160,000 people), 25 battalions, and 4 engineering regiments were formed among the Muscovites. Between October 1941 and January 1942, the German Army Group Centre was stopped at the outskirts of the city, then driven off in the Battle of Moscow. Many factories were evacuated, together with much of the government, and from October 20 the city was declared to be in a siege. Its remaining inhabitants built and manned antitank defenses, while the city was bombarded from the air. On May 1, 1944, a medal "For the defence of Moscow" and in 1947 another medal "In memory of the 800th anniversary of Moscow" was instituted. German and Soviet casualties during the battle have been debated, as sources provide different estimates. Total casualties between September 30, 1941, and January 7, 1942, are estimated to be between 248,000-400,000 for the Wehrmacht and 650,000-1,280,000 for the Red Army.
  
  During the postwar years, there was a housing crisis, solved by the invention of high-rise apartments. There are over 11,000 of these standardised and prefabricated apartment blocks, housing most of Moscow's population, making it by far the city with the most high-rise buildings. Apartments were built and partly furnished in the factory, before being raised and stacked into tall columns. The popular Soviet-era comic film Irony of Fate parodies this construction method. The city of Zelenograd was built in 1958 at 37 kilometres (23 miles) from the city centre to the north-west, along with the Leningradskoye Shosse, and incorporated as one of Moscow's administrative okrugs. Moscow State University moved to its campus on Sparrow Hills in 1953.
  
  In 1959 Nikita Khrushchev launched his anti-religious campaign. Of Moscow's fifty churches operating in 1959, thirty were closed and six demolished. On May 8, 1965, due to the actual 20th anniversary of the victory in World War II, Moscow was awarded a title of the Hero City.
  
  The Moscow Ring Road (MKAD) was opened in 1961. It had four lanes running 109 kilometres (68 miles) along the city borders. The MKAD marked the administrative boundaries of the city until the 1980s, when outlying suburbs beyond the ring road were incorporated. In 1980, Moscow hosted the Summer Olympic Games, which were boycotted by the US and other Western countries due to the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. In 1991 Moscow was the scene of a coup attempt by conservative communists opposed to the liberal reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev.