Historama, March 12

This day marks the end of a disastrous war, the test run of a revolutionary discovery and the final transfer of a Russian capital.

“New” Russian capital

On this day in 1918, Moscow became Russia's capital… again.

The city started life in 1147, but it was not until the late 15th century that it became the capital.

In 1712, Tsar Peter the Great moved the capital to the newly-built St Petersburg, where it stayed put until after the 1917 revolution.

Read more about Peter the Great on Russiapedia

The Bolsheviks thought Moscow was less vulnerable to anti-revolutionary forces and therefore quickly made it the capital once more.

Moscow and St Petersburg in pictures on our site

Victory and defeat

The Winter War between the Soviet Union and Finland fired its last shot on this day in 1940.

Called the Infamous War by Russian historians, the war claimed over 100,000 Soviet soldiers' lives in just five months.

Hostilities started because the USSR urgently needed to move its border away from Russia's second-largest city, Leningrad (as St Petersburg was then known), due to the Nazi threat.

While a cease-fire forced Finland to cede around a tenth of its territory, this did little to protect Leningrad, which was besieged the following year by the Nazis.

Read more about this day in Russian history in our “Russia Now” section