Krasnaia Presnia

(until 1918, Presnia, after the name of a river, which was channeled into a conduit in 1908), a section of Moscow (now part of Krasnaia Presnia city district), which was named to commemorate the heroic struggle of its workers in the Revolution of 1905–07.

In the 17th century, on the southern side of the Presnia River was the Sadovnich’ia Dvortsovaia Sloboda (court gardeners’ quarters), which in 1681 was granted to the Patriarch and accordingly renamed Patriarshaia Sloboda. On the northern side was the village of Voskresenskoe, founded by Tsar Fedor III Alekseevich. In the 17th century the tsarist menagerie was located on the site of the present-day zoo. In the late 18th century Presnia became an industrial section of Moscow. In 1799 the Prokhorov Print Factory (now the F. E. Dzerzhinskii Trekhgornaia Factory Combine) and a number of enterprises and artisan shops sprang up. Social democratic organizations appeared in the section in 1894–95.

As a major industrial and proletarian section of the city, Presnia became the main center of the 1905 Moscow armed uprising. A number of enterprises and streets in Krasnaia Presnia were given names in commemoration of the December fighting: 1905 Street, Vosstanie Square, Barrikadnaia, Litvin-Sedoi and Druzhinnikov streets, Shmit Thoroughfare, Pamiati Revoliutsii 1905 g. Plant, and others. The Presnia workers took active part in the establishment of Soviet rule in Moscow in 1917, the Civil War of 1918–20, and socialist construction. V. I. Lenin was the Presnia workers’ deputy to the Moscow Soviet. The district has large enterprises: the Trekhgornaia Factory Combine, Housing-Construction Combine No. 1, the Krasnaia Presnia and Proletarskii Trud plants, and others. In 1924 a historical-revolutionary museum was founded in Krasnaia Presnia.