Kuntsevo District (Moscow)

 district, invisible, third-level administrative division

Administrative district (raion) of Western Administrative Okrug, and one of the 125 raions of Moscow, Russia. Population: 142,497 (2010 Census).

The first reference about Kuntsevo in the historical documents pertains to the year 1454. Kuntsevo is connected with the military events of Russian history. In 1611 - 1612 on The khoroshevskikh and Setunskikh meadows, near Kuntseva, stood the troops of the Polish hetman Of zholkevskogo. In 1613 Kuntsevu approached with the troops prince Vladislav, who was attempting to master Moscow throne. In Kuntsevo more than 300 years ago new masters elevated the palace, the church and the park, decorated with white marble statues. At that time Kuntsevo hosted empress Ekaterina II and prussian king Friedrich- Wilhelm III. From the middle of 19th century Kuntsevo became a summer-resort locality. In 1890 a summer theater was opened, the so-called "tea grove".

The historians N. M. Karamzin, T. N. Granovskiy, the writers L. N. Tolstoy, I. S. Turgenev, artists A. K. Savrasov, V. G. Perov, and As i. N. Kramskoy lived and worked in Kuntsevo. In Kuntsevo also was located the dacha of the founder of the Tret'yakovskoy gallery P.M. Tret'yakova. While Stalin maintained an apartment at the Kremlin, he also had a dacha in Kuntsevo on a high bank of the Moskva River. The Blizhny ["near"] Dacha at Kuntsevo, featured a double-perimeter fence and eight camouflaged 30-millimeter antiaircraft guns hidden in the birch forest to protect the dacha's solitary resident. Closed side roads and 300 NKVD special troops provided security for the low [and ugly] dacha behind the big green metal gates. In 1953 Politburo members were summoned to Stalin's Kuntsevo dacha, where they found the leader dying of a stroke.