This book brings together stories about twenty incredible women from Moscow—brave, ambitious, talented, and sensitive. Each Moscow woman was unique: they shone on the theater stage, appeared in films, ran manufactories, inspired artists, built and opened schools, hospitals, and maternity homes. Historian and author of the course “Women in a Big City” Oksana Monakhova tells how Faina Ranevskaya fought her way to the big stage, how Véra Firsanova, a businesswoman of pre-revolutionary Russia, laid the groundwork for the Sanduny Baths—a benchmark of the bathing industry of that time—and how fashion designer Nadezhda Lamanova developed dresses that every woman could sew for herself. The heroines of this book changed the world—reshaping it for their own sake. And that could not help but reflect in the city’s appearance. In this book you will learn what amazing stories are hidden by the home, streets, parks, and museums of Moscow—about their owners and patrons.