The Moscow dialect or Moscow accent (Russian: Московское произношение, Moskovskoye proiznoshenye; [mɐˈskofskəjə prəɪznɐˈʂenʲɪɪ]), sometimes Central Russian, is the spoken Russian language variety used in Moscow. Influenced by both Northern and Southern Russian dialects, the Moscow dialect is the basis of the Russian literary language.
Overview
The 1911 edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica wrote:
Literary Russian as spoken by educated people throughout the empire is the Moscow dialect...
The Moscow dialect really covers a small area, not even the whole of the government of Moscow, but political causes have made it the language of the governing classes and hence of literature. It is a border dialect, having the southern pronunciation of unaccented o as a, but the jo for accented o before a hard consonant it is akin to the North and it has also kept the northern pronunciation of g instead of the southern h. So too unaccented e sounds like i or ji'.