Wooden Church Architecture of the Russian North: Regional Schools and Traditions (14Th–19Th Centuries)/Evgeny Khodakovsky

Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 Wooden Church Architecture of the Russian North

This book presents a broad panoramic overview of church architecture in the Russian North between the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries. While it is inevitably overshadowed by the imperial splendour of the country’s capital cities, this unique phenomenon is regarded as the most distinctive national expression of traditional Russian artistic culture and at the same time as a significant part of humanity’s worldwide architectural heritage. The chief intention of the book is to present the regionally specific features of the wooden churches of the Russian North, which vary from area to area for local natural or historical reasons. This approach touches upon the very important questions of the typology and classification of the multiplicity of architectural forms. The ‘regional view’ entails giving clear definitions of the ambiguous terms ‘architectural school’ and ‘tradition’, explaining the origins and shaping impulses for the different regional clusters of objects. Structurally the book presents a history of the development of wooden church architecture in the Russian North and then follows the key points of the mediaeval Russian expansion along the waterways from Novgorod into the North – the Svir’ River, Lake Onego, the town of Kargopol’ and the River Onega, the White Sea, the Rivers Northern Dvina, Pinega and Mezen’ – those areas that still retain the most splendid pieces of Russian regional wooden church architecture. The study is based on field research and provides an up-to-date, multi-faceted view of Russian wooden architecture.

Evgeny Khodakovsky is Head of the Department of Russian Art History Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 at St Petersburg State University. He lectures on the history of the art and architecture of the Russian North, Russian mediaeval art, folk art, Norwegian wooden architecture and the history of restoration in Russia and Europe. Routledge Research in Architecture

The Routledge Research in Architecture series provides the reader with the latest scholarship in the ﬁeld of architecture. The series publishes research from across the globe and covers areas as diverse as architectural history and theory, technology, digital architecture, structures, materials, details, design, monographs of architects, interior design and much more. By making these studies available to the worldwide academic community, the series aims to promote quality architectural research.

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Wooden Church Architecture of the Russian North Regional schools and traditions (14th–19th centuries) Evgeny Khodakovsky Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 This page intentionally left blank Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 Wooden Church Architecture of the Russian North Regional schools and traditions (14th–19th centuries)

Evgeny Khodakovsky Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 First published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2016 Evgeny Khodakovsky The right of Evgeny Khodakovsky to be identiﬁed as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identiﬁcation and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Khodakovsky, Evgeny. Wooden church architecture of the Russian north: regional schools and traditions (14th–19th centuries)/Evgeny Khodakovsky. pages cm. – (Routledge research in architecture) Includes bibliographical references. 1. Wooden churches – Russia, Northern. 2. Regionalism in architecture – Russia, Northern. I. Title. NA5681.K48 2015 726.50947Ј1 – dc23 2015006862

ISBN: 978-1-138-85290-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-72318-1 (ebk)

Typeset in Sabon by Florence Production Ltd, Stoodleigh, Devon, UK Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 To my wife Olga and my children – Vasilii, Nikolai and Evdokia – for the inspiration and the sense of life Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 This page intentionally left blank Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 Contents

List of ﬁgures xi Preface xiii List of abbreviations xv

Introduction1

1 Sources9

2 The discovery and study of Russian wooden architecture 27

3 The technology of wooden construction in Rus’ 41

4 Types of wooden church architecture 51

5 Regional schools and traditions in the wooden church architecture of the Russian North 85

6 The late period in Russian wooden architecture 135

Glossary 151 Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 Bibliography 157 Index of names 169 Index of places 173 This page intentionally left blank Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 Figures

0.1 Wooden church architecture of the Russian North: an overview map2 1.1 Icon of Saint Alexander of Oshevensk 12 1.2 Church at a cemetery in Ivangorod 13 1.3 Monastery of St Nicholas, outside Moscow 15 2.1 The Trinity Church in Nënoksa 29 2.2 Andrei Bode: Variants for the restoration of the 1688 Church of the Presentation in Zaostrov’e 38 3.1 The Dormition Church from the Monastery of St Alexander of the Kushta 42 3.2 Location of the grooves 44 3.3 Types of corner joint 46 3.4 Roof construction of the refectory of the Church of St John Chrysostom at Saunino 47 3.5 A nebo ceiling in the Intercession Church, Liadiny 48 4.1 The Church of Resurrection of Lazarus from the Muromskii Monastery 53 4.2 The Church of the Deposition of the Robe from the village of Borodava 55 4.3 The Church of St George in the village of Iuksovichi, Leningrad region 56 4.4 The Church of St Basil, Chukhcher’ma on the Northern Dvina 57 4.5 The Chapel of St Nicholas at Gomorovichi, Leningrad Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 region 58 4.6 The Church of the Nativity of the Virgin from the village of Perëdki, Novgorod region 60 4.7 The Ascension Church at Piiala on the River Onega 61 4.8 The Dormition Church at Varzuga on the southern coast of the Kola Peninsula 62 4.9 The Church of St Nicholas, Liavlia 64 4.10 The Church of the Presentation in the Temple, Krasnaia Liaga 65 xii Figures 4.11 The Church of St Nicholas, Soginitsy 66 4.12 The Dormition Church from the village of Kuritsko 67 4.13 The Church of St Nicholas in the Muezero Monastery 69 4.14 The Epiphany Church in Chëlmuzhi 70 4.15 The Church of St John Chrysostom, Saunino 71 4.16 The Refectory of the Intercession Church, Liadiny 71 4.17 The Dormition Cathedral in Kem’ 72 4.18 The Church of St Michael the Archangel, Iuroma 75 4.19 The Church of Sts Peter and Paul, Virma 77 4.20 The Resurrection Cathedral in Kola 79 5.1 The Church of the Nativity of the Virgin in Gimreka 92 5.2 The Church of St Nicholas, Soginitsy 93 5.3 The Dormition Church in Kondopoga 94 5.4 The Intercession Church from Vytegra, Ankhimovo 97 5.5 The Transfiguration Church in the Kizhi pogost 98 5.6 The Transfiguration and Intercession Churches with the bell-tower 100 5.7 The Church of St Demetrius, Shcheleiki 101 5.8 The Churches of the Epiphany and of the Intercession and St Blaise in Liadiny 104 5.9 The Annunciation Church in Pustyn’ka 105 5.10 Eighteenth-century River Onega kub-roofed churches 106 5.11 The Church of St Nicholas, Purnema 113 5.12 The Ascension Church from the village of Kushereka 118 5.13 The Church of the Prophet Elijah in the Vyiskii pogost 122 5.14 The Church of the Presentation in the Temple, Zaostrov’e 126 5.15 Churches of the Upper Dvina school 128 5.16 The Church of the Hodegetria, Kimzha 130 6.1 The Churches of St Nicholas and the Nativity in Purnema 143 6.2 The Transfiguration Church, Nimen’ga 145 6.3 The Church of St Nicholas, Kelchemgora (Zaozer’e) on the River Mezen’ 150 Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 Preface

This book is the product of many years’ study of the wooden church architecture of the Russian North that began back in 1998. Ever since then, I have made regular field trips to carry out research in the Arkhangelsk, Vologda, Murmansk and Leningrad regions and the Republic of Karelia, studied archival documents, and absorbed the contents of numerous publications. My deep immersion in this rich and varied material also engendered a conviction that it should be made accessible to more than only a Russian-speaking audience. With this publication of an academic survey of the wooden architecture of the Russian North in English, my aim is to see it included in the history of world art as the most Russian phenomenon within Russian architecture, free of any sort of external influences or involvements. A further factor of no small importance is that the book represents a response to the long-standing interest in wooden architecture as one of the components of Russian national artistic culture that has been manifested by English-language writers as far back as the mid-sixteenth century, when trading relations between Russia and England were first established. In the twentieth century the curiosity of earlier travellers gave way to thoughtful scholarly analysis of the phenomenon of Russian wooden architecture, explored in David Buxton’s superb book The Wooden Churches of Eastern Europe: An Introductory Survey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). At the time of the fall of the Iron Curtain it was Buxton who presented in Britain Aleksandr and Elena Opolovnikov’s work The Wooden Architecture of Russia: Houses, Fortifications, Churches (New York: Harry Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 N. Abrams, 1989), in which Russian researchers now shared their experience of carrying out restoration work and the historical study of wooden architecture in Russia. In the twenty-first century, interest was further fuelled by the publication of Richard Davies and Matilda Moreton’s Wooden Churches: Travelling in the Russian North (London: White Sea, 2011). Now I have the great honour of joining such an enduring English-speaking scholarly tradition and offering my own interpretation of the phenomena and processes involved in the wooden church architecture of the Russian North. xiv Preface The conduct and publication of this research would have been impossible without the active support of the staff at Routledge (part of the Taylor & Francis Group) and especially my editorial assistant, Sade Lee. Prepara- tion of the English text was accomplished thanks to highly professional translation work by Paul Williams (Saint Petersburg), who for more than a quarter of a century has been contributing to the strengthening of ties between Russia and Britain in the sphere of culture and the arts. Nikolai Zadorozhnyi, Anna Ivannikova (Museum of the Russian Icon, Moscow) and Irina Shalina (State Russian Museum, Saint Petersburg) responded willingly to a request to make a unique work of seventeenth-century Russian icon- painting available for publication in this book. Andrey Bode, architect and restorer (Research Institute of the History and Theory of Architecture, Moscow), not only gave regular consultations, but also provided me with a variety of pictorial material – survey drawings, restoration projects and maps. I was always able to obtain answers to my questions about the art and history of mediaeval Novgorod, a city that played a defining role in the opening up of the Russian North, from Ilya Antipov, senior lecturer at Saint Petersburg University, architectural archaeologist and brilliant teacher. On those occasions when I encountered difficulties in selecting suitable photographs from my own expedition archives, I was always able to turn to Arina Noskova (St Petersburg branch of the Research Institute of the History and Theory of Architecture, Moscow). Among foreign colleagues and friends, my plans to publish a book about Northern Russian wooden architecture found support from Professor Siri Skjold Lexau, Dr Art (University of Bergen), Dr Mark Gardiner (Queen’s University, Belfast) and Richard Davies, architectural photographer (London). Many thoughts and observations developed in this book arose during auditorium lectures and field work with art-history students of St Petersburg State University, to whom I am obliged for their interest, enthusiasm, optimism and belief in the future founded upon the experience of encounters with the monuments of the past. And, of course, I would like to address words of appreciation as well to several generations of my family. My grandmother, who came from Old Believer stock and passed away while I was working on this book, showed me, through her long life of great labour, all the depth and breadth of the Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 Russian national character. Thanks to my parents, with whom as far back as 1988 I first travelled the ancient waterways of the Russian North, across Lake Ladoga and along the River Svir’ into Lake Onego to the island of Kizhi. I want to express particular gratitude to my wife, Olga, who has been a constant support all these years and repeatedly shared with me the hardships and even dangers of travelling through the boundless expanses of the Russian North, to my sons, Vasilii and Nikolai and my daughter, Evdokia, who have also already been introduced to the beauty of the North and will, I hope, continue to feel connected to it throughout their lives. Oxford – St. Petersburg, February 2015 Abbreviations

AN SSSR Akademia Nauk SSSR [Academy of Sciences of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics] BLDR Biblioteka Literatury Drevnei Rusi [Library of the Literature of Early Rus’ (series)] ChOIDR Chtenia Obschestva Istorii i Drevnostei Rossiiskikh [Readings in the Society for the History and Antiquities of Russia] GAAO Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Arkhangelskoi Oblasti [State Archive of Arkhangelsk region, Arkhangelsk] GMA Arkhiv Gosudarstvennogo Muzeia Arkhitektury imeni A.V. Shchuseva [Archive of the Shchusev State Museum of Architecture, Moscow] IAC Imperatorskaia Arkheologicheskaia Komissia [Imperial Archaeological Commission] IIAC Izvestiia Imperatorskoi Arkheologicheskoi Komissii [Proceedings of the Imperial Archaeological Commission] IRLI RAN Institut Russkoi Literatury Rossiiskoi Akademii Nauk [Institute of Russian Literature, Russian Academy of Sciences, St Petersburg] KFSSR Karelo-Finskaia Sovetskaia Sotsialisticheskaia Respublika [Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic (within the USSR)] KIO Kratkoe Istoricheskoe Opisanie Prikhodov i Tserkvei Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 Arkhangelskoi Eparkhii [A brief historical description of the parishes and churches of the Arkhangelsk eparchy] NA IIMK RAN Nauchnyi Arkhiv Instituta Istorii Materialnoi Kultury Rossiskoi Akademii Nauk [Research Archive of the Institute of the History of Material Culture, Russian Academy of Sciences, St Petersburg] NARK Natsionalnyi Arkhiv Respubliki Karelia [National Archive of Republic of Karelia, Petrozavodsk] xvi Abbreviations PSRL Polnoe Sobranie Russkikh Letopisei [The Complete Collection of Russian Chronicles (series)] RAKh Rossiiskaya Akademiia Khudozhestv [Russian Academy of Arts] RAN Rossiiskaya Akademia Nauk [Russian Academy of Sciences] RGADA Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Drevnikh Aktov [Russian State Archive of Ancient Documents, Moscow] RSFSR Rossiiskaia Sovetskaia Federativnaia Sotsialisticheskaia Respublika [Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (within the USSR)] SSSR Soiuz Sovetskikh Socialisticheskikh Respublik [Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR)] Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 Introduction

In Russia their Churches, steeples, and houses are all of wood. (Richard Johnson, 1556; in Hakluyt and Goldsmid 1886: 13)

. . . those forests and waterways, above all fantastic wooden towers and churches, belonged to an enchanted world. (David R. Buxton 1981: 40)

Since earliest times construction in timber has been an inseparable and organic component of Russian artistic culture, in many ways determining its distinctive national identity. Wooden architecture existed prior to the arrival in late tenth century Rus’ of Byzantine forms and methods of building and continued for centuries to give a highly important vector for the development of Russian art between East and West. Due to the gigantic expanses of forest in central and northern Russia, timber was used for the construction of dwellings, places of worship, fortresses and service structures, becoming for the Slavs the same kind of basic yet at the same time animate material as marble was for the Greeks. The beauty and variety seen in works of wooden architecture is evidence of one very important aspect of Russian artistic culture: it retains a very high level even when it has the lowest ‘social origins’. The fact that construction in remote northern churchyards or villages was carried out by semi-literate peasants who had no drawn plans, let alone academic training obtained in one of the capitals, did not in the least mean that their creations were primitive. They answered Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 all the classic requirements of architecture, being functional, long-lasting and invested with a special austere, simple beauty. At the same time, as David Buxton rightly observed, an important role was also played by the character of the Russian North as an extensive peripheral region, whose immense expanses, exceptional for Europe, ‘account for the comparative immunity of north Russian timber building to outside inﬂuences. A contributory factor was the scarcity, throughout the area, of brick or stone buildings which would otherwise have acted as the instrument of such inﬂuences’ (Buxton 1981: 39). 2 Introduction

WOODEN CHURCHES IVarzuga OF THE RUSSIAN NORTH Kovda

klet' type VMezen' White sea

tent-roofed Solovetskii Monastery

Kem'i kube type Kimzha I Arkhangelsk Trinity Muezero Purnema luromaV, tent-roofed on Monastery / Liavlya /—\ L J crossed-"bochki" Aphukhchrfr'm a\Ed°ma Nenoksa i Virma Kii-lslandS

many-domed (Kushereka^S Nim en'gap 0 3 tiered 1 ® Chelmuzhi I (O o . w 23 Turchasovo Tv ^

< Kenozero Verkhniaia Konaopoga JJftiugaA ^fshevenski Olonets. . Oneno $ kBelaia/aiuda LADOGA lSoginitsy^\ J / Kargopol£> LAKE I S w ' r ' ^rrireka (k

luksovichi Paltoga UstugJ

St. Petersburg rStaraiapadaga (from 1703) BalorerXO Bwlava*

Alexander of Kushta i monastery / Novgorod

Vologda

Figure 0.1 Wooden church architecture of the Russian North: an overview map Source: Drawing by Andrei Bode.

In Rus’, even in pagan times, wood was believed to have sacred properties and in the Christian era it acquired a new religious function. Adoration of wooden idols was replaced by veneration of holy icons – images painted on wooden panels, while on or close to the locations of the old pagan Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 shrines majestic Christian churches and cathedrals, which were also initially wooden, were put up. This is attested by The Tale of Bygone Years written by Nestor the Chronicler, a monk of the Kiev Monastery of the Caves, in the early twelfth century. According to his account, immediately after the Baptism of Rus’ in 988, Prince Vladimir

gave orders for churches to be built of timber and placed on sites where idols had previously stood. And he set the Church of St Basil on a hill where an idol of Perun [the chief pagan god] and others had stood and where the Prince and people had celebrated rites to him. In other towns, Introduction 3 too, they began putting up churches and allocating priests to them and bringing people to baptism in all the towns and villages. (Povest’ Vremennykh Let 2007: 190)

In folklore wood was still regarded as animate. It was personified in fairy tales and songs because as a substance occupying a transitional place in the structure of organic nature, reacting to heat, light and moisture, it became a sort of ‘intermediary’ between humanity and the mute world of objects. We would be to a large extent correct in picturing mediaeval construction as being made almost entirely of timber, although today this is hard to imagine due to the almost complete loss of that relatively short-lived material. Jacques Le Goff, describing the European cultural landscape, states laconically that ‘the Middle Ages was a world of wood’ (Le Goff 1988: 203) and for Early Rus’ that assertion would be even more true. A one-sided view emerges of the history of mediaeval architecture, in both Early Rus’ and Europe, if we study it only on the basis of works that were constructed in masonry and consequently less susceptible to the destructive influence of time. Even if masonry works have been destroyed, their ruins, foundations or even remnants uncovered by archaeology can often provide sufficient data for the reconstruction of the lost building and its reinstatement in the history of art. This sort of approach to research produced an enduring conception of mediaeval architecture as a broad vista of the development of masonry architecture, its forms, types and styles and the evolution of constructional methods. The one-sidedness of this vision is strikingly expressed in Le Goff’s metaphorical conclusion:

To us the Middle Ages is a glorious collection of stones: cathedrals and castles. Yet these stones represent only the tiniest part of what once existed. They are a few bones remaining of a body of wood and materials even humbler and more perishable, such as straw, mud, and cob. Nothing better shows the fundamental belief of the Middle Ages in the separation of the soul from the body and the survival of the soul alone. What the age has left to us, once its body had crumbled into dust, is its soul incarnated in durable stone. Yet we should not be deceived by this illusion produced by time. Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 (Le Goff 1988: 208)

From the very outset, wooden buildings in Rus’ were not by any means necessarily primitive. This is illustrated by the example of the oaken thirteen- domed St Sophia’s Cathedral in Novgorod, which was begun in 989, the same time as the masonry Church of the Tithe in Kiev and just a year after the Baptism of Rus’: ‘In the year 6497 [AD 989] Bishop Joachim built the wooden Church of St Sophia that had 13 tops and stood for 60 years’ (PSRL 1879: 2). Thus, at the very first stage of Russian Christian architecture the Novgorodian timber cathedral presented a striking and original alternative 4 Introduction to Byzantine masonry construction. The erection of the rich and complex St Sophia’s, with an appearance that stood comparison with multiple-domed masonry edifices, already raises the question of the interaction of wood and masonry architecture that is a key issue for the whole centuries-long history of Russian architecture. In the early stages its paths of development in some ways coincide with the patterns shaping the evolution of timber construction in Western Europe in the early Middle Ages. When the construction of stone edifices was interrupted after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the wooden structures that took their place were invested with both functions and grand appellations more appropriate to Roman basilicas. For example, the Life of St Brigit, compiled by a monk named Cogitosus around the year 650, describes the large church of the pilgrimage complex at Kildare in eastern Ireland, where the saint’s relics were to be found. Lisa M. Bitel makes the very profound observation that

Cogitosus’s description of the church and tomb also recalled other shrines, other times, and other sacred cities. Traveling with Cogitosus puts us purposefully on a map of early-medieval architecture, pilgrimage, literature, and ritual that stretched from Jerusalem and Constan- tinople through the Rome of Old Saint Peter’s, past the episcopal towns of Gaul to Kildare and St. Brigit. (Bitel, 2004: 607)

In a Rus’ that had just adopted Christianity from Byzantium too, the construction of the wooden St Sophia’s Cathedral in Novgorod symbolically marked the route of the progress of Sophia – the Divine Wisdom – from Constantinople to the North, the expansion of the boundaries of the Chris - tian world and the inclusion of Novgorod in its sacred topography. The wealth and variety of compositions of space and volume to be found in early wooden Christian buildings in Europe and Russia suggests that their beauty and grandeur were a consequence of the very difficult task of substi- tuting them for masonry edifices, which were a priori invested with greater authority in the minds of mediaeval people. This stimulated carpenters to produce masterpieces that might compete in authority and significance with their stone counterparts. Perhaps it is in this light that we should perceive Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 the surprising equality of standing between the wooden St Sophia’s in Novgorod and the masonry Church of the Tithe in Kiev. In the Early Russian urban environment masonry construction was for a long time very much the exception on account of its high cost in terms of both money and labour. We know that after the completion of the Church of the Tithe in Kiev in 996 there was a gap of more than 35 years in masonry construction, while after the consecration of a new St Sophia’s Cathedral in Novgorod in 1052 a second masonry church was constructed in the city only in 1103. The Mongol invasion of the eastern and southern principalities of Rus’ in 1237–40 also drastically reduced the pace of masonry Introduction 5 construction. Even in Novgorod, which was not directly affected by the Mongol onslaught, building ceased for around 60 years in the thirteenth century due to the difficult military situation on the western frontiers: after the Church of the Nativity of the Virgin in the Peryn Skete (1230s) the next masonry church – St Nicholas’s on Lipno – was not put up until 1292. In this situation wooden architecture was invested with a special role – far from the secondary one high-handedly allotted to it in later times. It was not for nothing that wooden elements were extensively employed in masonry construction as well. For example, back in the pre-Mongol era it was wooden beams that gave a trilobate configuration to the top of the narthex of the Church of the Saviour at Berestovo outside Kiev (1113–25). For centuries wooden ties were used to give extra strength to masonry. This method was employed right up until the construction of the Dormition Cathedral in the Moscow Kremlin (1475–9), when Aristotile Fioravanti used metal. Besides that, wooden transom (tiablo) iconostases, themselves reminiscent of tiered architectural edifices with clearly identifiable horizontal load-bearing structures, began to play an ever greater role in the design of the interiors of masonry cathedrals and churches. Thus, despite its relative lack of durability and susceptibility to fires, wood made up for those shortcomings by being cheap, readily available and easy to work. So the towns, monasteries, churches, suburbs and settlements that regularly burnt down quickly rose again from the ashes. The speed with which churches were put up in Rus’ is indicated by the existence of an entire class of ‘ordinary churches’ [obydennyi khram] that were constructed literally in a single day in fulfilment of a vow so as to halt the spread of an epidemic. For example,

in the year 6975 [1467] there was pestilence in Pskov, in Novgorod and across the Novgorodian districts. And they built the wooden Church of St Simeon the God-Receiver in Zverintsy, on a new site, in a single day with people carrying the logs from the forest on their shoulders, on the ﬁrst of October, the Feast of the Intercession of the Virgin, and it was consecrated by Archbishop Iona, who celebrated the liturgy that same day, and the following year they built a masonry church of St Simeon on the same site. Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 (PSRL 1848: 127)

A later source contains a description of the process of constructing the same sort of church in Vologda on 8 October 1654.

At precisely 1 a.m., the foundation for the church was laid. Some took charge of the ground plans; others supervised the hauling of the wood which was being brought in from every direction. Still others made torches out of birch bark and ringed the construction site with these, providing light during the early morning hours. An implicit condition 6 Introduction of the vow to build an obydennyi khram was that the structure be totally new from the ground up. By nightfall of the same day the work was completed, albeit the interior walls were left rough and unhewn. Icons were borrowed from several nearby churches for the formal consecration and the celebration of the inaugural Divine Liturgy by the archbishop on the following day. The new church was dedicated to the Savior. Four days after its completion, a local artist vowed to paint, in a single day, an icon of the Savior for the new church. The following day the icon was delivered as promised. The completion of the church . . . marked the transformation of death into life, for from that day on the death- dealing plague ended. (Zguta 1981: 426)

These accounts reveal how the widespread use of wood was one of the factors contributing to the vitality of Russian mediaeval culture, which under the extremely difficult conditions – the Mongol yoke, internecine wars, fires and epidemics – found optimal ways of giving physical expression to its moral and artistic ideals. In time things began to change and after yet another conflagration the affected quarters of this or that town were no longer invariably recon structed using wood. Brick-built chambers appeared, then palaces, mansions and urban estates. Struys, describing Moscow in 1669, states that

amongst this great number of Dwelling-houses you ﬁnd few or none, but what are altogether of Wood, except some Merchants Houses in Kitay-gorod, who as we have already said, build mostly of Stone for the better security of their Goods. (Struys 1684: 135)

The irreversibility of this process became evident after the replanning of provincial towns along regular lines that took place under Catherine II and the fire that destroyed Moscow in 1812. The proportion of wooden buildings plummeted and the traditional Russian urban landscape gave way to some - thing very different. While the prosperity of the two capitals, the provincial centres and country estates of central Russia permitted the construction of Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 masonry churches, wooden ecclesiastical building persisted outside of those areas, in regions where history had led to the formation of a fundamentally different spiritual and social situation. So, gradually wooden architecture was confined to the margins, not just of the towns – in the suburbs – but more generally to the periphery of the state, mainly the North that would remain for many more years the chief custodian of the building traditions of wooden architecture and of its products. Historical circumstances inevitably affected wooden architecture at the time of urbanization, when the peasant population was moving to the towns and cities and the traditional way of life was changing. Already in the late Introduction 7 nineteenth century there was a tendency to destroy wooden architectural monuments. At first this was due to a failure to appreciate their value, which led to the dismantling or crude ‘updating’ of hundreds of old churches. Then came deliberate destruction in the period of the Soviet campaign against religion and of rural decline. Still today, the future of many wooden churches that miraculously, against all the odds, survived the past century evokes feelings of pain and anxiety. As we embark on a study of the regional schools and traditions of the wooden architecture of the Russian North, we need to draw the geographical boundaries – they are present-day Leningrad, Arkhangelsk, Vologda and Murmansk regions (oblasti), parts of Novgorod region and the Republic of Karelia. These areas comprise a territory that in imperial times belonged to the provinces of Olonets, Arkhangelsk, Vologda, St Petersburg and Nov- gorod. In the era of Muscovite Rus’ the extensive lands of the Russian North were divided administratively into districts or uezdy, the most significant of which were the Kargopol’, Vaga, Dvina and Kevrola uezdy. Considerable tracts of land and communes were owned by the Solovestkii, Antoniev-Siiskii and Kirillo-Belozerskii Monasteries. Until the active phase of the integration processes that led to the formation of the Muscovite state in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the northern lands belonged to the extensive Obonezhskaia (‘around Lake Onego’)1 Piatina, one of the five divisions of the Novgorodian Republic, as well as to Zavoloch’e (‘the land beyond the portages’) and the Belozersk and Rostov principalities that were separate domains of the grand princes. The chronological boundaries for an examination of the wooden architectural monuments of the Russian North would initially seem to be very precise. The earliest extant example is the Church of St Lazarus from the Muromskii Monastery that dates from the second half of the fourteenth century. This particular building with technical and constructional aspects that display a number of archaic features provides a sort of benchmark from which to begin. The other limit can be taken to be the 1826 decree ‘On rules for the future construction of churches’ that regulated and bureaucratized the process of building wooden churches and thus put an end to the age- old folk tradition that had nourished the wooden architecture of the North. Nevertheless, those boundaries are highly transparent and easily crossed, Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 because a proper study of the history of wooden architecture is impossible without a review of pre-Mongol works – the church of 882 and the Church of the Prophet Elijah in Kiev that are mentioned in the chronicles and also St Sophia’s Cathedral in Novgorod (989), the Dormition Cathedral in Rostov (991), the Dormition Church in Ustiug (1290) and archaeological material (Ioannisian 1994–6; Logvin 1976). Furthermore, even the 1826 decree could not halt the centuries-long momentum in the creation of wooden edifices, as demonstrated by two tent-roofed Churches of the Prophet Elijah – one in Panozero (1850s–70s), the other in Mashezero (1871) – and also the bell-tower of the Kizhi pogost erected in 1874. Thus the chronological 8 Introduction boundaries of the history of Russian wooden architecture can be fairly flexible and span a period from the late tenth century to successful contemporary attempts to revive the traditions of Early Russian carpentry (such as buildings in the Lake Vodlozero area in Karelia).

Note 1 Although the spelling Lake Onega is more common in English, the alternative ‘Onego’ is used in order to clearly distinguish the lake from the River Onega. Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 1 Sources

Archaeological sources The loss of hundreds and thousands of wooden buildings over the years has considerably narrowed modern architectural historians’ possibilities for research. As far back as 1577–8 Heinrich von Staden believed that by his time ‘several thousand [churches] have rotted away’ (von Staden 1967: 95). In this situation particular importance attaches to the study of primary sources – archaeological, pictorial and written. Despite the fact that wood survives very poorly in soil, archaeological investigation of mediaeval Russian wooden architecture has produced results. However, this material relates more to dwellings (Staraia Ladoga, Novgorod, Berest’e) than to works of ecclesiastical architecture that, due to their sacred status and special organizing role in the layout of a settlement, always possessed an exceptional character. The vertical supports of early Christian churches in Scandinavia were placed in holes dug in the ground and those, when found by archaeological excavation, will indicate the size of a lost feature; however, the Russian practice of laying horizontal rows of logs only very rarely left traces of buildings. Besides that, the use of identical construction techniques for secular and religious buildings, based on the simple four-sided log frame, adds considerably to the difficulty of identifying the original function of those wooden elements that are occasionally uncovered during archaeological excavations. The minimal amount of Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 remains left from wooden churches of the pre-Mongol period means we can judge their existence only from indirect indications – the presence of surviving ceramics from the floor, traces of fire damage, shallow dry-stone foundations (podvaliny), a concentration of burials around the exterior or finds of church utensils. Examples of such works of Russian wooden architecture from the pre-Mongol period are provided by the remnants of churches in the former Galician-Volhynian principality (Vasilev on the River Dniester, Onufrievshchina, Lviv, the Oleshkov archaeological site) and in Rostov Velikii (Ioannisian 1994–6: 12–22). 10 Sources Similar difficulties arise with determining the purpose of the numerous wooden structures left from mediaeval Novgorod, despite the fact that the city has been studied for decades and extensively described not only in Russian, but also in foreign historical sources (Brisbane and Hather 2007). The Novgorodian cultural layer provides rare favourable conditions for the preservation of wood, which enables us to reconstruct the layout of whole residential neighbourhoods. Researchers have made attempts to identify within the mass of construction individual objects that obviously had some special (religious) significance. Such evidence includes the so-called ‘columns of the oaken St Sophia’s Cathedral’ that actually date from the mid-eleventh century and may be the remnants of the carved decorative portal of some unknown church. There is, however, insufficient confirmation for this hypothesis since, despite their exquisite, highly artistic carving, the ‘columns’ were reused in the construction of a floor and we can only guess at their original location in the structure of the lost edifice. The theory that these pillars belonged to the semi-legendary oak St Sophia’s Cathedral, which was built in 989 immediately after Christianity came to Novgorod and burnt down in 1049, remains an attractive but unfounded piece of speculation (Zasurtsev 1967: 98–9). More rational is the opinion of Iurii Spegal’skii, who associated the pillars with the construction of a dwelling house, where they may have adorned a porch or gallery (Spegal’skii 1972: 172). Still, the fragmentary and isolated nature of the finds makes it impossible to draw any clear conclusions about the character of the pre-Mongol structure for which the columns were made. Another object that opens up rich possibilities for the interpretation of archaeological evidence on the territory of the city is the remnants of a wooden building that Marina Rodionova discovered inside the Novgorod Detinets (kremlin), to the north of the Archbishop’s Palace (Rodionova and Popov 2012). Precise dendrochronological analysis has dated this structure to the year 1287. It has a decagonal groundplan and so can be related to the type of centrally planned polygonal edifices or rotundas that were common in mediaeval Christian architecture in Europe and the south of Rus’. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that in Novgorod, which had strong ties to cities in Europe, such a church design was translated Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 into wood. This makes perfect sense, given the unfavourable conditions for the development of masonry architecture that arose in the middle of the thirteenth century. Thus, despite the fragmentary data from archaeological sources the picture presented by wooden architecture in Rus’ in the eleventh to thirteenth centuries seems extremely interesting, many-faceted and complex. It presents a wide variety of aspects and raises two most important questions – first, regarding the interaction of masonry and timber architecture, and second, regarding the possible Byzantine or European origins of particular impulses that determined the distinctive character of pre-Mongol construction. Sources 11 Pictorial sources

Wooden architecture in icons The artistic interpretation of physical reality in the western European ‘Renaissance’ understanding remained for a long time alien to Russian art. Thus detailed depictions of wooden architecture occur in early Russian painting and graphic art only in icons and book illustrations in a directly religious context. The traditional iconography for certain saints of the Russian North (Alexander of Oshevensk, Antonii Dymskii) called for them to be depicted against the background of the monasteries that they founded, which makes it possible to regard their iconic images as a more or less reliable source for the reconstruction of the appearance of those monasteries. The icon of Alexander of Oshevensk (Figure 1.1) is the most revealing in this respect. From the second half of the seventeenth century the gold background that symbolized the divine sphere was increasingly replaced in Russian icons by a depiction of three-dimensional space that icon-painters modelled using geometrically clear and tectonic architectural forms. On the one hand, the disparities of size characteristic of the mediaeval icon are retained here – the figure of the saint is disproportionately larger than the monastery he founded, which stresses the scale of his spiritual accomplishments and his significance as creator of the community. On the other hand, the archi tecture in this icon has a clear link with the actual buildings of the monastery: we can easily make out the vertical elements of the Churches of St Nicholas and the Dormition, which in keeping with Russian northern tradition were linked compositionally by the tent-roofed bell-tower standing between them. The integrity of the composition of the monastery as a whole is heightened not only by the harmonious placement of the main churches in its centre, but also by the enclosure incorporating residential and service structures that surrounds the community (Mil’chik and Ushakov 1981: 85–92). In all prob ability such attention to the specific features of the complex was due to the fact that these icons were produced for pilgrims who visited the Aleksandro-Oshevenskii Monastery and took away such images as souvenirs. This also explains the fairly large quantity of similar icons that exist showing Alexander of Oshevensk in front of his monastery Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 from different angles (in the Russian Museum in St Petersburg, the History Museum in Moscow). A similar topographical element can be found in depictions of St Prokopii of Ust’-Ianskii in front of a typical wooden church and of Sts Ioann and Prokopii of Ustiug above a panorama of the town of Velikii Ustiug. In all cases, while the icon-painting retains its conventional stylized character, the architectural images in these works are of considerable interest as sources for wooden monastic, church and urban construction in seventeenth century Rus’. Yet even when topographic specifics are not implied and deliberately excluded, works of icon-painting can provide interesting illustrations of 12 Sources

Figure 1.1 Icon of Saint Alexander of Oshevensk, last quarter of the seventeenth century, Kargopol’(?) Source: The Museum of the Russian Icon, Moscow, inv. no. 221. Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016

woodworking in Russia. A series of icons from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries devoted to the story of the icon of the Virgin of Tikhvin invariably include marginal scenes showing the construction of a wooden chapel in 1390, its subsequent dismantling and removal to a different site, and also a ﬁre. An icon of St Prokopii of Ustiug with scenes from his life (1600) presents clearly and in detail the process of erecting a srub (basic framework of logs), which notably exhibits the older method of cutting a groove in the upper surface of the logs that was still in use in the Stroganovs’ ancestral lands at the turn of the seventeenth century. Sources 13 Drawings made by foreign travellers in the late Middle Ages While for Russian people in the Middle Ages wooden buildings were com- monplace, many foreigners who visited Russia in the seventeenth century not only left written descriptions of Russia’s wooden towns and cities in the pages of their travel journals, but also produced whole series of graphic art illustrating their impressions. A comparison of the drawings of Antonis Guteeris (1615), Adam Olearius (1630s), Augustin Meyerberg (1661–2), Nicolaas Witsen (1664–5) and Erik Palmquist (1674) reveals wooden construction to be a separate theme that interested them all. A panorama of a town or an individual street, a village, estate, monastery, saltworks or fortress towers – the foreign travellers depicted all of these with varying degrees of attention to detail. However, like the architectural backgrounds in Russian icons, despite their evident topographical character these drawings need to be regarded with judicial caution. The line separating stylized elements from reality is very unsteady, again because of the loss of the buildings depicted. For example, in some instances (Ivangorod, Nizhnii Novgorod) Adam Olearius uses one and the same type of wooden church, whose upper part takes the form of a many-sided pyramid standing on its apex and surmounted by a shatër (tent-roof) (Figure 1.2). Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016

Figure 1.2 Church at a cemetery in Ivangorod, 24 May 1634 Source: Olearii 1906: 8. 14 Sources Not a single church with that kind of architecture has survived down to the present. Thus, either Olearius’s drawings inform us of an absolutely unknown type of wooden church and are an exceptionally valuable source for the history of Russian wooden architecture; or else they should be interpreted as a piece of typification that lost its connection with reality during the engraving of Olearius’s original drawings when his book was being prepared for publication several years after his return from Russia. The works of Meyerberg, who produced a series of pen-and-ink views of villages and towns on the way from Novgorod to Moscow, may seem more plausible since his expressive, fluid manner testifies to an immediate link to the location. Meyerberg, however, does not go into detail, limiting himself to panoramic views, possibly due to the speed with which he was travelling and the brevity of his stops. Probably one of the most interesting pictorial primary sources for the history of wooden church architecture in Rus’ is a magnificent drawing of the Monastery of St Nicholas outside Moscow in the album of the Swedish diplomat Erik Palmquist (1674) (Figure 1.3). This is unlikely to have been an architec tural fantasy because it was part of Palmquist’s task as a scout to record with meticulous veracity all that he saw and to compile a sort of encyclopaedia of Russian life at that time. The architectural peculiarity of the monastery’s tower-like church comes from three tiers of crossed bochki (ogival gabled roofs, literally ‘barrels’) of diminishing size placed one on top of another. Despite the absence of known analogues, the church in Palmquist’s drawing does display details found in other works of wooden architecture that are still extant: kokoshniki (decorative miniature versions of the bochka) at the base of the drum of the dome above the sanctuary (similar to the domes of the Ascension Church of 1669 from Kushereka and the tiered Transfiguration Church of 1714 in the Kizhi pogost) or bochki facing the four points of the compass.

Graphic views and architectural drawings from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Views and architectural drawings from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are an extremely informative category of pictorial sources for the Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 history of wooden architecture. In contrast, however, to the drawings of seventeenth-century foreign travellers who focussed on wooden buildings as one of the most interesting features of Russian life, in the graphic art of the 1700s and 1800s there is not the same unanimity of thematic approach. Works of architecture were recorded totally unsystematically, cropping up by chance on the pages of topographic atlases (the 1797 Atlas of Arkhangelsk Province, for example), in albums, technical drawings or books, which evidently reﬂects the general attitude of the period to wooden architecture as a secondary and ‘provincial’ matter – not, admittedly, devoid of a note of melancholic nostalgia for the days before Peter the Great. Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016

Figure 1.3 Monastery of St Nicholas, outside Moscow (1674) Source: Palmquist s.a.: 10. 16 Sources Perhaps it is in this vein that we should regard the scale drawings that Ivan Michurin made of the royal palace in Kolomenskoe in 1763 and also the views of the Stroganovs’ mansion in Sol’vychegodsk in the drawings of Afanasii Chudinov (1793) and Ivan Chesskii (1842). Of special value among the pictorial sources from the eighteenth century is a drawing from a book by the academician Nikolai Ozeretskovskii showing the Kizhi pogost that was made during his journey around Lake Onego in 1785 (Ozeretskovskii 1792: 23). The complex is shown after the completion of all the building work that was carried out there throughout almost the whole of the first half of the century. To the right of the Trans- figuration Church is the Church of the Intercession that was reconstructed from a tent-roofed building into one with multiple domes in the 1740s. The drawing clearly shows the zigzag belt of small gables (frontonnyi poias) on the octagon – a feature typical of church architecture on the shores of Lake Onego. Only the bell-tower is different from the appearance of the pogost today: in the drawing in Ozeretskovskii’s book it is placed on a low chetverik (square srub) and connected by a hanging gallery to the porch of the Transfiguration Church. This sort of coupling of a church and an octagonal bell-tower on a square base was also a feature of the architecture of the Lake Onego area and became a distinctive regional characteristic in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (the Churches of St Nicholas in Soginitsy, St Barbara on Iandomozero and St Demetrius in Shcheleiki). After the reconstruction of the Kizhi pogost bell-tower in 1862–74, which changed the proportions of its square and octagonal sections, the hanging gallery was dismantled. Additionally the drawing in the book shows the location of the entrance to the pogost and the structure of the wooden enclosure that was later lost and replaced by a wall of heaped up stones. In view of the serious changes caused by nineteenth-century renovations of the Kizhi complex, the illustration in Ozeretskovskii’s book makes that publication one of the most interesting pictorial sources for the history of wooden church architecture of the Russian North. Of the same level of importance are two drawings giving views of the Stroganovs’ wooden mansion in Sol’vychegodsk which provide a demonstration of the difficulty of working with sources, even relatively late ones. The perspective plan of Sol’vychegodsk that Chudinov made in 1793 Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 reproduces the topography of the town and the location of the wooden buildings, the most significant of which was the Stroganovs’ palace – a tall two-storey annexe on a high basement (podklet) with covered steps ascending in two flights. The tall log tower is surmounted by a picturesque bochka. Chudinov’s drawing is particularly valuable because it provides a basis for assessing the persistence of certain traditions in wooden residential architecture. The position of the Stroganovs’ mansion adjoining the Annunciation Cathedral, to which it was connected by a passageway gallery, accords with pre-Mongol practice in the construction of princely residences; to a certain degree it is testimony to the architectural expression of the Sources 17 political ambitions of the Stroganovs, who were the practically absolute rulers of the north-eastern fringes of the Muscovite state in the middle and second half of the sixteenth century. Furthermore, the tower with a bochka top accords with the reconstruction of the late twelfth-century Novgorodian mansion of the eminent icon painter Oles’ Grechin, which had a similar composition. The depiction of the Stroganovs’ residence that appeared a half-century later than Chudinov’s drawing, in an 1842 engraving by Ivan Cheskii, no longer has any sort of specific topography and can scarcely be considered a reliable source. Most probably it was produced on the basis of oral descriptions and greatly romanticized in the process. The nineteenth-century artist turns the early Russian khoromy into a semblance of a mediaeval castle, retaining only the main noteworthy features of the original – living space above a high basement and the towers.

Photographs The category of late, but probably most informative sources, contains photographs dating from the late nineteenth century through to the second half of the twentieth. One of the first to start using a camera to record works of architecture was Vladimir Suslov (1857–1921) during his large-scale expedition to the north of Norway and Russia in 1886. Not long previously, Lev Dahl on his journey to the Lake Onego area in 1876 and Suslov himself on his trip to the Northern Dvina in 1883, had still relied on the established genre of graphic architectural views; now the camera was becoming broadly adopted in the practice of field research. Returning with a whole panorama of photographs showing the wooden architecture of the Russian North, Suslov established a sort of starting point for a new era in the study of Russian architecture. Documentary photography delivered the source from the earlier subjectivity of the draughtsman or even professional artist, while still making it possible for the photographer to present his own individual vision of a building. The special artistic expressiveness of the wooden architecture of the Russian North was keenly felt by Ivan Bilibin, who gained fame as an illustrator and later as a stage designer for the Ballets Russes but in 1902–4, at the very start of his creative path, made several journeys to Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 Arkhangelsk, Vologda and Olonets provinces. Bilibin made an important contribution to the study of northern architecture with his extensive photographic archive (today in the collection of the Institute for the History of Material Culture in St Petersburg) that contains material on dozens of wooden churches, including one of the earliest series of shots of the Kizhi pogost. Here mention must be made of Bilibin’s special artist’s eye, his gift for composing a picture and choosing an angle of view that enables us to appreciate an architectural ensemble in all its splendour. It is not without good cause that many of Bilibin’s photographs served as the basis for the celebrated postcards he created for the Society of Saint Eugenia 18 Sources (a medical charity) depicting churches in Verkhov’e and Poduzhem’e, on the Kokshen’ga and Pochozero. Other important collections of photographs from the early twentieth century that have become invaluable sources for the history of the wooden architecture of the Russian North are those taken by Dmitrii Mileev, Vladimir Plotnikov, Nikolai Shabunin, Andrei Karetnikov, Sergei Prokudin- Gorskii, Igor’ Grabar’ and in the 1920s–30s by Konstantin Romanov, Feodor Kalikin and Nicolay Udalenkov. During the Second World War, Lars Pettersson undertook the cataloguing of works of wooden architecture in the territory of Karelia occupied by Finnish forces. In view of the fact that dozens of churches were lost in the period from the late nineteenth century and throughout the whole of the twentieth, photographs have become the most significant and informative visual primary source for the history of wooden architecture of the Russian North.

Written sources

Mediaeval written sources (up to the early eighteenth century): chronicles Although they do testify to the existence of wooden edifices, the chronicles of mediaeval Rus’ rarely give us detailed accounts of them. Entirely typical is the following brief mention of the construction of a wooden church from the Novgorod Fourth Chronicle for the year 1389: ‘And on Fox Hill a wooden Church of the Nativity of the Virgin was built, and on Falcon Hill a wooden Church of St Nicholas and a monastery were built.’ Followed almost immediately by: ‘27 May [1392], in the afternoon, the Church of the Holy Virgin burnt down, and the whole monastery on Fox Hill burnt’ (PSRL 1848: 96–7, 99). Nevertheless, such laconic references in the extensive corpus of Russian chronicle collections are exceptionally valuable because of the very early dates of some of the buildings mentioned: the Church of the Prophet Elijah in Kiev in 945, (PSRL 2000b: 44–5), St Sophia’s in Novgorod (989), the Church of the Virgin in Vladimir – ‘cathedral of wood’ – (990) (PSRL 1856: 313), the Dormition Church in Rostov, begun Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 in 992. Of the grandeur of this last edifice, consumed by fire in 1160, the chronicler wrote succinctly ‘there was none like it nor will there be’ (PSRL 2000b: 232). Mention has already been made of the wooden St Sophia’s Cathedral in Novgorod which perished in flames in 1049. The chronicle report provides more details: ‘On 4 March, a Saturday, St Sophia’s burnt down. It was fairly built and decorated and had 13 tops’ (PSRL 2000a: 181). The dramatic pictures of mediaeval conflagrations regularly painted on the pages of the Novgorod chronicles provide at the same time indirect confirm - ation of the determinant role that was allotted to wooden churches in the cityscape. On 18 April 1299, the Saturday before Easter, Sources 19 a storm arose with a whirlwind and there was a strong and rapid fire. Some, snatching up but little, fled from their homes, and the rest was all taken by the fire . . . At St James’s the watchman was burnt to death, on the Market Side 12 churches burnt down and they did not manage to carry out all the icons or books. And in the Church of Christ several people died of the fire and two priests. In the Nerevskii Konets [district] 10 churches burnt as did much riches in the churches and a good man, Oleferii Lazarevich, perished. And in the morning instead of joy there was sorrow and lamentation. For our sins the prophecy of the Prophet Isaiah was fulfilled, who said, ‘Then I will turn your festivals into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation’. (Amos 8:10 in PSRLa 2000: 329)

For the subsequent history of Novgorod’s architecture, though, the chronicle material is also interesting in that it records the dynamics of the appearance of masonry and wooden churches, making it possible to reconstruct a picture of urban development at a given stage:

The wooden Church of the Resurrection was consecrated, on the Red Hill, by the Plotnichnyi Konets, and a monastery established. That autumn [1415] two masonry churches were completed in the Liudin Konets – the Exaltation of the Cross and St Luke’s. (PSRL 1889: 162–3)

The simultaneous construction of both masonry and wooden churches in early ﬁfteenth-century Novgorod is borne out by another chronicle which states that in the year 1419–20:

Archimandrite Varlaam erected a masonry church in the Yur’ev Monastery to the Nativity of the Virgin. Mikhail Iur’evich built the wooden Church of St Michael at Kolmovo, and Hegumen Fedosii the masonry Holy Trinity Church at Klopsk in 60 days. (PSRL 2000a: 412)

Cadastres (Pistsovye knigi) that were compiled from the late fifteenth Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 century, the time when the centralized Muscovite state was being formed, to collect information on the socio-demographic and economic situation for purposes of taxation, contain among other things information about ecclesiastical buildings in Russian towns, pogosty, monasteries and convents. The clerks sent off to the Russian North (the territories that had belonged to the Novgorodian republic) systematically recorded one pogost after another, beginning as a rule with the administrative centre, where there was a church or a whole ensemble (Voskoboinikova 2001). Since prosperity could be judged by the number of churches, their size, their architecture, church utensils and icons with precious metal covers, the contents of sixteenth- and 20 Sources seventeenth-century cadastres are valuable indicators of the trends in and character of wooden church construction in the North, and in some cases of its typology as well. For example, the Kizhi pogost was inventoried over the years by Iurii Saburov (1496), Andrei Likhachev (1563), Andrei Pleshcheev (1582–3), after the Time of Troubles by Pëtr Voeikov (1616–19) and then by Nikita Panin and Semion Kopylov (1628–31). A comparison of the records left by several generations of clerks produces a picture of the architectural development of one of the most significant pogosty on Lake Onego; this makes it possible to recreate partially the history of the churches that preceded the present world-famous ensemble. These descriptive documents take the form of a list of properties or items – from the most important to the least, from the centre to the periphery and from an exterior depiction to interior furnishings. A many-sided approach to cadastres as a primary source for research into Russian wooden architecture is perfectly illustrated by the publications of Irina and Oleg Cherniakov, who systematized the descriptions of north-west Lake Onego made between 1563 and 1678 to reveal the dynamics, evolution and peculiarities of church-building in the area over those decades (Cherniakova and Cherniakov 1988). Recent studies of cadastres and similar descriptive sources have contributed considerably to the history of wooden architecture on the White Sea coastline, since a major part of it was owned by the Solovetskii Monastery (for instance, churches, saltworks and monastic yards in Purnema and Nizhmozero) (RGADA 1201–1–79: 203, 211–14). One of the most recent examples of such descriptive surveys is the Vologda Census Book (Perepisnaia kniga) of 1711–12 which contains information on the number of the churches, dwelling houses and farmsteads, and also specific details of structures (Cherkasova and Pugach 2008). Study of the Vologda Census Book has made it possible to reconstruct a complete documentary picture of the late mediaeval Northern town just before the sweeping changes in the historical townscape that occurred in the eighteenth century. Another group of written sources comprises the poriadnye zapisi: con - tracts between clients (peasant communities) and teams (artels) of builders that list in detail the features of the intended building – its spatial composition, height, decoration and interior structure. Not one of the churches Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 built to a contract that has so far come to light has survived down to the present day, but a careful reading of the texts and conversion to our modern system of measurement makes it possible to reconstruct those buildings in accordance with the parameters agreed in the document.

Accounts and notes of European travellers The reports and observations on late mediaeval Russia made by European travellers between the mid-sixteenth century and the early eighteenth represent a signiﬁcant element in the overall history of Russian-European Sources 21 relations. The emergence and strengthening of the Muscovite state during the reigns of Ivan III (1462–1505) and Vasilii III (1505–33) was associated with the arrival of numerous Italian architects, engineers and craftsmen, whose skills and technologies helped their Russian clients to give visual expression to their achievements. From a historical perspective those ﬁrst generations of foreigners to come to Muscovy opened up the new-born country to Europe – in a certain sense as part of the Age of Discovery. From that point onwards, the common challenge of the Ottoman threat to Christian monarchies and involvement in reciprocal trade and commerce laid the foundation for close links between the kingdoms of Europe and Russia. Over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries a general impression of late mediaeval Russia was created. This spread very rapidly across Europe through the extensive publication of reports, descriptions and notes written by a succession of travellers such as Richard Chancellor, Jacques Margeret, Jan Struys, Adam Olearius and Cornelis de Bruijn (see: Hakluyt 1599; Margeret 1669; Struys 1684; Olearius 1669; de Bruijn 1714). The large number of translations and further editions of these works demonstrates the great popularity of such accounts and, consequently, a strong interest in Russia. This is only the most visible aspect of European impressions of Russia and more materials (the diary of Nicolaas Witsen, for instance) remained unpublished until the second half of the twentieth century (Witsen 1996). Beginning with Ambrogio Contarini, who visited Moscow in 1476–7, the massive scale of wooden construction in Russian towns and cities was something that all foreign travellers noted as a distinctive, even exotic feature. The English mariner Anthony Jenkinson, who spent time in Russia in 1557–8, recalled that

The houses are builded with wood of Fire [ﬁr] trees, ioyned one with another, and round without: the houses are foure square without any yron or stone worke, covered with birch Barkes and wood over the same: their Churches are all of wood, two for every parish, one to be heated for Winter and the other for Sommer . . . The citie of Musko is great, the houses for the most part of wood, and some of stone, with windowes Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 of yron, which serve for summer time. There are many faire Churches of stone, but more of wood, which are made hot in the winter time. The Emperours lodging is in a faire, and large castle, walled foure square of bricke, high, and thicke . . . In his palace are Churches, some of stone, and some of wood, with round towers, fairely gilded. (Morgan and Coote 1886, I: 27; 34–5)

A few years later Thomas Randolphe wrote in 1568, that ‘Colmogro [Kholmogory] is a greate towne builded all of wood, not walled but scattered house from house’ and 22 Sources Vologda standeth upon the river of Vologda, which commeth into Dwina. The towne is great and long, built all of wood as all their townes are. In this towne the Emperour hath built a castle invironed with a wall of stone and bricke, the walles faire and high rounde about. Here (as in all other their townes) are many Churches, some built of bricke, the rest of wood, many Monkes and Nunnes in it: a towne also of great traﬁque and many rich marchants there dwelling. (Morganand Coote 1886, II: 245–6)

Following Jenkinson, the Italian Alexander Guagnini in his Sarmatiae Europeae descriptio [A Description of Sarmatian Europe], ﬁrst published in 1578, lists Nizhnii Novgorod, Riazan, Kashira, Tula, Kaluga, Smol- ensk, Viazma, Tver’ and Yaroslavl’ as practically entirely wooden. Jacques Margeret was also struck by this peculiarity, writing that the city of Moscow was

full of wooden buildings. Each building has only two storeys, but a large space around on account of the ﬁres to which they are much subject. In recent time they have built many stone churches. There are also an inﬁnite number of wooden ones and even the streets are paved or boarded with wood. (Margeret 1669: 40)

Adam Olearius, who was in Moscow in 1636, gives a detailed description of the city’s wooden housing:

’Tis true, that the Palaces of great Lords, and the Houses of some rich Merchants excepted, which are of Brick or Stone, all the rest are of Wood, and made up of beams, and cross-pieces of Firr layd one upon another. They cover them with bark of trees, upon which they sometimes put another covering of Turfes.

Olearius goes on to state that ‘there is also lately built a very fair Palace of stone, according to Italian Architecture, for the young Prince; but the Great Duke [Grand Prince] continues still in his wooden Palace, as being more Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 healthy than stone-structures’ (Olearius 1669: 43). The ﬁrm conviction that living in wooden buildings was more beneﬁcial for health was evidently generally held across Rus’. The Dutch traveller Jan Struys, following the already established tradition for foreigners’ descriptions of Russian towns and cities, wrote in 1668 of Pskov as

a large City, a great part thereof is surrounded with a wall . . . Their houses are made sleightly of Trees and pieces of Timber, let in with joynts, without any Gentility or ornament . . . ‘Tis true they have some Houses of stone, but the most eminent and wealthy Citizens chuse rather Sources 23 to lie in Wooden-Houses than in those, for that they say, the latter are more wholsom. (Struys 1684: 121)

Samuel Collins adds that ‘they have some reason to think so, because their stone Rooms being arched thick reverberate a dampness when the stone is hot’ (Collins 1671: 57). In Struys’s time, as during Olearius’s visit thirty years earlier, members of the Grand Prince’s family lived in wooden dwellings: ‘the Court of Emperours Sister, being a fair Palace, but of Wood, built after a quaint and artificial manner’ (Struys 1684: 129). It was actually during Struys’s sojourn in Moscow that the construction of Alexei Mikhailovich’s famous wooden palace at suburban Kolomenskoe (begun in 1667) took place (see Hamilton 1954: 106–107). At the same time, in the course of his description of Russian cities Jenkinson expressed justified concern about the ‘feare of burning: for they are sore plagued with fire’ (Morgan and Coote 1886, I: 27). This characteristic of the Russian urban environment was also very much in the mind of Heinrich von Staden who drew up a detailed plan for an invasion of Russia from northern Europe and recommended taking by way of armament several ‘heavy cannon and mortars so as to smash the gates of wooden towns, and mortars in case they are needed to start fires in the wooden towns and monasteries’. Evidently he had been impressed by the Great Fire of Moscow in 1571 (von Staden 1967: 47). According to Olearius

The carelessness of the Muscovites and the disorders of their house- keeping are such that there hardly passes a moneth, nay not a week, but some place or other takes ﬁre, which, meeting with what is very combustible, does in a moment reduce many houses. (Olearius 1669: 43)

Jan Struys, describing the ‘ﬁre-commands’ of Moscow in the late 1660s, witnessed that

by the reason of the great scarcity of Water in Moscou, the ﬁrst thing they lay their hands to, is to disjoynt the Houses, and therefore for the Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 most part are train’d up in that kind of Architecture, to be assistant again in the rebuilding of the same, when all danger is supposed to be over. (Struys, 1684: 136)

The same thing was repeated by the Swede Erik Palmquist (Palmquist 2012: 228–30). And after a ﬁre, as Olearius stated,

those, who have their houses burnt, have this comfort withall, that they may buy houses ready built, at a market for that purpose . . . at a very 24 Sources easy rate, and have them taken down, transported, and in a short time set up in the same place where the former stood. (Olearius 1669: 43)

The situation was the same in 1669: ‘If a Citizen has his House burn’d he may be everyday supplied with a new, which (considering the old is brought to Ashes) may, without much cost, be placed where the other stood’ (Struys, 1684: 135). The Russians even found a metaphysical aspect to their conflagrations: ‘If a Church be burn’d, they say it is ascended, they must not say burn’d’ (Collins 1671: 25) – as if it had gone to Heaven and became one of the sacred structures of the Heavenly Jerusalem. This belief, described by Samuel Collins in the 1660s, is also reflected in earlier sources, since the same was stated concerning the fire of 1049 that destroyed the oak cathedral of St Sophia in Novgorod: ‘and the Church of Saint Sophia ascended from the fire on the 4th day of March, a Saturday’ (PSRL 1879: 2). It is noteworthy that no less lofty language was used to describe the fire that destroyed the Church of Vladimir Icon of the Virgin in Belaia Sluda in 1962 by the English traveller and researcher David Buxton, who had spent time on the Northern Dvina three decades earlier: ‘After a life-span of 320 years (well above average for a wooden church), the precious relic was struck by lightning and ended its days in a mighty blaze, as impressive in death as in life’ (Buxton 1981: 49).

Late written sources (eighteenth–nineteenth centuries) The church reform imposed by Peter the Great (which included replacing the Patriarch with a bureaucratic Synod) and other sweeping changes in Russian history in the eighteenth century had a strong impact on the administrative and structural organization of the Northern dioceses and on ecclesiastical record keeping. The splitting of the ancient archbishoprics of Novgorod and Vologda into smaller territories turned the towns of Arkhangelsk and Velikii Ustiug into new eparchial centres. Catherine the Great’s reform in 1775 led to the formation of an additional diocese of Olonets, which is now a regional town in the Karelian Republic. Between the eighteenth and early twentieth Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 centuries the process of church building in the Russian North was administered from those focal points and the documents of the Synod period illustrate the process of interaction between church and secular authorities at the centre and periphery of the Russian Empire. The regional archives in Arkhangelsk, Vologda and Petrozavodsk contain sources relating to the activities of eparchies and consistories, and also preserve parish documents, accounts and petitions. The increasing bureaucracy from the nineteenth century onwards has supplied modern researchers with a huge quantity of documents, such as detailed parish inventories. This category of document, an intermediate type between the Sources 25 mediaeval cadastre and modern statistical report, represents an interesting historical phenomenon and provides a thorough account of a church building and its compound. From the 1820s the authorities’ determination to impose church construction according to unified standards under the supervision of a professional architect produced extensive correspondence between all the participants in the process – the parishioners as initiators of the church building, priests, bishops’ aides, architects and church and civil committees responsible for approving the budgets, revising and refining the projects. Among the late written sources we can also include the writings of travellers from the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth, whose attention was sometimes caught by a particular work of wooden architecture. For example, from the travel notes of Captain Iakov Mordvinov we can deduce that in 1752 the Intercession Church in the Kizhi pogost already had ten domes. In other words, by that time the reconstruction of the church had been completed and it had lost its earlier tent-roof structure (Mordvinov 1888: 12). Such information becomes particularly precious when it concerns lost works that were not otherwise recorded in any way. Shortly before the destruction of the Resurrection Cathedral in Kola, the Arkhangelsk local historian Vasilii Vereshchagin described the building as unusually large for such a small town and noted that the cathedral was ‘built of exceptionally thick logs’, while its interior decoration was ‘astonishing for its antiquity’ (Vereshchagin 1849: 127). Such mentions, albeit still rare in those times, are evidence of Russian society’s gradually awakening interest in venerable wooden buildings and the occasional ethnographic observations of inquisitive travellers would soon develop into scholarly study of this distinctive branch of Russian architecture. At the present time the primary sources from the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that are most in demand with those studying wooden architecture of the Russian North are the metriki – ‘dossiers’ for churches compiled to a standard pattern sent out to parishes in the form of a questionnaire by the Imperial Archaeological Commission in 1887. Very useful material can be found in the archives of the provincial departments of construction and the consistories of the Arkhangelsk, Vologda and Olonets eparchies; these contain not only documents relating to current Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 construction or repair work, but also historical information on earlier churches that can be found in nineteenth-century paperwork in connection with reconstruction, loss and so on. Original historical documentation is of fundamental importance for practical research, especially in relation to restoration processes. Consulta- tion of primary sources will expand the circle of known objects that have previously remained unexplored and broaden our view of church architecture of the Russian North. Archive documents will supply additional information on the reconstruction and renovation of extant monuments and enable us to recreate the process of church building in the eighteenth 26 Sources and, especially, nineteenth centuries, when that activity was managed and overseen by the Holy Synod. Thorough study of historical sources and documents in the archives helps to shed light on the broad experience of collaboration between different levels of church and civil authorities, the mistakes and losses caused by non-professional and amateur intervention and, of course, the inspiring achievements of cooperation between eminent architects and researchers who have helped to preserve and maintain unique monuments of Russian wooden church architecture. Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 2 The discovery and study of Russian wooden architecture

The discovery of Russian wooden architecture: late nineteenth–early twentieth century The first steps along the path to studying Russian wooden architecture were made back in the middle of the nineteenth century, when the traveller and ethnographer Sergei Maksimov delivered to the architect Andrei Zhukovskii in St Petersburg architectural drawings of Resurrection Cathedral in Kola; it had burnt down in 1854, during the British bombardment of the town (see Figure 4.20, page 79). Even at that time the grandeur and defenceless- ness of old wooden churches presented the scholarly community with the problematic task of investigating their history. However, the systematic study of Russian wooden architecture began only in the mid-1870s and is associated with the academician Lev Dahl (or Dal’, 1834–78). He was responsible for a large number of publications in the periodical Zodchii [The Architect] and also architectural drawings and sketches of churches in Olonets province (Dal’ 1875; 1877). These included scale drawings of the Church of St Lazarus in the Muromskii Monastery, the most ancient of all the surviving wooden edifices, and of the Transfigura- tion Church in Kizhi (1714). Lev Dahl’s untimely death prevented him from continuing his researches. Dahl’s successor in the field would be Vladimir Suslov, known as one of the founders of the Russian school of restoration. He began his scholarly career with large-scale expeditions to the Russian North. In 1883 Suslov became the first to study works of wooden architecture on the Northern Dvina and in 1886 he undertook a journey to Sweden and Norway. He Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 returned to Russia around the North Cape and set about studying, photographing, measuring and producing scale drawings of churches in villages on the White Sea (Nënoksa, Una, Unezhma, Shueretskoe, Kem’) and the basin of the River Onega (Podporozh’e, Turchasovo, Chekuevo). Suslov returned to St Petersburg via the Kargopol’ and Pudozh areas and the south side of Lake Onego. The end results of the trip were an immense archive of photographs, drawings and historical data, and also a book – Putevye zametki o severe Rossii i Norvegii [Travel Notes on the North of Russia and Norway] – published in 1888 (Suslov 1888). 28 Discovery of wooden architecture Vladimir Suslov was one of the first in Russia to put forward proposals for the restoration of wooden architectural monuments. To a large extent he shared the approach taken in the 1880s by Norwegian architects, who also perceived the composition of the old northern church as the embodiment of a ‘national style’. In that period, in both Russia and Norway, there was the evident start of a shift towards the recognition of the value of old wooden churches. In each country we observe a parallel tendency towards the preservation and restoration of those few dozen edifices that for various reasons had fortuitously avoided destruction in the previous centuries. The 1880s became a real heyday for Norwegian architectural historiography and restoration science. The most important figures in this field at that time were Nicolay Nicolaysen (1817–1911), to whose plan in 1884 a stave church from the village of Gol was reassembled near the Bygdøy royal estate outside Christiania (Oslo), and Peter Andreas Blix (1831–1901), who carried out a very important, although somewhat controversial, restoration of the church in Hopperstad. In late-1880s Russia Suslov, in his material relating to the Trinity Church in Nënoksa, anticipating the methodology of the Soviet architect and restorer Aleksandr Opolovnikov, expressed the opinion that encasing the srub in boards and widening the windows distorted the appearance of the traditional Russian wooden church and consequently his project called for the uncovering of the logs and the restoration of the original window openings and the western gallery. However, the fanciful porch with carved columns and a bochka roof was a flight of fantasy on the part of Suslov, who was keen to bring out still more the fairy-tale character of what was anyway a remarkable five-shatër church. Thus his proposal embodied the contradictory characteristics of that era, when the embryo of a new scientific approach to the task of restoring architectural monuments was still accompanied by vestiges of the earlier ‘stylistic method’. Despite the fact that in the years that followed Suslov devoted a significant portion of his creative energy to the restoration of works of masonry architecture – St Sophia’s Cathedral in Novgorod, the Cathedral of the Saviour in the Mirozhskii Monastery in Pskov, the Transfiguration Cathedral in Pereslavl-Zalesskii and many others, he continued to feel a keen sympathy for wooden architecture. In the years 1898–1907 the scholar Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 produced the still unpublished manuscript Survey of Carpentry in Rus’ that is kept in the Research Museum of the Russian Academy of Arts. The Survey can be regarded as the first systematic history of Russian wooden architecture, in which the author covers very broadly the historical and theoretical aspects of the subject. Today Suslov’s legacy – projects, measurements, technical drawings, photographs, drawings, watercolours and theoretical writings – is an utterly priceless resource; many of the buildings that he photographed or drew under the very difficult conditions of his travels no longer exist today and his material at times remains the sole evidence we have of irretrievably lost Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016

Figure 2.1 The Trinity Church in Nënoksa (1727–1729) Source: Suslov, 1888: Fig. III. 30 Discovery of wooden architecture masterpieces. Suslov’s study of the history of Russian wooden architecture was based on a far broader set of examples than the old photographs, hypotheses and reconstructions to which Soviet scholars were forced to resort after the large-scale losses of the twentieth century. In the light of this, Suslov’s researches are not merely of historical interest, but remain important for present-day scholarship. Gradually the treasury of the Russian North revealed itself not just to scholars, but to the wider public as well. ‘Only now, little by little, are our monuments of forgotten native art with every passing day becoming better understood and dearer to the Russian heart,’ Suslov wrote in 1888 (Suslov 1888: 67). Eminent artists played a major role in the popularization of the North as a subject in Russia in the late nineteenth century – Konstantin Korovin, Valentin Serov, Vasilii Vereshchagin, Ivan Bilibin and Igor’ Grabar’. While Korovin and Serov, who both visited the North repeatedly in the 1890s, only touched casually upon wooden architecture, Vereshchagin, Bilibin and Grabar’ devoted a considerable part of their painterly talent to the cause of promoting and preserving Russian architecture. In 1894 Vereshchagin made a journey along the Northern Dvina, producing a remarkable series of paintings in which he recorded for pos- terity, for example, the unique interior of the Church of Sts Peter and Paul in Puchuga. In his book Na Severnoi Dvine. Po dereviannym tserkvam [On the Northern Dvina. Touring the Wooden Churches] (Vereshchagin 1896) the artist raises the question of preserving the wooden heritage of the area, lamenting the ignorance of the locals who were unable to properly appreciate the architectural masterpieces that surrounded them in their daily lives and the lack of a historical memory in those who were supposed to care for the ancient edifices. The same theme runs through Ivan Bilibin’s article ‘Narodnoe tvorchestvo Russkogo Severa’ [‘The Folk Art of the Russian North’] (Bilibin 1904), which was the chief literary result of his journeys. Although this essay was written by an artist and set designer, it is of special interest to architectural historians, particularly in those places where Bilibin analyses the peculiarities of the northern carpenters’ construction of architectural form. At the same time as Bilibin, Igor’ Grabar’ was also discovering the architecture of the Russian North. After making a trip down the Northern Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 Dvina in 1902, a route that had already become traditional, he remained permanently enchanted by the edifices of the region. Grabar’s favourite places would become Permogor’e, Rakuly and Panilovo, all of which he also depicted in a series of picture postcards. It was during this journey that the plan took shape in the artist’s head for a large-scale history of Russian art. In the first volume of that magnum opus Grabar’ contributed a chapter on ‘The Wooden Architecture of the Russian North’ (Grabar’ and Gornostaev 1910; Grabar’ 1969: 165–235). He wrote it together with Fëdor Gornostaev and it was illustrated with photographs taken by the authors and Ivan Bilibin, as well as scale drawings by Vladimir Suslov. This was one of the Discovery of wooden architecture 31 first attempts to systemize and give a theoretical interpretation of the factual material. Grabar’ grouped the churches into five basic types – klet’, shatër, kub, tiered and many-domed – establishing a typology that would prevail in the literature for decades to come. This makes the publication of his history of Russian art one of the most important events in the study of the country’s wooden architecture. The appeals made by the scholarly and artistic community concerning the fate of the unique works of northern timber construction did not go unheeded; in the early twentieth century the situation resulting from the critical condition of many masterpieces of Russian architecture was taken under strict control by the Imperial Archaeological Commission (IAC). The commission, which from 1886 to 1917 was headed by Count Alexei Bobrinskii, did not simply put a stop to the wave of demolitions and dilettante renovations of venerable buildings, but also contributed to the formation in Russia of an organized system for the preservation of monuments. Over many years the IAC reacted promptly and sympathetically to requests and reports sent in from various provinces, examining them at regular sessions devoted to restoration (IIAC 1911; 1914; 1915; 1916). It dispatched architects to make inspections, sought funding and co-ordinated all stages of the restoration process. Against this background, a separate chapter in the history of the field is represented by the activities of Dmitrii Mileev (1878–1914), who on assignment from the commission made dozens of surveys and scale drawings of northern wooden churches that remain of exceptional value. Mileev’s expeditions of 1905–6 can be considered the start of a systematic approach to the problem of preserving Russia’s wooden architectural monuments, which entailed cataloguing them and at the same time assessing the degree of deterioration of the constructions. In the course of just those two summer seasons, he measured, photographed and inspected at least forty-nine objects spread across the whole of the Russian North. Undoubtedly Mileev took account of the practices of Dahl and Suslov, who had made the first steps in this direction, and some of the churches to which Mileev turned his attention had already been mentioned in the publications of the artists Vereshchagin and Bilibin. Mileev’s journeys, however, already had specific, practical aims connected with saving works of wooden architecture and did Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 not merely ascertain their artistic value and parlous state of preservation. The result was an extensive catalogue of measurements, plans, descriptions and photographs of architectural masterpieces in the Russian North, many of which have since been irreparably lost. A no less important result, however, was the repair work carried out in many places in the years that followed on the basis of the material gathered by Mileev’s expeditions, which marked the beginning of the systematic restoration of wooden architectural monuments in Russia. The scale of the work that Mileev carried out in just a few summer field seasons from 1906 to 1914 is particularly impressive if we take account of 32 Discovery of wooden architecture the fact that at the same time he was engaged in excavating the Church of the Tithe in Kiev and the restoration of the Ipat’ev Monastery in Kostroma for the Tercentenary of the House of Romanov. Mileev was responsible for the restoration of the Church of the Epiphany in Chëlmuzhi, which was also part of the programme for renovating works of architecture associated with the ruling Romanov dynasty. In 1906 Mileev devised a plan for moving the bell-tower of the ensemble in Chukhcher’ma that was carried out in 1911 (see Figure 4.4, page 57). The activities of this highly dedicated scholar also notably included a course of lectures on Russian wooden architecture that he gave at the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts and at the Architecture Courses for Women. A study of the life of Dmitrii Mileev, his projects, his legacy of drawings and photographs and the records of his addresses to sessions of the IAC, testifies to his having developed a general, very mature concept for the restoration of works of wooden architecture. His projects were always very precise with regard to each object and far from always called for complete dismantling and reassembly. As a rule they were limited to the replacement of the lower tiers of logs, the installation of a stone foundation and repair of the cladding – that is to say, the elimination of the chief causes that had led to the building becoming dilapidated and, often, skewed off its axis. Mileev completely shared Suslov’s position and made it his goal to free a building of the accretions of later years. He was one of the first to come forward with practical measures for neutralizing the distortions caused by nineteenth-century reconstructions. Pre-revolutionary studies in this field were summed up in the systematic Course on the History of Russia Architecture by Mikhail Krasovskii. Summing up the research carried out by his predecessors, most notably Ivan Zabelin, who identified Russian wooden architecture with the concept of Russian national artistic creativity free from foreign influences, Krasovskii asserts:

We shall allude merely to the fact that the church of the village of Kolomenskoe and the Intercession Cathedral [‘St Basil’s’] in Moscow . . . are in their general idea and in the majority of the details entirely original ediﬁces that have nothing in common with either the architecture of Western Europe or the architecture of Byzantium and Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 particularly signiﬁcant for us is the fact that their builders were clearly imitating the forms of our wooden churches. (Krasovskii 1916: 11)

The author examined in detail the technology of constructing wooden buildings and analysed their various types – dwellings, service buildings and defensive structures, paying attention as well to the crosses and ‘srubtsy’ [little sruby] erected on graves and the fences enclosing church pogosty – at Liadny and Oshevenskoe, for example, of which no trace whatsoever now remains. Krasovskii continued the line of multi-disciplinary study of works Discovery of wooden architecture 33 of Russian wooden architecture. He developed the already established classiﬁcation and separated the church types chronologically into klet’, shatër, kub, tiered and many-domed. By way of illustrations he used the travel drawings of Olearius and Meyerberg, the scale drawings and plans of Dahl, Suslov and Mileev and photographs taken by Bilibin. The book ends with a review of interior elements – klirosy, windows, piers and so on, as well as a separate essay devoted to Ukrainian wooden architecture. The series of republications of Krasovskii’s work in recent years is the best testimony to its relevance for scholars today.

The study of Russian wooden architecture: twentieth–early twenty-first centuries Soviet restoration work in the first decade after the revolution represents one of the brightest chapters in the chronicle of architectural historical science in this country. Despite the extremely difficult challenges of the time resulting from the ravages of the Civil War, general economic collapse and cardinal ideological transformation, in those years people managed to do a tremendous amount for the preservation of architectural monuments. Not only was there a continuation of the tradition of splendid pre-revolutionary restoration, but the foundations were laid for future accomplishments in the preservation of architectural heritage in the USSR. As is widely known, in 1918–20 the top priority task was the reconstruction of architectural monuments in Moscow and Yaroslavl’ that had suffered gravely in the upheavals of the revolution. The need to investigate the condition of buildings in the Russian North was due to the same causes; during the period of Allied intervention and Civil War the seemingly remote and tranquil region of the Dvina and Pinega basins had been a theatre for large-scale military operations. One of the first achievements in the study and preservation of the wooden architectural monuments of the Russian North in the Soviet era was the Northern Dvina expedition mounted by the Central Restoration Workshops of the People’s Commissariat for Education. It took place between 27 August and 6 October 1920 and consisted of Igor’ Grabar’, Pëtr Baranovskii and a number of other scholars. Baranovskii later recalled that the expedition Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 worked for over a month, ‘being provided with exceptional (truly fantastic for the present time) conditions: an entire large steamer was placed at our complete disposal’ (GMA: XIV, 19, 2: 9). The fact that this was a return visit to the area for Grabar’ was of particular significance for the expedition as after the intervening eighteen long and difficult years he had the opportunity to compare the state of preservation of the architectural heritage of the Russian North. The chosen route followed the pre-revolutionary tradition that had already been established by Vladimir Suslov. In 1883, as the first among the researchers of wooden construction, Suslov began to open up the architectural treasure- 34 Discovery of wooden architecture house that the Northern Dvina represented as the most significant com- mercial waterway from the mid-fifteenth to the eighteenth century. And it is probably in the tradition of such pre-revolutionary practice of accumu- lating factual material that we should assess the main results of the 1920 expedition. Its papers contain practically no mention of theoretical or methodological matters: expedition members mainly produced written descriptions of the objects and visual records through drawings and photographs. That does not mean, however, that the thinking of the expedition members was ‘retrospective’. This approach is evidence that the tasks of the group of researchers lay exclusively in the practical and sometimes even in the statistical realm. The architects paid particular attention to buildings that had been lost or seriously damaged as a result of the hostilities. Grabar’ wrote about this with alarm as the expedition proceeded:

Up until now we have precisely ascertained only the loss of the churches in Shegovary and Bereznik. Along the White Sea and on the lower Dvina everything is whole . . . Of the churches ten have already perished up to the present. The one in Panilovo has been built entirely of new logs patterned on the old one, but, of course, they are as different as heaven and earth. The exact same with Zachach’e. Chelmokhta burnt down (the large church). The greatest destruction awaits us in some three days time, on the boundary of Arkhangelsk and what is now Northern Dvina province, where there was ﬁghting over a period of a year. We do not know what is left there. People say much has been lost. (Grabar’ 1969: 29–30)

A year after the journey to the Northern Dvina a second northern expedition was organized, this time to the Rivers Vyia and Pinega (18 August–25 September 1921). Despite the fact that the aims of the second expedition were the same as the year before – recording descriptions and measurements, photographing works of wooden architecture, including documenting the consequences of the Civil War, the pace at which the group moved and the schedule for carrying out the work at the sites were less hectic. As a consequence they studied and recorded some extremely interesting buildings that retained very rare archaic constructional techniques and Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 details; for example, the tent-roofed Church of the Prophet Elijah from 1600 in the Vyia pogost or the refectory of the church in Romanov Ostrov that was heated but chimneyless and thus unique even at that time. The third expedition in which Pëtr Baranovskii participated took place in August 1926. The group was again led by Igor’ Grabar’, who had just published the programmatic article ‘Restoration in this country and in the West’, in which he compared the achievements and successes of Russian restoration in the first post-revolutionary years with foreign experiences (Grabar’ 1926). The expedition, whose route lay along the shores of Lake Onego, became a sort of illustrative confirmation of Grabar’s Discovery of wooden architecture 35 article. Particular attention was devoted in the course of the journey to the many-domed Transfiguration Church in Kizhi. A plan was made with measurements taken above the porch (over the planking); separate scale drawings show the upper dome and ‘neck’, the main belt of eight bochki on the facets of the lower octagon, the crosses and vypuski (brackets) of the porch (GMA: XIV, 19, 5: 3–7v). Baranovskii even proposed dismantling the Transfiguration Church’s elder sister – the Church of the Intercession in the Vytegorskii pogost (in Ankhimovo) – and removing it to the recently founded open-air museum at Kolomenskoe in Moscow. According to the architect’s observations and assessment the move could have been accomplished fairly easily – directly ‘from the riverbank right by the church to Kolomenskoe along the Sheksna shipping route [the system of rivers and canals connecting Lake Onego, Beloe Ozero (the White Lake) and the River Moskva]’ (GMA: XIV, 19, 3: 1–1v). The idea was never realized and, sadly, in the early 1960s the Intercession Church burnt down. The results of the 1920s expeditions are of enormous significance for the study of the wooden architecture of the Russian North and also for the development of restoration practice in Soviet Russia. In his studies of peasant dwellings Pëtr Baranovskii continued the established pre-revolutionary tradition associated with Dmitrii Mileev and anticipated Konstantin Romanov’s expeditions to Zaonezh’e and the Pinega valley in 1926 and 1927. Baranovskii was also akin to the pre-revolutionary architects in the universal quality of his thinking, which enabled him to give an equally profound assessment of both timber and masonry construction. Finally, in the most immediate time frame these expeditions, by demonstrating so keenly the need for the preservation of wooden architectural monuments, became the starting point for the formation of the idea of Russia’s first open- air museum, which was established on Baranovskii’s initiative in 1923 at the former royal estate of Kolomenskoe in Moscow. With regard to the late 1920s–1930s mention must also be made of the activities of Konstantin Romanov and Rufin Gabe’s monograph on Karelian wooden architecture (Gabe 1941). A real feat was the wartime publication in 1942 of a collective work on Russian wooden architecture by Sofia Zabello, Vladimir Ivanov and Pëtr Maksimov (Zabello et al. 1942). It is symbolic that the previous overview on a similar scale, Krasovskii’s Course, Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 had come out in 1916, also during a war with Germany, when heightened national self-awareness prompted society to turn to the most distinctive and sublime forms of Russian artistic culture. Zabello, Ivanov and Maksimov’s opus might be termed a ‘catalogue’ as it brought together all the material then available on civil and religious construction. The authors made extensive use of pre-revolutionary plans and scale drawings made by Dahl, Suslov and Mileev from collections of the Museum of the All-Russian Academy of Arts, supplementing them with photographs and detailed annotations that summed up the information on each of the objects. Such a thorough approach means that the three scholars’ catalogue remains unsurpassed in 36 Discovery of wooden architecture the breadth of its coverage of the subject, the detailed analysis and the pictorial material included. The post-war period in this field of scholarship is associated above all with one name – Aleksandr Opolovnikov (1911–94), who from the 1940s right up to his tragic death in a car accident remained the leading specialist in the study and restoration of wooden churches. He began work on the Kizhi pogost in 1949, freeing the churches of nineteenth-century plank casing and renewing the shingle covering of the domes of the Transfiguration Church. The practical and theoretical aspects of early twentieth-century restoration served to a large extent as the methodological basis for his approach. Among the pre-revolutionary architects Opolovnikov particularly singled out Dmitrii Mileev and his like-minded associate Andrei Karetnikov, declaring that ‘their positions and experience served is as the foundation upon which later by succession our concept and technique of restoration formed.” (Opolovnikov 1974: 18–19). Years later his loyalty to this principle established by the pre-revolutionary architect–restorers was reaffirmed in an English-language publication by Aleksandr Opolovnikov and his daughter, Elena, in which Mileev and Karetnikov are unequivocally called ‘the founders of the modern method of restoring ancient monuments in the USSR’ (Opolovnikov and Opolovnikova 1989: 25). It will therefore hardly be an exaggeration to state that the works that Opolovnikov carried out from the second half of the 1940s continued the development of the restoration of Russian wooden architecture from the point where that accelerating, strengthening process had been brought to an abrupt halt by Mileev’s death. His approaches and practical instructions were given a detailed substantiation in Opolovnikov’s programmatic book The Restoration of Works of Folk Architecture, published in 1974. This like- mindedness can chiefly be observed in a striving to free the old structure from later additions (plank sheathing, painting, plasterwork, iron fixtures, altered shapes of door and window openings and elements imitating the Classical décor of masonry buildings) and return it to its authentic appearance on the basis of a detailed on-site inspection. The basis of Opolovnikov’s approach to restoration was this: before starting to work on a particular object he would identify ‘accretions’ of various kinds. Traditional accretions are relatively late elements of the Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 building that were made in architectural and constructional forms typical of folk architecture (for example, a replacement roof that reproduced authentic roofs in type and shape). Neutral accretions are late elements of the building that although not connected with the traditions of folk architecture are nevertheless of great artistic value in their own right; for example, a Baroque iconostasis in place of the transom (tiablo) type with horizontal beams or shelves supporting the sacred images that is authentic for early Russian wooden churches. Finally, there are non-traditional accretions that usually include painted cladding over the logs, sheathing domes in roofing iron, enlarging the windows and other kinds of ‘updating’ Discovery of wooden architecture 37 that distort the aesthetic impression of the building and make it look banal. The goal of the restoration architect, according to Opolovnikov, is to remove the non-traditional elements and to return the building to an optimal appearance that is a synthesis of its original part and all the traditional and neutral accretions (Opolovnikov 1974: 140). Returning the Kizhi pogost to its original appearance, which entailed a complex restoration of the churches and the re-creation of the enclosure, would be Opolovnikov’s crowning achievement, but it was not the only one. He was also the person who came up with the idea of creating a historical, architectural and ethnographic museum preserve on the island of Kizhi. It was established in 1966 and remains one of the best known Russian open- air museums around the world. At the same time the architect was travelling throughout the North, applying his method to the restoration of churches in the White Sea region, the Kargopol’ area and the Zaonezh’e peninsula in the north of Lake Onego. Aleksandr Opolovnikov was the author of a large number of books on wooden architecture (Opolovnikov 1976; 1977; 1986; 1989). In the last years of his life he busied himself with the study and restoration of the wooden architectural heritage of Siberia. In recent decades a prominent role in the study of Russian wooden architectural monuments has been played by Viacheslav Orfinskii, a professor at Petrozavodsk State University. Orfinskii’s sphere of research interest is the folk architecture of Karelia, but the actual range of his investigations is far wider. His chief creation is a complex classification method, the core of which is a ‘typological system of the techniques, forms and details of wooden architecture’, which he published jointly with Irina Grishina as a separate piece of research (Orfinskii and Grishina 2004). The authors re- examine the traditional classification of wooden ecclesiastical buildings that goes back all the way to Grabar’s chapter in the first volume of his History of Russian Art and divide them into five basic types. Orfinskii proposes a multi-level scale embracing not only the arrangement of volumes or the methods of constructing the tops of churches, but all the additional features that play an important part in determining a particular edifice’s place in the context of wooden architecture. The result was a highly-ramified system of classes and subclasses, typological groups and subgroups, types and subtypes, sorts and subsorts, varieties and subvarieties, variants and sub- Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 variants. Each of these elements is allotted a letter code that makes it possible to describe an object with a short formula. Through the introduction of this typology the diversity of the wooden architecture of the Russian North is now reflected more adequately, although it must be admitted that the system is very unwieldy. Mikhail Mil’chik occupies a special place in the study of wooden architecture due to his distinctive approach to investigating its history through focusing attention on the sources – pictorial and written – and their interpretation. He was the author of publications devoted to an analysis of the architectural backgrounds in Early Russian icons that testified to particular 38 Discovery of wooden architecture changes in the appearance of church buildings or monastic ensembles. Mil’chik singles out as a special category of written document the poriadnye zapisi (building contracts) that, thanks to his archive searches and deciphering, are substantially expanding the range of sources for the study of wooden architecture and the re-creation of its variety (Mil’chik and Ushakov 1981; Mil’chik 1999; 2008). Since the turn of the millennium, historical research into wooden architecture has increasingly tended to take on a more practical character. This is due to the implementation of restoration works that require architects and designers to have both precise, scrupulous knowledge of the history of the specific building and an understanding of the particular local and wider architectural context within which that object is given its assessment within as part of the general history of Russian wooden architecture. In the light of this, the achievements of Igor’ Shurgin (Shurgin 1982; 2006; 2010; 2011) and Aleksandr Popov in the study and preservation of the wooden churches of the North appear especially important. The same kind of theoretical and scientific restoration approach is organically combined in the publications and projects of Andrei Bode (Bode 2002; 2005; Bode and Pankratov 2011). On the one hand edifices are studied specifically in connection with the prospect of their restoration, which seems particularly topical in the present situation when the task of preserving wooden archi tecture is becoming especially important. On the other hand, each case is also an example, enabling us to draw broad conclusions on questions of history and the methodology of restoration. Thoroughly conducted field observations are collated against information from archive documents; the stages of construction are ascertained, as well as the dates when repair work was carried out and the character of the changes that the building has undergone in the course of its history. The conclusions and proposals in such difficult cases for restoration as the Church of the Presentation in the Temple in the village of Zaostrov’e outside Arkhangelsk are very accurate. In Bode’s conception at the end of Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016

Figure 2.2 Andrei Bode: Variants for the restoration of the 1688 Church of the Presentation in Zaostrov’e Discovery of wooden architecture 39 the restoration the Church of the Presentation will display elements that existed at various stages in the history of the building. He proposes, for example, for the sake of the preservation of the building to recreate the four- pitch metal roof that existed at the turn of the twentieth century (Bode and Frolova, 2014: 156). This is testimony to the gradual ‘rehabilitation’ of a period in the history of Russian wooden architecture that for a long time was held to be lacking not only artistic, but even historical value. At the same time this methodology also testifies to as objective an approach as possible to the building as a ‘source’ embodied in wood, in which every historical detail is important, even those of a secondary character. The study of Russian wooden architecture has not been confined to native researchers. As far back as the late nineteenth century, thanks to the practice of providing illustrations in publications, such as those of Dahl and Suslov, with captions in both Russian and French, European historians were able to include timber construction in the Russian North in their field of view (Suslov 1896; 1897; 1901). In foreign literature one of the earliest scholarly surveys of Russian wooden architecture was provided by Lorentz Dietrichson in his well-known fundamental monograph of 1892 on Norwegian stave churches (Dietrichson 1892: 102–19). In that publication he gives a description and analysis of the most ancient wooden churches in Russia, dating from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries: the Churches of the Resurrection of Lazarus in the Muromskii Monastery and of St George the Bringer of Victory in Iuksovichi, both of which had by that time been surveyed and published by Lev Dahl. Dietrichson compared the many-domed Trans- figuration Church in Kizhi with the picturesque composition of St Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow, placing them together as absolute masterpieces of Russian architecture. In his assessment of the church in Kineshma Dietrichson does, admittedly, make reference to ‘Indian’, ‘Asiatic’ forms (Dietrichson 1892: 108), to all appearances under the influence of the concept expounded in Eugène Viollet-le-Duc’s book L’Art Russe (Viollet- le-Duc, 1877), which was highly popular in Europe in the late nineteenth century. Dietrichson’s interest in Russian church construction is entirely natural; the outstanding Norwegian scholar, famed as the discoverer of his own country’s wooden architecture, strove to incorporate it into the general Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 history of European timber construction and to present the Norwegian churches in the broadest context of Eastern European architectural traditions – Western Ukrainian, Polish, Czech and German. Already in the Soviet era, in 1928 and 1932, Russia was visited by the prominent British researcher David Roden Buxton, whose stays coincided with the most dramatic period of collectivization and the destruction of the traditional way of life in the Russian countryside. It was Buxton who, after having personally travelled to the Russian North and recorded many buildings on the Rivers Onega and Northern Dvina, became for decades the chief custodian of knowledge about Russian wooden architecture when 40 Discovery of wooden architecture Soviet Russia was cut off from the rest of the world by the Iron Curtain (Buxton 1934; 1981). Between 1941 and 1944, when a considerable part of Karelia was occupied by Finnish forces, the Finnish architectural historian Lars Pettersson worked in the area to the north of Lake Onego, producing surveys, pictorial reconstructions and photographs of many works of wooden architecture in Zaonezh’e, including the celebrated Kizhi pogost. After the war Pettersson published a monograph on the wooden church architecture of Zaonezh’e which was translated into German and thus became widely known to the European scholarly community (Pettersson 1950). The approach taken by the Finnish scholar, examining the wooden architecture of a small region of the Russian North in the context of the centuries-long history of the development of Eastern Christian (Byzantine, Serbian, Transcaucasian) masonry construction, is open to challenge on account of the lack of any sort of mechanism connecting those phenomena. However, the attempt to present Russian timber construction in the broadest context of world art, with the possibilities of a panoramic survey of a variety of building traditions, seems absolutely correct. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, when Russia entered a new phase of historical development after the break-up of the USSR, interest in the architectural heritage of the Russian North among foreign historians and travellers remained high. In the sphere of academic studies of Russian architecture, a leading role has been taken by William Craft Brumfield, the author of a comprehensive work on the history of Russian construction (Brumfield 2004) and creator of an extensive gallery of photographs of wooden and masonry edifices in the Russian North. In the course of the 2000s, Richard Davies undertook many expeditions to the region, presenting in his book the contemporary ‘life’ of wooden churches in integral and inseparable connection with the life of the Russian North, its people and landscapes (Davies and Moreton 2011). Davies highlights this very important aspect of the link between wooden architecture and daily life – something that over the course of decades was torn apart under the influence of radical civilizational shifts and changes brought about by the standardiza - tion of the nineteenth century and the reconstruction of society and the economy in the twentieth. Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 The study of Russian wooden architecture has a history going back almost 150 years. In that time not only has a huge amount of factual material been accumulated, but whole scholarly schools have formed, interpreting and classifying it. In the pages of hundreds of research papers on the subject, wooden architecture has been revealed as a distinctive and highly original phenomenon demanding the most careful attention. Obviously in view of such a huge body of research and such a keen interest, on the part of foreign scholars as well, Russian timber construction can no longer be regarded as a second- rate phenomenon in the context of the country’s architecture. It occupies a worthy place among the finest achievements of Russian artistic culture. 3 The technology of wooden construction in Rus’

The basis of any wooden building in Rus’ was the srub – a crib whose walls are made up of successive layers (ventsy) of horizontal logs with joints at the corners. The arrangement of horizontal round logs produced walls that were strong and as efficient as possible, permitting the construction of churches with considerable height. The use of horizontally placed layers of logs to form architectural volumes of various shapes that are combined with others in various compositional arrangements is the fundamental difference between mediaeval Russian wooden buildings and the vertically-oriented stave churches of Scandinavia. In mediaeval Norway staves were placed upon strong rectangular beams lying around the whole perimeter of the building on a level site paved with stone. These massive sills, very remotely resembling the okladnoi venets (lowest tier of logs) in Russian churches, determined the layout of the whole structure and performed the functions of a sort of wooden plinth. On top of the vertically placed staves a further horizontal beam or ‘architrave’ was placed, completing the framework of the main body of the building. This skeleton, made up of upright staves and horizontal beams above and below, was filled in with vertical panels driven into special slots and this formed the rhythmically divided surface of the walls. In Scandinavia srub constructions began to be used in religious architecture only in the middle of the fifteenth century (for example, the ‘Fisherman’s Chapel’ of 1459 now in the Maihaugen museum at Lillehammer). Russian wooden construction mainly employed round logs. Nevertheless, in the mid-sixteenth century, in the reign of Ivan the Terrible, a Dormition Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 Cathedral existed in Mozhaisk that was made from rectangular timbers (Sheredega 1970), while in the 1660s Jan Struys mentions that in Moscow ‘houses are made of Square pieces of Timber notch’d and let into each other’ (Struys 1684: 135). Although the dimensions of a srub were limited by the useful length of a dressed log, that did not prevent the enlargement of the interior space because by cutting into the main srub it was possible to add further elements (priruby) to create a sanctuary, side chapels, refectory (trapeznaia) and entrance vestibule (seni). Describing Ivan the Terrible’s campaign against Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016

Figure 3.1 The Dormition Church from the Monastery of St Alexander of the Kushta (second quarter of the sixteenth century), now at the Spaso- Prilutskii Monastery, Vologda Source: Photo by the author, 2012. Wooden construction in Rus’ 43 Kazan’, Heinrich von Staden also noted the extensive possibilities afforded by the use of buildings assembled from logs:

The Grand Prince ordered the construction of a town with wooden walls, towers and gates, like a real town, and had all the beams and logs numbered from top to bottom. Then that town was taken apart, placed on rafts and ﬂoated down the Volga together with warriors and the large artillery. When he came close to Kazan he ordered that this town be put up . . . (Staden 1925: 113)

Building with ventsy makes it possible to dismantle structures without harming them:

You may have Houses ready made, which may be taken asunder, transported thence, and set up any where else, in a short time, and with little pains and charge, since they consist onely of beams, and posts, set one upon the other, and the vacuities are ﬁll’d up with Mosse. (Olearius 1669: 44)

This was actually done quite often in the olden days for various reasons, such as to move a building from a river bank that was being washed away, when a community was resettling elsewhere or to make repairs. In the twentieth century this property provided the opportunity to save hundreds of works of wooden architecture that were taken apart, transported to open- air museums and reassembled there, or else restored in situ through complete dismantling. The work of constructing a church began with laying down the first venets, which established the configuration of the future building. The ‘foundations’ as a rule took the form of granite boulders embedded in the ground at the corners of the srub and laid around its perimeter. In later times, admittedly, wooden churches might also be placed on masonry foundations or else, as happened in the early twentieth century, these were introduced later to underpin the sruby in the course of restoration work (the Churches of the Epiphany in Chëlmuzhi and of St Demetrius of Thessalonica in Staraia Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 Ladoga). The laying of boulders without a continuous coating of mortar was conducive to the unhindered passage of air through the base of the srub, prolonging its life-span. Ensuring the preservation of the timber was a very important require- ment, not only during construction, but also at the very earliest stage, when the material was being prepared. The timber for a future church had to be felled in winter, when the resin content of the tree-trunks was at its highest. Particular attention was also devoted to the dressing of the logs, for which purpose axes were used and never saws. (It was only in the late twentieth century that the restorer Aleksandr Popov succeeded in reviving 44 Wooden construction in Rus’ the technology for making the Early Russian axe, which cuts the fibres of timber in such a way that they themselves provide the log with reliable protection against damp.) From the second tier upwards a groove was cut in either the upper or lower logs to make the two ventsy fit tightly together. A groove on the lower surface of the upper log is the most common technique, but in earliest times the opposite method was used, with each successive venets being set into a groove cut into the upper surfaces of the one below. This method has been observed in srub structures of pre- and post-Mongol periods uncovered by archaeology in Staraia Ladoga, Novgorod, Berest’e and Moscow. In extant wooden churches the ‘groove on top’ can be found in the Lazarus Church from the Muromskii Monastery (second half of the fourteenth century), now in Kizhi, and the Church of the Nativity of the Virgin from the village of Perëdki, now in the Vitoslavlitsy museum of wooden architecture outside Novgorod – that is to say, in the earliest surviving examples. Thus the ‘groove on top’ is in many cases an indirect indicator of archaic date, sug- gesting that a building was created at the very latest in the early seventeenth century. However, this older method may have been preserved in remote, peripheral areas, where the development of construction technologies proceeded at a slower pace, and could therefore be found in later buildings. One example of this is provided by the north-western tower of the Bratsk stockade (1654) on the River Angara that was brought from Siberia to the Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016

Figure 3.2 Location of the grooves: underneath (left); double or alternating (raznopaz) (middle); on top (right) Source: Photos by the author, 2007; 2011; 2008. Wooden construction in Rus’ 45 Kolomenskoe museum-preserve in Moscow. The fortress in Bratsk still belonged to the late mediaeval stage; the presence of the ‘groove on top’ is easily explained by the transfer to seventeenth-century wooden architecture of Siberia of constructional techniques used in the Russian North as a result of population shifts connected with the opening up of new territories. Truly astonishing, on the other hand, is the ‘groove on top’ seen in the wooden architecture of the northern Ukrainian Poles’e region in the eighteenth and even nineteenth centuries. This is represented by the Church of the Resurrection from the village of Kisorichi in Rovno region (1780s) and a bell-tower from the village of Velikii Zholudsk (1877), now located at the Pyrohiv Museum of Folk Architecture and Life of Ukraine (Kiev). In all probability this archaic method survived in Poles’e, on both Ukrainian and Belorusian sides of the present border, from pre-Mongol times, when it was practically unchallenged. This is borne out by the wooden structures uncovered at the thirteenth-century Berest’e archaeological site at Brest in Belarus, where ‘the connecting sockets and sealing grooves were cut from the upper side of the log’ (Lysenko 2007: 80–81). Besides grooves entirely on top or underneath, there is also a distinctive regional variant in Russian wooden architecture known as raznopaz, where both sorts of grooves are found in a single srub. Raznopaz is found in seventeenth- and eighteenth- century buildings in the Kenozero lake area (the Church of St George in the Porzhenskii pogost) and lower down the River Onega (the Churches of the Ascension in Piiala and of the Vladimir Icon of the Virgin in Podporozh’e). Raznopaz was also extensively used in the construction of dwellings. The localization of this method, in particular on the main ancient waterways from Novgorod to the Zavoloch’e area, perhaps reflects the preservation of a certain stage in the evolution of construction techniques, when during the late mediaeval transition from groove on top to groove underneath both methods may have been used simultaneously. Specifically around Kenozero and on the Onega, however, it remained a typical, distinctive local feature and represents one of the most interesting regional traditions in the wooden architecture of the Russian North. At the corners, where the logs met at right-angles, a round ‘cup’ (chasha) was cut into the lower one to match the shape of the upper one as it was placed in it. A small rectangular lug (potainoi zub – literally ‘secret tooth’) Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 was made within the cup that fitted into a specially cut socket in the second log with the aim of making a firmer joint. The most common form of corner joint, where the ends of the logs protruded beyond the corners, sticking out from the walls and thus accentuating the dimensions of the main sruby, was known as v oblo. The alternative arrangement, where the ends were cut off square with the walls, was v lapu (Figure 3.3). As a rule a church building consisted of several three-dimensional elements, each of which took the form of a separate srub: the sanctuary (termed ‘round’ when it was five-sided, as if imitating an apse), the main body of the church and often a refectory (trapeznaia) and entrance vestibule (seni). 46 Wooden construction in Rus’

Figure 3.3 Types of corner joints: v oblo (left); v lapu (right) Source: Photos by the author, 2012.

Generally speaking, each of these volumes had its own separate roof. At the top the walls were flared out in the poval, which took the eaves and the moisture that fell from them away from the walls, in much the same way as a cornice in classical architecture. Refectories and vestibules would be covered by a pitched roof made without nails (samtsovaia). Planks forming the slope of the roof were placed on horizontal poles or purlins fixed into the cross walls of the srub (Figure 3.4). Where the top ends of the planks met at the ridge they were slightly covered by the okhlupen’, a log with a V-shaped groove cut into it (in secular wooden architecture this was often given a horse-shaped end). At the bottom the roof planks were set into the potok – a timber with a trough cut into that also served as a gutter for water. The potok was in turn supported by brackets known as kuritsy (literally ‘chickens’, on account of their shape) cut from the bole of a tree with one of the roots left on it. The antiquity of Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 the use of kuritsy is confirmed by a find of this constructional element during archaeological excavations in Rostov Velikii, on the site of the wooden Church of the Dormition that was built in 992 and burnt down in 1160 (PSRL: 2000b: 232; Ioannisian 1994–96: 19–20). The protruding ends of the roof purlins that extended beyond the logs forming the gable were covered by carved ‘bargeboards’ known as pricheliny and the end of the ridge beam by a polotentse (‘towel’) – a short decorative board that hung down vertically. The sanctuary prirub was most often roofed with a bochka – a distinctive ogival structure somewhat resembling an inverted boat with two sides Wooden construction in Rus’ 47 curving out then in again and finally rising to a sharp ‘keel’ at the top. The body of the church could have any of several types of roof – a tent-like shatër, a kub (something between a bochka and a dome, with four sides sloping out and then in again to the apex), tiered (with more than one slope on each side) or, occasionally, a bochka. The domes (glavy – literally ‘heads’) are set on drums (shei or sheiki – ‘necks’) that are decorated with a collar of little boards (epancha). The domes get their onion shape from the zhuravtsy – vertical boards attached together to form a frame. Domes, drums, kokoshniki (decorative miniature versions of the bochka) and bochki are usually covered with wooden shingles (lemekha), while pitched roofs have attractive finishing planks (krasnyi tës) laid over a water-proofing layer of birch-bark. The lower, hanging ends of these planks were shaped into ‘truncated lances’. Traditionally there were two types of window: the krasnoe okno – ‘red or beautiful window’ – framed by an architrave of four smooth boards mitred at the corners, and the volokovoe okno that was closed by a special sliding panel. Krasnye okna were larger and grander. They were usually placed in the walls of the body of a church and refectories, while volokovye okna served to light the sanctuary, especially in small churches or chapels. Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016

Figure 3.4 Roof construction of the refectory of the Church of St John Chrysostom at Saunino (1655) Source: Photo by the author, 2011. Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016

Figure 3.5 A nebo ceiling in the Intercession Church, Liadiny (second half of the eighteenth century, lost in a fire on 5 May 2013) Source: Photo by the author, 2011. Wooden construction in Rus’ 49 In the interiors the most important elements were carved pillars decorated with bands (zhguty) and ovoids (dyn’ki). Pillars were most often placed in refectories, where they supported the matitsy – massive horizontal beams that carried the ceiling. The ceiling in the body of the church was made in the form known as a nebo (literally ‘heaven’) – a concave almost pyramidal construction with a keystone-like ring in the centre from which sloping beams ran down to the walls (Figure 3.5). The flat areas between the beams and within the ring were filled with icon- painting (Kol’tsova 1993). Up until the middle of the eighteenth century, iconostases also consisted of massive horizontal beams or transoms (tiabla) on which the holy images stood. It was only in the era of the Elizabethan Baroque (1740s–60s) that they gradually gave way to decorative carved iconostases.1

Note 1 For more detailed surveys of traditional Russian methods and techniques of wooden building see: Miloslavskii 1956; Milchik and Ushakov 1981. Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 This page intentionally left blank Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 4 Types of wooden church architecture

The problem of describing the great typological variety of Russian wooden churches remains one of the most difficult aspects of the study of this topic. Since 1910, thanks to the programmatic chapter by Igor’ Grabar’ in his History of Russian Art, it has become a firmly established tradition in the literature to divide the edifices into five basic types – klet’, shatër, kub, tiered and many-domed (Grabar’ and Gornostaev 1910). That same classification is retained in Zabello, Maksimov and Ivanov’s Russian Wooden Architecture, published in 1942. In the second half of the twentieth century a similar principle was followed by Aleksandr Opolovnikov, when in the 1980s he reviewed his long years of research and restoration work (Opolovnikov 1986). Despite the fact that Viacheslav Orfinskii has criticized this typology for being ‘the creation of an artist’ and failing to reflect the full compositional variety of the wooden churches of the Russian North (Orfinskii and Grishina 2004: 13–14), the use of this approach as a starting point for further, more in-depth analysis remains entirely permissible. Since we are concerned with works of mediaeval architecture, the terms that were used to describe wooden buildings in the Middle Ages are very important. Back then, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the clerks compiling the cadastres were already faced with the task of specifying the material and types of structures they needed to record; already at that time everywhere on the pages of those documents they used such designations as ‘tent-roofed’, ‘klet’-type’ and ‘with a refectory’. Thus the documents register Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 the artistic, compositional and functional elements of the buildings that are most striking and characteristic from the viewpoint of psychological perception. It may be a pronounced verticality, embodied in an upward- soaring shatër or tent-roof, compactness, entailing the covering of a plain klet’ with a simple two-pitch roof or, on the contrary, the presence of a notable additional element – a refectory or a vestibule. Undoubtedly this terminology reflected the primary typology that existed in contemporaries’ perception of church architecture and so these historically hallowed terms should be retained in the modern research apparatus. 52 Types of wooden churches Nevertheless, the lively diversity of architectural forms should not be restricted to just the basic characterizations of the arrangement of volumes that was used by Russian people in the Middle Ages. Today we need to examine in more detail and more logically each of the general types, identifying, where possible, further varieties within them and producing a more ramified system.

The earliest klet’ churches The klet’ (literally ‘cage’) – a rectangular srub with a roof over it – is traditionally considered the simplest and oldest design used for wooden buildings, both secular and religious. The Russian izba (peasant’s log hut) and the Russian wooden church are both descended from the klet’ and for that reason the oldest extant wooden building – the Church of St Lazarus from the Muromskii Monastery – bears a strong resemblance to an izba (Figure 4.1). The church was built in the second half of the fourteenth century, according to tradition personally by Lazar’ Muromskii, a contemporary of the great Russian saint Sergius of Radonezh, of whom the eminent twentieth- century émigré author Boris Zaitsev wrote vividly and picturesquely:

He grew up in the pine forests, learnt a trade and down through the centuries retained the image of a carpenter saint, the tireless builder of porches, churches and monk’s cells, and in the fragrance of his sanctity the scent of pine shavings was so distinct. (Zaitsev 2014: 33)

Those same words could equally be applied to Lazar’ Muromskii, whose life story presents a picture of the monastic assimilation of the Novgorodian North and the construction of the first modest places of worship in the future ‘Northern Thebaid’. A wood-framed vestibule may have been built on to the Church of the Resurrection of Lazarus in the sixteenth century. In 1959 the church was removed from the monastery on the east shore of Lake Onego. It was restored by Aleksandr Opolovnikov in 1960 and installed on the island of Kizhi, not far from the pogost (Opolovnikov 1969; Orfinskii, 1999). Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 The Lazarus Church has a host of features testifying to its antiquity. First and foremost, there is the archaic method of fitting one venets tight to another, where the log in the upper course fits into a groove in the one below rather than the other way round. Besides that, the corner joints of the klet’ lack the hidden internal lug. In other words, they do not have the additional connecting element that had to be present in the more complex and structurally advanced buildings of the later period. Other important characteristics of the Lazarus Church are the presence of vertical ties on the west side of the srub intended to prevent deformation of the surface of the wall and the absence of a ceiling in the narthex and Types of wooden churches 53

Figure 4.1 The Church of Resurrection of Lazarus from the Muromskii Monastery (second half of the fourteenth century), now in the Kizhi Museum Preserve Source: Photo by Arina Noskova, 2007.

sanctuary. Particularly interesting is the construction of the doors and doorways. We can draw conclusions about the construction of wooden doors in the period before the building of the Lazarus Church from the evidence of the excavations at Berest’e, where twenty-eight doors from the late 1200s were found. There they opened inwards and were mainly made of two or three boards joined together by inset cross-members. Those features are also seen in the doors of the Lazarus Church, another confirmation of its antiquity. The doorways are treated differently on each side, which suggests Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 there was no firmly established way of making them. The same is true for the hundred-years-older Belarusian site: ‘By the thirteenth century no single, most rational design for a doorway had been developed and in Berest’e four types have been identified’ (Lysenko 2007: 81–2). Other early klet’-type churches date from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and display a number of variations due to the peculiar construction of the roof that first, became taller, taking on a steep, ‘wedge-like’ shape, and second, acquired steps or cascades. One of the earliest klet’ churches with a wedge-shaped roof is the Church of the Deposition of the Robe from the village of Borodava (1485) that has 54 Types of wooden churches been moved to the Kirillo-Belozerskii Monastery (Figure 4.2). The tall roof is evidence of a desire to add variety to the small number of possible ways of topping out a simple rectangular volume. That is why as early as the fifteenth century the traditional pitched roof was given a special shape which set the church apart from the mass of wooden buildings, causing it to rise above them. Apart from the pronounced tendency to increased height, a peculiarity of this building is the combination of the sanctuary and the body of the church in a single srub, but with different roofs. And here for the first time in wooden architecture we find a bochka over the sanctuary. A gallery is attached to the church on the west and south. Noticeable too is the considerable size of the refectory (trapeznaia). The existence of a tradition of building wooden monastery churches with refectories as early as the fifteenth century is attested by chronicle entries – for the year 6965 (AD 1457), when in Novgorod ‘on Fox Hill a wooden Church of St John Chrysostom with a refectory in one, was built on the orders of Archbishop Evfimii’, and the following year ‘a wooden Church of St Nicholas with a refectory was built at the Otenskaia Pustyn’ [monastery] on the orders and through the zeal of Archbishop Iona’ (PSRL 1889: 197–8). The church from the village of Borodava is probably the only remaining physical evidence of monastery buildings of this sort, the character of which is fairly hard to judge from the chronicle sources alone. The Church of St George in the village of Iuksovichi, Leningrad region (1493; 1522?) is the oldest wooden church still standing at its original location (Koliada 1977). The core of the church is made up of three volumes. The western and eastern kleti are of equal height, while the central one is substantially taller and wider. As a result the church has a cross-shaped ground-plan. A special role in the aesthetic impression produced by this church is played by the tall wedge-shaped roofs and the small dome crowning the central klet’. From this one gets a sense of a stage-by-stage ascent, which is heightened by the steps in each of the roofs (Figure 4.3). Here, as in the Church of the Deposition of the Robe, the wedge-shaped roof intensifies the sense of upward striving. This church was, however, subjected to considerable reconstruction early in its life, which gave it increased height. An important detail of the Church of St George in Iuksovichi is the cascade Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 roof with three steps on the slopes above the central klet’ and two per slope on both east and west sides. As well as fulfilling a decorative function, these cascades also serve a practical purpose: when it rains they break up the flow of water coming off the steep roof that might otherwise wash away the soil at the base of the church.The Church of St George was reconstructed again in the seventeenth century: its ancient part was raised and placed on pillars, and then the church was enclosed with a gallery. This significantly increased the building’s useable floor space. These three klet’-type churches from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries demonstrate idiosyncratic approaches to the construction of ceilings. In the Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016

Figure 4.2 The Church of the Deposition of the Robe from the village of Borodava (1485), now in the Kirillo-Belozerskii Monastery Source: Photo by Ilya Antipov, 2006. Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016

Figure 4.3 The Church of St George in the village of Iuksovichi, Leningrad region (1493; 1522?) Source: Photo by Arina Noskova, 2007. Types of wooden churches 57 sanctuary and narthex of the Church of St Lazarus there are no ceilings at all and they remain open to the roof. In the main body of the Church of the Deposition of the Robe there is a two-pitched ceiling with its ridge at right-angles to the lengthwise axis of the building. In the Church of St George the sanctuary has a two-pitched ceiling in line with the longitudinal axis. The list of early klet’-type churches is completed by the Church of St Nicholas in the village of Kovda, Murmansk region (1597) (Shurgin 2006: 18–28) and the Church of the Nativity of the Virgin in the village of Listvenka, Leningrad region (1599), which also have cascade roofs (Koliada 1998). In both cases additional sruby were built on to the late sixteenth-century kleti in the 1700s: in Kovda it was a refectory dated to 1750, in Listvenka an entrance vestibule in 1720 (removed during the 1990 restoration). Nevertheless, in both cases the historic core of the church was preserved and they provide visual proof of the existence of klet’-type churches with cascade roofs that became widespread across the Russian North in the sixteenth century. In later years, when churches topped out in other ways became common, the klet’-type did not disappear and continued to be used extensively, retaining its original age-old elements, such as the wedge shape of the roof – the lost Church of the Epiphany in Elgomskii Pogost (1643), the Church of St Basil in the village of Chukhcher’ma (seventeenth century?; 1824) and others; or the cascade arrangement on its slopes – the Chapel of St Michael Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016

Figure 4.4 The Church of St Basil, Chukhcher’ma on the Northern Dvina (seventeenth century?; 1824) Source: Photo by the author, 2014. Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016

Figure 4.5 The Chapel of St Nicholas at Gomorovichi, Leningrad region (eighteenth century) Source: Photo by the author, 2013. Types of wooden churches 59 the Archangel from Lelikozero (second half of the seventeenth century), now moved to the museum on the island of Kizhi. The klet’ type survived not only because of the devotion to tradition that is characteristic of wooden architecture and the stability of forms over many centuries, but also because of the active construction of chapels. The chapel (chasovnia) is a ‘little church’ without a sanctuary prirub and consequently it ends with a blank wall on the east side (Figure 4.5). Since a chapel has no sanctuary the liturgy (Orthodox communion service) cannot be held there and wor ship is restricted to reciting the canonical hours and reading from the Psalms and other texts. The iconostasis is placed up against the solid eastern wall and accordingly has no royal gates or doors. The cut-down form of the chapel and its subsidiary role in respect of a church meant that no grand architecture was required and so the modest dimensions of the klet’ were ideally suited to its lesser functions. The areas with the greatest concen - trations of chapels dating from the 1600s–1900s are the Kizhi skerries, the Zaonezh’e peninsula and the Kenozero area of Murmansk region. As a rule, all the buildings belong to the klet’ type. So the klet’ constructions that opened the history of Russian wooden architecture back in the fourteenth century became one of its main forms, enduring even in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when all the other traditional types of ecclesiastical building had ceased to be made.

Tent-roofed churches Tent-roofed or shatër churches are, like the klet’ type, among the most ancient sorts of church building. For convenience they can be divided into a number of basic subtypes:

• cross-plan (kreshchatyi) • pillar (‘octagon from the ground up with priruby’) • ‘octagon on square with a refectory’ • multiple tent-roofs • ‘tent-roof on crossed bochki’.

Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 Cross-plan tent-roofed churches It is possible to say with near certainty that the shape of the wooden shatër or tent-roof had an influence on the design of the masonry Ascension Church (1532) in Kolomenskoe, a village and residence of the Grand Prince, at that time outside Moscow, that was built ‘upwards in the wooden manner’, that is to say, as was the practice in wooden architecture. It follows that by the early sixteenth century the tent-roof design in timber construction was already so widespread that it could influence the technologically advanced and unconventional Muscovite masonry architecture of Vasilii III’s time and also take precedence over a foreign architect. 60 Types of wooden churches The prototypes for the Kolomenskoe church may have been the cross- plan tent-roofed churches of the area around Lake Beloe (Beloe Ozero, the White Lake), north-west of Vologda, to which the Grand Prince and his wife had made a pilgrimage to give thanks for the birth of an heir. In 1491, for example, Alexei Vologzhanin began to build the cross-plan Dormition Church in Ustiug, while in 1493 his brother Mishak constructed, in a monastery in the trading quarter of Vologda, a Church of the Ascension that, all the evidence suggests, also had a cruciform ground-plan. The earliest tent-roofed churches that have survived down to the present are contemporaries of the Ascension Church in Kolomenskoe. They have a pronounced cruciform structure, confirming the information in the historical sources about the Vologda craftsmen’s construction methods. The Dormition Church from the Monastery of St Alexander of the Kushta (second quarter of the sixteenth century, now in the Spaso-Prilutskii Monastery outside Vologda; see Figure 3.1, page 42) is one of the most obvious examples of a cross-plan tent-roofed church. The cross, whose arms are roofed with bochki, serves as the base for an octagonal srub (a vos’merik) that is topped by a slender shatër. The Church of the Nativity Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016

Figure 4.6 The Church of the Nativity of the Virgin from the village of Perëdki, Novgorod region (1531–9), now in the Vitoslavlitsy Museum, Novgorod the Great Source: Photo by the author, 2013. Types of wooden churches 61 of the Virgin from the village of Perëdki, Novgorod region (1531–9, now in the Vitoslavlitsy Museum, Novgorod the Great), the second ancient cross-plan tent-roofed church, adds to our picture of the use of this type in sixteenth-century wooden architecture. Despite considerable differences, it adheres to the same centrally planned compositional formula, with a shatër on an octagon placed over a cross. Cruciform tent-roofed churches were also constructed in other regions. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries practically all the shatër churches built in the lower reaches of the River Onega had a cross-plan base, as shown by the Ascension Church in the village of Piiala (1651) and the now lost Church of the Prophet Elijah in the village of Vazentsy (1786). In the White Sea area there were the Church of St Clement in the village of Una (1501 or seventeenth century), the Church of St Nicholas in the Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016

Figure 4.7 The Ascension Church at Piiala on the River Onega (1651) Source: Photo by Richard Davies, 2005. Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016

Figure 4.8 The Dormition Church at Varzuga on the southern coast of the Kola Peninsula (1674) Source; Photo by the author, 2000. Types of wooden churches 63 village of Shueretskoe (1595; 1753) and that pearl of the Kola Peninsula, the Dormition Church standing in the village of Varzuga (1674). All these churches are connected by the idea of all sides being facades, something which should be particularly characteristic for coastal buildings that are seen from passing ships, when changing locations exclude a single favoured viewpoint and the building presents itself to advantage from all sides.

‘Octagon from the ground up with priruby’ The Church of St Nicholas in the village of Liavlia (1584) (Figure 4.9) and a large number of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century buildings in the basin of the Northern Dvina have a set of common features that makes it possible to group them together: the composition consists of a vos’merik from the ground up that is of roughly equal height in each case, a monumental tent-roof and two priruby on the west and east roofed with bochki. In some churches the octagon is embraced on the north, west and south by open galleries. This kind of composition is found in the Church of St Nicholas in the village of Panilovo (1600), the Church of St Vladimir in Belaia Sluda (1642), the Church of St George from the village of Vershina (1672) and several others. Besides the basin of the Northern Dvina, tower-like octagonal churches were constructed for several decades in the seventeenth century in the Kargopol’ area – the Churches of the Prophet Elijah in Zadniaia Dubrova (1622), of the Presentation in the Temple in Krasnaia Liaga (1655) (Figure 4.10) and of St Nicholas in Astaf’evo (1670). In the eighteenth century this tradition was revived and is demonstrated in the Churches of the Transfiguration in Agafonovskoe (1756), of the Nativity of the Virgin in Kolodozero (1784) and of St John the Theologian in Oshevenskoe (1787). No less notable was the appearance of tower-like churches in the Svir’ valley and Mezhozër’e area between Lakes Ladoga and Onego. The most illustrative examples are the Church of St Nicholas in Soginitsy (1696) (Figure 4.11) and the Transfiguration Church in Pid’ma (1696, lost). While the connection between cross-plan tent-roof churches and the distribution of their sites needs to be spoken of with great caution, the tower- like churches of the Northern Dvina basin, the Kargopol’ and Mezhozër’e areas remain at the present time the earliest proofs of the existence of a Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 definite link between type and geographic location. A separate examination of the regional aspect of these edifices can be found in Chapter 5 (pages 119–123). However, it is important to stress here that these churches are revealing examples of the fact that questions of typology in the wooden architecture of the Russian North cannot be examined in abstraction, disregarding the territorial principle. It is also of no small importance that chronologically this connection appears from the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century; practically the same period when wooden churches cease to be isolated, randomly preserved witnesses to the development of architecture between the late fourteenth and the mid-sixteenth century and Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016

Figure 4.9 The Church of St Nicholas, Liavlia (1584) Source: Photo by the author, 2014. Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016

Figure 4.10 The Church of the Presentation in the Temple, Krasnaia Liaga (1655) Source: Photo by the author, 2011. 66 Types of wooden churches

Figure 4.11 The Church of St Nicholas, Soginitsy (1696) Source: Photo by the author, 2007.

exist in a quantity that represents a more or less systematic phenomenon with its own internal patterns.

‘Octagon on square with a refectory’ In the lands immediately adjacent to Novgorod only one work of wooden tent-roofed architecture from the late sixteenth century survived – the Dormition Church from the village of Kuritsko (1595, now moved to the Vitoslavlitsy Museum outside Novgorod the Great). That building, which might also be described as pillar-like, is the first to exhibit the ‘octagon on Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 square’ pattern that in the coming seventeenth century would be one of the leading designs in Russian church architecture. In general, surviving tent-roofed churches from the sixteenth century have a centrally planned composition – either cruciform or pillar-like – with a strong emphasis on the vertical. In these buildings the task of expanding the floor space, which towards the end of the sixteenth century was becoming increasingly pressing on account of the demographic situation, was tackled by changing the ground plan and the configuration of the main body of the church. For example, when one entered an octagonal church of the ‘Dvina type’ the space opened up widely due to the diagonally diverging walls; while Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016

Figure 4.12 The Dormition Church from the village of Kuritsko (1595), now in the Vitoslavlitsy Museum, Novgorod the Great Source: Photo by the author (2013). 68 Types of wooden churches in the cruciform churches it was extended along the north-south axis in front of the iconostasis. An important and remarkable peculiarity of the church from Kuritsko is the fact that here the expansion is achieved by an external volume attached to the main central srub – a gallery with a side-chapel. The fact that this extension was made as a srub rather than merely using a framework testified to its elevated status and marked a gradually emerging tendency towards spatial development not only of the main pillar of the church, but also of additional, more autonomous volumes on the west side. From the early 1600s a far more complex type of tent-roofed building began to take shape that has been defined as the ‘octagon on square with a refectory’, combining practically all the main shapes and roof forms known in wooden architecture: the square chetverik of the body of the church and the sanctuary (a klet’), an octagonal vos’merik, rectangular refectory and rectangular entrance vestibule. Each of these elements has a corresponding roof design: the refectory and vestibule are covered by two-pitched roofs, the octagon on a square is topped by a shatër, while the sanctuary has a bochka, straight pitched or cascade roof. The formation of this type of church was, however, a gradual process. Three Karelian edifices from the early seventeenth century bear testimony to a sort of ‘search’ for the ideal proportions between the tent-roofed top of a church and its lower elements: the Cathedral of Sts Peter and Paul in Povenets (1600, lost), the Church of St Nicholas in the Trinity Muezero Monastery (1602) and the Epiphany Church in the village of Chëlmuzhi on the north-east shore of Lake Onego (1605). The Church of St Nicholas (Figure 4.13), situated on an island in the Muezero lake a few dozen kilometres inland from the western (Karelian) coast of the White Sea, is one of the most interesting examples of the wooden architecture of the Russian North from the early 1600s (Molchanov 1969; Shurgin 1982). Two things in particular need to be noted here. First, this church became an important milestone in the development of wooden churches with size able refectories, which led to the decentralization of the earlier pillar-like archetype of the sixteenth century. Besides the vertical vector, tent-roofed architecture also acquired a horizontal one; the composition became more elaborate, richer and more varied. Second, in the Church of St Nicholas the octagon is unusually placed in respect of the lower part Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 of the building, covering both the body of the church and the sanctuary. In other words, the vertical axis of the shatër does not coincide with the centre of the chetverik. As a result the western faces of the octagon are located above the body of the church and the eastern ones above the sanctuary. The second extant building – the Epiphany Church in Chëlmuzhi (Figure 4.14) – clearly demonstrates the same tendency, only in this case the octagon and tent-roof are located above the refectory and the body of the church (Vakhrameeva and Kurguzova 1985). This peculiarity of spatial composition found in both churches makes it possible to classify their configurations as archaic, indica ting that in the first years of the seventeenth century the placement Types of wooden churches 69

Figure 4.13 The Church of St Nicholas in the Muezero Monastery (1602) Source: Photo by the author, 2013.

of the octagon, with the tent-roof above and the square on a single axis, had not yet become the classic arrangement. That conﬁguration would ﬁnally become established only in the architecture of the Churches of Sts Florus and Laurus in Megrega (1613) and Sts Peter and Paul on Lychnyi Island (1620). Thus, by examining Karelian church buildings from the early seventeenth century – the Church of St Nicholas in the Trinity Muezero Monastery, the Epiphany Church in Chëlmuzhi and the Church of Sts Florus and Laurus in Megrega – we can trace the process of the formation and crystallization in the Russian North of one of the main compositional formulas in wooden tent-roofed architecture: the ‘octagon on square with a refectory’, which is Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 found in all the regions (the basins of the River Onega and Northern Dvina, around Lake Onego and in the Kargopol’ area) (see Figures 4.15–16).

Churches with multiple tent-roofs A piece of grafﬁti drawn in the interior of St Sophia’s Cathedral in Novgorod in the second half of the eleventh century shows the outline of a building with three tent-roofs and a cross on top of each of the elements. For all the value of that image, it is hard to say how common churches with tent-roofs (and multiple tent-roofs) were in pre-Mongol Rus’. From the sixteenth Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016

Figure 4.14 The Epiphany Church in Chëlmuzhi (1605) Source: Scale drawing by Dmitrii Mileeev (IIAC 57, 1915: 171). Figure 4.15 The Church of St John Chrysostom, Saunino (1655) Source: Photo by the author, 2005. Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016

Figure 4.16 The Refectory of the Intercession Church, Liadiny (second half of the eighteenth century), lost in a ﬁre on 5 May 2013 Source: Photo by the author, 2011. 72 Types of wooden churches century regular mentions of churches with several shatëry begin to appear in the written sources. For example, the Cadastre of Miron Vel’iaminov from 1622–4 mentions churches ‘with nine tops’ – the Church of the Archistrategos Michael in Arkhangelsk and the Church of the Nativity of John the Baptist in Kholmogory, in the Verkhniaia Polovina trading quarter in the St Nicholas district (Ovsyannikov and Jasinski 1998: 192, 333). It is logical to suggest that in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries an architectural formula that went back to the semi-legendary past again found physical embodiment in the unique many-tent-roofed Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016

Figure 4.17 The Dormition Cathedral in Kem’ (1711–17) Source: Photo by the author, 2014. Types of wooden churches 73 churches of the Russian North. At the present time there are two buildings of this type – the three-sanctuary three-shatër Dormition Cathedral in Kem’ (1711–17) (Vakhrameev 1986) and the three-altar five-shatër Trinity Church in Nënoksa (1727–9) (Zaruchevskaia 1999; 2010) (see Figure 2.1, page 29). Thanks to these buildings and also the pre-revolutionary photographs and measurements of the since lost Church of the Resurrection in the village of Sel’tso on the River Emtsa (1673) that were made by Dmitrii Mileev and the reconstruction of the Olonets fortress with the three-shatër Trinity Church, the history of churches with multiple tent-roofs within early Russian wooden architecture can be reconstructed quite fully (Mil’chik and Ushakov 1981: 110, 114, 116). There is every reason to also seek prototypes for the churches in Kem’ and Nënoksa in the multiple-sanctuary architecture of the sixteenth century, both wooden and masonry, such as the wooden Cathedral of the Inter- cession on the Moat built in Moscow in 1554; here the tops of the side chapels were compositionally subordinated to the vertical of the central church. The same spatial structure is found in its masonry successor (better known as St Basil’s), constructed in 1555–61. Other edifices in this group are the Transfiguration Cathedral of the Solovetskii Monastery (1558–66), the Cathedral of Sts Boris and Gleb in Staritsa (1558–61), the five-domed oak-beam Dormition Church ‘in the masonry manner’ in Mozhaisk (1563) and the wooden Dormition Cathedral of the Monastery of St Trifon of Viatka from the late sixteenth century (see Sheredega 1970; Batalov 1993; Ruzaeva 1997).

‘Tent-roof on crossed bochki’ Despite the universal, superregional character of tent-roofed churches with refectories that are distributed across the whole of the Russian North, it is also possible to point to local variations of this subtype that were brought about by general changes in religious life in the second half of the seventeenth century. Patriarch Nikon’s reform, which began in 1652 and was aimed at bringing the Russian Church into line with Greek Orthodoxy, became one of the chief events in Russian history in the period before Peter the Great. The innovations affected not only the way services were Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 conducted, the celebration of certain rites and the editing and reprinting of books. Since Russian church architecture at that time was also a ‘language’ of sorts, with a very pronounced national character, the era of changes associated both with Nikon and with developments in the artistic culture of late-mediaeval Russia also had its effect on the appearance of the Russian church building in the second half of the 1600s. Although a formal decree pro hibiting the construction of churches with tent-roofs was not issued by Patriarch Nikon, in many eparchies, including those in the North, regulatory instructions were periodically issued with the aim of limiting the number of shatër churches. 74 Types of wooden churches For example, a charter granted by Archbishop Kornilii of Novgorod on 4 March 1681 for the construction of a Church of the Great Martyr Catherine in the Kurostrov volost’ stipulates that it should be located ‘on the site of the old church and the upper part of the church should not be a shatër and the sanctuary should be made round and triple’ (Popov 1880: 10). After the formation of the Eparchy of Kholmogory and the Vaga in 1682, among the first actions of the new archbishop, Afanasii, was to state, in a charter of March 1683 for the construction of the Church of the Nativity of the Virgin in the Kekhta volost’ of Kholmogory district, ‘. . . the top of the church shall not be built as a tent-roof and the sanctuary shall be made round’ (Popov 1880: 5). Another charter, issued by Afanasii on 7 September 1688 for the construction of the Church of St George in Lodma parish, prescribes ‘the top of the church shall not be built as a tent-roof and the sanctuary shall be made round and triple’ (Nikiforov 1888). Perhaps pronouncements of this sort were the reason for those modifica- tions of the traditional upper part of wooden churches that can be observed everywhere from the middle of the seventeenth century. It is quite possible that this is what lies behind the variations on the theme of the shatër top that acquired a distinctive local character in certain regions. On the Rivers Pinega and Mezen’ there was a variant on the type with churches having a tent-roof ascending from crossed bochki that had small domes on their ridges. Since crossed bochki require a square base, the main pillar of these churches consists of a massive chetverik without the traditional vos’merik (Figure 4.18). The tent-roof on crossed bochki variant combined the previous Early Russian monumentality, the fanciful picturesqueness and complexity of architectural composition characteristic of the second half of the seventeenth century with the canonical arrangement of five domes, demonstrating harmony with the architecture of the Eastern Christian world. Therefore the linking of the shatër and five domes in Pinega-Mezen’ architecture does not seem an irreconcilable contradiction, as is evidenced, for example, by ‘the wooden five-domed single tent-roofed Church of the Sainted Priest and Miracle-Worker Nicholas constructed in 1687 to a charter of Archbishop Afanasii of 22 March that same year’ in Sura on the Pinega (KIO 1895, II: 279). This edifice was elegant proof that such a shape entirely met the requirements of that exacting churchman who had a good grasp of matters Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 of church construction. Examination of this category of tent-roofed churches once again raises the question of their relationship to geographical locality. This confirms the need to additionally include a regional component in the typological analysis of this or that group of buildings; however, besides the settlements along the Pinega and Mezen’ a church with a similar superstructure can also be found in the village of Bestuzhevo on the River Ust’ia in the south of Arkhangelsk region, where sometime between the years 1696 and 1762 the Church of the Presentation was also topped out with a shatër on crossed bochki (Mil’chik and Ushakov 1981: 69–73). Types of wooden churches 75

Figure 4.18 The Church of St Michael the Archangel, Iuroma (1685) Source: Grabar and Gornostaev 1910: 399.

On the basis of the frequency of mentions in the sources and among the surviving examples of wooden architecture, klet’-type and tent-roofed churches make up the two most numerous categories. In all probability they are the most ancient types of church building. From the seventeenth century, however, the superstructures of wooden churches and their composition became more varied, which makes it possible to identify additional groups in late wooden ecclesiastical architecture.

Kub, tiered and many-domed churches Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 The surviving kub, tiered and many-domed churches of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries bring variety and complexity to the appearance of the hitherto simple, laconic and therefore austere klet’ and tent-roofed churches. As with the elaborate five-domed churches that have a tent-roof on crossed bochki, the composition of kub, tiered and many-domed churches can be explained by important events in the artistic life of Rus’ in that period, such as the activities of Patriarch Nikon, which, besides everything else, had a direct effect on the architecture of the 1650s and 1660s, and reunion with the Ukraine, which must have enriched Russian architecture with new ‘baroque’ forms. Nevertheless, in Opolovnikov’s opinion, the appearance 76 Types of wooden churches of the kub is ‘a logical consequence of the general tendency in Russian seventeenth-century taste towards the picturesque’ (Opolovnikov and Opolovnikova 1989: 234). Fragmentation of form, which penetrated into all spheres of artistic creativity, particularly painting and architectural decoration, eventually affected wooden architecture as well, which in the second half of the seventeenth century often seems to be under the spell of its masonry counterpart. The kub is a massive superstructure in the form of a four-sided curving closed roof structure with an ogival silhouette from each side that resembles an onion dome. A kub may be topped by a single central dome or an arrangement of five domes, with the other four being placed on the corners of the kub. This variant proclaims the return in the second half of the seventeenth century of the ‘canonical five domes’ as the main means of finishing the top of a church. These alterations may be explained by the strong impact of regional masonry architecture, which had ‘conquered’ the wooden forms and shapes. The principal tendency in wooden architecture from the 1650s onwards is defined, first, by the introduction of the five-domed formula, which coincides with edicts restricting construction of tented-roof churches, and second, by the further elaboration of that formula into multi-domed wooden cathedrals. The earliest example of a kub roof dated from 1666, the year of the construction of the (now lost) Church of St Paraskeva (Piatnitsa) in the village of Shueretskoe on the Karelian shore of the White Sea. The distribution area of wooden kub churches covers the Karelian coast and Onega Bay on the White Sea and also the lower reaches of the River Onega; these were in the sphere of economic interest and spiritual influence of the Monastery of the Cross on Kii Island, the Transfiguration Monastery on the Solovetskie Islands and the Kozheozerskii Monastery, where Nikon himself had been hegumen in the 1640s. It is noteworthy that the known kub churches on the shores of the White Sea (at Shueretskoe, Virma and Kushereka) appeared only in the years 1660–90, that is to say, in the period that saw the most intensive construction in the Monastery of the Cross. Subsequently, in the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, churches with a kub top were built mainly along the River Onega. Although the kub churches are a specifically local phenomenon that was Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 not adopted in other regions of the Russian North, this typological sub- group is one of the most striking developments in the history of wooden architecture because of the elegant refinement of an architectural form that stands out conspicuously from other roofing methods. The kub type demonstrates that significant tendency in the history of northern wooden architecture, which may be defined as its compliance to the image of a masonry church. Due to this process, however, conservative wooden architecture acquired a great variety of new forms, technical methods and unique experience that would contribute to the flourishing of Russian wooden church building. Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016

Figure 4.19 The Church of Sts Peter and Paul, Virma (second half of the seventeenth century) Source: Photo by Arina Noskova, 2007. 78 Types of wooden churches The tiered churches that exist today date from the middle of the seventeenth century. The emergence of both kub-roofed and tiered buildings coincides with bans on the construction of tent-roofs on churches, reuni- fication with the Ukraine and, as has already been noted, with general changes that affected practically all aspects of the nation’s culture. The tiered structure can be interpreted as an attempt to realize within the aesthetic parameters of the time the striving for height that had long been characteristic of Russian architecture. Placing elements with reducing base size one on top of another preserved the height of the pillar church, providing an adequate substitute for the forbidden shatër, the monumental integrity of which gave way to the characteristic seventeenth-century fragmentation and multiplicity of artistic forms. Igor’ Grabar’ hypothesized that the tiered church made its appearance in Russian wooden architecture concurrently with Russo-Ukrainian integra - tion. It is indeed true that one of the main types of composition in Ukrain- ian ecclesiastical wooden architecture is a series of successively smaller vos’meriki or chetveriki placed one on top of another (Grabar’ and Gornostaev 1910: 413–15). This theory may be indirectly proved by the geographical distribution of tiered churches. The strength of the possible influence of Ukrainian architecture diminishes further away from the borders of Ukraine towards the north-east. Of the now extant buildings of the tiered type, most are found closer to Central Russia (in Tver, Novgorod and Kostroma Regions), while in the North their distribution is confined to Vologda region and the upper and middle reaches of the Northern Dvina. On the River Onega and in Karelia there are practically no tiered churches. The rare exceptions include the Church of the Nativity of St John the Baptist (1786–1801) in Kandalaksha, beyond the Arctic Circle. The densest collection of tiered churches in the Russian North is a group of buildings from the second half of the eighteenth century in Vologda region – in the Tsypinskii pogost, Kalikino, Kornevo and Vasil’evskoe that have a common pattern of several vos’meriki of diminishing height placed one on top of the other (Shurgin 2006: 110–15). The oldest extant example of this type can be taken to be the Church of the Virgin from the village of Kholm (1552, now in the Kostroma Museum of Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 History and Ethnography) that may once have had a tent-roof traditional for the sixteenth century (Agafonov 1952). To all appearances, the compact distribution of the tiered type in wooden architecture can be explained by its restriction to the nearer spheres of influence of major eparchial centres (Tver, Novgorod, Moscow, Yaroslavl’ and Vologda) where masonry construction was particularly developed and par ticularly thorough supervision was exercised by the ecclesiastical authorities. Types of wooden churches 79 Many-domed and tiered many-domed churches These were a feature of Russian wooden architecture from the outset. It has already been mentioned that in 989 the oaken St Sophia’s Cathedral was constructed in Novgorod ‘with thirteen tops’ (PSRL 1879: 2). In 1072 the relics of the first Russian saints, the martyr princes Boris and Gleb, were transferred to a five-domed wooden church at Vyshgorod outside Kiev. From this it follows that a multiplicity of domes in pre-Mongol wooden architecture was connected with the building of cathedrals or with a royal commission and dependent on the forms of masonry building. The upsurge in many-domed construction in the North in the late seventeenth century is associated with Archbishop Afanasii of Kholmogory Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016

Figure 4.20 The Resurrection Cathedral in Kola (1684), destroyed in 1854 Source: Drawing by A. Zhukovskii (Illiustratsiia. Vsemirnoe Obozrenie, Vol. I, No. 12, St Petersburg, 1858: 181). 80 Types of wooden churches and the Vaga. His name is directly connected with two outstanding many- domed cathedrals of the late 1600s – in Kola and Shenkursk – that may viewed as predecessors of the famous Kizhi masterpiece that appeared just a few decades later. The Resurrection Cathedral in Kola was consecrated in 1684. The history of that remarkable building lasted until 1854, when during the Crimean War British ships deliberately fired on it. Its elaborate composition consisted of three five-domed chetveriki. Additional domes may have been placed above the sanctuary, the priruby of the central chetverik and the landings of the steps up to the porches, in which case the number of domes on the Resurrection Church could have been as high as twenty-three. The image of the Kola cathedral evokes the description of Novgorod’s legendary oaken St Sophia’s of 989. The ancient pre-Mongolian type of huge multi-domed edifice, ‘fairly built and decorated’ (as the chronicles put it), reappears in Russian late mediaeval architecture like an epilogue. The use of this sophisticated formula in pre-Mongolian times, and again in the seventeenth century, is in line with the central authorities’ striving to manifest themselves in subordinated lands and territories. At the same time, the configuration of the multi-domed cathedral accords with Greek tendencies in Russian art of the pre-Mongolian era and the activities of Nikon and Afanasii in the second half of the seventeenth century, aimed, at least in part, at bringing the Church back into line with Greek practices. The large scale and heavenly beauty of the Resurrection Cathedral in Kola would seem inappropriate for a remote fortress with few inhabitants. This disparity can, however, be explained by the cathedral’s function of representing the Russian Orthodox world on its northern frontiers, since Kola was the first harbour of the Muscovite state on the maritime route from Europe. The cathedral was evidently also intended to have a protective function: its side-altars were dedicated to Nicholas, the patron saint of mariners and travellers, and George, the warrior saint regarded as a defender of the Orthodox and a heraldic symbol of Moscow. The protective significance of such consecrations was echoed by the main towers of the Kola fortress which were built at the end of the sixteenth century and also named after St Nicholas and St George. Thus, in the history of Kola we see a Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 characteristic concordance of fortifications and church architecture, whose elements are closely linked by their common role as protective shields. The contemporary Cathedral of the Archangel Michael in Shenkursk, dating from 1681, was built ‘in the masonry manner’. Compared to the Kola edifice, it was less complicated in design, but it too belonged to the type of grand cathedral with a multi-domed superstructure and minor domes on side compartments. Its configuration is based on the traditional cross, which may have been inherited from the previous cruciform edifice of 1582. On account of its tall square core topped by five domes, the Shenkursk church is believed to be related to other late seventeenth-century cathedrals – the Dormition Types of wooden churches 81 Cathedrals in Kolomna (1672–82), Riazan’ (1693–9) and the Joseph Volokolamsk Monastery (1688–92), the Cathedral of the Presentation in Sol’vychegodsk (1689–93) and the Trinity Cathedral in Pskov (1699). The spread of multiple domes in wooden architecture from the second half of the seventeenth century may not only be connected with the powerful influence of the forms that existed in masonry architecture, from examples of which the builders of rural churches took their cue. The appearance of multi-domed churches in a particular region was sometimes due to imitation of a celebrated and respected archetype that provided the impulse for the development of an enduring architectural tradition. This was the case, for example, on Lake Onego, where throughout the whole of the eighteenth century builders to one extent or another found their inspiration in the Transfiguration Church in the Kizhi pogost or the Church of the Intercession in Ankhimovo. In concluding this examination of the main typological groups, an important aspect of their historical development must be stressed. Despite the fact that the earliest surviving churches, from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries, belong to the klet’ type, this does not in the least mean that the entire history of wooden church architecture takes the form of an evolution from ‘simplest’ to ‘most complex’. This has been noted by researchers from other countries as well as Russia: ‘It must also be borne in mind that the more sophisticated derivatives did not necessarily supersede the simpler but always existed alongside them.’ (Buxton 1981: 41). Confirmation of this is once again provided by the oaken thirteen-domed St Sophia’s Cathedral built in Novgorod in the year 989. In other words, the elaborate many-domed composition is the start of Russian wooden architecture and not in any way the outcome of a centuries-long, step-by-step ascent to the masterpieces of the Kizhi pogost that appeared only in the eighteenth century. It is evident that the classification of the wooden churches of the Russian North into five main groups that became established back in the early twentieth century can today seem highly simplistic – despite the fact that additional categories can be defined within the five basic types, making it possible to develop and refine the traditional system. The great variety of wooden ecclesiastical architecture over the centuries of its history can hardly Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 be reduced to just a few types. An analysis of actual architectural form should therefore be supplemented by a study of the mechanisms that produced it, and those were shaped by a whole complex of factors. Often the spatial composition, layout, methods of roof construction and so on depend directly on the location of the buildings, just as this or that dialect is directly associated with the locality from which it comes and predetermines the way of life of its speakers. When they examine the archaeological typology in the abstract, in its pure form, researchers inevitably encounter a need to take account of the regional factor, as has been demonstrated by such strongly pronounced regional 82 Types of wooden churches typological groups as ‘tower-like tent-roofed churches from the ground up’ (basin of the Northern Dvina, Kargopol’ area, Svir’ valley), ‘tent-roof on crossed bochki’ (the Rivers Pinega and Mezen’) and kub churches (the southern White Sea area and lower reaches of the River Onega). This pattern is also confirmed by data relating to the historical geography of the Russian North. According to the assessment of the prominent researcher Mikhail Vitov, in Zaonezh’e

the territory of a pogost as a rule takes the form of an enclosed geographical entity: it is the basin of either a stream or the tributary of a larger river, or else a lake, or, ﬁnally, a group of smaller lakes or inlets. The boundaries of pogosty run through unforested localities – either watersheds or large lakes, such as Onego, Ladoga, Sandal and others. (Vitov 1962: 174)

In this context sorting works of wooden church architecture by geography into regional schools or groups implies the identification of local centres that possess their own specific character of development, their own chronological boundaries and which had a certain shaping influence on building types. This kind of regional grouping principle is entirely applicable to works of church architecture. The preconditions for the emergence of local architec - tural centres, ‘schools’, tendencies and traditions were provided by the feudal fragmentation of mediaeval Rus’, the specifics of water and land routes in the northern direction, geographic (climatic) conditions in a place of settlement and the region’s level of economic prosperity, which was directly dependent on its geographical location. An important factor is proximity to, or remoteness from, ideological centres – major towns, diocesan centres or monasteries with prototypes of masonry or wooden architecture that could have had a certain shaping influence on architectural tendencies in the locality. The geographical distribution of works of wooden architecture in the Russian North does undoubtedly present patterns that make it possible to speak of particular cohesive groups and raises the question of additional criteria by which they can be classified. The concept of ‘style’ in the generally accepted meaning is hard to apply to wooden folk architecture, while the Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 frequently employed, highly convenient term ‘school’ requires narrower definition. For an analysis of a particular regional set of characteristics within northern church architecture of the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries a more adequate word might prove to be the broad and flexible term ‘tradition’. The concept of a ‘school’ is examined within that framework and employed exclusively in the analysis of those groups of buildings that display:

• a minimal time span between the earliest and latest works, representing the active period of one or, rarely, two generations of craftsmen who Types of wooden churches 83 formed a ‘school’ in the direct sense of the word and passed on to their younger contemporaries technological methods and innovations as well as architectural ideas; • common origins as a consequence of this; that is to say, the buildings were the work of one or two teams of carpenters; • typological similarity; • minimum distance between the buildings or the existence of convenient means of travelling rapidly between them (as a rule by water); • an ‘ideological centre’ (archbishopric, monastery, town, large pogost), whose ediﬁces might serve as a model for builders during the formation of a school.

The concept of a ‘tradition’ has broader boundaries and can be deﬁned as presenting:

• not only a local, but also a regional grouping of buildings; • a greater chronological spread, encompassing the work of several generations of craftsmen; • stable compositional forms associated with a speciﬁc region, given more or less free creative interpretation; • the repetition of distinctive decorative devices and details, often those that have lost their original functional purpose and have become ‘a tribute to tradition’.

As a result the examination of the regional specifics of wooden architecture using this approach is one of the most interesting aspects of this field of study, being closely intertwined with the problem of typological classification. This kind of approach makes it possible to place wooden church architecture of the Russian North into a broad geographical context and to identify certain mechanisms and specific local features of its development. Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 This page intentionally left blank Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 5 Regional schools and traditions in the wooden church architecture of the Russian North

The North has always occupied a special place in Russian national culture (Bulatov 2006; Terebikhin 1993). Back in the Middle Ages, the advance into the North was to a considerable degree perceived not so much as a geographical relocation as an ascent from the material to the spiritual. The shores of the White Sea and the Arctic Ocean, to which the migration routes led and where the Novgorodian domains ended, were regarded as the edge of the world, beyond which physical existence was transformed into a heavenly one, while somewhere beyond the horizon lay the entrance to Paradise. Archbishop Vasilii Kalika (‘Basil the Pilgrim’) wrote of that very thing in his 1347 ‘Letter about Paradise’ to Bishop Fëdor of Tver:

And the site of holy paradise was found by Moislav the Novgorodian and his son Iakov. In all there were three [large ships], one of which perished after much wandering, while the other two were long driven about the sea by the wind and brought to some high mountains. And on that mountain they saw a depiction of the Deesis [Christ enthroned with attendant Virgin Mary and one or more saints] painted in miraculous azure and adorned beyond measure, as if made not by human hands but by Divine Grace. And the light in that place was self- luminous, beyond human telling . . .

After losing several companions, who strove to enter paradise in the flesh, the remaining travellers ‘hastened thence: they could not even look upon it – that indescribable brightness, nor hear the joy and exaltation. And the Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 children and grandchildren of those mariners are even now alive and well, my brother’ (BLDR 1999: 46). Historically the Russian North belonged ecclesiastically to two of the most ancient eparchies – Novgorod and Rostov – and for many centuries this determined the character and direction of the opening up of these vast lands. As early as 1137 the extension of Novgorodian influence from Ladoga to the White Sea was recorded in a document issued by Prince Sviatoslav Ol’govich ordering that a tenth of all taxes collected in those lands be set aside for the benefit of St Sophia’s Cathedral in Novgorod (Ianin 1977: 91). 86 Regional schools and traditions In the fifteenth century when the clash between Novgorod and Moscow for control of the lands along the Dvina (Zavoloch’e) intensified, there is a known instance when, in 1445, Archbishop Evfimii of Novgorod personally visited the northern lands, thereby stressing their importance for Novgorod (PSRL 1889: 188). The geographical location of the Novgorodian republic, its socio-political structure in the form of a democracy based on the veche (popular assembly), the absence of the Tatar-Mongol yoke and the economic advantages derived from trade with the Hanseatic League together suggest that we can regard the Novgorodian North as a relatively isolated and self-sufficient phenomenon in the history of mediaeval Rus’.

An analysis of Novgorodian chronicles makes it possible to conclude that the Novgorodian republic in the second quarter and middle of the fifteenth century existed independently of the lands around, in both the political and the ecclesiastical spheres. Novgorodians strove not to involve themselves in the conflicts of Muscovite and North-Eastern rulers. We find no indications in Archbishop Evfimii II’s actions of any hostile intentions directed against Moscow. At the same time we have no records of the Novgorodian eparch taking part in general Russian ecclesiastical affairs or his travelling to see the Metropolitan in Moscow. The Novgorodians were more interested in their own problems: crop failures, fires, the struggle against external enemies, the construction and frescoing of churches and secular buildings. (Antipov 2009: 41)

This situation persisted right up to the Novgorodian republic’s loss of independence in 1478 and its annexation by Moscow. Yet even after that the ancient division of the Novgorodian lands into extensive territories (the piatiny) continued and found reflection in the clerical records of the Muscovite state. Climatic characteristics and the nature of agriculture resulted in the non-viability and almost total absence in the northern lands of large landed estates and serfdom, which fettered not only the economic and personal liberty of the peasants, but also their creative endeavours. Thus centuries of accumulated experience and polished techniques, inexpensive and readily available material, efficient methods of organizing construction Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 work and relative freedom from administrative control favoured the creative ‘emancipation’ of the northern builders. This distinctive character of Novgorodian socio-political and economic development had a direct effect upon the art produced there. As regards the ‘second front’ in the opening up of the North, Rostovian (and later Muscovite) influence was exerted through the main town in north-eastern Rus’ – Velikii Ustiug, which was located at the head of the Northern Dvina and provided a convenient ‘bridgehead’ for further advances, either towards the White Sea or eastwards to the Kama and onwards to the Urals. Regional schools and traditions 87 Even after the formation in the sixteenth century of a single centralized state ruled from Moscow, ‘Novgorodian’ and ‘Rostovian’ echoes persisted for a long time in the culture of the Russian North – in place names, dialects, icon-painting and architecture. In 1682 the ecclesiastical provinces of Nov- gorod and Vologda were reorganized, with the new eparchy of Kholmogory and Vaga being carved out of Novgorod’s territory and the eparchy of (Velikii) Ustiug from Vologda’s. Thus shortly before the foundation of St Petersburg in 1703, which substantially altered the course of the socio- economic development of the North, two new ecclesiastical centres appeared there that gave an additional impulse to local art. Novgorod was from earliest times famed as a centre of the carpenter’s art. As far back as the turn of the eleventh century, the fame of the thirteen- domed oaken St Sophia’s Cathedral in Novgorod had established its citizens’ reputation as being skilled builders rather than warriors. In any case, that was the mocking suggestion made by Prince Sviatopolk’s military commander when he berated Iaroslav’s Novgorodian army that for three months had not ventured to cross the Dnieper and give battle to decide the fate of the grand princely throne in Kiev: ‘After all, you’re carpenters! We will have you build our mansions!’ (Povest’ Vremennykh Let 2007: 200). These inborn qualities enabled the Novgorodians to establish and dissemin- ate the traditions of wooden architecture in those lands that came within their sphere of economic and political influence. The factors governing the appearance of architectural schools were created by the character of migration into the Russian North in the mediaeval period. People built settlements along large and small rivers, on the shores of lakes and the White Sea. Travel by water in summer and on the ice in winter was practically the only means of getting between the villages, pogosty and monasteries. The rivers and lakes of the Russian North served as natural highways, connecting Novgorod with its most distant territories. A break between waterways was no obstacle to the pioneers: since ancient times people had made portages, carrying their boats overland from the basin of one river to another. David Buxton, who travelled many of the roads and rivers of the Russian North, gained a very personal impression of the ancient Novgorodian routes and gave this analysis of them:

Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 Their main highway passed through Lake Ladoga and the River Svir’ to Lake Onego, whence two alternative routes – by way of the Rivers Pudozh or Kovzha – led through minor streams and short portages to the River Onega and so to the White Sea. The Kovzha route, via Beloye Ozero (the White Lake), also connected with the upper reaches of the Sukhona, one of the principal head-streams of the Northern Dvina. This great river system led on the one hand downstream to the White Sea, and on the other, up a major tributary, the Vychegda, eastward towards the Urals. (Buxton 1981: 38) 88 Regional schools and traditions Settlements might also be established at those bottlenecks that delayed travellers for a time and a portage itself became a place of interaction between the adjoining areas. (The most striking example of this is the historically, culturally, ethnographically and architecturally unique development of the Kenozero area on the site of the ancient Kena portage.) Besides their convenience for travel, the rivers facilitated the development of ﬁsheries, animal husbandry and arable farming, which was far from easy given the climate at such high latitudes. Dense forests, impenetrable bogs and rocky rapids on the rivers meant the opening up of new lands proceeded unevenly and led to the appearance of ‘oases’ dotted across the expanses of the northern desert. All this favoured the local concentration of phenomena of various kinds – customs, costume, dialect, folk art and architecture – which acquired an exclusive, endemic character. This peculiarity of the historical, geographical and cultural development of the Russian North explains to a large extent the appearance of different features in the wooden architecture of the region that might be attributed to a local school or regional tradition.

The River Svir’ and Lake Onego

The tent-roofed churches of the Svir’ basin and Lake Onego The route to the North from Novgorod began with the River Volkhov and continued along the south shore of Lake Ladoga and the full length of the River Svir’ that connects it to Lake Onego. In the basin of the Svir’ stands one of the oldest extant wooden churches in the Russian North – the Church of St George in Iuksovichi (1493), which has already been described as one of the most interesting buildings of the klet’ type with a tall cascade roof (see Figure 4.3, page 56). The name of the village occurs in the charter of Sviatoslav Ol’govich from 1137. The early date for that mention of the settlement and also the venerable age of the church itself, which is the oldest surviving wooden building still standing on its original site, are eloquent pointers to the historical and strategic importance of this region. Further- more, the legend that links the construction of St George’s in Iuksovichi with Alexander of the Svir’, one of the most highly venerated saints of the Russian North, makes it possible to speak of the Aleksandro-Svirskii Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 Monastery as a powerful ideological centre in the basin of the River Svir’ associated with the beginnings of the formation of a local architectural tradition. A further significant organizing role in this region was played by the Olonets pogost, where the cadastres recorded churches as early as the sixteenth century (Cherniakova and Cherniakov 1988: 57–60). After the early seventeenth-century Time of Troubles, however, many of those buildings were either destroyed or ruined and services were not held in them. A new phase in the history of the wooden architecture of the Svir’ basin began in the 1630s with the reconstruction of the ancient Church Regional schools and traditions 89 of St George in Iuksovichi and the construction of the Resurrection Church in Vazhiny, which has a unique composition. The building takes the form of a massive desiaterik (ten-sided srub) – something extremely rare in the history of Russian architecture. The church did, however, have at least one precursor – a late thirteenth-century desiaterik discovered during exca vations in the Novgorod Kremlin (Rodionova and Popov 2012). That building, as mentioned earlier, may in turn have had some indirect relation to centrally-planned European religious edifices and southern Russian pre-Mongol churches. These associations make the Resurrection Church in Vazhiny one of the most interesting works in the history of wooden architecture in the Russian North, despite the substantial alterations made to it in the nineteenth century. In the middle years of the seventeenth century, the main teams of carpenters in the Svir’ area were engaged in the construction of the large Olonets fortress. Its towers may have influenced the strong emphasis on height in a series of tent-roofed churches from the later 1600s which, within the framework of the general Lake Onego area tradition of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, can be looked upon as a local, more or less integral Mezhozër’e school (Mezhozër’e – ‘between the lakes’ – being the name for the area between Lakes Ladoga and Onego). This is because these buildings meet the definition of a school as a strongly pronounced phenomenon:

• narrow localization (on the isthmus dividing Lakes Ladoga and Onego with its internal network of waterways – the Rivers Svir’ and Vazhinka); • a minimal chronological span (1670s–90s); • proximity of ‘ideological centres’ able to provide favourable stimuli and conditions for the development of the school and tradition (Olonets, Tikhvin, the Alexandro-Svirskii Monastery); • typological afﬁnity, with almost identical buildings in a number of cases; they all display a very similar arrangement of volumes – a tent-roof superstructure, tower-like composition (‘octagon from the ground up’, ‘octagon on square’, ‘octagons on square’) with western and eastern priruby considerably reduced in length, enlargement of the upper part of the srub by ﬂaring (povaly) and the use of zigzag belts of small gables (frontonnye poiasa) at the points of expansion.

Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 Besides the tower-like composition, which may have been a ‘reverbera- tion’ of the construction of fortresses at Olonets and Tikhvin, the device of linking a vos’merik above with the one below by means of a frontonnyi poias, which stressed the tiered character of the Mezhozër’e edifices, may have been due to the influence of striking works of local masonry architecture from the sixteenth century, for example, the Refectory Churches of the Intercession in the nearby Tikhvin and Aleksandro-Svirskii Monasteries that were quickly restored after the Time of Troubles. The belts of kokoshniki that in those buildings embellish the transition from the main body to the drum may have served as prototypes for the wooden triangular gables. 90 Regional schools and traditions The revival of construction in the area of the River Svir’ and on Lakes Ladoga and Onego began very soon after the end of the Time of Troubles. The overwhelming majority of buildings from that period can now only be identified from mentions in the cadastres and other written sources. By the early twenty-first century, the sole survivors from that period were the Churches of Sts Florus and Laurus in Megrega (1613), of Sts Peter and Paul on Lychnyi Ostrov (1620) and of the Resurrection in Vazhiny (1630). The appearance of some others can be reconstructed, despite their loss, on the basis of pictorial sources: these are three Churches of St Nicholas – on Brusno island, in the trading quarter (posad) of Olonets (both built in 1630, like the church in Vazhiny) and in Lindozero (1634). Although this sample of buildings is random and there is as yet no occasion to speak of a school per se, they do display a more or less identical tendency

towards the development of the vertical structure of the churches and also a striving to achieve the greatest possible richness and complexity of the volume and outline of the building. It was in that direction that the search for compositional and constructional solutions proceeded. (Noskova 2011: 131)

The formation of the ‘Mezhozër’e school’ with distinctive general regional features and typological characteristics can be dated to the last quarter of the seventeenth century. Its initial phase can be illustrated by the Church of the Sign in Tikhvin (before 1679, lost), the Church of St Nicholas in Dereviannoe (1683, lost) and two Churches of the Prophet Elijah – in Gornee Sheltozero (1685, lost) and Saminskii Pogost (1692). The Church of St Nicholas in Dereviannoe sadly remained practically unstudied and we are obliged to assess it from a drawing and plan made by Lev Dahl (Krasovskii 1916: 245). From the plan of the building it is evident that it took the form of a row of four kleti: the sanctuary, the body of the church, the refectory and a vestibule with steps on the longitudinal axis. All the priruby were covered by two-pitched roofs. The tall central chetverik was strongly flared with a large frontonnyi poias made up of three pediments on each of its sides. Placed on the upper logs of the poval was the sole vos’merik, supporting the tent-roof. Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 The Church of the Prophet Elijah in Gornee Sheltozero was also studied by Lev Dahl, whose drawings of the church itself and its porch were published in the Proceedings of the Imperial Archaeological Commission (IIAC 1915 no. 57: 164–5). As with the church in Dereviannoe, the central pillar of this building consists of a chetverik, a broader vos’merik and a tent- roof, while the sanctuary has a two-pitched roof. The porch displays distinctive features: on the whole it is treated like the one in Gimreka (see below), but the upper landing is uncovered and attached to a carved post. Despite the fact that the Church of the Prophet Elijah in Saminskii Pogost is located on the south-east shore of Lake Onego, it fits comfortably Regional schools and traditions 91 into the series of western Onego region buildings; the proportions of the building’s volumes are similar to the church in Dereviannoe, while the construction of the chetverik called for two frontonnye poiasa, which are a characteristic feature of the school in question. While the pillar-like compositions of the churches in the Dereviannoe pogost, Gornee Sheltozero and Saminskii Pogost have the classic two-part structure, vos’merik on chetverik, in the mid-1690s two churches were built on the south-western side of Lake Onego with a unique tripartite structure in the form of two vos’meriki on a chetverik: the Church of the Nativity of the Virgin in Gimreka (1695) (Figure 5.1) and the Church of St Varlaam of Khutyn in the village of Rybreka (1697, lost). The constructional treatment of the pillar of the church in Gimreka differs from that of the two-part churches examined above. The pillar supporting the tent-roof has three parts (a chetverik and two vos’meriki) and spreads out towards the top, but the upper octagon is not a continuation of the poval of the one below, but rather is set inside its flare, as in Olonets, Soginitsy and Pid’ma. The Church of St Varlaam of Khutyn in nearby Rybreka was compositionally similar and most probably the work of the same master builder. Based on differences in the constructional treatment of the church pillar, we can speak of an evolution in wooden church architecture around the south of Lake Onego from the early two-part compositions in the 1680s and early 1690s (Dereviannoe, Gornee Sheltozero and Saminskii Pogost) to the three-part arrangement of the middle to late 1690s (Gimreka, Rybreka). At the same time in Mezhozër’e they were also building churches of the ‘vos’merik on vos’merik’ type. The Transfiguration Church in the village of Pid’ma on the Svir’ and the Church of St Nicholas in the village of Soginitsy, also in the Svir’ basin, belong to the category of pillar-like churches that are octagonal from the ground up. St Nicholas’s in Soginitsy has survived into the twenty-first century (see Figures 4.11 on page 66 and 5.2 on page 93). The Transfiguration Church was lost in the mid-1900s, but we can obtain a fairly complete impression of it thanks to a series of photographs taken by Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii in 1909, others taken by Mileev and a drawing in Pettersson’s book (IIAC 1915 no. 57: 144–145; Pettersson 1950: 102). The two buildings are almost completely identical, with the exception of the structure of the roof over the sanctuary prirub (in Soginitsy it is simply Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 two pitched, while in Pid’ma there was a cascade roof). Besides that, St Nicholas’s in Soginitsy was constructed alongside a pre-existing bell-tower. Thus the basin of the River Svir and the isthmus between Lakes Ladoga and Onego are marked not only by typological similarity but also an extremely high pace of construction in the 1690s when four churches were put up in three years, two of them in a single season: the Church of the Nativity of the Virgin in Gimreka (1695), the Church of St Nicholas in Soginitsy (1696), the Transfiguration Church in Pid’ma (1696) and the Church of St Varlaam of Khutyn in Rybreka (1697). Those narrow chronological and geographical limits as well as shared constructional features make it Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016

Figure 5.1 The Church of the Nativity of the Virgin in Gimreka (1695) Source: Photo by the author, 2012. Regional schools and traditions 93

Figure 5.2 The Church of St Nicholas, Soginitsy (1696) Source: Photo by the author, 2013.

possible to identify the churches of south-western Lake Onego and the upper Svir’ basin as forming a single Mezhozër’e school. The intensive construction work in Mezhozër’e came to a sudden halt in the late 1690s. This may have been due to the radically altered political and economic situation in the region as a result of the outbreak of the Great Northern War, the establishment of a shipyard in Lodeinoe Pole on the Svir’ and the foundation of St Petersburg. The Svir’ basin and the area around Lake Ladoga became drawn into the orbit of the new capital. Peter the Great’s reforms and severe pressure from the state under wartime conditions evoked aversion and rejection that expressed themselves, among other ways, Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 in the emphatically traditional Early Russian forms of architecture seen in the Lake Onego area and Karelia in the ﬁrst half of the eighteenth century (multiple domes, twenty-wall ground plans, tent-roofs). At the same time the defeat of Sweden, which had over the centuries caused no small amount of harm to the Russian North, also encouraged the crystallization of national features in folk architecture and their powerful, triumphant expression. Under such historical circumstances we can expect ﬁrst, a shift of construction activity to the north-east of the newly formed capital into the periphery of the Onego-Ladoga region; second, in such a situation a tendency for traditional architectural thinking to strengthen is observed. Beginning 94 Regional schools and traditions as early as the 1710s and right through to the 1770s, the devices, decoration and composition of Mezhozër’e churches of the late seventeenth century were repeated in general terms in the following works of wooden architecture in the northern Lake Onego region: the Church of St Barbara in Iandomozero (1650, the vos’merik was extended upwards with two frontonnye poiasa around 1710), the Dormition Church in Kosmozero (1720, lost) and the Church of Sts Peter and Paul in Lychnyi Ostrov (the upper part of the vos’merik dates from the mid-eighteenth century). The 1720s–40s saw the second phase of the Intercession Church in Kizhi, when it was topped with a tent-roof. In the 1760s–70s on the northern shores of Lake Onego, there Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016

Figure 5.3 The Dormition Church in Kondopoga (1774) Sources: Drawing by Dmitrii Mileev, (IIAC, 1915 no 57: 156) (left); Photo by Arina Noskova, 2007 (right). Regional schools and traditions 95 is again evidence of the active construction of tent-roofed churches that saw the creation of the Church of the Nativity of the Virgin in Kuzaranda (consecrated in 1765), the Ascension Church in Tipinitsy (1761–81, lost) and the Church of St Alexander of Svir’ in Kosmozero (1769). The brilliant conclusion of this series was the Dormition Church in Kondopoga (1774). The eighteenth-century tent-roofed churches on the north and north-west shores of Lake Onego inherited from the previous generation of churches in the Svir’ area some features whose endurance can be attributed to a certain local tradition that was passed on from team to team. These buildings display frequent use of the decorative device of the frontonnyi poias, which is not always combined with an additional flaring of the top of the octagon. This suggests a definite decorative, but not compositional kinship between the edifices, which can be said to be linked by a common West Lake Onego tradition of decoratively finishing the pillar of a church. Therefore the long history of tent-roofed churches on the River Svir’ and the shores of Lake Onego through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries can be viewed as a process with several stages:

1 the genesis of a particular architectural tradition in the context of a highly potent upsurge in construction in the North immediately after the end of the Time of Troubles; 2 its crystallization and maturation in the late seventeenth-century ‘Mezhozër’e school’; 3 a shift north-eastwards and subsequent strong inﬂuence on the wooden architecture of northern Lake Onego right through to the 1770s.

In this case it will be more appropriate to use the term ‘Northern Lake Onego tradition’ because the picture of construction in that area of the Russian North accords with the proposed deﬁnition of a tradition as displaying:

Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 • the repetition of distinctive decorative devices and details, often those that have lost their original functional purpose and have turned into ‘a tribute to tradition’.

Similar general patterns can be observed in the architecture of the wooden chapels of Zaonezh’e, which remains today one of the areas with the highest concentration of wooden religious and secular architecture in the Russian North. The chapels of the Kizhi skerries are both compositionally and spiritually connected with the Kizhi pogost ensemble and subordinated to it. They serve not only as a system of range markers to guide vessels through the confusion of narrow channels, but also as ‘propylaea’ of sorts, 96 Regional schools and traditions a ‘supporting act’ whose small forms gradually prepare the traveller for an encounter with the sublime multi-domed Transﬁguration and Intercession Churches on the island of Kizhi. All these chapels are of the basic klet’ type, topped as a rule by a shatër belfry in the late eighteenth or nineteenth century. On the south side of the island there is the Chapel of the Deposition of the Cincture of the Virgin Mary (1764–1825) in Garnitsy, the Chapel of the Sign (1780–1820) in Korba and the Chapel of Sts Quiricus and Julietta (eighteenth–nineteenth century) in the village of Vorob’i. On the island of Kizhi the oldest building still standing on its original site is the Dormition Chapel in the village of Vasil’evo (second half of the seventeenth century). On the northern side of the island the Kizhi pogost is framed by a necklace of chapels consecrated to the Icon of the Virgin ‘Consolation of All Who Sorrow’ in Eglovo (eighteenth–nineteenth century), Sts Peter and Paul in Volkostrov (1750s–turn of the nineteenth century), St Paraskeva Piatnitsa and St Varlaam of Khutyn in Pod’el’niki (1860–5). The same features mark the best known extant chapels on the Zaonezh’e peninsula: the Chapel of St George in Ust’-Iandoma (1750–80), the Chapel of the Trinity and St Demetrius of Thessalonica in Seletskoe (1753), the Chapel of St Nicholas in Tambitsy (seventeenth–nineteenth century) and the Chapel of the Beheading of John the Baptist in Voronii Ostrov (1860). Practically all the religious buildings in Zaonezh’e evolved in stages from an original klet’ that was extended westwards with priruby and then upwards with a belfry. Later, in the nineteenth century, some chapels, such as those in the villages of Polia and Viogoruksi, had a sanctuary added as a prirub on the east side and were consecrated as churches. The same sort of constructional history belongs to the grandest ecclesiastical building on the Zaonezh’e peninsula – the Church of St Barbara in the village of Iandomozero. The church was consecrated in 1650 although at that time it consisted only of a relatively small srub with a pitched roof. In the early eighteenth century it was extended upwards with a vos’merik topped by a tent-roof and embellished with a frontonnyi poias. In the late 1700s a bell- tower was built onto the church on the west side, connected to the entrance vestibule by a covered gallery (Vakhrameev 1988). So the Church of St Barbara followed the same pattern as the chapels of Zaonezh’e, having at its core a klet’ to which further elements were gradually added both vertically Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 and horizontally in a westerly direction. The ‘blocking-in’ of a church with a bell-tower generally took place at the ﬁnal stage of construction.

The many-domed churches in the basin of Lake Onego In the early eighteenth century two foremost masterpieces of Russian wooden architecture sprang up on the shores of Lake Onego – the twenty-four-domed Intercession Church in Ankhimovo near Vytegra (1708, burnt down in 1963; recreated in 2007 outside St Petersburg) and the world-famous twenty-two- domed Transﬁguration Church of the Kizhi pogost (1714) in Lake Onego. Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016

Figure 5.4 The Intercession Church from Vytegra (Ankhimovo), recreated in 2007 outside St Petersburg Source: Photo by the author, 2010. Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016

Figure 5.5 The Transfiguration Church in the Kizhi pogost (1714) Source: Photo by Arina Noskova, 2007. Regional schools and traditions 99 The brief span of time between the construction of the two churches, their proximity and common compositional formula suggests that the same team of carpenters was at work in both Ankhimovo and Kizhi. They both have a ‘twenty-walled’ base – an octagonal vos’merik with four priruby. Each has a tiered arrangement of vos’meriki (in Ankhimovo the core of the building was made of two octagons; in Kizhi there were three). It is the little domes on the stepped bochki above the priruby and on the ledges of the vos’meriki that combine to make the celebrated multi-domed symphony that, since the loss of the Intercession Church, is performed ‘from the original score’ only by the Transfiguration Church in Kizhi. The Transfiguration Church brings together almost all the main strands in the centuries-long evolution of Russian architecture, dating back to the tenth century, to the semi-legendary thirteen-domed oaken St Sophia’s in Novgorod and the Dormition Cathedral in Rostov. Besides the multiplicity of domes going back to pre-Mongol times, Kizhi’s Transfiguration Church is an embodiment of one other essential element of Early Russian architecture – height achieved through the use of a strongly pronounced centrally planned stepped composition. In the early eighteenth century, when Russia – and with it the whole of Russian art – was embarking on a completely different path of development, the builders of the Intercession and Transfiguration Churches turned around and looked back, as it were, brilliantly summing up the long and fruitful centuries of the Early Russian architectural and artistic tradition. Thus the churches in Ankhimovo and Kizhi were not only the offspring of the Russian culture of Peter the Great’s time, but also represent one of the most striking aspects in the history of Early Russian construction. The exceptional compositional formula of the Transfiguration Church in Kizhi gave the builders of the neighbouring Intercession Church the extremely difficult task of creating a unified ensemble of the two churches that had probably existed on the island since the fifteenth century and were certainly documented as early as 1582–3 in the cadastre drawn up by Andrei Pleshcheev. In 1693–4 both churches, which had until then had tent-roofs, were badly damaged by fire, with the Intercession Church being practically destroyed. Recent research has shown that the conflagration served as the starting point for large-scale building work to create a new Kizhi ensemble Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 that went on for almost 200 years (Gushchina 2001). The original ‘warm’ (i.e. heated, for use in winter) Intercession Church with a side chapel dedicated to St Nicholas was of the basic klet’ type and its superstructure may have been of a temporary character. After the adjoining twenty-two-domed Transfiguration Church was completed in 1714, the question of making the Intercession Church more monumental again came to the fore. Its second construction period, in the 1720s, ended with the erection of a shatër above the chetverik. Soon, however, this was dismantled and in the course of the third phase of construction it was replaced, by 1752–6, with the present arrangement of nine domes. The 100 Regional schools and traditions

Figure 5.6 The Transﬁguration (1714) and Intercession (1694–1764) Churches with the bell-tower (1862–74) Source: Photo by the author, 2007.

consecration took place in 1764 and so that year has traditionally been considered the date of the construction of the Intercession Church. Subsequent work at the Kizhi pogost consisted of ‘refurbishments’ of both churches in the early nineteenth century when they were encased in planks and the domes of the Transfiguration Church were sheathed with roofing iron. In 1862 the previous octagonal bell-tower on a low chetverik was replaced and joined to the Transfiguration Church by a gallery. With the reconstruction of the bell-tower in 1874, the history of the creation of the Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 Kizhi pogost ensemble came to an end. The present bell-tower is of interest not only as a significant compositional element, a lynchpin joining the two multi-domed churches into a single whole; the pillar shape topped by a shatër demonstrates its belonging to the centuries-long development of Early Russian architecture. At the same time the semicircular tops to the doorways (some of them false) and the planking imitating masonry are evidence that this structure was already to a significant degree subject to tendencies unchar- acteristic for wooden folk architecture. Thus the year 1874 symbolically marked the end not only of the construction of the Kizhi pogost, but also of traditional Russian wooden architecture. Regional schools and traditions 101 Before that, however, after the construction of the churches in Ankhimovo and Kizhi in the early 1700s, many-domed churches continued to appear one after another on the shores of Lake Onego for the rest of that century. The following can be defined as a group composing a regional tradition: the Ascension Church in Sermaksa (1717), the Epiphany Church in Paltoga (1733), the Church of John the Baptist in Shuia (before 1752), the Dormition Church in Deviatiny (1770), the Church of the Prophet Elijah in Shustruchei (1781), the Church of St Demetrius in Shcheleiki (1783) and the Church of St Nicholas in Oshta (1791). Practically all these churches make use, in ‘reduced’ form, of the motif of the stepped ascending domes placed on bochki that is dominant in Kizhi and Ankhimovo. Formally, the many-domed eighteenth-century Lake Onego churches were topped by a canonical arrangement of five-domes, with crossed bochki serving as the base. (In the case of the Transfiguration Church in Kizhi the same function is achieved by placing the topmost dome on a separate small vos’merik around which there are four bochki bearing little domes.) Nevertheless in the churches from later in the century the decorative possibilities of bochki with domes are exploited to the maximum. They may face the cardinal points of the compass or be on the diagonals. In the multi- part symphony of the superstructure an important part is also played by the Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016

Figure 5.7 The Church of St Demetrius, Shcheleiki (1783) Source: Photo by the author, 2012. 102 Regional schools and traditions domes on the bochki above the sanctuary prirub, their height and size allowing them to merge into the overall rhythmic composition. Thus the Intercession Church in Ankhimovo and the Transfiguration Church in Kizhi are significant not only in themselves. Their role in Russian architecture is increased even more through the stimulus that they gave to a local building tradition which retained its specific character for almost another century, right through to the 1790s.

The Kargopol’ area and the River Onega From Lake Onego subsequent settlement of the northern lands followed various routes – along the River Vyg to the White Sea or along the River Vodla and on by way of portages to the Kenozero lake and the River Kena, which flows into the River Onega. The Onega was for centuries an important waterway, connecting Moscow and Novgorod through the Kargopol’ area with the White Sea and on to northern Europe. Heinrich von Staden, who planned an invasion of Rus’ by European states from the north, specifically wrote: ‘If someone wants to penetrate into the Grand Prince’s country, he needs to use the River Onega’ (Staden 1925: 65). The largest town on the Onega is Kargopol’, founded most probably back in the twelfth century. Located close to the head of the river, where it flows from the large Lake Lacha, Kargopol’ occupied a strategically advantageous position on the ancient routes connecting the Beloe Ozero (White Lake) area to the south with the White Sea to the north. The town’s heyday began in the sixteenth century when, in 1536, Kargopol’ became the centre of the vast Onega district (Onezhskii uezd) that extended to the shores of the White Sea and a transhipment point for the transport of salt from there to Vologda and Moscow (Semushin 2010: 53). In 1561–3 the masonry Cathedral of the Nativity was built here, one of the first urban (as opposed to monastic) cathedrals in the Russian North. The events of the Time of Troubles, when Kargopol’ successfully resisted bands of lawless men, heightened the importance of the town still further. A significant factor, too, was the existence around Kargopol’ of the lands best suited to arable farming in the whole of the North. The wooden architecture of Kargopol’s hinterland is very varied. To all Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 appearances the absence of strongly pronounced local features, which might be typological peculiarities or the use of some distinctive techniques, can be attributed to the geographical location of the town; it was open to many influences and, it is fair to say, reworked tendencies that existed in northern architecture as a whole. Probably the only typological line that can be singled out in local construction is the tower-like octagonal tent-roofed churches that appeared from the 1620s and were constructed right through to the late eighteenth century. This group includes the Churches of the Prophet Elijah in Zadniaia Dubrova (1622), the Presentation in the Temple in Krasnaia Liaga (1655, see Figure 4.10, page 65) and St Nicholas in Astaf’evo Regional schools and traditions 103 (1670). On the basis of these churches a case can probably be made for the existence of a local seventeenth-century Kargopol’ school represented by several buildings localized in one region that have similar typological characteristics and a location close to the ‘ideological centre’ – Kargopol’. A particular factor that may have influenced the appearance of the tower- like seventeenth-century churches of the Kargopol’ area was the intensive construction of wooden fortresses in Kargopol’ itself in 1631 and 1665. We know that each of the two stockades had a pair of octagonal towers with a shatër superstructure. In the 1630s active fortification work was being also conducted further down the River Onega – in Ust’-Mosha and Turchasovo (Mil’chik 2008: 18–22; 40–6). It is not impossible that in Kargopol’, as on the River Svir’ where the Olonets stockade was built in 1649, military construction provided a stimulus to the development of carpentry in general and created a background for the emergence of wooden church architecture oriented on a tower-like composition of the main volume. The relatively short chronological span of the seventeenth-century Kargopol’ edifices (1620s–70s) makes it possible to postulate two successive generations of craftsmen within the bounds of a single school. But the pillar-like Churches of the Transfiguration in Agafonovskoe (1756), the Nativity of the Virgin in Kolodozero (1784) and St John the Theologian in Oshevenskoe (1787), put up in the eighteenth century, were based on the earlier prototypes, forming what was already a local Kargopol’ tradition with freer interpretations of the tent-roofed tower formula from the 1600s. As well as tower-like churches, shatër churches with refectories were also constructed around Kargopol’, among them the Church of St Nicholas in Pavlovskoe (1659) and the Church of St John Chrysostom in Saunino (1665, see Figure 4.15, page 71). In the middle of the eighteenth century this latter tradition found expression in the compositional treatment of the Church of the Intercession and St Blaise in Liadiny (1743; 1761; lost in 2013) and the Church of the Nativity at Bol’shaia Shalga (1745). Despite the serious losses that the wooden architecture of the Kargopol’ area has suffered, the surviving edifices and archival sources continue to testify to its richness and variety. Further north along the Onega, in the middle reaches, the settlements are grouped mainly along the banks of the river, having arisen in the distant past at places where vessels moored after a day’s passage or before a stretch Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 of rapids. The region of the middle Onega, where it is joined by the Kena and where the ancient portage to the Emtsa and on to the Northern Dvina begins, had been a crossroads of water routes from time immemorial. Perhaps this favoured the formation here of a distinctive architectural phenomenon that might be termed the ‘Middle Onega School’ with its main attendant features – typological uniformity (a bochka roofing the main body of a church or chapel and not the sanctuary prirub), localization (in the middle section of the river) and a narrow time frame (late 1660s–first quarter of the seventeenth century). This school was represented by at the very least seven edifices, the majority of which are no longer extant. From the 104 Regional schools and traditions

Figure 5.8 The Churches of the Epiphany (1793) and of the Intercession and St Blaise (1743; 1761, lost in 2013) in Liadiny Source: Photo by Vladimir Knyazhitsky, 2005.

seventeenth century there was the Dormition Church of the Kirillo- Chelmogorskaia Pustyn’ (monastery) (second half of the seventeenth century), the Transfiguration Church of the Ol’kovskii pogost (1690, lost) and the Church of the Beheading of John the Baptist in Pochozero (Filippovskoe) (1700, bochka roof recreated in 2006). The eighteenth-century edifices were the Trinity Church of the Elgomskii Pogost (1714, lost), the Annunciation Church in Pustyn’ka (1719–26) and the nearby chapel in Nizhnie Markomusy (early eighteenth century). The church in the Spasozero pogost may also have dated from this period. Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 Bochka roofs were characteristic of Early Russian architecture, including secular buildings, but in ecclesiastical construction they are found to be dominant only on the edifices of the middle Onega and the Church of the Virgin of Kazan from Ilimsk in Siberia, which also dates from the second half of the seventeenth century (1679). To all appearances, the relative isolation of this area and also its remoteness from the centre of the state favoured the conservation and persistence of traditional Early Russian forms. In the light of this, the surviving Annunciation Church in Pustyn’ka, plans, scale drawings and photographs of other middle Onega edifices represent a unique body of material that enables us to get a completely reliable Regional schools and traditions 105

Figure 5.9 The Annunciation Church in Pustyn’ka (1719–26) Source: Photo by the author, 2011.

conception of one of the oldest, most original and picturesque forms of roof in Russian wooden architecture. Architecturally the lower Onega tends towards the White Sea region. It was from there, in the second half of the seventeenth century, that the kub form of roof spread to the banks of the Onega. The kub is important in the history of wooden architecture as it represented a significant enrichment of the traditional ways of constructing the upper part of a church building. This substantial addition to the existing aesthetic range determined that diverse large-scale ensembles would appear specifically in the basin of the River Onega. Characteristic examples of the extensive use on the Onega of Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 the kub type of roof as a striking distinctive tradition are two masterpieces of local wooden architecture from the middle and second half of the eighteenth century: the Church of St Vladimir in the village of Podporozh’e (1757) and the Transfiguration Church in Turchasovo (1786). In the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the villages of Piiala, Verkhnii Mud’iug, Turchasovo, Makar’inskoe and Chekuevo, tent- roofed summer churches were supplemented with winter churches topped by a kub and also with bell-towers, forming grand three-part ensembles. No less interesting is the combination of just two kub-roofed churches together – the Churches of the Trinity and St Vladimir in the village of Podporozh’e 106 Regional schools and traditions

Figure 5.10 Eighteenth-century River Onega kub-roofed churches: St Vladimir’s in Podporozh’e (1757) (left); The Transﬁguration Church in Turchasovo (1786) (right) Source: Photos by the author, 2012.

or the interaction of the kub-roofed Presentation and Transfiguration Churches with the older tent-roofed Dormition Church and a bell-tower with a similar top in Chekuevo. Finally, it was specifically the kub form that made possible such an original edifice as the Annunciation Church in Turchasovo (1795), where a single structure combines two kuby above side chapels with a majestic shatër (Bode 2005). None of these complexes have survived in their entirety down to the present but, judging by nineteenth- and twentieth-century photographs, the wooden churches along the banks of the Onega from Kargopol’ to the sea represented some of the finest achievements of Russian wooden architecture.

The White Sea region The wooden church architecture of the White Sea region has been investigated Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 only episodically, chiefly in connection with the restoration of individual buildings. Those most extensively covered in the literature are the Dormition Church in the village of Varzuga, the Trinity Church in Nënoksa and the Dormition Cathedral in Kem’. The significance of those edifices, not only for the immediate region, but for Early Russian architecture as a whole, has been unanimously affirmed by successive generations of researchers (Suslov 1897: 12–13; Opolovnikov 1955a, 1955b; Ushakov 1974; Vakhrameev 1986; Zaruchevskaia 1999; Shurgin 2010). Individual attention has also been paid to the oldest wooden churches of the White Sea region – in Kovda (1597) and the Muezero Monastery (1602, see Figure 4.13, page 69) Regional schools and traditions 107 (Molchanov 1969; Shurgin 2006: 29–40). The considerable losses that White Sea architecture has had to endure throughout its history increase the difficulty of studying this important chapter in the chronicle of wooden construction in the Russian North. Nevertheless, a careful analysis of the written sources and examination of those few buildings that do survive make it possible to a certain degree to reveal the chronology of construction in the White Sea region in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, to identify periods within it and to address the question of possible sources for White Sea wooden architecture in its early stages. The Novgorodians’ assimilation of the shores of the White Sea can be considered to have been accomplished as far back as the thirteenth century, since there are mentions in written sources of that time of taxes being collected on the Terskii coast of the Kola Peninsula (Semushin 2010: 115). In the thirteenth to mid-fifteenth centuries, though, their presence was exclusively confined to hunting, trapping and fishing activities. This did not entail a settled way of life and, consequently, ruled out the development of any ecclesiastical–parochial organization. According to the observation of the great historian Vasilii Kliuchevskii,

the ﬁfteenth-century Novgorodian land holdings in the White Sea region . . . possesses one curious distinctive feature that graphically explains the process and means by which the Novgorodians settled those parts. The greater part of the Novgorodian estates in the coastal areas, even those of small landowners, did not take the form of any sort of neat domains concentrated in one place, but rather consisted of many frag- mented little parcels scattered across the coastal islands, the seashore and the maritime rivers, as the charters put it, often situated at huge distances from one another. (Kliuchevskii 1912: 6)

The main impetus for church construction in the White Sea region came from the foundation in the 1430s of the Solovetskii Monastery, which was from the outset and remained throughout the course of its history the determining factor in the development of local ecclesiastical architecture, and not only on the Solovetskii (or Solovki) Archipelago itself. Situated in the Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 middle of the sea, the monastery served as a sort of centre for the White Sea ‘oikumene’, drawing the adjoining coastal areas into the orbit of its spiritual life and economic activities. Despite the existence in the estuary of the Northern Dvina of the Nikolo-Korel’skii and Archangel Michael Monasteries, Kliuchevskii attributed the decisive role in church construction in the White Sea region to the Solovetskii Monastery: ‘There is no suggestion of churches in the Pomors’ [eastern White Sea coast-dwellers’] settlements before the foundation of that monastery. They began to be built by the monastery already, under the influence of its aspirations to bring spiritual enlightenment’ (Kliuchevskii 1912: 8). 108 Regional schools and traditions Construction of churches on the Solovetskii Monastery’s estates on the shores of the White Sea began very quickly, practically as soon as the lands were acquired. As early as 1491 Archbishop Gennadii of Novgorod issued a document exempting from tributes and legal action the clergy of the Church of St Nicholas the Wonder-Worker in Varzuga (Dosifei 1836, 3 II: 182–3) – the building which seems to have initiated wooden church construction in the White Sea region. The earliest cadastre, compiled by Iurii Saburov in 1496, records the Church of St Nicholas in the former domains of Marfa Boretskaia (‘Martha the Mayoress’ – leader of Novgorod’s final, unsuccessful struggle against Moscow) ‘by the sea on the River Suma’ (Dosifei 1836, 3 II: 14). The same book mentions the Trinity Church at the mouth of the River Soroka, where St Savvatii of Solovki passed away in 1435 (Dosifei 1836, 3 II: 21–3). In contrast to the previous decades, however, early sixteenth-century sources contain practically no mention of new buildings in the White Sea region. One of the reasons for the reduced pace of construction may have been the interregnum in the archbishopric of Novgorod from 1509 to 1526 that disrupted the established procedure for the issue of permits to build churches. Since the development of the estates on the mainland depended not only on the archbishop of Novgorod, but also on the initiatives of the Solovetskii hegumen, the absence of instructions to build may also be due to the difficult situation prevailing in the administration of the monastery itself, which had fourteen different heads between the turn of the century and 1534. Evidently the power vacuum in the archbishopric of Novgorod and the difficulties that the Solovetskii Monastery experienced after its first generation of monks passed away were factors highly unconducive to the development of architecture on the White Sea. The situation began to change with the arrival in Novgorod of Archbishop Makarii, who held that office from 1526 to 1542, and especially with the election of Filipp Kolychev as Solovetskii hegumen in 1548. At first Filipp enjoyed the support of Tsar Ivan the Terrible, who in the early years of his reign showed the monastery his particular favour. This was due primarily to the community’s increased importance following the recent canonization of its founders. In 1550 the monastery was granted the Kolezhma volost’ (small rural district), where a church was built dedicated Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 to St Clement of Rome (KIO 1896, III: 144–5). In 1551 Ivan IV made another grant – of the ‘coastal village of Sorotskaia’ (Soroka, now Belomorsk). The transfer of ownership to the monastery was made specifically for the construction in the settlement of a church to commemorate the place where the newly-canonized Savvatii had died. In 1553 the monastery was confirmed in its possession of Suma (present- day Sumskii Posad), which had at one time been conferred on St Zosima, the first Solovetskii hegumen, by Marfa Boretskaia herself. One of the oldest churches in the White Sea region – St Nicholas’s in Suma, which dated back to the second half of the fifteenth century – was mentioned in 1553 in Regional schools and traditions 109 conjunction with another dedicated to the Dormition. The tendency of the original White Sea parishes to expand can also be seen in Varzuga, where by 1563 another Dormition Church also stood alongside an earlier Church of St Nicholas (Platonov and Andreev 1929: 3). The dedication of the new buildings at both Suma and Varzuga to the Feast of the Dormition of the Virgin Mary may have been connected with Hegumen Filipp’s construction on Bolshoi Solovetskii island in 1552–7 of the Dormition Church with a refectory and a cellarer’s block that marked the start of masonry construction not only on the Solovki, but throughout the White Sea region. The brisk changes that Filipp implemented not only influenced the monastery and its estates, but also encouraged the ecclesiastical infrastructure to branch out across the White Sea region. The construction of the Dormi- tion Church and the Transfiguration Cathedral on the Solovki that went on continuously from 1552 to 1566 – the creation of a harbour on Bolshoi Zayatskii Island, the making of roads and water-engineering works, as well as intensive communications between the monastery and its mainland estates, farms and enterprises, formed the background to the development of wooden construction in the region. It is therefore not surprising that Filipp Kolychev’s departure to take up the office of metropolitan in Moscow in 1566 affected the entire course of architecture on the White Sea. Filipp’s subsequent fall from grace also removed the Tsar’s favour from his monastery, on which the prosperity of an entire region depended. In 1568 the northern White Sea region experienced first-hand all the horrors of the oprichnina terror instigated by the increasingly paranoid Tsar Ivan. That time remained long in the memory of the locals as ‘Basarga’s expropriation’ (Basargin pravezh), when detachments commanded by Basarga Leont’ev laid waste to the Terskii and Karelian coasts (the western and northern shores of the sea). Nevertheless, the intensive pace of con struction during Filipp’s time as hegumen laid the foundation upon which a relatively rapid revival took place in the 1570s. That decade may have seen the establishment of the Trinity Muezero Monastery in western Karelia (Shurgin 2006: 30), while from 1574 we have a description of the Churches of St Nicholas and the Nativity of the Virgin in the Kandalaksha Monastery that would soon feature in Heinrich von Staden’s famous ‘invasion plan’ of 1577–8: ‘The Kandalaksha is a river where there is an unfortified settlement and a small monastery. These Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 people, as well as the monks and their servants, get their living from the sea. Here is the border of Lapland’ (Staden 1925: 63). The Swedish menace, which started to emerge in the early 1570s, forced Ivan the Terrible to turn his attention to the White Sea region as one of the most important areas for his defence policy. In 1578 the Solovetskii Monastery began construction of the Suma stockade, which, judging by Andrei Pleshcheev’s cadastre, was already completed by 1583. The old Church of St Nicholas was moved inside the stronghold from the ‘village on the River Suma’ and ‘now a Church of St Nicholas the Wonder-Worker has been erected in that village’ (Geiman 1941: 199). 110 Regional schools and traditions The voevoda Kiprian Zagriazhskii’s successful repulsion of an attack on the Kem’ volost’ in 1580 lifted the Swedish threat for a time. The Solovetskii Monastery, which had taken upon itself the defence of the country’s north- western borders, was back in favour with Tsar Ivan, who by that time was making generous endowments to try to make amends to the victims of the oprichnina. Intensive construction again got underway in the monastery itself – the erection of stone walls began in 1582 and continued until 1596. In 1583 the masonry St Nicholas’s was consecrated, completing the main ensemble of churches. Against this background, in the 1580s we also find mention of buildings on the shores of the White Sea that apparently existed even earlier – the Chapel of the Prophet Elijah in Liamtsa (1582), the Church of St Nicholas in Unezhma (before 1586) and the Church of St Clement in Shueretskoe (before 1590) (Geiman 1941: 183, 307). So, ‘Basarga’s expropriation’ and the Solovetskii Monastery’s period in disfavour in the late 1560s slowed, but did not halt, church construction on the shores of the White Sea in the 1570s and even in the uneasy 1580s, as is evidenced by numerous references in written sources. How- ever, the regrouping of the Swedish forces and repeated raids on the region in 1589 and 1590 destabilized the situation for a long time and again brought devastation, this time far more perceptible and prolonged than the oprichnina terror. Nevertheless, the devastation of the White Sea region and the Solovetskii Monastery estates became the starting point for a simultaneous burst of church building that in the 1590s reached the highest intensity in the history of wooden church architecture in that part of the world. The basis for this was appreciable support from the tsarist government and concessions on the part of the Novgorodian eparchy, which created favourable financial conditions for overcoming the after-effects of the Russo-Swedish War. The process of restoration of ecclesiastical architecture in the western White Sea region can be traced from as early as 1590, despite the fact that a conclusive peace between Russian and Sweden was still very far off. By 1592, most probably, the Church of St Nicholas in Unezhma was already restored, but as yet it still had no priest. From the second half of the 1590s sources increasingly no longer report the devastation of parishes and volosti, but the appearance of new churches. Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 The year 1597 brought the Church of St Nicholas in the village of Kovda – the earliest in the White Sea region to have survived into the twenty-first century. It was originally a simple klet’ type, consisting of the main body of the church with a cascade roof and a sanctuary prirub with a plain pitched roof. Both elements have a broad flare (poval) of identical configuration, which endows the simple composition with harmony and unity. The roofs over both parts have an archaic construction with frequent horizontal members, which may serve as an indirect means of dating and confirm Igor Shurgin’s opinion that St Nicholas’s was indeed built in the late sixteenth century (Shurgin 2006: 25–6). The refectory was built on in the mid-1700s. Regional schools and traditions 111 The many churches that sprang up in the White Sea region in the last decade of the sixteenth century again appeared at the same time as intensive building work on Bolshoi Solovetskii Island, where in the 1590s Master Trifon had already completed the ring of stone walls around the monastery. In 1596–1601 the construction of the Annunciation Gate Church took place. This period in the history of wooden church construction in the region is concluded by the Church of St Nicholas with a refectory in the Trinity Muezero Monastery (1602, see Figure 4.13, page 69), whose architecture has a strongly pronounced specifically monastic character. In this edifice the peculiar placement of the vos’merik with a tent-roof above both sanctuary and main body, which are contained in a single rectangular srub, was repeatedly regarded in publications of the 1960s–80s as a new archetype (the ‘vos’merik on chetverik’ with a refectory), employed widely in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Molchanov 1969; Opolovnikov 1986: 30–5). Despite the fact that we know of the construction in neighbouring Zaonezh’e in the early 1600s of the compositionally similar Sts Peter and Paul Cathedral in Povenets (1600), Epiphany Church in Chëlmuzhi (1605, see Figure 4.14, page 70) and others, including earlier churches with non-separate sanctuaries in other regions of the country, the Church of St Nicholas in the Trinity Muezero Monastery can be considered a case apart as its architecture displays strong features of monastic construction. The distinctive two-part composition of St Nicholas’s can also be explained by a correlation with masonry refectory churches, which as a rule consisted of two volumes: an eastern one containing the church with its sanctuary and a western one intended for the refectory and service rooms. Adjoining the main srub is a spacious refectory with a single pillar. This resembles the single-pillared chamber of the Dormition Church in the Solovetskii Monastery that was constructed in 1557. St Nicholas’s in the Trinity Muezero Monastery was to be the last known church built in the White Sea region before the Time of Troubles, after which a new era in the constructional history of the Russia North began. On the basis of the mentions of wooden churches on the shores of the White Sea that appear in the sources the following periodization of timber construction in the region in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries can be proposed: Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016

• Initial phase (middle and second half of the ﬁfteenth century) – the foundation of the Solovetskii Monastery and its subsequent development of mainland estates, which gave a powerful impetus to church construction on the Terskii, Karelian and Pomor Coasts. • First quarter of the sixteenth century – an interregnum in the Novgoro- dian eparchy and fourteen hegumens in quick succession on the Solovki slow the rate of church construction in the area. • 1526–42 – the resumption of construction under Archbiship Makarii; the mission of Sts Feodorit of Kola and Trifon of the Pechenga. 112 Regional schools and traditions • 1548–66 – the heyday of architecture in the Solovetskii Monastery and the White Sea more generally under Hegumen Filipp (Kolychev); numerous mentions of churches on estates and in parishes along all the coasts of the White Sea. • 1568–early 1570s – ‘Basarga’s expropriation’ and its consequences. • Mid-1570s–1589 – resumption of building work in the Solovetskii Monastery and the White Sea region; development of fortiﬁcation construction. • 1589–91 – devastating raids by Swedo-Finnish troops and the ruin of the whole western White Sea area. • 1590s – post-war restoration; completion of the Solovetskaia fortress; the period of the most intensive building and reconstruction of wooden churches in the White Sea area in all of the previous history.

The mentions that have come to light of churches built on the Terskii, Karelian and Pomor Coasts in the 1400s and 1500s makes it possible to reveal a fairly complete panorama of timber church construction on the White Sea in that period; on the basis of this data a periodization can be proposed that structures the information. One of the preliminary conclusions might be a thesis about the considerable influence of the Solovetskii Monastery on the local wooden architecture of the region, since that religious centre played the leading role in opening up the western White Sea area. Despite the fact that the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century edifices enumerated in the sources have nearly all been lost and it is hard to make a judgement about local architectural traditions, the chronicle of church construction presented fills to a certain extent the blank spaces in the study of the initial stage of the history of wooden architecture in the White Sea area. In the early seventeenth century the Russian North shared with the rest of the country the agonies and privations of the Time of Troubles. In the winter of 1613–14 the White Sea region suffered the horrors of devastating raids, after which construction of new churches came to a halt for several years. Mention of the building of churches become frequent again only in the 1630s with the Church of Sts Zosima and Savatii of the Nadvoitsy parish (1630) and two Churches of St Nicholas – in Vorzogory (1636) and Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 Maloshuika (1638). It is important to mention here a very significant tendency in seventeenth- and even eighteenth-century White Sea architecture to preserve features characteristic of shatër churches of the late 1500s – chiefly the persistence of a centrally planned pillar-like composition of the main body of the building topped by a tent-roof, among the most interesting of which is the Church of St Nicholas in the village of Purnema on the shore of Onega Bay. Its exact date cannot be established for certain, but the 1640s seem most likely. A telling archaic feature of St Nicholas’s in Purnema is its pillar-like composition and the absence of a refectory. Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016

Figure 5.11 The Church of St Nicholas, Purnema (1640s?) Source: Photo by the author, 2012. 114 Regional schools and traditions A number of characteristics found in the Purnema church were passed on to subsequent generations of buildings in the southern White Sea region and the lower Onega in the 1600s and 1700s that form a more or less integral group. This can be taken to include the Church of St Nicholas in the village of Nizhmozero (1661), as well as the Churches of the Exaltation of the Cross in Sheleksa (1709) and Makar’inskoe (the Ust’-Kozhskii pogost, 1769) and the Church of the Entry into Jerusalem in Verkhov’e. These edifices all have a pronounced verticality, produced by a stepped arrangement of elements and a shatër, thus preserving the earlier tradition of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century churches that manifested itself in Kuritsko (1595) (see Figure 4.12, page 67) and Purnema (1640s?). A comparison of the ground plans of the churches of the southern White Sea and lower Onega area also reveals a core that remained practically unchanged until the middle of the eighteenth century – the main body forming the square base of the church pillar and a slightly smaller square of the sanctuary prirub. These features can be found not only in the tent-roofed churches, but even in the early kub- type Ascension Church from the village of Kushereka (1669). To all appearances this type was so deep-rooted in the wooden architecture of the White Sea region that even such radical changes to the roof of the main body did not for a long time have a substantial impact on the underlying layout. So a number of tent-roofed churches in the White Sea region and the lower Onega, which is historically connected to it, can be seen to present highly interesting archaisms that determined the preservation in wooden architecture of the 1600s of features that were characteristic of buildings of the late sixteenth century. These features can also be traced in the architecture of churches in the villages of Maloshuika, Nizhmozero, Sheleksa, Ust’-Kozha and Verkhov’e, forming a local White Sea regional tradition, the main connecting factor of which is a common approach to spatial composition and layout. At the same time, church architecture of the White Sea area in the late Middle Ages clearly demonstrates the way Moscow’s dominance was under- scored not only by political means, but also by the spread of the completely new and typically Muscovite architectural form of the five-domed church – symbolizing the presence of the centralized power – all over Russia. This tendency may be defined as an attempt to incorporate northern architecture Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 into the national context – first in stone and then in wooden architecture. Since the Russian North has always been the most conservative area, it preserved the old Novgorodian tradition of non-conformism and showed relative independence from the rule of Moscow. For this reason the erection of stone cathedrals in the Solovetskii Monastery and the town of Kargopol’ in the mid-sixteenth century should be seen as a manifestation of the principal Moscovite architectural trend of that period – the expansion of the five-cupola composition, which originated with the Dormition and Archangel Cathedrals in the Moscow Kremlin. The multi-domed motif thus reappears in Russian architecture, recalling the pre-Mongolian period of Regional schools and traditions 115 political unity, and in the time of Ivan III and his successors is emblematic evidence of the return of a strong centralized authority. In the sixteenth century, the image of the five-domed cathedral was associated with the religious centre of the Russian lands; it linked the North with the capital city and created a unified architectural and spiritual space. Indeed, towards the end of the seventeenth century, several stone cathedrals imitating specific Muscovite prototypes were built across the Russian North. Those cathedrals formed a system of symbolic landmarks on the frontiers of the Muscovite state. A second very important aspect of the history of North Russian architecture in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is connected with the representation of the Russian Orthodox world along the European borders and on the trade route from the Barents Sea to the White Sea and the Northern Dvina River. Since 1553, when Richard Chancellor reached the Nikolo-Karelskii Monastery and travelled from there to Moscow and elsewhere, this maritime and river passage was the major route for commerce between Russia and European countries. Its importance becomes obvious if we look at maps of the period, which indicate this route with accuracy and precision. Yet at the same time, the Russian North was prey to numerous plundering raids from the earliest times right up to the twentieth century. The famous plan for European intervention compiled by Heinrich von Staden considered the White Sea coastline and the Northern Dvina the quickest way of penetrating deep into the heart of Russia. The Russo- Swedish War in the early 1590s revealed the vulnerability of the northern frontiers. Hence, the Russian state’s building programme in the North must be interpreted as having a defensive function as well. Certainly, the widespread network of fortresses protected the northern borders and coasts of the Muscovite state, but in the specific dedications of northern churches and cathedrals we may see also an appeal for celestial intercession. This pre-Mongolian tradition was revived in Kremlin architecture, since its central cathedral was consecrated to the Dormition of the Virgin Mary, who has always been perceived as the primary protector and intercessor for Orthodox believers. The churches in the oldest Russian settlements on the White Sea coast – Varzuga and Kem’, traditionally regarded by Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 foreign invaders as primary targets – were also dedicated to the Dormition. The Kremlin’s Cathedral of the Archangel Michael also has a military and protective significance for the first city of the Russian land, and this explains the name given to the city of Arkhangelsk, founded in 1584 to shield the northern gateway to the Russian state. Thus, in Russian northern architecture of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, we can distinguish three main aims behind the manifestation of central power: first, to bond the distant lands to the capital city not only politically and economically, but also on a psychological level, by planting Muscovite architectural models on northern soil; second, to present a strong 116 Regional schools and traditions image of the Russian world to Europe; third, to erect a spiritual fence to protect the holy frontiers with the help of heavenly guardians. It is noteworthy that these changes are first seen in the White Sea North, the remote periphery of the Muscovite state. In the preceding decades the majority of the churches on the White Sea coast, dating from the 1590s–1630s and dedicated to St Nicholas, demonstrate very archaic com positions and constructions, such as the simple square framework covered with a two-pitched cascade roof in Kovda (1597). The church in Shueretskoe (1595) is based on the ancient cruciform floor plan, which can be traced back to earlier examples of wooden architecture. However, the situation in White Sea wooden church architecture changes radically in the middle of the seventeenth century. One of the major developments in the 1600s and 1700s was the appearance of churches topped with a kub. The origins of the kub-roofed churches of the White Sea region remain a matter of debate. It may be that these alterations were caused by the intense activity of Patriarch Nikon in the White Sea area. Nikon is known for his campaign to accentuate the unity of the Russian and Greek Churches and to raise the status of the Patriarch to equal that of the Tsar. From this perspective, the Monastery of the Cross on Kii Island, founded by Nikon in 1656, may be seen as a clear testimony to his political ambitions since the configuration of the central three-domed Cathedral of the Exaltation of the Cross could have derived from the Cathedral of the Epiphany in the Moscow Kremlin. The creation of that Monastery of the Cross involved construction in wood as well as masonry, which may have given a strong impetus to the subsequent development of wooden architecture locally. A secondary role in the monastery compound was played by the refectory Church of the Archangel Michael. According to Galina Alferova’s reconstruction, this church, built in the monastery by Kargopol’ carpenters in 1657, had a kub roof (Alferova 1975). In that event, this particular church can be considered the earliest example of the kub type, although the question of the genesis of the kub form remains open – was it characteristic of Kargopol’ architecture in the mid-1600s or specified by Nikon during his organization of the early phase of construction on Kii Island? The close interaction of stone and wood in the ensemble of the Cross Monastery on Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 Kii Island acquires great significance for the history of wooden architecture in the White Sea region because in the course of these works undertaken by Nikon the idea of a many-domed composition was transferred from stone into wood. It was a precedent that may have determined the design of a number of wooden five-domed kub churches in the neighbouring area, i.e. the southern shores of the White Sea and River Onega. This group is represented by several edifices that demonstrate ambivalent features: the compact, simple square plan, characteristic for earlier architecture and the picturesque stone-like five-topped configuration of the roof, with its variety of forms and richness of decoration. Regional schools and traditions 117 The kub Ascension Church from Kushereka (1669) (see Figure 5.12) was built just a few years after the Cross Monastery was erected. It was followed by the Church of Sts Peter and Paul in Virma and ensembles on the River Onega (see Figure 4.19, page 77 and Figure 5.10, page 106). The kub also made it possible to increase the number of onion-domes to nine, as in the Church of St Nicholas in Berezhnaia Dubrava (1678). Thus, towards the end of the seventeenth century, kub churches had already formed a very interesting set of wooden buildings, absorbing elegant masonry forms. The second factor that should be noted when we are considering the kub- roofed churches of the White Sea region is that they stand in places that belonged to Solovetskii Monastery. From early in its history, the monastery owned the villages of Shueretskoe, Virma and Kushereka that were known specifically for their kub-roofed churches. If we accept the reliability of the report that the Church of Sts Peter and Paul in Virma was built by Hegumen Varfolomei and dates not from the second half of the seventeenth century, but from 1625, then we have identified another potential source for the kub superstructure, the non-standard form of which can be attributed to the influence of the Solovetskii Monastery architectural tradition. It may have been appreciated by the future Patriarch Nikon, who spent several years on the Solovki and later paid great attention to architectural innovations. In that case the use of the kub is his brainchild – the Monastery of the Cross on the White Sea that was constructed as ‘a second Solovki’ may have been a more pronounced expression of some tendency that already existed in the middle decades of the seventeenth century in local White Sea–River Onega architecture. Whatever the case, leaving the question of the origins of the kub type unresolved, the distribution area of wooden kub-type churches is the Karelian and Onega Coasts of the White Sea and the lower reaches of the River Onega – areas that were in the sphere of economic interest and spiritual influence of the Monastery of the Cross on Kii Island, the Transfiguration Monastery on the Solovki and the Kozheozero community, where Nikon had also been hegumen. It is noteworthy that the known kub churches appeared on the Karelian and Pomor Coasts of the White Sea only in the 1660s–90s, which coincides with the period of most active construction in Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 the Monastery of the Cross. Apart from the Archangel Michael refectory church in the monastery itself (1657), there was the Church of St Paraskeva in Shueretskoe on the Karelian Coast (1666, lost), the Church of Sts Peter and Paul in Virma on the same shore (seventeenth–eighteenth century?) and the Church of the Ascension in Kushereka on the Pomor Coast (1669). Interestingly, from the second half of the nineteenth century, when the style of wooden churches was acquiring an increasingly ‘urban’ look and traditional forms were disappearing, those changes barely affected the kub- type churches of the White Sea region. Here the force of long-established tradition led to the construction of such edifices as St Nicholas’s in Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016

Figure 5.12 The Ascension Church from the village of Kushereka (1669), now in the Malye Korely Open-air Museum, Arkhangelsk Source: Photo by the author, 2008. Regional schools and traditions 119 Unezhma (1826) and the Transﬁguration Church in Nimen’ga (1878, see Figure 6.2, page 145), each crowned with a massive kub. Finally, the architecture of the White Sea region is made especially distinctive by a pair of buildings with multiple tent-roofs from the early eighteenth century: the Dormition Cathedral in Kem’ (1711–17) and the Trinity Church in Nënoksa (1727–9, see Figure 2.1, page 29 and Figure 4.17, page 72). These ediﬁces have several features that allow us to interpret their composition on the basis of points in common:

• closeness in time; • the same region; • the spiritual and economic ties that Kem’ and Nënoksa had with the Solovetskii Monastery, i.e. the possible inﬂuence of monastic building traditions, which always encouraged originality and non-standard architectural approaches.

It is worth noting that the upper part of the Transfiguration Cathedral on the Solovki is, in the most general terms, comparable to the Nënoksa church – a five-part structure with a central drum that narrows towards the top and four subsidiary churches on the corners of the main body. The history of the wooden architecture of the White Sea region between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries does not permit us to speak of any single school, although at various historical stages the region did produce groups of buildings that have a close typological similarity (the kub churches of the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries and the pillar-like tent- roofed churches such as St Nicholas’s in Purnema). Still, examining the church architecture, allotting it to different periods and forming an inte- grated picture of its development from the 1500s onwards does make it possible to identify patterns and a distinctive regional character. This was determined by the decisive influence of construction in the monasteries on the Solovki and Kii Island and, possibly, the conservation of Novgorodian traditions that lived on in the White Sea architecture of a later period.

The Northern Dvina and its basin Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 The Northern Dvina is the largest river in the Russian North and, together with its main tributary, the Sukhona, served from early times as the main waterway connecting the central lands of Rus’ with the White Sea region. Sigismund von Herberstein, who visited Russia in the 1510s and 1520s, wrote about the convenience of travel along the Sukhona–Dvina route: ‘. . . from Moscow you can go directly to Vologda; from Vologda, turning a little to the east, to Ustiug, and from Ustiug, finally, down the River Dvina directly northwards’ (Limonov 1986: 111). A few decades later, after Richard Chancellor’s expedition, it was the Dvina that became the artery for trade with Northern Europe. 120 Regional schools and traditions The construction on the Northern Dvina and its basin (the Pinega, Toima and Vyia) again represents a separate chapter in the history of Russian wooden architecture. We have already discussed the pillar-like tent-roofed churches that were built as vos’meriki ‘from the ground up’ in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the earliest of which was the Church of St Nicholas in Liavla (1584, see Figure 4.9, page 64). A similar compo - sition marks a separate group of wooden churches on the Dvina: St Nicholas’s in Panilovo (1600 or 1660, lost) and two Churches of the Prophet Elijah, one belonging to the parish of Siia (first half of the seventeenth century), the other in the Vyiskii pogost (1600). Among the edifices of the second half of the seventeenth century, this type is found in the Church of St Vladimir in Belaia Sluda (1642, lost), the Church of the Synaxis of the Archistratigus Michael in Khavrogory (1670–2), the Church of St George in Vershina (1672, moved to the Malye Korely museum) and St Nicholas’s Church in Zachach’e (1687; the shatër replaced by a bania – faceted onion dome – in 1748). David Buxton also noted in 1932 an octagonal chapel at the Belaia Sluda pogost that echoed the vos’merik of the neighbouring Church of Vladimir Icon of the Virgin (Buxton 1981: 23). These buildings cannot all be attributed to a single regional school in view of their relative remoteness from one another and the considerable time span, almost 200 years, between the church in Liavla and the last of the constellation, St George’s from the village of Vershina on the River Toima. Therefore, when describing their common compositional peculiarities, we can define this phenomenon as the ‘Dvina tradition’. This not only preserved principles for the treatment of volumes, but also permitted modification within those same broad boundaries in the last outstanding monument of Dvina wooden architecture – the Church of St Demetrius of Thessalonica in Verkhniaia Uftiuga (1784). Despite the vos’merik-on-chetverik composition that has replaced the vos’merik from the ground up, it retains the ‘Dvina tradition’ centralized layout and the pillar-like composition in which a monumentally majestic shatër is comparable in size with the height of the main body. The great losses of wooden church architecture on the Northern Dvina, Upper Toima and Vyia mean that particular value attaches to the observations of those twentieth-century researchers who had the opportunity to Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 witness all the richness and variety of northern architecture and considerably expand contemporary conceptions of its constructional peculiarities and techniques. One example is Pëtr Baranovskii’s expedition to the River Vyia in 1921, where up until the Second World War the Church of the Prophet Elijah (1600) stood in the Vyiskii pogost. For Baranovskii that edifice provided the occasion not only for practical study but also for theoretical contemplation of the paths of development of Russian wooden architecture. Judging by Baranovskii’s notes, which are kept in the archive of the Schusev State Museum of Architecture in Moscow, the central issue remained the question: Regional schools and traditions 121 Were tent-roofs in ancient times open to the interior of the church? Not separated by ceilings, not serving merely as decoration, i.e. shatry like those that that we see in masonry architecture? After all, it is indisputable that in architecture the exterior, the façade of a building, is supposed to accord with its inner substance, that common sense and the correspondence of external decoration to the internal concept is the chief virtue, so to speak, in construction. Monuments of Russian wooden architecture, alongside all manner of other very major works of world art, are significant precisely because in them, from beginning to end, for all their beauty, harmoniousness and kinship with nature, everywhere the law of the logic of construction not only holds sway but is the fountainhead of both the whole substance and the beauty of the building. In them there is absolutely nothing artificial, invented solely for the sake of decoration. (GMA XIV 18, 2: 15v)

In conﬁrmation of his theory Baranovskii cites ‘a tradition that in this church in olden times there were no ceilings, which is borne out by the fact that in the sanctuary there is a window above the ceiling’ (GMA XIV 18, 6: 9). Oral tales are, however, supplemented by the data from a thorough on site inspection conducted jointly with local carpenters. The architect observed that

in the attic (i.e., above the ceiling) and up through the shatër the beams are also trimmed; the ceiling beams are cut into the walls very badly and undoubtedly at a later time; the assembly is with a grove in the lower log (as in the Church of St Lazarus in the Murmanskii [Muromskii] Monastery from 1390). (GMA XIV 18, 6: 9v)

In Baranovskii’s opinion

an examination of the Vyia church settles once and for all the question of the existence in olden times of tent-roofs open inside the church right to the top . . . If the Vyia church had not given us a definitive answer Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 to this question, it may be that it would never have been settled with sufficient conclusiveness. Now though, knowing for certain that this splendidly preserved, precisely dated edifice had an open shatër, we can boldly assume that in the earliest era the majority of tent-roofs were open and served as models for the similar structure of masonry tent- roofs. (GMA XIV 18, 2: 14v; 17–17v)

Later this thesis about the prevalence of tent-roofs open inside was disputed by the architect–restorer Vladimir Krokhin in his programmatic Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016

Figure 5.13 The Church of the Prophet Elijah in the Vyiskii pogost (1600) Source: Zabello et al. 1942: 90. Regional schools and traditions 123 paper about tent-roof construction in the wooden architecture of the Russian North (Krokhin 1986). He knew about Baranovskii’s investigation of the subject through Pëtr Maksimov, who half a century later mentioned the paper that Baranovskii presented to the Moscow Architectural Society a few months after his expedition to the Pinega. Besides that, in the mid-1950s Maksimov, who was the author of the section on wooden architecture in volume II of the History of Russian Architecture under the editorship of Igor’ Grabar’, agreed by implication with Baranovskii’s deductions and alludes to the circumstance that the expedition

discovered thorough trimming back, ﬂush with the logs of the vos’merik, of the ends of the logs forming the bochki that are at present located above the ceiling of the church. [Therefore it is likely that inside, too, the church was] very expressive with its upward soaring space of the tent-roof. (Maksimov and Voronin 1955: 268–9)

Nevertheless, unpublished field-study material from 1921 giving more detailed results of the examination of the Church of the Prophet Elijah in the Vyiskii pogost remained for the most part inaccessible to Soviet architectural historians studying the question of shatër architecture. As a result Baranovskii’s text, preserved among his manuscript legacy, may even now provide a fresh impetus for the continuation of this extremely interesting discussion. As in other regions within the distribution pattern of tower-like tent-roof churches (the Kargopol’ area and Svir’ valley), the endurance of this regional typological variant on the Northern Dvina may have also been connected with intensive construction of fortifications in, for example, Kholmogory, which had been since olden times the centre of the Dvina land. In 1692 a wooden enclosure was constructed around the Nikolo-Karelskii Monastery. (Baranovskii moved a segment of that wall together with the entrance tower – ‘Holy Gate’ – to the Kolomenskoe museum.) Even earlier, in 1584, for additional defence against incursions by European squadrons into the Dvina delta from the Barents and White Seas, Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 the town of Arkhangelsk was founded and its walls and towers became one of the most important strongholds in the Russian North. The fortification work, for which there was a regular need due to repeated fires (notably in 1636 and 1670), must have had an influence on carpentry traditions, devices and technology. Aleksandr Opolovnikov sensed this connection and seems entirely justified in his observation that ‘Church architecture gradually adopted the watch-tower design and especially favoured the octagonal log base with a high pyramidal roof. This tent-roof came to symbolize not military daring, but the demands of spirituality and the power of human creative impulse’ (Opolovnikov and Opolovnikova 1989: 17). 124 Regional schools and traditions Regional schools and traditions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries on the Northern Dvina Alongside the tent-roofed tower-like churches, a special chapter in the history of wooden architecture on the Northern Dvina is created by the many-domed churches of the seventeenth century. People have often connected the origins of multiple domes on the Dvina with the influence of masonry architecture in the time of Archbishop Afanasii of Kholmogory (1682–1702). It is indeed true that the intensive construction initiated by that energetic cleric was predominantly carried out in masonry and was supposed to visually express the scale of Afanasii’s reorganization and assert the authority of the Moscow Patriarchate in the Russian North, where the schismatics who refused to accept Nikon’s reforms remained fairly strong. The astonishingly beautiful and rich churches in Nizhnii and Verkhnii Matigory, on the island of Ukhtostrov and in Kholmogory itself, might seem to have overshadowed the history of wooden architecture in this region (Bulkin and Ovsyannikov 1976). Under Afanasii ecclesiastical buildings did undeniably also perform a representative function and wood, being a relatively short-lived and vulnerable material, could no longer maintain its precedence. Therefore the main consequence of Arcbishop Afanasii’s architec tural policy is generally believed to have been the subordination of wooden construction to forms of masonry architecture through the introduction of five- and nine-domed compositions and the displacement of the traditional tent-roofs (Pod’yapolskii 1969: 21; Gnedovskii and Dobrovol’ skaya 1978: 53). Nevertheless, an attentive study of the question prompts the conclusion that such changes had more ancient, deeper roots. As far back as the early seventeenth century, sources record the appearance of distinctive types of church along the whole of the Northern Dvina. The cadastre for the town and trading quarter of Kholmogory compiled by Miron Vel’iaminov in 1622–4, already mentions the Church of the Nativity of John the Baptist ‘with nine domes, in the masonry manner’ (Ovsyannikov and Jasinski 1998: 333). In that same period Vel’iaminov also describes the monastic Church of the Archistratigus Michael in Arkhangelsk as having ‘a top of nine domes’ (Ovsyannikov and Jasinski 1998: 192). Vladimir Suslov found in a cadastre for Velikii Ustiug a reference to the nine-domed tent- roofed Church of St Nicholas in Cherevkovo (Suslov 1896: 12–13), which Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 may have been built in the period between 1657 and 1683. While these three churches are mentioned only briefly in the written sources and are very hard to analyse, the Church of the Prophet Elijah in the village of Chukhcher’ma (1657) is one of the earliest edifices on the Northern Dvina that is recorded in great detail in surveys and photographs from the early 1900s (KIO 1894, I: 287; IIAC 1908, 28: 42; 1911, 41: 179–82; Ushakov 1982: 40–1, 96, 122–7, 133, 137). Constructed a quarter of a century before Afanasii’s appointment to the Kholmogory archbishopric, this church already presents a very elaborate composition, in which the main artistic effect is achieved by an arrangement of multiple domes – small onions on eight little drums Regional schools and traditions 125 grouped around the upper perimeter of a chetverik and a central dome atop a low shatër. It is difficult to say whether this nine-dome formula was borrowed from earlier examples or represented something new in mid-seventeenth- century Dvina architecture. In any case, long before the construction in and around Kholmogory, it was in Chukhcher’ma that a new course was mapped out in local architecture for at least three decades ahead – the time of the appearance in the lower Dvina basin of the nine-domed Churches of the Epiphany on Ukhtostrov (1681–2) and of the Presentation in the Temple in Zaostrov’e (1683–8). According to information provided by Boris Gnedovskii and Ella Dobrovol’skaia, both churches were built by the same carpenter – the peasant Stepan Feodorovich Melakhov from Zaostrov’e (Gnedovskii and Dobrovol’skaia 1978: 48). The Church of the Presentation is today the sole work of wooden architecture from the late seventeenth century to survive in the lower Dvina basin and, as is clear from its spatial composition, it is a replica of the Chukhcher’ma church. If, as seems to be the case, these edifices appeared independently of the architectural situation that arose on the Northern Dvina in the time of Archbishop Afanasii, then where could the impetus have come from that encouraged the formation of this tradition? Most probably we should seek the sources of this kind of nine-domed composition in architecture from the reign of Ivan the Terrible, under whom links between the lands on the Dvina and Moscow became especially strong. From the 1550s, when the English Muscovy Company was founded following Richard Chancellor’s expedition, the Northern Dvina developed into an important artery of trade, connecting central Russia with the country’s only coastline at that time and thence to northern Europe. At the start of the 1560s the nine-domed masonry Cathedral of the Intercession on the Moat (better known now worldwide as St Basil’s) in Moscow was completed and the Annunciation Cathedral inside the Kremlin was enlarged, also being adorned with an arrangement of nine domes. The compositional treatment of the Intercession Cathedral went on to influence the architecture of wooden churches in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in outlying parts of the state. It is entirely probable that this was another instance of the same char- Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 acteristic sixteenth-century process of mutual influence between wooden and masonry architecture that people usually illustrate with the example of the Ascension Church in Kolomenskoe. That tendency was able to manifest itself especially powerfully on the busy trading route along the Dvina. The fanciful many-domed wooden churches erected on the river’s picturesque banks played an important role, forming in the minds of the local Orthodox population and foreign visitors a sort of model of an ideal Russian church that derived from the concept of the Cathedral of the Intercession on the Moat in Moscow. It is remarkable that the selfsame association still persisted even in the late nineteenth century: in 1887, responding to a question about Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016

Figure 5.14 The Church of the Presentation in the Temple, Zaostrov’e (1683–8) Source: Photo by the author, 2007. Regional schools and traditions 127 his church’s resemblance ‘to any more or less well known old building in the capitals or provincial cities’ in a questionnaire sent out by the IAC, the priest of the Church of the Presentation in Zaostrov’e referred to the words of a woman who ‘had once been to Moscow’ connecting this church on the Dvina with the Cathedral of St Basil the Blessed (IIMK III, 27: 13).The unlikelihood that the appearance in the North of churches with five or nine domes instead of tent-roofed ones was connected exclusively with Patriarch Nikon or Archbishop Afanasii is confirmed by sources that pre-date the formation of the Eparchy of Kholmogory and the Vaga in 1682. As far back as 1627, with the written permission of Metropolitan Kiprian of Novgorod, a five-domed tent-roofed church was constructed in the Trinity parish on the island of Ukhtostrov. It stood until 1646 when, acting on a new charter from Metropolitan Affonii, another five-domed tent-roofed church was built with a porch and two side-chapels, dedicated to the Trinity and St Alexis. In all probability the tent-roofed bell-tower with five tops and nine pillars harmonized architecturally with the parish’s main church building (KIO 1894, I: 278–9). The charter issued by Metropolitan Kornelii on 4 March 1681 for the construction of the Church of the Great Martyr Catherine in the Kurostrov volost’ specifies that the church should be erected ‘on the site of the old church, and the top of the church is not to be a shatër and the sanctuary is to be round and triple’ (Popov 1880: 10). From these documents it follows that over the course of half a century at least three metropolitans of Novgorod–Kiprian (1626–34), Affonii (1635–49) and Kornelii (1674–95) – one after another gave their blessing to the construction of five-domed churches in the lower Dvina basin. So, the nine-domed churches that were created in the 1650s–80s, as well as the mentions in written sources of other earlier many-domed churches on the Northern Dvina, confirm the thesis that the character of wooden architecture in this area was not so much determined by Archbishop Afanasii’s masonry construction as largely inspired by an already established local tradition. This possibly goes back to the second half of the sixteenth century and should be examined both in connection with Novgorodian impulses and in the broader general Russian architectural context. Between the middle of the seventeenth century and the middle of the eighteenth, churches were constructed on the Northern Dvina that had very Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 picturesque and original upper parts: the Church of St George in Permogor’e (1665), the Church of St George in Srednepogostskoe on the Upper Toima (1685), the Dormition Church in Cherevkovo (1691) and St Nicholas’s in Kuliga Drakovanova (1710). The brief interval of time between the early and late edifices, the regional unity and a distinctive feature of the architectural appearance with the main body of the church being topped by a crosswise bochka – all these characteristics make it possible to speak of the existence in those decades in the higher reaches of the river of a separate ‘Upper Dvina school’. Another important circumstance that facilitated the appearance of such a phenomenon was the proximity of an ideological 128 Regional schools and traditions centre, Sol’vychegodsk, which played the role of administrative and economic centre on the Sukhona–Dvina river route and was located at the strategically important confluence of the River Vychegda with the Dvina. Observations made by Igor’ Shurgin are particularly valuable for the development of the thesis of an ‘Upper Dvina school’. He cites the following information from a cadastre about the construction undertaken in Sol’vychegodsk after the fire of 1656: ‘the Church of the Resurrection was put up, wooden with a warm refectory, on the top of the church a bochka with three small domes with crosses’ (Shurgin 2011: 198). A drawing from 1726 conveys the appearance of another Sol’vychegodsk church – St Paraskeva Piatnitsa – with a similar superstructure, which once again demonstrates the persistence of this composition in the local wooden architecture at the turn of the eighteenth century. No less convincing, it would seem, are Shurgin’s conclusions about the reasons for the creation in the late seventeenth century of another church with a crosswise bochka, but this time in the Siberian town of Ilimsk, since the routes into the Kama basin and on into Siberia began from Sol’vychegodsk, the domain of the Stroganovs (Shurgin 2011: 198–201). By the early twenty-first century only two edifices from the ‘Upper Dvina school’ survived. The earlier of them is the Church of St George in Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016

Figure 5.15 Churches of the Upper Dvina school: The Church of St George from Srednepogostskoe (1685), now at Kolomenskoe, Moscow (left); The Church of St George, Permogor’e (1665) (right) Source: Photos by the author 2014, 2009. Regional schools and traditions 129 Permogor’e (1665) in which, in contrast to other churches, the crosswise placement of three domes with crosses was on two intersecting bochki. The other, the Church of St George from Srednepogostskoe on the Upper Toima (1685), was moved in 2008 to the Kolomenskoe museum in Moscow, where it is on display in a restored condition. More complex is the question of the tiered churches on the Northern Dvina – the Church of Sts Peter and Paul in Ratonavolok (1722) and the Church of St Athanasius in Belaia Sluda (1753). The 1726 drawing already mentioned adds to this category the Church of St Prokopii of Ustiug that was evidently constructed in Sol’vychegodsk after the 1656 ﬁre and served as a model for the tiered churches of the region. The tiered churches on the Dvina are, however, very different in their artistic treatment, although they do employ the common principle of several stacked volumes narrowing towards the top. The small number of such ediﬁces may be due to the loss of other possible counterparts or else to the exclusivity and rarity of such a composition, which never did form a school and did not become a tradition. Nevertheless, examination of these churches as a single regional group makes it possible to explain to some degree the architectural situation that took shape in that part of Russia beginning in the second half of the seventeenth century. After tent-roofed churches had practically ceased to be constructed on the banks of the Dvina for almost a century, the local builders found new forms whose richness, decorativeness and inventiveness accorded with the general tendencies in the development of Russian culture around the turn of the eighteenth century.

The Pinega and Mezen’ The term ‘school’ can also be applied to works of wooden church architecture from the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries on the banks of the rivers Pinega and Mezen’. The geographical proximity of these buildings to each other, the chronology of construction with particularly high rates between the 1680s and 1710s, and a common, very striking constructional approach with a superstructure in the form of a tent-roof on crossed bochki that gives special note to the local architecture – all these things make it possible to speak of a distinct ‘Pinega-Mezen’ school’. The beginnings of Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 this school were laid in the 1680s with the construction of the Church of the Archangel Michael in Iuroma (the Iuroma-Velikii Dvor pogost) (1685, see Figure 4.18, page 75) and the Church of St Nicholas in Sura (1687–9). In the 1690s the unheated Church of St Artemii in the Verkol’skii Monastery and the Church of St Nicholas in Edoma (1699) were built. Subsequently there appeared in the region the Church of the Hodegetria in Kimzha (1709), the Churches of the Resurrection in Kevrola and of St Artemii in the Verkola Monastery (1710–12), the Church of St George in Pirinem’ (1717) and the Church of the Nativity of the Virgin in Mezen’ (1714–18). 130 Regional schools and traditions Confirmation that many of these buildings do indeed represent a school was uncovered by Natal’ia Liutikova with the aid of an archive document from 1709 that reveals the story of the creation of one of the best known works of wooden architecture in the region: the Church of the Hodegetria in Kimzha that was completed in that very year. That document states that the church was constructed by the master carpenter Iev Prokof’ev ‘who in the course of his life in the Kholmogory and Ustiug eparchies has built in all some five churches’ (Liutkova 1989: 138). This evidence is interesting not only because it confirms that a fairly large number of churches belong to the one craftsman. It is significant that Iev Prokof’ev worked in different eparchies and thus his artel’ furthered the spread of architectural motifs and techniques across extensive areas. This may possibly explain the existence of churches topped with a shatër over Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016

Figure 5.16 The Church of the Hodegetria, Kimzha (1709) Source: Photo by Richard Davies, 2005. Regional schools and traditions 131 crossed bochki not only on the Pinega and Mezen’ but also on the River Ust’ia between the Vaga and the Northern Dvina. For example, an icon of St Prokopii of the Ust’ia in the collection of the Arkhangelsk Regional Museum of Fine Arts depicts the Church of the Presentation in the Temple in the village of Bestuzhevo, constructed in 1696 (Mil’chik and Ushakov 1981: 69). A comparison of written and pictorial sources relating to buildings remote from one another makes it possible to partially reconstruct the mechanism that connected them and to enlarge our conception of constructional schools in the wooden architecture of the Russian North. Typologically similar churches, surmounted by tent-roofs on crossed bochki, appear at one and the same time on the territory of different archbishoprics. But the statement that Iev Prokof’ev worked in the Kholmogory and Ustiug eparchies eliminates this apparent contradiction and even makes it possible in some instances to speak of a school as more than just a regional phenomenon; in the present case the identity of the master plays a key role and concentrates within it the concept of a school as such. To a large extent this is also bound up with social changes taking place in the late Middle Ages, when the image of an artist as an individual was gradually emerging from a background of anonymous collective creativity. It is not for nothing that the legend the ethnographer and traveller Sergei Vasil’evich Maksimov recorded about the Resurrection Cathedral in Kola, which was built in the early 1680s by a contemporary of Iev Prokof’ev, unexpectedly contains an allusion to the idea of ‘creative torments’, something that would seem inconceivable for a mediaeval craftsman.

The master sits on a hill across from the cathedral and weeps. He sits there all morning, all afternoon, all evening and weeps . . . They call him to eat and he curses; they call him to sleep and he kicks out, and he just keeps looking at that cathedral of his and keeps weeping. (Maksimov 1890: 183–5)

The church in Kimzha was finished in 1709, but the permit for its construction was issued somewhat earlier, in 1700, during the lifetime of Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 Archbichop Afanasii of Kholmogory. Thus the concept of an ‘ideological centre’ as one of the defining criteria for the term school remains no less important than the skills of such an outstanding builder as Iev Prokof’ev. It has already been stated that the five-domed single tent-roofed wooden Church of St Nicholas the Wonder-Worker in Sura was constructed under a charter issued by Archbishop Afanasii in 1687 (KIO 1895, II: 279). One may assume, therefore, that the initial impetus for the emergence of the ‘Pinega-Mezen’ school’ did come from Archbishop Afanasii, with his ideas being embodied by Iev Prokof’ev in wooden architecture. It can be regarded in the same way as the builder Fëdor Stafurov, who also 132 Regional schools and traditions worked to commissions from Afanasii, and constructed masonry churches in Kholmogory and the lower reaches of the Northern Dvina in the late seventeenth century with a strongly marked individual style. As is the case with certain other regional phenomena in the wooden architecture of the Russian North, after the death of Iev Prokof’ev the ‘Pinega-Mezen’ school’ mutated into a tradition, with the impetus continuing to exert an influence over several more decades. In 1743 the Sts Peter and Paul Side-Chapel of the Church of the Prophet Elijah in Iuroma (the Iuroma-Velikii Dvor pogost) was constructed and topped with the same tent-roof on crossed bochki as the neighbouring Church of the Archangel Michael and in 1781 the same arrangement was used in the Trinity Church in Lampozhnia. The reproduction in the middle and second half of the eighteenth century of earlier architectural formulas characteristic for the River Mezen’ testifies to the formation and consolidation of a local tradition founded upon striking archetypes more than half a century old and the works of Iev Prokof’ev. The actual circumstances attending the creation of pieces of architecture began to blend with legends in the popular consciousness. An example of how the image of a carpenter from the distant past could become mythol- ogized is provided by another legend, also recorded by Maksimov. This one concerns the builder of the Church of St Michael the Archangel in Iuroma on the Mezen’ (see Figure 4.18 on page 75):

‘You ought to take a look at our wonder,’ Father Mikhail told me and led me into the church. The church was an old building . . . fairly large with strikingly thick logs and original architecture. ‘According to popular tradition,’ Father Mikhail said, ‘the church was built by a bogatyr’ [champion] (or batyr’ as they say around here) named Pashko. Supposedly with his own hands, on his own shoulders, he stacked up these great masses one on another, alone without any help. He was immensely strong and as visual proof of that he left people a wooden model of his arm as a remembrance. ‘Here it is!’ he told me in the church vestibule. A huge piece of wood, as long as a tall man, is carved on one side Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 into a semblance of a human arm. The hand is clenched and the width of that ﬁst is equal to four, if not ﬁve heads of a grown man. Along the wrist and the whole forearm and elbow there are carved ornaments in the fashion of balusters and this arm was probably intended to be one of the columns supporting the ceiling. The inventive ingenious builder most likely became bored with making around ten such arms and replaced them with the simple pillars, barely trimmed, but more reliable on that account, that support the ceiling at the present time. So the arm was just left unused in the corner of the church and the parishioners’ grateful memory of the builder prevented it from rotting somewhere Regional schools and traditions 133 outside. Whether he was a bogatyr’ or an unassuming peasant with no great strength, perhaps from the Pinega (the Lampozhnia church, three versts from the town, is similar to the Iuroma one in every way), is impossible to say. Meanwhile the legend of Pashko the bogatyr’ is still alive among the people. (Maksimov 1890: 591–2)

Legends are legends, but the passing of time did undoubtedly allow later generations to re-assess the works of their predecessors. Shapes, techniques, motifs and decorative elements became canonized and were reproduced, either ‘verbatim’ or mediated, continuing to form favourable conditions for the further development of local architecture (as Maksimov says when he writes that ‘the Lampozhnia church . . . is similar to the Iuroma one in every way’). Now, however, within the framework of the tradition, architecture had in its collection not only a variety of visibly embodied artistic solutions, but also referenced an abundance of associations and a rich historical memory. The same sort of thing occurred with the tent-roofed churches of the Svir’ valley in the late seventeenth century and in Zaonezh’e throughout almost the entire eighteenth century. Similarly the striking, fairy-tale forms of the Transﬁguration Church in Kizhi and the Intercession Church in Ankhimovo served as prototypes for a whole constellation of many-domed churches around the shores of Lake Onego right up to the end of the eighteenth century. Against the background of these phenomena, the late period in the history of the wooden architecture of the Russian North presents an exceptionally interesting picture. Here the concept of tradition proved very strong, but not always capable of resisting civilizational shifts and changes. Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 This page intentionally left blank Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 6 The late period in Russian wooden architecture

In the history of Russia’s national art the eighteenth century is assigned a special role. The dramatic and eventful reigns of Peter the Great, Elizabeth and Catherine II firmly connected Early Rus’ to the Modern Era, initiating the secularization of ecclesiastical culture and in a matter of two or three generations turning the old Muscovy into a European power. St Petersburg was being actively built and developing, becoming practically the sole centre where architects and painters could find employment for their talents through profitable commissions from the court and aristocracy. So it may seem justified to view the history of Russian art in the eighteenth century as the story of art in the single metropolis of St Petersburg, which had upstaged for a time even ancient Moscow, whose deserted Kremlin was falling into decay. Nevertheless, such radical changes from the traditional ways prompt thoughts of a possible Early Russian ‘momentum’, the strength of which should have made itself felt even during the sharpest turns in the historical fortunes of the national culture in those decades of great upheavals. As far back as the early twentieth century, Ivan Bilibin, an artist who had a very keen sense of the specific character of Russian national art, wrote graphically about this phenomenon:

But then out of the blue came Peter’s reforms. At the top everything changed radically, so radically that the common people could not understand what had happened and lagged behind. What took place there, Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 at the top, was so diametrically different, so alien and so incompre- hensible, while on the other hand the people’s creative treasury was still so full of the traditions of the seventeenth century that there was enough material for the development of folk art for a whole century more. And then comes the double-headed eighteenth century, where on the one hand the centres of population and the moneyed class gradually merge with the West with regard to customs, clothing, art and science, while the folk art of the countryside and the remote, out-of-the-way towns still keeps moving ahead, developing the legacy of the old days: people 136 The late period wear brocade and splendid headdresses and build tent-roofed churches. The seventeenth century lives on! (Bilibin 1904: 303)

The contrast between the art of the city and that of the villages that Bilibin noted becomes particularly evident if we compare construction in the capital with the wooden church architecture of the Russian North that blossomed for the last time in the reign of Catherine II. The contrast is highlighted above all in the building materials used – not so much the physical properties of wood and brick but a whole complex of associations, because even then wooden construction was beginning to be firmly connected in people’s minds with the time before Peter the Great. Thus in the second half of the eighteenth century, when urban art was developing under the guidance of the principles of Classicism, the wooden church architecture of the northern provinces adjoining St Petersburg presented a unique picture because due to momentum it still followed pre-Petrine traditions, demonstrating the astonishing persistence of Early Russian forms and methods that remained untouched by metropolitan influences. This is precisely what Bilibin meant when he used the metaphor ‘the double-headed eighteenth century’ throughout which ‘the legacy of the old days’ was still being developed. The most striking aspects of that legacy would be the monumental church buildings of the 1760s–90s that have become part of the wealth of Russian architecture. Those decades were marked by anti-ecclesiastical reform and the brutal suppression of peasant revolts from which the North was not exempt (the Kizhi Uprising of 1769–71 became a menacing prologue to the Pugachev Rebellion). Yet in this very period folk church architecture produced its finest creations that also proved to be its swansong. The panoramic sweep of Russian wooden architecture in Catherine II’s time extends from Lake Ladoga around Lake Onego, through the Kargopol’ area, the White Sea region, the Northern Dvina and Pinega to the distant Mezen’. The scale of church construction in the 1760s–90s is entirely comparable with that recorded in the cadastres of the seventeenth century when the North was engaged in the rapid restoration of devastated villages and pogosty after the Time of Troubles. The brisk pace with which churches Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 appeared did not in the least mean that they were being turned out to a single design. The edifices of this period continue to display undiminished the great variety of traditional Early Russian architectural formulas which prompted Bilibin’s jubilant exclamation: ‘The seventeenth century lives on!’ It was not for nothing that Catherine’s reign saw the completion of grand ensembles that had been started in pre-Petrine times or in the early 1700s: in 1769 the Church of the Exaltation of the Cross was erected in the Ust’- Kozhskii pogost on the River Onega alongside the older Church of St Clement (1695). In 1764, after much delay, the celebrated Intercession Church of the Kizhi pogost was consecrated. A few years later, in 1769, the The late period 137 construction of the tent-roofed Church of St Alexander of Svir’ completed the formation of the architectural complex in the village of Kosmozero on the Zaonezh’e peninsula. In 1787 a Church of St Clement was constructed in the old Pomor village of Shueretskoe that became the final chord in a magnificent four-part ensemble, the beginning of which went back as far as 1595. These examples testify to the unbroken thread of tradition in wooden architecture that ran from the sixteenth century to the late eighteenth and connected in a single whole buildings put up by different generations. The survival of the principles of Early Russian ensemble construction into Catherine II’s time was determined by more than just the need to complete architectural complexes begun earlier. In the 1760s and 1790s some of these ensembles appeared at once, in a momentary burst of inspiration, as it were, the creations of a single team of carpenters. Examples are the Intercession (1763) and Resurrection (1766) Churches in the village of Rakuly on the Northern Dvina and the majestic Transfiguration (1786, see Figure 5.10, page 106) and Annunciation (1795) Churches in the village of Turchasovo in the lower reaches of the River Onega. The second half of the eighteenth century also wrote the epilogue to the centuries-long history of tent-roofed architecture. The shatër tops that were so common in ecclesiastical construction in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries came under bans as early as the 1650s in a move connected with Patriarch Nikon’s wide-ranging reforms of Church practices and texts. In central Russia shatër superstructures disappeared totally from masonry architecture fairly quickly, by the 1680s. In wooden architecture, however, matters took a different course. By the middle and second half of the eighteenth century across the whole of the Russian North tent-roofs were making a triumphant return to the church builders’ arsenal. In the 1760s and 1770s, in less than a decade, three tent- roofed churches were put up in the northern Lake Onego area alone – the Church of the Nativity of the Virgin in Kuzaranda (1765), the Church of St Alexander of Svir’ in Kosmozero (1769) and the celebrated Dormition Church in Kondopoga (1774, see Figure 5.3, page 94), which deserves to share the fame of the nearby Kizhi pogost. In the Kargopol’ area the shatër architecture of Catherine’s time is represented by two masterpieces that appeared almost simultaneously: the Church of the Nativity in Kolodozero Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 (1784) and the Church of St John the Divine in the village of Pogost in the Oshevenskaia volost’. At Kolodozero

the situation of the church complex on a peninsula suggested an original treatment of the enclosure, which was placed across its narrow part. By tradition trading stalls were built into the enclosure facing onto the market square . . . Tribute must be paid to the mastery of the folk builders, who so skilfully combined natural and architectural elements in one harmonious whole. (Ushakov 1982: 52) 138 The late period In the Oshevenskaia church the same sort of persistence and traditional- ism of compositional methods is demonstrated not only by the use of a tent-roof, but also by the tower-like octagonal composition of the central volume that had been characteristic of local Kargopol’ architecture in the previous (seventeenth) century. Besides that, the historical construction in the Oshevenskaia volost’ serves as a typical example of a multi-centred composition where the vertical of the shatër, placed on a massive vos’merik, played a particularly important role in a landscape of architecture and nature combined. The Church of St Demetrius of Thessalonica (1784) in Verkhniaia Uftiuga in the basin of the Northern Dvina completes the long history of wooden church architecture that from the late sixteenth century had been devoted specifically to the tent-roof. Edifices in the area of the Dvina had long been marked by their tower-like composition, achieved with the aid of a shatër whose height was comparable to that of the lower elements and sometimes even exceeded them. Yet this approach never led to the disruption of good proportions and only stressed the dominance of the tent-roof that soared above its setting and was seen well from the river. The considerable gap in time that separated the Church of St Demetrius from its sixteenth- and seventeenth-century precursors had no effect at all on the artistic merits of the later edifice. On the contrary, the Dvina tower-like composition that had at one time implied a simple, laconic two-part structure of vos’merik and shatër was here reinterpreted and rendered more complicated by the introduction of an additional supporting element. As a result the Church of St Demetrius takes a form very widespread in wooden architecture – a vos’merik-on-chetverik construction – that is crowned by an exceptionally tall tent-roof characteristic of the local building tradition. The Annunciation Church ensemble in Turchasovo (1795) occupies a special place in the whole history of wooden architecture specifically on account of its combination of practically incompatible characteristics. These are the late construction date (the penultimate year of Catherine II’s reign) and the tall, authentically Early Russian shatër that seems to ignore all the main tendencies in the evolution of Russian architecture over the previous century and a half – the regulating instructions of the second half of the seventeenth century, Peter the Great’s reforms, the Baroque of his Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 daughter Elizabeth’s time and the Neo-Classicism of Catherine II’s. Vladimir Suslov, who was the first to make a study of the Annunciation Church back in the late nineteenth century, pointed out the existence of a decree ‘from Empress Catherine on the construction of this church’ and

fairly curious scale drawings of it by way of a design. These clearly convey the church’s general type and the main measurements of the structure are marked on the plan. The height of the building to the cross, by the way, is given as 25 sazhens. (Suslov 1901, VII: 13) The late period 139 The tent-roofed churches constructed in the Russian North in the 1760s to 1790s, including the variations on the theme – for example, the ‘tent- roof on crossed bochki’ in the architecture of the Trinity Church in Lampozhnia on the Mezen’ (1781) – give no indications of a possible decline or any sort of sign of some imminent degeneration of the form. Seemingly the tent-roof structure was at all times such an organic part of Russian architectural thinking that its use could only be halted artificially in the nineteenth century, when special directions and approved standard designs were introduced that regulated the practice of church building in rural areas. The wooden church architecture of Catherine II’s day was not confined to tent-roofed construction alone, although that was the most widespread and enduringly popular among the common people. A similar stability and consistency in the use of techniques, forms and devices can also be found in buildings traditionally classified as belonging to the tiered (for example, the Church of St Nicholas from the village of Vysokii Ostrov, 1767) and many-domed types. An especially high rate of construction of wooden many-domed churches occurred specifically in Catherine II’s reign and is associated with the Lake Onego area – that part of the Russian North that was geographically and economically most closely connected with (relatively) nearby St Petersburg. After the consecration of the Intercession Church in Kizhi in 1764, several compositionally astonishingly rich and attractive many-domed churches appeared in a fairly brief period on the south side of Lake Onego: the Dormition Church in Deviatiny (1770), the Church of St Demetrius the Myrrh-Bearer in Shcheleiki (1783, see Figure 5.7, page 101) and the Church of St Nicholas in the Oshta pogost (1791). In Liadiny, to the east of Lake Onego, the fanciful twelve-domed Epiphany Church was constructed in 1793 that bears a distant resemblance to the Intercession Church of the Kizhi pogost. The finale of this mighty surge in construction around Lake Onego was the major repair work on the twenty-four-domed Intercession Church in Ankhimovo near Vyterga in 1793. The church had been erected back in 1708, beginning the many-domed tradition in this area, and became an elder sibling of the famous Transfiguration Church in Kizhi. Local folklore connected the creation of the Intercession Church with Peter the Great Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 and events in the Great Northern War. After the repairs, in the course of which the old church was completely dismantled and reassembled on a new masonry foundation, an inscription was placed on its façade mentioning Catherine II, in whose reign the church acquired a new lease of life. In the opinion of the scholarly discoverer of Russian wooden architecture, academician Lev Dahl, it was at that time ‘probably that the various em- bellishments were added such as the Ionic pilasters on its plank sheathing and the changed shape of the domes’ (Dahl’ 1877: 98). These remained part of the church’s appearance for another century and a half, a characteristically ‘Classical’ stamp of Catherine’s reign. 140 The late period So, throughout the second half of the eighteenth century demotic church construction retained the previous basic set of architectural elements that made up the spatial composition of a traditional Northern church (vos’merik, chetverik, shatër, bochka, shatër on intersecting bochki and so on). This makes it possible to analyse the edifices of this period using the traditional typology applied to buildings of the fifteen to seventeenth centuries. Architecture in the various regions of the Russian North right up to the end of the eighteenth century retained certain clearly recognizable long- established local features: around Lake Onego tent-roofed and many-domed churches continued to be built; on the Northern Dvina pillar-like ones with tent-roofs; on the River Onega churches with a cruciform ground plan and/or a kub above; on the Pinega ones with a tent-roof over crossed bochki. There was still a close connection between the typological characteristics of a particular building and its geographical location – a principle that is fundamental to works of folk architecture. The construction of Catherine II’s day does display attempts to reconcile metropolitan Neo-Classicism with an Early Russian form (or urban masonry architecture with its rural wooden counterpart). Evidence for this survives on some churches in the form of even planks sheathing the rows of logs and imitating the smooth plastered surface of a masonry building or the use in wood of elements of the Classical system of orders alien to it (demi-columns, capitals, triglyphs, metopes and triangular pediments). It is, however, obvious that the later accretions proved superficial and non- essential. Moreover, wooden construction remained almost unaffected even by direct contact between the various parts of the North and St Petersburg. An example might be the architecture of the Dormition Church in Kondopoga (1774, see Figure 5.3, page 94) which was funded by money that the peasants earned from numerous contracts to deliver granite from Karelian quarries for the palaces and embankments of the capital. Despite this, the architecture of the Kondopoga church demonstrates once more the phenomenon of continuity typical of the transitional eighteenth century: due to the powerful force of the centuries behind it, the Early Russian form continues to exist, robust and not out of place, in the completely different historical, political and socio-economic environment of Catherine’s reign. Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 Significantly, in this very period Early Russian wooden architecture began for the first time to be perceived as a form of art and not as crude peasant handiwork that could hold no appeal for the capital’s enlightened public with their refined tastes. It was not for nothing that during a voyage on Lakes Ladoga and Onego Nikolai Ozeretskovskii, a member of the Academy of Sciences and the Russian Academy, admired the Kizhi pogost that ‘consists of two wooden churches, one of which has 23 domes and stands on an elevated site. It has a most attractive appearance’ (Ozeretskovskii 1792: 23). It has also been suggested that the ‘curious scale drawings’ of the Turchasovo ensemble mentioned earlier, which were made by the priest Ivan Grigor’ev, were The late period 141 not a design, but a survey of the churches that preceded those studied by Suslov – a survey made by an amateur (the character of the drawings betrays an unskilled hand). Grigor’ev’s purpose is not clear: most probably he was one of the enlightened devotees of antiquities and, attracted by the beauty of the churches, made drawings of them. In that case we are dealing here with a highly valuable document for the history of Russian culture, testifying . . . to an awakening conscious interest in Russian architectural and artistic heritage. (Slavina 1983: 22–4)

The creations of the last decades of the eighteenth century – the Dormition Church in Kondopoga (fig. 5.3), the Church of St Demetrius in Verkhniaia Uftiuga, the Church of the Epiphany in Liadiny (see Figure 5.8, page 104), the Annunciation Church in Turchasovo, St Nicholas’s in the Oshta pogost and many others – are indeed masterpieces of Russian wooden architecture although they date from the final period in its history. There is not the slightest suggestion in them of decline, stagnation or degeneration. On the contrary, the intensity of construction, artistic variety, bold innovations, respect for tradition (and at the same time reworking of it) are features that at the time held out the promise of a long life still to come for wooden architecture of the Russian North – confirming Bilibin’s statement that in the eighteenth century ‘the people’s creative treasury’ was still full. The same powerful Early Russian ‘momentum’ can explain a fact of no small importance – that throughout the nineteenth century bell-towers were constructed or reconstructed to complete the centuries-long process of forming celebrated three-part ensembles. In the early decades towers were built at Maloshuika (1807) and Nënoksa (1818); later it was Kizhi’s turn (1862; 1874, see Figure 5.6, page 100). In the words of Aleksandr Opolovnikov,

wooden architecture of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, despite all the changes that took place in it, remained true to itself. It did not go beyond the strict bounds of the distinctive traditions created earlier, undeviatingly followed the principle of architectural and constructional unity, preserved the attitude to wood as an artistic material, Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 rejected superﬁcial decorativeness and in general character remained, as before, architecture that was, if one can put it this way, overtly and undisguisedly timber. In other words, later wooden construction still continued to express the aesthetic ideals and creative method of popular artistic culture and was its most sublime generalization and material embodiment – striking, alive and many-voiced. (Opolovnikov 1974: 31)

Soon, however, the thread of the centuries-old tradition of Russian wooden architecture snapped. From the second quarter of the nineteenth 142 The late period century onwards, the style of wooden churches acquired an ever greater ‘urban’ appearance. Traditional forms, which provincial architects’ ofﬁces could never have approved due to their association with Old Believers, disappeared. The nineteenth century was destined to be a time when, as Vladimir Suslov sorrowfully stated,

everywhere any possibility presents itself to refurbish an ancient church or create a new one, the stamp of pathetic imitation of the present-day lies upon it. The majority of old wooden churches that I have seen have been amended to such an extent that not only have their details been lost, but their very forms are also distorted. It is sad to think that in a mere century the nation killed off for good within itself all the age-old traditions of art and does not even see the merits of its own past. (Suslov 1888: 67)

Institutionalization, regulation and bureaucratic procedures were to become the hurdles that free folk creativity in architecture proved incapable of overcoming. Bureaucratization does, however, have its positive side for architectural historians as the abundant documents from the nineteenth century preserved in the archives of Arkhangelsk, Petrozavodsk, Vologda and St Petersburg make it possible to trace in detail all the stages of the construction process, to understand the principles governing its organization and to assess the degree of involvement of the various parties. On the part of the parish, the most important roles were played by the peasants who gave the commission and the executor–contractor, who may as before have come from that same peasant milieu and acted as designer for the project. On the part of the ecclesiastical administration a project received approval and confirmation in the consistory (Dukhovnaia Konsistoriia) after being checked by a profes - sional civil architect. The intermediary between the parish and the provincial centre was the blagochinnyi, a senior priest who acted as superintendant of an administrative territory of several parishes. As an example we can take the entirely typical case of the construction of the Church of the Nativity in the village of Purnema on the Onega coast of the White Sea. Together with the seventeenth-century Church of Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 St Nicholas this church forms a complex of buildings dating from different historical periods. While St Nicholas’s is a typical Early Russian tent-roofed edifice (for details, see Figure 5.11, page 113), the history of the building of the Nativity Church in 1857–61 reveals all the specifics of the organization of parish construction in the reign of Alexander II, an era which became in effect the epilogue to the history of traditional Russian wooden architecture. The Church of the Nativity in Purnema was consecrated in 1861; it was the third building on the site. Information about the first church, which was consecrated to St Blaise, has not survived and an inventory from 1834 only mentions that this building had burnt down (GAAO 463–1–42: 3). It was The late period 143 that fire that necessitated the construction in 1762–5 of the second church, which stood for only ninety years or so. The inventory allows us to partially reconstruct its appearance: ‘on a wooden foundation, eight sazhens high, single-domed with scales, all covered with planks . . . in the refectory a ceiling on two pillars . . . one brick stove, white.’ (GAAO 463–1–42: 2–3). Intensive use of the church in winter, the deleterious effect of stove heating and swings in temperature led to the raising as early as 1852, during a visit by Bishop Varlaam of Arkhangelsk to the Purnema parish, of the need to construct a new Church of the Nativity with a chapel of the Holy Martyr Blaise in the refectory on the south side. The inhabitants of the village set out their request in detail in a formal application dated 11 March 1853, attaching an estimate and design (GAAO 29–4(3), 350: 1–2). Just a week later, on 18 March 1853, the Bishop of Arkhangelsk gave a positive decision (GAAO 29–4(3), 350: 4). This marked the beginning of a long preparatory procedure that sheds much light on the details of the organization of church construction in the Russian North in the middle and second half of the nineteenth century. Before building the church local parishioners had to collect the money and await approval of the design and estimate from the Chamber of State Properties, which checked that the plan they had drawn Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016

Figure 6.1 The Churches of St Nicholas (1640s?) (right) and the Nativity (1857–61) in Purnema (left) Source: Photo by the author, 2012. 144 The late period up conformed to all the technical standards and regulations. Only after endorsement of the design and the budget from the Chamber was it possible to obtain permission to fell timber. After a long process of reconciliation, the design for the Church of the Nativity was approved on 22 November 1855, making it possible to replace a building that was by now badly dilapidated and on the point of collapse. (GAAO 29–4(3), 350: 10–11). It was this design that formed the basis for the building contract that was concluded on 10 April 1857 between the parish and Mikhailo Pirogov, son of Fëdor (GAAO 29–4(3), 350: 47–50). That document specified the procedure for the procurement and delivery of materials, the execution of elements of external and internal decoration and the period of construction (the summer seasons of 1857–8). In a certain sense this agreement was by its nature the successor to the Early Russian poriadnaia zapis’. Nevertheless, the work was somewhat protracted: in November 1859 the blagochinnyi informed the Arkhangelsk Consistory that ‘construction of the Purnema church is not finished. At present it has only been fitted with rafters and the sanctuary is roofed with planks. The rest of the construction continues.’ (GAAO 29–4(3), 350: 51). It was only by 1 November 1860 that he could report: ‘in Onega uezd in Purnema the construc tion of the new church dedicated to the Nativity has been completed in all matters in accordance with the contract concluded in 1857 with the contractor Pirogov.’ (GAAO 29–4(3), 350: 52). In January 1861 the signa- tories of the acceptance certificate for the church attested that

all the work on the church has been performed well and solidly. The aforesaid Purnema church, in length, width and height proved entirely in agreement with the plan and elevation approved by the Arkhangelsk Provincial Building Commission on 22 November 1855 . . . and proved entirely ready for consecration, apart from the side-chapel of the Holy Martyr Blaise.

The consecration was held on 2 March 1861 (GAAO 29–4(3), 350: 54–5, 57). Now, alongside the early tent-roofed Church of St Nicholas from the 1640s, the village of Purnema had a new Church of the Nativity that met Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 the standards and requirements of the day. The long history of the church complex in Purnema reﬂects the whole course of the development of wooden church architecture in the Russian North between the sixteenth and early twentieth centuries; it reveals practically all its main aspects connected with questions of source studies, the persistence of techniques, the phenomenon of archaisms and the compositional characteristics of both the buildings themselves and the ensemble organization as a whole. The changes had less of an effect on the more conventional kub churches on the River Onega and in the White Sea region, where momentum accounts for the construction of such ediﬁces as the Church of St Nicholas in Unezhma Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016

Figure 6.2 The Transfiguration Church, Nimen’ga (1879–82) Source: Photo by the author, 2012. 146 The late period (1826), the Resurrection Church in Vazentsy (1853), the Church of the Icon of the Virgin of Tikhvin in Verkhnii Mud’iug (1865) and the Epiphany Church in the village of Pole (1853). A special place in this series belongs to the Transfiguration Church in Nimen’ga because the date of its construction (1879–82) and the deeply traditional Early Russian kub shape of its top seem absolutely incompatible. But therein lies the peculiarity of the wooden architecture of the Russian North, which even in the last stage of its existence continued to contain within it and to reveal all its centuries- long history, despite the bureaucratization and standardization of the second half of the nineteenth century. Nimen’ga is situated a few kilometres from where the river of the same name enters Nimen’ga Bay on the southernmost shore of the White Sea. The toponym already appears in sixteenth-century sources: a record for the Turchasovo stan (subdivision) of Kargopol’ uezd copied from the 1556 cadastre drawn up by Ia.I. Saburov and I.A. Kutuzov mentions ‘by the sea on the River Nimenga the little commune [volostka] of Nimenga . . . In that same commune on the Nimenga a pogost and in it a Church of the Transfiguration’ (Vasil’ev 1981: 134–5). The administrative subordination of Nimen’ga to the Turchasovo stan would seem to suggest the involvement of the people of Kargopol’ in opening up the southern White Sea region, while the dedication of the church to the Transfiguration also points to a possible influence of the Solovetskii Monastery, which in the 1550s and 1560s was flourishing through the efforts of Hegumen Filipp Kolychev. No information has survived about the first Transfiguration Church in Nimen’ga. It existed until 1758, and in the first half of the 1760s the next two churches appeared – a Transfiguration Church with a side-chapel of the Nativity of St John the Baptist and an Annunciation Church with a secondary altar dedicated to St Clement of Rome. These marked the second stage in the constructional history of the Nimen’ga pogost and preceded the present ensemble that dates from the 1870s. The churches were compositionally linked by a tent-roofed bell-tower and surrounded by an enclosure with two entrances. The Nimen’ga pogost ensemble constructed in the 1760s perished in a fire in the early hours of 25 October 1875. That same autumn the long story of building a new Transfiguration Church began. It was put up in 1879 and Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 finally consecrated only in 1882. In November 1875 the inhabitants of Nimen’ga applied to Bishop Iuvenalii of Arkhangelsk and Kholmogory with a request ‘to build a new church, with two floors, following the plan of the Annunciation Church that burnt down, with four altars: Transfiguration, Nativity of John the Baptist, Annunciation and Pope Clement of Rome.’ The plan to construct a single two-storey church instead of the two lost eighteenth-century buildings, bringing the four altars together in it, was from the outset seen as the most practical solution from a financial point of view given the difficult situation in which the villagers found themselves after the loss of both their The late period 147 churches at once. The prototype for the new Transfiguration Church was, nonetheless, the previous Annunciation Church of 1764, since that had had a refectory, a heating system and several altars, making it better suited to the needs of a large congregation (GAAO 29–4(3), 593: 3–5). In October 1876, exactly a year after the fire, the civil and ecclesiastical authorities gave permission for the construction of a new church in Nimen’ga. In the surviving plans for the first version the building has three aisles and elements of Classical-style décor (triangular pediments, a porch with wooden columns and false semi-circular apertures on the north and south façades) (GAAO 75–1, 670: 4–5). Of particular interest is the structure of the kub. The proposal was to create this long-established southern White Sea feature using just a framework rather than the traditional solid construction of ventsy (tiers of logs). The main work of erecting the Transfiguration Church was carried out in the summer building season of 1878. In his report to Bishop Makarii, dated 3 January 1879, the local priest Mikhail Vasilevskii stated that ‘in Nimen’ga parish the new two-storey church has been built and the lower floor is prepared for consecration.’ On 31 January the main altar was consecrated to the Transfiguration, followed the next day by the altar dedi - cated to St Clement of Rome (GAAO 29–4(3), 593: 98–9). The considerable size of the church made it impossible to finish the decoration of the upper floor that same year. In fact the work dragged on for three more years. In the year of its final completion, 1882, an inventory of the church was compiled, according to which it was

built in the form of an elongated square, while it protrudes in a semicircle on the eastern side. The church has a four-pitched roof and the porch a two-pitched one with wooden rafters covered with planks and painted black. Rising above the roof of the church is a dome with ﬁve cupolas and there are six on the east side above the sanctuary . . . (GAAO 29–31, 1217: 4)

In general this description accords with the present-day appearance of the building, with the exception of the loss of the cupolas over the sanctuary. The Transfiguration Church in Nimen’ga is one of the largest in the entire Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 White Sea region. It is a two-storey, three-part edifice consisting of a five- faceted sanctuary with a windowless eastern wall, the body of the church topped by a kub with five cupolas, and a massive extension on the west that incorporates a refectory and a vestibule with a staircase leading to the upper floor. The building has the plank sheathing that was characteristic of wooden churches in the second half of the nineteenth century. A study of the building of the Transfiguration Church in Nimen’ga provides an overview of wooden ecclesiastical architecture in the later 1800s and allows us to make some generalizations about the features that char- acterized the very last stage in the evolution of Russian timber construction. 148 The late period As in Purnema, the chronicle of the erection of the church in Nimen’ga reflects in detail the complicated bureaucratic procedure for the organization of parish church construction in the second half of the nineteenth century. As early as 1826 a decree was issued ‘On rules for the future construction of churches’ that imposed a duty on all places and persons to carry out the construction of new religious buildings and the repair of old ones only to designs drawn up ‘in accordance with the rules of architecture’. Those designs were to be approved in the provincial organs of ecclesiastical and civil administration, i.e. in the consistories and the construction departments of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (Opolovnikov 1974: 62). The prescriptions of the 1826 Rules could have been ignored, but a further decree in 1838 ordained that ‘timber shall not be released for various kinds of church construction and mending without designs and estimates drawn up in a technical manner and approved in the construction department of the provincial administration.’ Aleksandr Opolovnikov likened 9 March 1826 to the imposition of serfdom on Russian wooden architecture because the regulation instituted on that day ended freedom of creativity in construction and the possibility of embodying one’s lofty aesthetic ideals in monumental edifices. The mystical mythological image of the legendary Nestor the Carpenter gave way to the prosaic one of the state official and civil engineer (Opolovnikov 1974: 66). Yet for all these unfavourable factors it would not be correct to view the history of wooden architecture in the nineteenth century exclusively as a chronicle of decline. For example, one of the important areas of study in the history of construction of that period might be to explore the relationship between tradition and innovation, which in the nineteenth century far from always acted in opposition to one another. The process of the construction of the church in Nimen’ga points to the enduring significance of the commune (parish) in a northern village, that is to say, to the existence of an Early Russian collective principle in which public opinion played an enormous role. This accorded to a large extent with earlier mediaeval practice in the organization of construction work, where a church would be commission by the peasant mir (self-administrating community). It was this very circumstance that facilitated the preservation of historical memory against which government authorities and supervisory bodies were impotent. Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 It was a constant appeal to ‘ancestral memory’ that made it possible to retain in the design for the Nimen’ga church the four established altars, the dedications of which had particular meaning in the context of Pomor culture. Besides studying the architectural, historical and artistic aspects of the Transfiguration Church in Nimen’ga, no less important is the broad context that called forth this edifice and in many ways determined its regional White Sea character and tradition. The multiple altars in one building should be viewed against the background of the traditional White Sea practice of constructing churches with several side chapels that derives from the Transfiguration Cathedral in the Solovetskii Monastery. Subsequently, this The late period 149 characteristic occurred in such early eighteenth-century buildings as the Dormition Cathedral in Kem’ (1711–17) and the Trinity Church in Nënoksa (1727–9), and in the nineteenth century in the Intercession Church in Prilutskii parish (1869–74) and the Trinity Church in Mondino (consecrated in 1888). Dedications to St Clement were also very widespread in the White Sea and Lake Onego regions in the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, when altars in his name are mentioned in connection with churches in the villages of Una, Shueretskoe, Kolezhma, Niukhcha, Nënoksa, Piiala, Ust’-Kozha and Pole. The kub superstructure, which first appeared in precisely this same area back in the last third of the seventeenth century, is represented in the Transfiguration Church in Nimen’ga in all its monumentality and scale. This local feature, going back to old churches in the White Sea and Lake Onego regions (in the villages of Shueretskoe, Kusherka, Virma, Chekuevo, Podporozh’e, Turchasovo, Piiala and on Kii island), continues to occur in the nineteenth century in the Church of St Nicholas in Unezhma (1826) and the Epiphany Church in the village of Pole (1853). In Nimen’ga in 1879–81 the kub roof appears for the last time, testifying to the preservation in a late nineteenth-century edifice of this Early Russian element in its natural authentic form, rather than an artificial stylization. Undoubtedly all the metamorphoses that affected traditional architectural form and altered the ratio of proportions, the treatment of volumes, the décor, interior and even the very ‘philosophy’ of construction represent a certain loss of authenticity through the active intrusion into folk architecture of stylistic elements – mainly of provincial Classicism in its late manifesta- tions and derivative, mediated interpretation in wood. Style, as a sign of a specific time, acts in opposition to the supra-stylistic, i.e. timeless, character of the wooden folk architecture of the Russian North. The monumental five-dome top of the Transfiguration Church in Nimen’ga and the slender tent-roof of the bell-tower in the Kizhi pogost indicate, however, that the nineteenth century cannot be written off as merely a time of decline in the chronicle of wooden architecture. The late period in the history of northern architecture is still inadequately studied because throughout the twentieth century it was a priori perceived in a nega- tive way in contrast to the Early Russian period and the reigns of Peter I Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 and Catherine II. Today it is beginning to be assessed objectively and not only as a phenom enon bound up with the preceding centuries-long history. The passing of time now makes it possible to see the nineteenth century in the history of wooden architecture as a phenomenon that is laying claim, albeit diffidently, to its own place in the general history of Russian art. It is not only the encounter of old and new, their contest or interaction, that creates a very dynamic and diverse picture of the nature of wooden architecture in this period. It should be perceived against the complex historical and socio-economic background of its era, when major civilizational shifts were underway, when relations between town and country were being 150 The late period

Figure 6.3 The Church of St Nicholas, Kelchemgora (Zaozer’e) on the River Mezen’, 1895 Source: Photo by the author, 2014.

forged anew, while the industrial revolution and the general acceleration of the pace of life changed people’s very attitude to the creative process. In view of the influence of strict standards and guidelines, it is hard to speak of the preservation of regional schools and traditions, which were bound to gradually become dissolved in homogenized constructions, squeezed as it were into identical civil service uniforms. Yet unification and regulation of construction, albeit not in such a rigid form, had taken place earlier – in the reign of Ivan the Terrible in the mid-sixteenth century, for example, or after Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 Nikon’s schism in the second half of the seventeenth century. The critical attitude to nineteenth-century wooden architecture can also be explained by the general ambiguous attitude to eclecticism and histori- cism in Russian art studies that has only recently begun to change. An objective assessment is also made more difficult by an insufficient body of surviving examples of late church construction, as in the Soviet period they were first in line to be demolished due to their supposed lack of both artistic and historical value. A rehabilitation of this period should take place soon and then the fullest historical panorama of the development of the wooden church architecture of the Russian North will unfold. Glossary

Artel’ A team of builders (carpenters or masons). Bania An eight-sided top of a masonry or wooden church with an onion- like shape. Blagochinie The territory overseen by a blagochinnyi. Blagochinnyi (pl Blagochinnye) A senior priest acting as the superinten - dent of a group of parishes and serving as the link between them and the eparchy. Bochka (pl Bochki) A distinctive ogival structure somewhat resembling an inverted boat with two sides curving out then in again and finally rising to a sharp ‘keel’ forming the top ridge. Bogatyr’ A hero in Early Russian folk epics. Chasha A socket (literally ‘cup’ or ‘bowl’) cut in a corner joint between logs (see Potainoi zub). Chasovnia A chapel, small place of worship without a separate sanctuary. Chetverik (pl Chetveriki) A rectangular architectural volume. Desiaterik A ten-sided architectural volume. Dukhovnaia konsistoriia A consistory, the administrative body of an eparchy. Dyn’ki Carved decoration of pillars in the form of rounded bulges. Epancha (also Yepancha) A decorative collar of small planks on the drum beneath a dome. Eparchy (pl Eparchies) An extensive ecclesiastical administrative territory under the control of a bishop or archbishop. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries eparchies were subdivided into several blagochiniia (superintendencies). The main administrative units of the eparchies were Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 the parishes. Frontonnyi poias (pl Frontonnye poiasa) A decorative element on the facets of vos’meriki in the form of planks attached in a zigzag fashion. It occurs exclusively in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century church architecture on the shores of Lake Onego. Glava Literally ‘head’ – the near-spherical wooden top of a church surmounted by a cross. Gubernia province, A territorial subdivision of Russia first created in 1708. After the 1775 reform provinces were further divided into uezdy. 152 Glossary In Soviet times the provinces were replaced by regions (oblasti) and autonomous republics (such as Karelia), subdivided into districts (raiony). Hegumen The head of an Orthodox monastery. Iconostasis The more or less solid partition set with icons that separates the main body and congregation of an Orthodox church from the sanctuary which is reserved for members of the clergy. Izba (pl Izby) The wooden dwelling house of Russian peasants. Khoromy Literally ‘chambers’, the term used in Early Rus’ for a grand building made of wood. Klet’ (pl Kleti) Literally ‘cage’, the simplest rectangular wooden architectural volume, formed of tiers of horizontal logs (ventsy) stacked one upon another. Kokoshnik (pl Kokoshniki) A small bochka, an ogival element used for decorative purposes around the base of the drum of a dome or the facets of a vos’merik. Krasnoye okno (pl Krasnye okna) Literally ‘red (i.e., beautiful) window’, a larger, grander window framed by an architrave of four smooth boards mitred at the corners. Krasnyi tës The upper layer of planks forming the surface of a roof. Kreshchatyi A term denoting a building having a ground plan in the form of a Greek cross (with arms of equal length). Kub A type of superstructure – something between a bochka and a dome, with four sides sloping out and then in to the apex so that a cross-section through two opposite sides and the apex is ogival; a ‘four-sided onion dome’. Kuritsa (pl Kuritsy) A bracket forming part of a nailless roof, made from the bole of a tree with one of the roots left on it and cut in the shape of the head of a bird (kuritsa means ‘chicken’). Kuritsy supported the gutter (potok). Lemekh (pl Lemekhi) Wooden shingles. Matitsa (pl Matitsy) Massive squared beams carrying a ceiling. Metrika (pl Metriki) A questionnaire sent out to parishes to collect information on the history and architecture of churches. Mir A peasant community managing its own internal affairs. Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 Nebo Literally ‘sky’ or ‘Heaven’, a framed ceiling in northern wooden churches and chapels, usually with eight facets. The areas between the massive squared beams were filled with icons. Oblast’ (pl Oblasti) A territorial administrative unit of the Soviet Union and of the present-day Russian Federation, subdivided into districts (raiony). Obydennyi khram Literally ‘ordinary church’ – a wooden church that was constructed in a single day in fulfilment of a vow so as to halt the spread of an epidemic. This was quite a common practice in Early Rus’ and is recorded repeatedly in chronicles and other sources. Glossary 153 Okhlupen’ A log with a V-shaped groove cut into its lower edge, placed on the top of a roof, fixing the whole construction. In secular wooden architecture it was often given a horse-shaped end. Okladnoi venets The lowest tier of logs in a srub, on or just above ground level. Old Believers The ‘schismatics’ who refused to accept the reforms of the Russian Orthodox Church initiated by Patriarch Nikon in the mid- seventeenth century. Oprichnina A ‘state within the state’ that existed between 1565 and 1572 as a result of administrative changes instituted by Ivan the Terrible which set aside special territories for the tsar’s court and immediate entourage. The confiscation of properties and funds in their favour was accompanied by pillaging and executions. The Oprichnina became synonymous with a reign of terror and lawlessness. Papert’ An external gallery attached to a church. Piatina (pl Piatiny) Literally ‘a fifth, one of five’, a territorial administrative division of the mediaeval Novgorodian Republic, further subdivided into pogosty. The northern Novgorodian lands were part of the Obonezhskaia Piatina. Pistsovye knigi (sing Pistsovaia kniga) Cadastres that were compiled from the late fifteenth century, when the centralized Muscovite state was being formed, to collect information on the socio-demographic and economic situation in a particular area for purposes of taxation. Podklet A basement area in a church or house, generally used as storage space. Poriadnaia zapis’ (pl Poriadnye zapisi) A contract between a peasant community and a team of builders for the construction of a church. Podvalina (pl Podvaliny) Shallow dry-stone foundations. Pogost (pl Pogosty) A complex comprising a village church together with cemetery, a house for the clergy and ancillary buildings; also an administrative district for which this was the centre. Politsa (pl Politsy) A gently sloping skirt at the base of a shatër, kub or tall wedge roof. Polotentse Literally, ‘towel’, a short decorative board that hung down vertically.

Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 Pomor (pl Pomory) An inhabitant (of Slavic origin) of the White Sea coast and lower reaches of the Northern Dvina. Potainoi zub Literally ‘secret, hidden tooth’, a lug that fitted into a socket within the corner joint to make a stronger fastening between logs. Potok A wooden gutter with a trough cut in it to carry away water coming off the slope of a roof. Poval (pl Povaly) A flare, outward expansion of the upper part of a srub (chetverik or vos’merik). Prichelina (pl Pricheliny) A decorative ‘bargeboard’ hiding the ends of logs sticking out from beneath the slope of a roof. 154 Glossary Prirub (pl Priruby) A log-built extension ‘cut into’ the main srub. Raznopaz A term used to describe an arrangement when the logs in alternate ventsy have two grooves cut into them, above and below, to ensure a close fit with their vertical neighbours, which have no grooves. Refectory See triapeznaia Rus’ The old name for the Eastern Slavs and their lands in pre-Mongol and Mongol times. Samtsovaia A pitched roof made without nails, with boards resting on an arrangement of horizontal purlins (slegi) set into the end gables and vertically mounted kuritsy. Seni A vestibule, the equivalent of the narthex in Byzantine and Early Russian masonry church architecture; an entrance hall in a peasant house (izba). Shatër (pl Shatry) Also shatyor, a ‘tent-roof’ with several faces rising from a polygonal base and narrowing to a small glava at the top. Sheia or sheika Literally ‘neck’ – the cylindrical drum beneath an onion dome. Skete A small outlying monastery, acting as an extension of a larger religious community, sometimes for those seeking stricter observance. It takes the form of a small group of buildings: a church, cells and service premises intended for just a few monks. Slegi (sing Slega) Elements of a nailless roof, horizontal beams or purlins set into the end gable walls. Srub (pl Sruby) A crib made up of several tiers (ventsy) of logs laid horizontally one above the other to form a volume in wooden architecture, either alone or in combination with others. Srubets A low srub usually placed on a grave, used in Old Believer burials. Tiabla (sing Tiablo) Squared horizontal beams used in making early tiered iconstases. Time of Troubles The period in Russian history at the start of the seventeenth century following the extinction of the Rurik dynasty. It was marked by a collapse of central authority, a number of pretenders to the throne (some backed by Polish interventionists who occupied Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 Moscow for a time), an invasion by Swedish forces in the North and general lawlessness. The period was brought to an end by the election of Mikhail Romanov as tsar in 1613. Trapeznaia ‘Refectory’ – originally a place for eating collective meals during church festivals, a large room added onto a church that substantially increased the capacity of the building. In the Russian North it had a particular function as a communal meeting place. Uezd (pl Uezdy) A territorial unit in Muscovite Rus’, the Russian Empire and the early years of Soviet rule. After Catherine II’s administrative reform, uezdy were subdivisions of the provinces. Glossary 155 V lapu A form of corner joint, where the ends were cut off square with the walls. V oblo Literally ‘round’ (indicating that the round ends of the logs were visible), the most common form of corner joint, where the ends of the logs protruded beyond the corners, sticking out from the walls and thus accentuating the dimensions of the main architectural volume. Veche A popular assembly, a gathering of freemen who were heads of families to decide important questions. The prime institution of government in mediaeval Novgorod. Venets (pl Ventsy) A tier of horizontal logs within a srub. Verkh (pl Verkha) ‘Top’, the form of the superstructure of a wooden church. Voevoda Literally ‘leader of an army’, in Early Russian times a ruler’s deputy, the administrator of a territory, combining civil and military functions. Volokovoe okno (pl Volokovye okna) A small window closed with a sliding wooden panel. Volost’ In Early Rus’ a region, territory, or an allotment of land. Vos’merik An octagonal architectural volume. Vypusk (pl Vypuski) Ends of logs protruding from the walls to serve as brackets supporting galleries, porches, etc. Zhguty Carved decoration of wooden pillars in the form of horizontal bands. Zhuravtsy Shaped wooden ribs, placed vertically, forming the framework inside an onion dome. Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 This page intentionally left blank Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 Bibliography

Archival collections

GAAO (State Archive of Arkhangelsk region, Arkhangelsk) Fund 29, Schedule 31, Item 1217: The main church and sacristy inventory of the Arkhangelsk eparchy, Onega district, the Nimen’ga Transﬁguration parish, drawn up in 1882. Fund 29, Schedule 4, Vol. 3, item 350: On the construction of a church in Purnema parish, Onega district. Fund 29, Schedule 4, Vol. 3, Item 593: On the construction of a church in Nimen’ga parish. Fund 75, Schedule 1, Item 670: On the examination of the design and timber estimate for the construction of a church in Nimen’ga parish. Fund 75, Schedule 1, Item 765: On the examination of the design for the construction of a church in the settlement of Nimen’ga in Onega district. Fund 462, Schedule 1, Item 29: An inventory of the property and lands of the churches of the Nimen’ga parish (1833). Fund 463, Schedule 1, Item 42: An inventory of ecclesiastical property by the churches of Purnema (1834).

GMA (Archive of the Shchusev State Museum of Architecture, Moscow) Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 Fund XIV. The Pëtr Dimitrievich Baranovskii Fund.

IIMk (Research Archive of the Institute of the History of Material Culture, Russian Academy of Sciences, St Petersburg) Category III, Item 27: Dossier of the Church of the Presentation in the Temple in Zaostrov’e. Fund 3, Schedule 1, Item 4223 (dated 1887): Dossier of the Church of Sts Peter and Paul in Povenets. 158 Bibliography National Archive of the Republic of Karelia, Petrozavodsk Fund 25, Schedule 1, year 1898, document 28/1, folio 91: On the inspection of the churches of the eparchy by deans in 1898.

RGADA (Russian State Archive of Ancient Documents) Fund 1201 (Solovetskii Monastery), Schedule 1, item 79: Census book of the monastery estates (communes (volosti) and salt-works) from 1677.

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Afanasii, Archbishop of Kholmogory Collins, Samuel, British traveller 23–24 and the Vaga 16, 74, 79–80, 124–5, Contarini, Ambrogio, Italian traveller 21 127, 131–2 Affonii, Metropolitan of Novgorod 127 Dahl (Dal’), Lev, Russian architect and Alexander II, Emperor of Russia 142 researcher 17, 27, 31, 33, 35, 39, 90, Alexander of Oshevensk (Oshevenskii), 139 Saint 11–2 Davies, Richard, British architectural Alexander of Svir’ (Svirskii), Saint 95, photographer 40, 61, 130 137 Dietrichson, Lorentz, Norwegian Alexei Mikhailovich, Tsar of Russia 23 researcher and art historian 39

Baranovskii, Pëtr, Soviet architect and Elizabeth, Empress of Russia 49, 135, restorer 33–5, 120–1, 123 138 Bilibin, Ivan, Russian painter, Evfimii (Euthymius), Archbishop of illustrator, stage designer, Novgorod 54 photographer 17, 30–1, 33, 135–6, 141 Feodorit (Theodorites) of Kola, Saint Blix, Peter Andreas, Norwegian 111 architect and restorer 28 Filipp Kolychev, Solovetskii hegumen, Bobrinskii, Count Alexei, Chairman of Metropolitan of Moscow, Saint the IAC 31 108–9, 112, 146 Bode, Andrei, Russian architect and Fioravanti, Aristotile, Italian architect restorer 2, 38–39, 106 in Muscovy 5 Brigit of Ireland (of Kildare), Saint 4 Bruijn, Cornelis de, Dutch traveller 21 Gabe, Rufin, Soviet researcher and Brumfield, William Craft, American architectural historian 35 researcher 40 Gennadii, Archbishop of Novgorod 108 Buxton, David Roden, British traveller Gornostaev, Fëdor, Russian Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 and researcher 1, 24, 39–40, 81, 87, architectural historian 30, 51, 75, 78 120 Grabar’, Igor’, Russian painter, restorer and architectural historian 18, 30–1, Catherine II, Empress of Russia 6, 24, 33–4, 37, 51, 75, 78, 123 135–140, 149, 156 Grigor’ev, Ivan, priest at Turchasovo Chancellor, Richard, English mariner 140–1 21, 115, 119, 125 Guagnini (Gwagnin), Alexander, Polish Chesskii, Ivan, Russian draughtsman 16 traveller of Italian origin 22 Chudinov, Afanasii, Russian draughtsman 16 Herberstein, Sigismund von, Austrian Cogitosus, Irish monk 4 diplomat 119 170 Index of names Iaroslav (Yaroslav) Vladimirovich (‘the Marfa Boretskaia (‘Martha the Wise’), Prince of Novgorod, the Mayoress’), Novgorodian Great Prince of Kiev 87 noblewoman 108 Iona (Jonah), Archbishop of Novgorod Margeret, Jacques, French traveller 5, 54 21–2 Iuvenalii, Archbishop of Archangelsk Melakhov, Stepan, peasant, carpenter, and Kholmogory 146 church builder 125 Ivan III, Grand Prince of Muscovy 21, Meyerberg, Augustin, baron, Austrian 115 diplomat, traveller and draughtsman Ivan IV (Ivan the Terrible), Tsar of 13–4, 33 Russia 41, 108–9, 125, 150, 155 Michurin, Ivan, Russian architect 16 Ivanov, Vladimir, Soviet architectural Mikhailo Pirogov, son of Fedor, historian 35, 51 peasant, carpenter, church builder 144 Jenkinson, Anthony, English mariner Mil’chik, Mikhail, Soviet and Russian and traveller 21–3 historian of art and architecture Joachim, Bishop of Novgorod 3 37–8 Mileev, Dmitry, Russian architect, Kalikin, Feodor, Russian and Soviet restorer, researcher 18, 31–3, 35–6, researcher 18 73, 91, 94 Karetnikov, Andrei, Russian architect Mordvinov, Iakov, Russian traveller 25 and researcher 18, 36 Kiprian (Cyprian), Metropolitan of Nestor the Chronicler, Kievan monk 2 Novgorod 127 Nicolaysen, Nicolay, Norwegian Kliuchevskii, Vasilii, Russian historian architect and restorer 28 107 Nikon, Patriarch of Moscow and all Kopylov, Semion, compiler of cadastres Russia 73, 75–6, 80, 116–7, 124, 20 187, 137, 150, 155 Kornilii, Metropolitan of Novgorod 74 Korovin, Konstantin, Russian painter Olearius, Adam, Secretary of the 30 Holstein embassy, traveller and Krasovskii, Mikhail, Russian architect draughtsman 13–4, 21–4, 33, 43 and researcher 32–3, 35, 90 Oles’ Grechin (the Greek), Krokhin, Vladimir, Soviet restorer 121, Novgorodian painter 17 123 Opolovnikov, Aleksandr, Soviet Kutuzov, Ivan, compiler of cadastres architect, restorer and researcher 146 28, 36–7, 51–2, 75–6, 106, 111, 123, 141, 148 Lazar’ (Lazarus) of Muromskii, Saint Orfinskii, Viacheslav, Soviet and 52 Russian architect, restorer and Le Goff, Jacques, French mediaevalist 3 researcher 37, 51 Leont’ev, Basarga, oprichnik 109–10, Ozeretskovskii, Nikolai, Russian Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 112 traveller and writer 16, 140 Likhachev, Andrei, compiler of cadastres 20 Palmquist, Erich, Swedish engineer, captain of artillery, draughtsman Makarii (Macarius), Archbishop of 13–5, 23 Archangelsk and Kholmogory 147 Panin, Nikita, compiler of cadastres Makarii (Macarius), Archbishop of 20 Novgorod 108, 111 Peter I (Peter the Great), Tsar and Maksimov, Pëtr, Soviet restorer and Emperor of Russia 14, 24, 73, 93, architectural researcher 35, 51, 123 99, 135–6, 138–9 Maksimov, Sergei, Russian Pettersson, Lars, Finnish architectural ethnographer and traveller 27, 131–3 historian 18, 40, 91 Index of names 171 Pleshcheev, Andrei, compiler of Sviatopolk Vladimirovich (‘Sviatopolk cadastres 20, 99, 109 the Accursed’), Prince of Kiev 87 Plotnikov, Vladimir, Russian artist, Sviatoslav Ol’govich, Prince of photographer and traveller 18 Novgorod and Chernigov 85, 88 Popov, Aleksandr, Soviet and Russian architect and restorer 38, 43 Trifon, master–builder of the Prokof’ev, Iev, peasant, carpenter, Solovetskii stone fortress 111 church–builder 130–2 Trifon of Pechenga, Saint 111 Prokopii of Ustiug, Saint 11–2, 129 Prokudin–Gorskii, Sergei, Russian Udalenkov, Nikolai, Russian and Soviet inventor of colour photography 18, researcher 18 91 Pugachev, Emelian, leader of an Varfolomei, Solovetskii hegumen 117 uprising 136 Varlaam, Archbishop of Archangelsk and Kholmogory 143 Randolphe, Thomas, English traveller Vasilii III, Prince of Muscovy 59 21–2 Vasilii Kalika (Basil the Pilgrim), Romanov, Konstantin, Russian Archbishop of Novgorod 85 architectural researcher 18, 35 Vel’iaminov, Miron, compiler of cadastres 72, 124 Saburov, Iakov, compiler of cadastres Vereshchagin, Vasilii Vasil’evich, 146 Russian painter and traveller 30–1 Saburov, Iurii, compiler of cadastres 20, Vereshchagin, Vasilii Petrovich, 108 Russian historian 25 Savvatii Solovetskii, Saint 108 Viollet–le–Duc, Eugène Emmanuel, Sergius (Sergii) of Radonezh, Saint 52 French architect, restorer and art Serov, Valentin, Russian painter 30 historian 39 Shabunin, Nikolai, Russian artist and Vladimir the Saint (‘The Red Sun’), traveller 18 Prince of Kiev 2 Shurgin, Igor’, Soviet and Russian Voeikov, Petr, compiler of cadastres 20 architectural historian 38, 57, 68, 78, 106–7, 109–0, 128 Witsen, Nicolaas, Dutch traveller and Staden, Heinrich von, oprichnik of draughtsman 13, 21 German origin 9, 23, 43, 102, 109, 115 Zabello, Sophia, Soviet architectural Stafurov, Feodor, master builder of researcher 35, 51, 122 bishop Afanasii 131 Zagriazhskii, Kiprian, voevoda 110 Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 Stroganovs, a dynasty of merchants and Zaitsev, Boris, Russian emigrant, writer saltwork–owners 12, 16–7, 128 52 Struys, Jan, Dutch ship–builder and Zhukovskii, Andrei, Russian architect traveler 6, 21–4, 41 27, 79 Suslov (Souslow), Vladimir, Russian Zosima Solovetskii, first hegumen of architect, restorer and researcher 17, the Solovetskii Monastery, Saint 108, 27–33, 35, 39, 106, 124, 138, 141–2 112 This page intentionally left blank Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 Index of places

Agafonovskoe 63, 103 Edoma (Yedoma) 129 Angara, river see Siberia Eglovo (Yeglovo) 96 Ankhimovo (Vytegorskii Pogost) 35, Elgomskii (Yelgomskii) Pogost 57, 104 81, 96–7, 99, 101–2, 133, 139 Arctic Ocean 85 Garnitsy 96 Arkhangelsk (Archangel), city 7, 25, 38, Gimreka 90–2 72, 118, 123–4, 131, 142 Gol see Norway Arkhangelsk, Malye Korely open-air Gomorovichi 58 museum 118, 120 Gornee Sheltozero 90–1 Arkhangelsk, province of the Russian Empire 7, 14, 17, 25, 34, 144 Hopperstad see Norway Arkhangelsk, region (oblast’) of the Russian Federation 7, 34, 74, 131 Iandomozero (Yandomozero) 16, 94, Astaf’evo 63, 102 96 Ilimsk see Siberia Belaia Sluda 24, 63, 120, 129 Iuksovichi (Yuksovichi), Leningrad Beloe Ozero (White Lake) 35, 60, 102 Region 39, 54, 56, 88–9 Belozersk, town 7 Iuroma 75, 129, 132–3 Berest’e, archaeological site 9, 44–5, Ivangorod 13 53 Bereznik 34 Jerusalem 4 Bestuzhevo 74, 131, 139 Bol’shaia Shalga 103 Kalikino 78 Borodava 53–5 Kaluga 22 Bratsk see Siberia Kama, river 86, 128 Brest, Belarus’ see Berest’e Kandalaksha 78, 109 Brusno, island 90 Karelia, Republic of Karelia 7–8, 18, 24, 35, 37, 40, 68–9, 78, 93, 109, Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 Chekuevo 27, 105–6, 149 140 Chelmokhta 34 Karelian Coast see White Sea Chëlmuzhi 32, 43, 68–70, 111 Kargopol’, town 12, 102–3, 106, 114, Cherevkovo 124, 127 116, 138, 146 Chukhcher’ma 32, 57, 124–5 Kargopol’, uezd and area 7, 12, 27, 37, Constantinople 4 63, 69, 82, 102–3, 106, 116, 123, 136–8, 146 Dereviannoe 90–1 Kashira 22 Deviatiny 101, 139 Kazan 43 Dvina, district (Dvinskii uezd) 7 Kem’ 27, 72–3, 106, 110, 115, 119, Dvina, river see Northern Dvina 149 174 Index of places Kena, river 88, 102–3 Liavlia 63–4 Kenozero 45, 59, 88, 102 Lillehammer, Maihaugen museum see Kevrola, uezd 7 Norway Kevrola, village 129 Lindozero 90 Khavrogory 120 Listvenka 57 Kholm 78 Lodeinoe Pole 93 Kholmogory 21, 72, 74, 79, 87, 123–5, Lvov (Lviv) see Ukraine 127, 130–2 Lychnyi Island 69 Kiev, city 2–5, 7, 87; Church of the Prophet Elijah 7, 18; Church of the Makar’inskoe (Ust’-Kozhskii Pogost) Tithe (of the Virgin) 3–4, 32; 105, 114 Pirogovo (Pirohiv) open–air museum Maloshuika 112, 114, 141 45; Vyshgorod 79 Malye Korely museum see Arkhangelsk Kildare, Ireland 4 Mashezero 7 Kimzha 129–31 Matigory 124 Kineshma 39 Megrega 69, 90 Kisorichi see Ukraine Mezen’, river and area 74, 82, 129–33, Kizhi, island 44, 52, 59, 96, 136; 136, 139, 150 pogost 16–17, 20, 36–7, 40, 52, 81, monasteries: Antoniev–Siiskii 7; Joseph 95–6, 100, 136–7; Transﬁguration of Volokolamsk 81; Kii Island, Church 14, 27, 35, 39, 80–1, 96, Monastery of the Cross 76, 116–7, 98–102, 133, 139–40; Intercession 119, 149; Kirillo–Belozerskii 7, 54–5; Church 16, 25, 94, 96, 99–100, 136, Kirillo–Chelmogorskaia Pustyn’ 104; 139; bell-tower 7, 16, 100, 141, 149 Muezero, Muezerskii Trinity Kokshen’ga 18 Monastery 68–9, 106, 109, 111; Kola Peninsula 62–3, 107 Muromskii Monastery 7, 27, 39, 44, Kola, Resurrection Cathedral 25, 27, 52–3, 121; Nikolo–Korel’skii 107; of 79–80, 131 St Nicholas outside Moscow, by Erik Kolezhma 108, 149 Palmquist 14–5; Oshevenskii 11–2; Kolodozero 63, 103, 137 Otenskaia Pustyn’ 54; Solovetskii 20, Kolomenskoe see Moscow 73, 76, 107–12, 114, 117, 119, 146, Kolomna 81 148; Spaso–Prilutskii near Vologda Kondopoga 94–5, 137, 140–1 42, 60; Verkola Monastery 129 Korba 96 Mondino 149 Kornevo 78 Moscow, city and the capital of Russia Kosmozero 94–5, 137 14, 44, 78, 80, 86–7, 102, 108–9, Kostroma 32, 78 114–5, 135; descriptions by Kovda 57, 106, 110, 116 foreigners 6, 14, 21–23, 41, 119; ﬁres Kovzha, river 87 6, 23–4; Intercession Cathedral (‘St Kozheozero 117 Basil’s’) 32, 39, 73, 125; Kremlin 5, Krasnaia Liaga 63, 65, 102 114, 116, 125, 135, 156; Kuliga Drakovanova 127 Kolomenskoe 16, 23, 35, 36, 45, Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 Kuritsko 66–8, 114 59–60, 123, 125, 128–9 Kushereka 14, 76, 114, 117–8, Mozhaisk 41, 73 Kuzaranda 95, 137 Murmansk region (oblast’) 7, 57, 59

Ladoga, lake (Ladozhskoe ozero) 63, Nadvoitsy 112 82, 85, 87–91, 93, 133, 136, 140 Nënoksa 27–9, 73, 106, 119, 141, 149 Lampozhnia 132–3, 139 Nimen’ga 119, 145–9 Lapland 109 Niukhcha 149 Lelikozero 59 Nizhmozero 20, 114 Leningrad region (oblast’) 54, 56–8 Nizhnii Novgorod 13, 22 Liadiny 48, 71, 103–4, 139, 141 Northern Dvina, river 39, 57, 63, 69, Liamtsa 110 78, 82, 86–7, 10, 107, 115, 119–20, Index of places 175 123–5, 127, 129, 131–2, 136–8, 140, Pole 146, 149 155; travels to 17, 24, 27, 30, 33–4, Poles’e region see Ukraine 115 Polia 96 Norway: Gol stave church, Bygdøy Pomor Coast, see White Sea royal estate, Oslo 28; Hopperstad 28; Povenets 68, 111 Lillehammer, Maihaugen museum 41 Prilutskii parish 149 Novgorod, city 4–5, 7, 9–10, 14, Pskov 5, 22, 28, 81 17–19, 24, 28, 44–5, 54, 66, 69, 74, Puchuga 30 78, 85–8, 102, 108, 110, 127, 157; Pudozh 27, 87 ﬁres in the Middle Ages 18–9; Purnema 20, 112–4, 119, 142–4, 148 Kremlin (Detinets) 10, 89; St Sophia’s Pustyn’ka 104–5 Cathedral (oaken) 3–4, 7, 18, 24, 79–81, 99; Vitoslavlitsy Museum Rakuly 30, 137 60–1, 67 Ratonavolok 129 Novgorod the Great (Novgorod Riazan’ 81 Velikii), Republic of 7, 19, 52, 85–6, Rome 4 107, 155 Rostov: principality and eparchy 7, 24, 85–7; Dormition Cathedral 7, 9, 18, Old Ladoga see Staraia Ladoga 46, 99 Ol’khovskii Pogost 104 Rybreka 91 Olonets, province of the Russian Empire 7, 17, 24–5, 27 St Petersburg 7, 11, 17, 27, 87, 93, Olonets, town and fortress 73, 88–91, 96–7, 135–6, 139–40, 142 103 Saminskii Pogost 90–1 Onega Coast see White Sea Sandal, lake 82 Onega, river 8, 27, 39, 45, 61, 69, 76, Saunino 47, 71, 103 78, 82, 87, 102–6, 114, 116–7, Scandinavia see Norway, Sweden 136–7, 140, 144 Seletskoe 96 Onego (also Onega), lake (Onezhskoe Sel’tso 73 ozero) 7–8, 16–7, 20, 27, 34–5, 37, Sermaksa 101 40, 52, 63, 68–9, 81–2, 87–102, 133, Shcheleiki 16, 101, 139 136–7, 139–40, 149, 153 Shegovary 34 Oshevenskoe 11–2, 32, 63, 103, Sheleksa 114 137–8 Shenkursk 80 Oshta 101, 139, 141 Shueretskoe 27, 63, 76, 110, 116–7, 137, 149 Paltoga 101 Shuia 101 Panilovo 30, 34, 63, 120 Shustruchei 101 Panozero 7 Siberia: Angara, river 44; Bratsk, Pavlovskoe 103 fortress 44–5; Ilimsk, fortress 104, Perëdki 44, 60–1 128 Pereslavl-Zalesskii 28 Smolensk 22 Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 Permogor’e 30, 127–9 Soginitsy 16, 63, 66, 91, 93 Petrozavodsk 24, 37, 142 Sol’vychegodsk 16, 81, 128–9 Pid’ma 63, 91 Soroka, now Belomorsk 108 Pinega, river 33–5, 74, 82, 120, 123, Soroka, river 108 129, 131–3, 136 Spasozero Pogost 104 Pirinem’ 129 Srednepogostskoe on the Verkhniaia Pirogovo museum see Kiev Toima 127–9 Piiala 45, 61, 105, 149 Staraia Ladoga (Old Ladoga) 9, 43–4 Pochozero 18, 104 Staritsa 73 Pod’el’niki 96 Sukhona, river 87, 119, 128 Podporozh’e 27, 45, 105–6, 149 Suma (Sumskii Posad) 108–9 Poduzhem’e 18 Sura 74, 129, 131 176 Index of places Svir’, river 63, 82, 87–93, 95, 103, 123, Viogoruksi 96 133, 137 Virma 76–7, 117, 149 Sweden 27, 93, 110 Vitoslavlitsy Museum see Novgorod Vladimir 18 Tambitsy 96 Vodla, river 102 Terskii Coast see White Sea Vodlozero 8 Tikhvin 12, 89–90 Volkhov, river 88 Tipinitsy 95 Volkostrov 96 Toima, river 120 127, 129 Vologda 5, 7, 20, 22, 24–5, 42, 60, 78, Tsypinskii Pogost 78 102, 119, 142 Tula 22 Vologda region 17, 78 Turchasovo 27, 103, 105–6, 137–8, Vorob’i 96 140–1, 146, 149 Voronii Ostrov 96 Tver 22, 78 Vorzogory 112 Vychegda, river 87, 128 Ukhtostrov 124–5, 127 Vyg, river 102 Ukraine 75, 78; Kiev see Kiev; Western Vyia, river 34, 120 Ukraine 9, 39; Poles’e region 45; Vyiskii Pogost 34, 120–3 wooden architecture of 33, 39, 78 Vyshgorod see Kiev Una 27, 61, 149 Vysokii Ostrov 139 Unezhma 27, 110, 119, 144, 149 Vytegra, pogost see Ankhimovo Urals 86–7 Ust’-Iandoma 96 White Sea 20, 27, 34, 37, 61, 68, 76, Ust’-Mosha, fortress 103 82, 85–7, 102, 105–19, 123, 136, 142, 144, 146–9, 155; Karelian Vaga, river, eparchy 7, 74, 80, 87, 127, Coast 68, 76, 109, 111, 117; 131 Onega Coast 117, 142; Pomor Varzuga 62–3, 106, 108–9, 115 Coast 111–2, 117; Terskii Coast Vasil’evo 96 107, 109, 111–2 Vasil’evskoe 78 Vazentsy 61, 146 Yaroslavl’ 22, 33, 78 Vazhiny 89–90 Velikii Ustiug, town and eparchy 7, 11, Zachach’e 34, 120 24, 60, 86–7, 119, 124, 130–1 Zadniaia Dubrova 63,102

Downloaded by [New York University] at 05:06 16 August 2016 Verkhniaia Uftiuga 120, 138, 141 Zaonezh’e, peninsula 35, 37, 40, 59, Verkhov’e (Verkhnii Mud’iug) 105, 82, 95–6, 111, 133, 137 114, 146 Zaostrov’e 38, 125–6 Vershina 63, 120 Zavoloch’e (‘the land beyond the Viazma 22 portages’) 7, 45, 86