to fear him as unpredictable, prone to irrational fits of rage, and capable of
undermining traditional privileges and status of the nobility. Simmering discontent
gelled into a coup: with the knowledge of his son Alexander (who expected only
that Paul would be forced to abdicate), conspirators assassinated the emperor in
1801 in the Mikhailovskii Castle that he had specially constructed with a moat for
protection. So relieved was the elite that the explanation that he had died of
apoplexy was readily believed and his son Alexander succeeded, promising to rule
in the moderate, reforming, and inclusive spirit of Catherine II, the grandmother
who had raised him. Male succession (usually from father to son, sometimes
brother to brother) ensued thereafter until Nicholas II (1892–1917).
IMPERIAL IMAGINARY IN THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
The eighteenth-century imperial imaginary transformed the visual look of empire—
European-style secular art, portraiture, and classical architecture became de rigueur.
As in Muscovite centuries, the built environment became a canvas on which to stamp
an image of the state. Peter I designed St. Petersburg in a northern European
baroque, contrasting with the profusion of detail of late Muscovite buildings.
Empresses Anna (1730–40) and Elizabeth (1741–61) favored Italian and French-
inspired rococo, epitomized by the opulent gilded and carved facades of Bartolomeo
Rastrelli’s Catherine Palace in Tsarskoe Selo (1748–56) that shouted out the state’s
wealth. By mid-eighteenth century, and certainly by the reign of Catherine II,
neoclassicism, with its rational order and straight lines, edged aside these sinuous
lines andflamboyant display, representing the realm as rational and orderly, evoking
antiquity for those with classical education, and impressing with size and scale. Royal
palaces and noble estates alike exhibit classical style: Charles Cameron’s Palladian
palace at Pavlovsk outside St. Petersburg (1782–6), Giacomo Quarenghi’sAcademy
of Sciences (1783–9) in the city and, outside of Moscow, the Sheremetevs’estate at
Kuskovo (1760s; Figure 13.7). The classical impulse was disseminated empire-wide
by Catherine II’s Commission for the Stone Construction of St. Petersburg and
Moscow: founded in 1762 with instructions to create rational plans for the capitals, it
soon spread across the empire, producing over 300 town plans, many of which were
put into stone in provincial centers in the next decades.
Built environments, however, as a rule cannot be changed quickly and the
particular shape of Russia’s cultural change, along with the directions of imperial
expansion, meant that across the realm imperial architecture had a varied, some-
times muted, impact. In the Middle Volga, for example, local architecture lagged
behind the imperial center. Eighteenth-century prosperity sparked the construction
of stone edifices—the Annunciation Cathedral in the Kazan Kremlin (1736) and
the Church of the Moscow Miracle-Workers exemplify Moscow “Naryshkin”
baroque, not St. Petersburg’s European counterpart; older churches were remod-
eled with baroque cupolas. The stunning parish church of Sts. Peter and Paul
(1726) in a Russian section of Kazan displays an even more decorative Naryshkin
baroque (Figure 13.8), also seen in Kazan’s northern trading partners. Only at the
284 The Russian Empire 1450– 1801