In non-Russian capitals, grand neo-Russian cathedrals dominated city skylines in
Helsinki (Cathedral of the Dormition 1868), Vilnius (Cathedral of Mother of God
1860s), Riga (Cathedral of the Nativity 1876–84), and Reval/Tallinn (Cathedral of
Alexander Nevskii 1894–1900; Figure C.3), some named after Alexander III’s
patron saint Alexander Nevskii. Across Estland modest parish churches were built
in neo-Russian style in the 1880s; in Warsaw almost twenty such edifices were
built in the 1890s, embodying Russian dominance. In the south and farther afield,
such Russianate churches were built alongside mosques in Astrakhan (1904), at
Kremenets (1912) in Ukraine near the Austrian border, and at the tsar’s sea resort in
Crimean Yalta (1902). Urban planning projects transformed non-Russian cities, as
in Tashkent where the town was essentially split into Muslim and Russian sections,
the latter anchored by the grand neo-Byzantine Church of the Transfiguration
(1888), Russian administrative buildings, and rationally planned boulevards and
Figure C.3The neo-Russian Cathedral of Alexander Nevskii (built 1894–1900) in Reval
(modern day Tallinn) stands in contrast to the eighteenth-century baroque bell tower of one
of the city’s most important and ancient churches, the Lutheran Church of St. Mary, or
“Dome Church,”built on the foundations of a thirteenth-century Catholic church. Photo:
Jack Kollmann.
456 The Russian Empire 1450– 1801