Making a statement of imperial power in architecture as Russia moved westward
in the late seventeenth century was more difficult; here, Russia’s architectural styles
often complemented existing urban landscapes. In the 1660s, for example, in
Belarus’an-speaking parts of the Grand Duchy and the Hetmanate, Russia won
major centers with old Orthodox cathedrals, Uniate Orthodox and Catholic
churches, and Jewish synagogues. Smolensk and its surrounding lands had been
Orthodox and East Slavic from the eleventh century, and had been politically a part
of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania since the mid-fourteenth century; although
Russia controlled Smolensk from 1514 to 1611 and reconquered it in 1666, the
city’s experience in the vibrant Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, particularly as a
stronghold of Uniate Orthodoxy, shaped Smolensk’s urban landscape. Conquering
the city, Russia asserted Orthodoxy by settling the Orthodox see in a Trinity
Monastery taken from the Uniate Church in 1669; in 1676 Russia constructed
the Cathedral of the Life-Giving Trinity, remodeling it in 1727 in a decorative
baroque derived from Moscow—ornate window surrounds, octagonal windows,
friezes at the roof edges. In the 1670s Moscow also began construction of a
Dormition-style cathedral on the spot of the city’s twelfth-century cathedral,
which had fallen into disrepair, but construction was not completed until well
into the eighteenth century.
Even more than in Smolensk, Russia’s contributions to the symbolic landscape
in Ukraine complemented local architectural styles. In the second half of the
seventeenth century the Cossack Hetmanate enjoyed an economic boom where
hetmans, merchants, Cossackstarshyna, and Orthodox hierarchs and monasteries
actively patronized art and architecture. Kyiv’s prosperity under the Hetmanate
is evidenced by Hetman Ivan Mazepa’s stone cathedrals in the Pechersk neighbor-
hood and in the Podil lower town in a style that combined European, Ukrainian,
and Muscovite decorative elements to produce a distinct Mazepa style. In the
Pechersk neighborhood, Kyiv’s religious center, the patriarchate remodeled
the twelfth-century Sofiia Cathedral in the baroque style of Jesuit architecture of
the time; the Caves Monastery adorned its Trinity Over-the-Gate Church with an
elaborate baroque exterior and similarly ornate icons, frescos, and carved iconos-
tases for which Ukrainian artisans were valued around the realm (Figure 6.7). With
these edifices, Kyiv had a decidedly more European visage than Moscow and, as we
have seen, intellectuals from the Mohyla Academy, artists, and architects brought
new ideas, new genres, and a decorative architectural baroque to Moscow.
POLITICAL SUCCESSION AND LEGITIMACY
A crucial factor in the stability of all political systems is succession to the throne.
The Mongol empire suffered the unpredictability of succession by competition
(called by Joseph Fletcher“tanistry”) as well as heredity; the Ottomans successively
use fratricide, the harem system, and hereditary succession to eliminate rivals. Like
many of its European and Eurasian counterparts, Muscovy observed hereditary
succession by primogeniture, regarding the dynasty as appointed by God and thus
146 The Russian Empire 1450– 1801