seventeenth-century baroque. The cartouche ornament that had developed in
Tot’ma and Solikamsk in the seventeenth century traveled all the way to Irkutsk,
at Lake Baikal, where it shared space on Orthodox church facades with native
imagery. Terra cotta Dharma wheels and door frames evocative of Buddhist stupas
create relief on exterior walls, evoking the Buddhist Buriat population that would
have been involved in construction. Beyond Lake Baikal, eighteenth-century
Orthodox church architecture of Buriatiia combines all these influences, from
Naryshkin baroque to Tot’ma cartouches and Buddhist stupas, a striking image
of empire of difference. In addition, as in Kazan, in the late eighteenth century non-
Russian shrines were permitted: thefirst stone Buddhist shrines and monastery
buildings, in characteristic eastern style, were constructed.
When the Russian empire moved westward, however, a different accommoda-
tion with imperial style occurred. Smolensk, for example, had been in Russian
control since the 1660s and displays a version of the Naryshkin baroque in stone
Figure 13.9The Church of the Elevation of the Cross (1747–58) in Irkutsk features a
cartouche design that traveled across Siberia; its design follows seventeenth-century Moscow
baroque at a time when the classical St. Petersburg style dominated in the center. Photo:
Jack Kollmann.
Imperial Imaginary and the Political Center 287