These styles moved across empire. In Kazan, for example, the seventeenth- century Church of St. Varlaam retains a simplicity unlike the ornate Moscow baroque of the time, causing some to suggest the influence of more austere Tatar mosque architecture. As Russia moved towards steppe and Siberia in the seventeenth centuries, it entered few urban centers save its own fortress towns. Little indigenous architecture, certainly not in stone, vied for the symbolic skyline, so Russia's imperial presence was easily recognizable. Wooden forts were the most common, but stone churches made the biggest statement. Russian conquest, provisioning, and settlement of Siberia flowed through the towns of the Northern Dvina and Kama river basins and into the Perm lands. This vibrant northern area— rich in salt and mining, conduits of fur trade—generated a distinct and influential architectural style. Here the Stroganov family enjoyed monopolies in trade, salt, and mineral production over a vast territory of the upper Kama. Patronizing music, painting, and architecture, they created a decorative Stroganov style borrowing from the Moscow and Naryshkin baroques. Surviving stone churches in booming economic centers such as Cherdyn', Tot'ma, Solikamsk, Verkhotur'e, and Usol'e date from the eighteenth century, but perpetuated Muscovite styles of the previous century. In the Cherdyn area in the Perm' lands, for example, the ornate baroque Church of St. Nicholas in Nyrob (1704) commemorated the death here in 1601 of Mikhail Nikitich Romanov, exiled by his rival Boris Godunov; its exterior is profuse with carved ornament and pilasters. The city of Tot'ma is studded with similarly decorative baroque churches with carved cartouches that traveled from there into Siberia. In two key Stroganov trading centers, Usol'e and Solikamsk, a multitude of churches developed the decorative baroque, including Solikamsk's Church of John the Baptist (built 1715-21 and remodeled in 1772) and Usol'e's Church of the Transfiguration (1731). In Solikamsk, the Trinity Cathedral featured exterior frescos, colorful ceramic tiles, and a characteristic strip of brickwork resembling the spider-like Cyrillic letter "zhe" (Figure 6.6).
Figure 6.6 Solikamsk's 1680s Trinity Church features an ornament resembling the spidery Cyrillic letter "zhe" that traveled from here across Siberia in the next century. Photo: William Brumfield.
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, Cossack starshyna, 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 neighborhood 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
Figure 6.7 The Trinity "Over-the-Gate" Church at the entrance gates to the Caves Monastery in Kyiv stands on twelfth-century foundations, but exhibits the exuberant facade of late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Ukrainian baroque. Photo: Jack Kollmann.
charismatic and untouchable. In Muscovy there were no written or legally binding traditions of participation by the people or elite in succession, but various forms of consultation were the first resort.
Moscow's Daniilovichi inherited from Kyiv Rus' princely succession in the male line, but it was complicated by a tradition of collateral inheritance. In princely and boyar families, senior clan position passed from brother to brother. In Kyiv Rus', in principle, heirs to the grand-princely throne of Kyiv advanced among a hierarchy of princely seats as they awaited their elder kinsman's demise. Collateral succession is destabilizing in that it forces circulation of elites, as each new prince brings in his own men. Furthermore, collateral succession presupposes partible inheritance, as each prince claims a share ofsovereign territory. In practice in Kyiv Rus' this system worked for only a few generations before collateral lines became impatient for power and began to develop regional principalities.
Princes and their boyar clans in the Vladimir-Suzdal area shared these customs, with destabilizing effects. The prolific Tver' princely dynasty was riven with internecine struggles and territorial splintering. Moscow, however, benefited from biological accident: from 1328 to 1425 a sole surviving male took sovereign power seamlessly with no collateral rivals. Division of the realm for collateral kin was minimal, and boyar clans became ensconced in Moscow. At the death of Vasilii I in 1425, this lucky happenstance ended: he left a son (the only to survive him of five sons) and four brothers. Vasilii I's next youngest brother, Prince Iurii of Galich, collaterally claimed succession over Grand Prince Vasilii's 10-year-old son Vasilii. But the Moscow boyar elite resisted, backed by the young heir's powerful grandfather Grand Duke of Lithuania Vytautas, and the boy took the throne. Tensions between him and his uncles and cousins, and equally importantly between two factions of elites, broke into a dynastic war in 1433 that waxed and waned until Vasilii II's victory around 1453. The dynastic war confirmed that the ruling line would follow vertical succession, a linchpin of stability for successive generations of Moscow boyars.