Rozhdestvenskaya (Stroganovskaya) Church

Rozhdestvenskaya (Stroganovskaya) Church is a church dedicated to the Synaxis of the Most Holy Theotokos, located at 34A Rozhdestvenskaya Street in Nizhny Novgorod. It is the city's foremost monument of Stroganov Baroque and one of the oldest functioning Orthodox churches of the Lower Posad ^[1][19]. The two-tiered, five-domed stone church, with a separate tall bell tower, stands on a steep slope above the Nizhne-Volzhskaya Embankment, not far from the River Station; from the second tier of the bell tower one can see the confluence of the Volga and the Oka ^[2][19]. The church was built at the expense of the salt industrialist Grigory Dmitrievich Stroganov: construction took place at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries, but the consecration did not take place until 1719, after the patron's death ^[1][12].

Inside and out, the building is covered in white-stone carving — grapevines, exotic flowers, apples, pears, pomegranates — which has led people to compare the church to a carved jeweled casket ^[2][3]. It is one of the city's main sights and its calling card; for those arriving in Nizhny by water, it is the first of the city's major monuments to greet them ^[19][21].

Name and Location

The full official name of the church is the Church in Honor of the Synaxis of the Most Holy Theotokos. The Synaxis of the Most Holy Theotokos is one of the oldest feasts of the Mother of God, celebrated on the day after the Nativity of Christ, January 8, and it remains the patronal feast of the church ^[7]. It is called "Stroganov" after the patron who commissioned its construction, and the architectural style of the building has received its own name in art history — "Stroganov Baroque" ^[18][19].

The name "Rozhdestvenskaya" came to the church by inheritance. The Church of the Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos had stood on the mid-slope above the confluence of the rivers since ancient times: a chronicler reported under the year 1521 that when the Kazan Tatars attacked the city, they burned it down along with 240 households. In 1653 the merchant S. F. Zadorin rebuilt the Rozhdestvenskaya church, this time in stone, and in 1685 Grigory Stroganov added a stone side chapel to it in honor of his heavenly patron, Saint Gregory the Theologian. In the 19th century the Zadorin church was dismantled, and its name passed to the Stroganov church — along with the name of the street that it had once given ^[7][19].

The church stands on the mid-slope of the Nizhny Posad — the old trading lower town of the city. The five-domed church with its chapel is set directly on the steep slope of the riverbank, which distinguishes it from other Nizhny Novgorod churches ^[19]. In former times it was surrounded by trading offices and warehouses, and the stone chambers of the Stroganovs stood nearby, which have not survived to the present day ^[1]. The church's neighbors on the street are the main salt office, which administered the country's salt supply, and the Stroganov estate; this entire lower quarter of the city is called Rozhdestvenskaya Side ^[19]. Other stone churches also stood in the riverside strip — the Church of the Savior on Gremyachy Stream, of Cosmas and Damian, the Trinity, Nikolskaya, and Kazan churches ^[12].

The Stroganovs and the Concept of the Church

Grigory Dmitrievich Stroganov was a famous salt industrialist who moved to Nizhny Novgorod from Solikamsk. The Stroganovs first settled in Gordeevka, where they built their mansion and the Dormition Church (Uspenskaya Church), and then moved to where trade was in full swing — the main commercial street, Rozhdestvenskaya ^[1][7]. In the 17th century Nizhny Novgorod was Russia's main salt depot: salt was brought here from the Urals, Siberia, the Volga Region, and Balakhna, and the largest merchant dynasties rose on its sale — the Stroganovs, the Latukhins, the Bugrovs, and the Blinovs ^[19].

The idea was not only devotional: the church's architecture embodies the notion of a ceremonial representation of the illustrious family in the city ^[21]. The practical side was also taken into account — beneath the church, in the lower-level undercroft (podklet), Stroganov ordered storerooms to be built for the main source of his wealth, salt ^[8][20].

The Stroganov buildings of the turn of the 17th–18th centuries formed a distinct school in Russian architecture. It includes the Cathedral of the Presentation of the Most Holy Theotokos in the Temple in Solvychegodsk (1688–1696), the gate church of the Nativity of John the Forerunner in the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius (1692–1699), the Church of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God in Ustyuzhna (1694), the Church of the Smolensk Icon of the Mother of God in Nizhny Novgorod's Gordeevka (1694–1697), the Nizhny Novgorod Church of the Synaxis of the Most Holy Theotokos itself, and the Cathedral of the Savior's Transfiguration in Usolye in the Perm area (1727–1733), built by Grigory Dmitrievich's son Sergey ^[5]. The Nizhny Novgorod count is sometimes different: the diocese names five Stroganov churches, counting only those built by Grigory Dmitrievich himself, two of which stand in Nizhny Novgorod ^[7].

Among them, the Nizhny Novgorod church on Rozhdestvenskaya stands out for the particular monumentality of its form and its lavish decoration, executed with a jeweler's precision ^[7].

When it was built: the dispute over dates

The exact date the church was founded is unknown, and researchers have debated when it was built since the mid-19th century. The first direct mention of the church dates to the fire of 1715, when the church was already standing but had not yet been consecrated ^[12].

The most established version, adopted in the federal register of cultural heritage sites of Nizhny Novgorod, is as follows: construction began in 1697, with Grigory Dmitrievich Stroganov as the ktitor (church patron and founder); the main construction work was completed by 1703; and after his move to Moscow in that same year, the interior finishing and preparations for consecration dragged on ^[12]. The parish tradition of the church follows the same outline: founded in 1697, mostly completed by 1703, consecrated in 1719 ^[1].

The notes of the Dutch artist Cornelis de Bruijn, who visited Nizhny Novgorod in May 1703, show that by that time the building, in some degree of completion, already stood: in the Dutch original of 1711 the posad church is called "a large, beautiful stone church," and the Gordeevka one "a beautiful stone one." The French translation of 1718 and the Russian translation of 1873 made from it rendered these descriptions differently, and a version holding that construction began later grew out of the difference between the translations ^[12].

The names of four masons who worked for Stroganov "on the construction of the Church of the Nativity of the Mother of God" turned up in a file of the Chancellery of Masonry Works from 1708, held in the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts: Semyon Semyonov, son of Murzin, from the Yaroslavl village of Putyatino; Aleksey Ivanov from the Rostov village of Shultsa; Stepan Fyodorov from the village of Zverinets; and Pyotr Fyodorov from the village of Nikolskoye. The artel worked on the construction for about a year, and that year falls before 1702; all four were not Stroganov's serfs but hired free craftsmen from the Upper Volga, from places renowned for their stonework ^[12]. The name of the architect who conceived the church is unknown; according to one version, the model for the Nizhny Novgorod church was the Church of the Dormition on Pokrovka in Moscow ^[8].

Construction was nearly cut short by a fire. According to some sources, the work was completed by 1701, and a fire occurred at that time, after which the church was restored by Grigory Dmitrievich's wife, Maria Yakovlevna, née Novosiltseva ^[7][19][21]. According to others, the decisive event was the great fire of 1715, described in the New Nizhny Novgorod Chronicler, and the church was completed by the widow after the death of her husband, who died in that same year, 1715 ^[8][12].

The church was consecrated in 1719 by His Grace Pitirim, Archbishop of Nizhny Novgorod and Alatyr. The main altar was dedicated to the Synaxis of the Most Holy Mother of God — whereas the masons in the 1708 document had called the Stroganov church the Church of the Nativity of the Most Holy Mother of God; who preferred the other Marian feast, and when, remains unknown. In 1727, by the time work on the iconostasis was completed, the church was consecrated anew and became a parish church ^[1][8][12].

The stone Church of the Nativity of the Most Holy Mother of God, the second church not yet consecrated, of excellent construction and carving, painted in all manner of colors, and the bell tower likewise made magnificently with carving, the building of the eminent man Grigory Dmitrievich Stroganov

The Legend of the Architect

The beauty of the church was quickly overgrown with legends. The main one tells that Stroganov, who wanted a building the equal of which would be found neither in Nizhny nor in the whole country, asked the master whether he could build another such church. The master replied that he could build an even better one. Then the patron ordered him blinded — but the architect broke free from the servants, climbed the bell tower all the way to the cross, turned into a black raven, and flew away ^[17][18][20].

This is a tale, not a true story, and the storytellers themselves make this clear: by the time construction was finished, Grigory Stroganov was no longer alive ^[17][18][20].

The Ban of Peter I

In 1722, three years after the consecration, Peter I came to Nizhny Novgorod and attended a service at the Stroganov Church — according to the description, at the all-night vigil on May 29, on the eve of his fiftieth birthday — and the church was closed afterward ^[7][17].

The reason is still disputed, and there are several versions. According to a tradition recorded by Archbishop Makary in his book Monuments of Church Antiquities, the emperor recognized in the local-tier icons the very images he had himself commissioned from the court master Caravaque for the capital's Peter and Paul Cathedral: Stroganov, keen to adorn his own church, had secretly bought them from the artist behind the sovereign's back, asking him to paint different ones for St. Petersburg ^[7][17]. According to another version, upon looking at the iconostasis, Peter recognized in the face of the Savior the features of Stroganov himself — the painter had tried to please the nobleman — and walked out, slamming the door ^[17][18]. There is also a third retelling: the icons were painted not by Caravaque but by Stroganov's serf artist, who had been trained in Europe on his master's orders, and the model for the face of the Savior was the master himself ^[20]. Parish tradition also preserves the words the emperor supposedly spoke outside in the street ^[1].

In any case, no services were held in the church until Peter's death in 1725. The order was soon forgotten, and in 1727 the church was reopened to parishioners ^[17][18].

I will not pray to my own serf!

Seal it. And let there be no more services here.

Architecture

The church was built in the old Russian "ship" type: the building is elongated along a west–east axis, with the altar facing east. The church has two tiers — above are a three-apse altar, a prayer hall, a pillarless refectory, and a narthex; it was originally conceived as having four altars, with a winter single-altar church below and a summer three-altar church above, but services were held only on the second tier from the very beginning, while the lower tier was occupied by storerooms ^[2][7].

The five domes are oriented to the cardinal points, as in wooden churches, and the altar is crowned by a separate gilded dome with a cross. The central dome is adorned with a crown. The domes are not blind: they have windows, and light falls through the light drums directly onto the iconostasis ^[2]. The crosses at the bottom are decorated with the image of a crescent ^[2].

The second floor is more richly decorated: the frame of each window is covered with a lush floral pattern, the small columns by the windows are entwined with grapevines, and at the base of the large columns with Corinthian capitals there is an interlacing of pears, apples, and pomegranates. With each tier, the proportions of the columns and their finishing become more elegant ^[2]. White-stone carving — grapevines, flowers, apples, pears, pomegranates, shells, and scrolls — covers the walls in a solid carpet ^[2].

The carving lies on the facades so densely that the building is compared either to a precious carved casket or to a festive gingerbread covered with icing ^[3][19].

Originally the church was painted dark crimson and decorated with yellow, blue, and green; against this "brocade" background the carving looked especially rich. The walls, like the iconostases, were painted "in the slate style" (^[2]), that is, imitating dark marble. The domes were green: this is how they appear in A. O. Karelin's photograph, hand-colored in watercolor by I. I. Shishkin for an album of 1870 ^[15][16].

The bell tower stands next to the church; its first tier is built as a triumphal arch and serves as the ceremonial "red" entrance, which is decorated with white-stone hanging pendants (^[2]). The third and fourth tiers are belfries. The type of composition is "an octagon on a cube." The bell tower was connected to the church by an open gallery, which in the remodelings at the turn of the 18th–19th centuries became an enclosed passage ^[15].

At the top of the bell tower, beneath the cross, is a weathervane in the form of an ornate fluttering pennant, a detail uncharacteristic of Orthodox architecture. It is linked to the Stroganovs' passion for maritime affairs: Grigory Dmitrievich donated to the state four warships built at his own expense ^[2]. The pennant is also interpreted more simply — as a sign that the church stands on a waterway ^[20][21].

The Stroganov five-domed church, serene in its lines and forms and faithful to the "old covenant" tradition, is nevertheless strongly affected by an innovation: the original Ukrainian arrangement of the domes, which at once gave the tiered quality that the architect needed for the expressiveness of his style

The Iconostasis and Holy Relics

The iconostasis of the Stroganov Church, with its exquisitely fine carving and the paintings of the Stroganov icon painters, remains one of the most artistically accomplished in Russia ^[3][19]. It is carved from linden wood and assembled without nails or glue: the tiers were slid into place and fixed with grooves and tenons; the finished iconostasis was coated with gesso and then covered in gold leaf. The Royal Doors are carved from a single oak plank ^[3].

Five rows of icons are crowned by a Crucifix. The lowest row is the local tier with the main icons of the church; behind the side doors stand the icons "Adoration of the Shepherds" and "Adoration of the Magi," which together depict the Synaxis of the Most Holy Theotokos, the feast of the main altar. The "Adoration of the Magi" and the "Resurrection of Christ" were painted by Kornily Ulanov, abbot of the Annunciation Monastery and brother of the icon painter Kirill Ulanov, one of the masters of the Armory Chamber ^[3]. Above them come the festal tier, the Deesis, and the rows of the prophets and the forefathers ^[3].

Of the 46 icons from the late 17th century, 43 have survived to the present day; the rest of the church's furnishings were lost ^[7][11]. The refectory preserves a small iconostasis: an eastern wall covered with white-stone carving, later gilded, with icons of the Savior and the four Evangelists ^[2].

Among the church's holy objects are an ancient icon of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker; icons containing particles of the relics of St. Seraphim of Sarov, Metropolitan Filaret of Moscow, and the Optina Elders, kept in a small reliquary beside the iconostasis; and the venerated "Derzhavnaya" ("Sovereign") icon of the Mother of God ^[7][19].

With its elegance, the height of its craftsmanship, its astonishing lightness and airiness, combined at the same time with an extraordinary complexity of design, the iconostasis stands among the finest examples of the "Russian Baroque" style

The Bell Tower Clock and Ivan Kulibin

The clock on the bell tower was installed when the church was built, and it was an unusual one: besides telling the time, it showed the phases of the moon and the movement of the sun, and it was the dial itself that rotated, not the hand. On the stone slabs around the dial, Slavic letters can still be made out, dividing the circle not into 12 but into 17 parts — as on the clock installed in 1624–1625 on the Spasskaya Tower of the Moscow Kremlin: the seventeen parts corresponded to the longest summer day ^[4].

This clock is linked to a famous episode in the life of Ivan Kulibin. The Kulibin family lived nearby, and when the mechanism stopped and no one could fix it, the teenager secretly climbed up the bell tower and repaired the clock. His fame began with this ^[17][18]. Accounts differ on his age: by some he was fourteen, by others fifteen ^[4][17][18]. There is also a legend that the clock stopped at the hour of Kulibin's death and could never be repaired again; however, in photographs from different years the time on the dial is different ^[17][18].

The fate of the ancient mechanism is unknown: it was removed from the bell tower in 1937 ^[4][10]. Later an ordinary striking clock stood in the belfry, but by the beginning of the 20th century it, too, was no longer working ^[21].

The current mechanism dates from 1879 and, before the Revolution, adorned the facade of the Blinov Passage on the same Rozhdestvenskaya Street, a few hundred meters from the church; after 1917 the clock was dismantled and kept in the Nizhny Novgorod History Museum ^[4][10][20]. Accounts of where it was made differ: the diocese and the parish name England, while the Nizhny Novgorod video guide names the German factory of Johann Friedrich Weule ^[4][10][21].

In the mid-1990s a group of enthusiasts installed a clock on the bell tower, but it was mounted clumsily and had practically stopped working by the time restoration began ^[21]. In 2004–2005 the mechanism was restored by Aleksandr Georgievich Krasnikov, a master craftsman from Kaluga who had worked on antique clocks for some fifteen years; almost all the parts were preserved, and only the dials and hands were new. Installation began in July 2005 ^[4][10][21].

Today the clock shows the time on all four dials, striking the corresponding number of blows on an 80-kilogram bell right under the dome of the bell tower every hour, and one blow on the half hour. It plays no melodies, so it should not be called a carillon. The mechanism has no electric drive: the clock is wound by hand twice a week ^[21].

An ancient church should have only an ancient clock

Nineteenth-Century Repairs and the Falling Bell Tower

One of the first protective measures was the construction, in 1824, of a retaining wall on the northern, downhill side, designed by the architect I. E. Efimov (1823) — it was built from the brick of the dismantled, separately standing chapel of Gregory the Theologian. The proposal to reinforce the slope came from the engineer A. A. Betancourt. The landslide was prevented, and a terrace formed in front of the church, which, in the words of a contemporary, became "a kind of pedestal" for the church; at the same time, the ancient ensemble lost its Grigoryevsky chapel ^[8][13].

By 1832 the condition of the church had become alarming: some of the exterior carved decorations had collapsed on their own, others had been taken down, and still others hung loose and cracked. The restoration of the facades in 1835–1836 was carried out "after the former models" with funds collected by the descendants of the church's builder; at the same time, in May 1835, the architect Fyodor Shmelev for the first time measured the church and drew up its pre-repair state ^[13]. The work inside the church in 1847–1848 and 1861–1867 consisted of renovations: artificial marble replaced the plaster in the altar, the walls were covered with "paintings," and the iconostasis was gilded and extended with a fourth tier ^[13].

In the second half of the 1860s the bell tower began to lean. Buttresses were built near it and at the church itself, but they did not help; in the 1870s the settling worsened after springs were diverted from the hill for the city water supply ^[14]. Over twenty years the bell tower moved off the vertical by about 1.2 meters — in 1884 the deviation was measured at 1¾ arshins, about 1.24 meters ^[14][17].

In 1878 the diocesan authorities applied to the Synod for permission to dismantle the bell tower, stipulating that it had been built by the eminent man Grigory Dmitrievich Stroganov, represented a remarkable monument of Russian church antiquity, and that therefore photographs should be taken before it was torn down so that it could be rebuilt in its former form. The Synod, following the rules of the archaeological congresses, consulted the Moscow Archaeological Society; in November 1878 the architect N. V. Nikitin inspected the monument and concluded that the bell tower could be preserved with certain repairs. The bells had by then already been removed: the bell tower shook when they rang, even though the largest bell weighed less than 300 poods ^[14].

The Nizhny Novgorod engineer-architect R. Ya. Kilevein did not agree: he saw the cause in the weakness of the soil — a two-arshin layer of clay, beneath which lay a layer of earth containing coffins from the old cemetery — and spoke in favor of dismantling followed by reconstruction. On December 10, 1881, the Technical and Construction Committee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs demanded a detailed study of the church, bell tower, passage, and soil, with drawings, measurement of all cracks, and constant monitoring twice a year. In 1882 Bishop Makary of Nizhny Novgorod, himself a noted researcher of antiquities, asked Governor N. A. Bezak to create a technical commission; it consisted of seven people, with test pits and leveling carried out by the engineer M. P. Benkevich and the architect N. A. Frelikh, and monitoring of the bell tower by R. Ya. Kilevein and the architect I. G. Khvorinov ^[14].

The commission established that the bell tower was being pulled by a shifting of the soil layers under the pressure of the hill above, and that proper drainage would eliminate this cause. The money for the work — 20,000 rubles — was provided, at the request of the clergy and parishioners, by Count S. A. Stroganov, who demanded that project materials be sent to him and insisted that the work be carried out according to photographs of all the details ^[14].

Restoration of 1887–1896

The restoration began in 1887 and lasted ten years. The project was drawn up by the civil engineer V. M. Lemke, and I. K. Shirshov, manager of the Stroganovs' Nizhny Novgorod office, invited R. Ya. Kilevein to supervise the work — the city's foremost specialist in foundations, who not long before had used an original foundation in building the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral on the Strelka ^[14].

The church's foundation was in effect replaced with a new one. The covered gallery-passage was dismantled and rebuilt from measured drawings. The bell tower was dismantled down to its two lower tiers and rebuilt; the original decorative details were either preserved or restored from photographs, drawings, and plaster casts, mostly in white stone and only partly in cement. A. P. Melnikov, who reported on the church to the Nizhny Novgorod Provincial Scholarly Archival Commission, insisted that the smallest architectural details be recreated not by plaster molding but by carving in Myachkovo white stone, because it is precisely the details that make up the essence of the "playful Stroganov style" ^[14].

Contemporaries assessed the result differently. Melnikov considered that the former appearance had been restored with complete accuracy; V. I. Vinogradov, the author of an 1895 guidebook, wrote that the latest restoration had changed much in the church's exterior. The church's rector, N. Spassky, pointed to a mistake in the coloring: the red-brick background of the walls had been replaced with a dark crimson. In addition, the restoration of the upper tiers of the bell tower upset its proportions — as the restoration architect V. Ya. Chashchin later explained, instead of the original large-format brick, standard nineteenth-century brick was used, mechanically repeating the former number of courses, so that the top of the bell tower became squatter and the white-stone details noticeably cruder ^[14][16]. The flue of the central air-heating system, placed against the wall and spoiling the view from the south, was also a failure; it was dismantled much later ^[14][16].

The work dragged on not only because of its complexity but also because of money: the sum originally allocated proved insufficient, Count S. A. Stroganov provided additional funds, and over ten years more than 50,000 rubles were spent in all. The main outcome was that the monument was brought out of its dilapidated condition ^[14].

The names of those who worked on it were preserved in the 1893 account book: Pavel Krylov, the contractor for the exterior repairs; Kapiton Yemelyanov, roofer; Dmitry Kilmin, blacksmith; Akim Stolyarov, plasterer; Alexander Titov, stucco worker; Yefim Nikitin, carpenter; Ivan Norov, stove-maker; Ivan Tsybyshev, locksmith, who installed the cross on the bell tower; Andrey Khokhlov, goldsmith; and Mikhail Semyonov, coppersmith. The same book records a worker, Vasily Dodokin, who fell from the roof and was killed during the repairs. The white stone was hauled by the peasant Mikhail Kugushev, the river sand by the townsman (meshchanin) Stepan Voronov and his companions, and the brick came from the Gordeevka works of the Dorozhnov family ^[14].

Touch-ups and disputes of the 1910s

In the early twentieth century the church needed a new restoration, primarily of the interior: the window frames had rotted, the carving of the iconostasis was falling off, and its fragments were tied up with string and wire and fastened with nails ^[1]. The initiator of the work was the rector Nikolay Ivanovich Tsvetaev, who had been transferred to the Stroganov Church in April 1904 and traveled to various cities of Russia to raise funds ^[1][15].

In 1910 the green paint of the domes was replaced with polychrome painting; the work was carried out by N. Ya. Epanechnikov's Moscow workshop. The justification was the testimony of old people that within their memory the domes had been painted in colors, although as late as 1870, judging by Karelin's photograph, they had been green. The intervention of the archival commission halted the work only briefly. On the whole, the polychrome painting turned out to be successful and in keeping with the Stroganov style: renewed in the 1960s and 1990s, it exists to this day ^[15].

The main dispute, however, concerned the iconostasis: whether it had originally been painted "dark blue (golubets) shading to green," as the restorer-artist G. O. Chirikov, who surveyed the interiors in 1911–1912, believed, or had always been gilded. The church's repair committee decided that the iconostasis should be regilded in its entirety so as to match the light marble walls. The Imperial Archaeological Commission at first demanded that the possible original coloring be restored, but after heated debate it permitted full gilding on October 24, 1912, on condition that investigations continue — but by that time the old gilding and the coating beneath it had not merely been cleaned off but scraped away, and there was nothing left to investigate ^[15].

The clergy hurried to bring the church to a state of "splendor" by May 1913, the celebrations of the tercentenary of the House of Romanov. The icons were restored in Moscow by N. N. Safonov under the supervision of the architect P. P. Pokryshkin, a member of the Archaeological Commission. In our own time, the icon restorer V. F. Kosushkin, who worked on the iconostasis in 1986–1993, spoke harshly of that work: by his account, every single one of the icons bears traces of barbaric restoration from the early twentieth century ^[15].

While at it, they laid a ceramic floor of Metlakh tile, replaced the side-chapel iconostases in the refectory, touched up the wall paintings and painted the vaults, and swapped the late fourth tier of the iconostasis for one better suited to the Baroque character of the church. On May 30, 1913, representatives of the Archival Commission inspected the church, and on June 3 the renovated church was consecrated ^[15]. The inspectors' assessments diverged: while noting the conscientious trimming and gilding of the iconostasis, they also pointed out that the new painting in the domes and in the altar did not harmonize at all with the restored work, either in tone or in manner of execution ^[15].

After the repairs the church became cleaner and smarter, the glitter of the gold dazzles the eyes; one feels that a good deal of money was put into the work, but at the same time one cannot help feeling that neither soul, nor heart, nor mind, nor taste was put into it

The Soviet years: how the church survived

In 1934, services were banned, the church was closed, and the question of demolishing the building was raised. All the other churches on Rozhdestvenskaya Street were destroyed in Soviet times ^[20]. The Stroganov Church was saved by its last rector, Archpriest Sergiy Konstantinovich Veisov, who had taken over the parish in 1915. He gathered documents proving that the church was unique as a work of rare architecture, gave more than one lecture on the history, architecture, and cultural significance of Stroganov Baroque, and took this case to the Soviet authorities. The church was closed, but not destroyed ^[9][17].

Father Sergiy was kept on at the former church as custodian and guide of the "museum warehouse"; an elderly monk, Spiridon, served as the church's watchman, and the priest's daughter Serafima helped as well. According to the recollections of relatives, parishioners came to the church disguised as tourists and, when no one was around, received the rector's blessing. In that same year, 1934, Father Sergiy was transferred to the Kazan Church, then to the Trinity Church in Vysokovo; he died in 1944 ^[9]. According to another account, a Museum of the History of Religion and Atheism was installed in the church, and Father Sergiy himself was appointed acting director of the museum ^[17].

After that the building changed hands: a warehouse of the Gorky pharmaceutical administration, the Museum of the History of Religion and Atheism, the Museum of Folk Crafts ^[8]. During the war years the church premises housed a pharmacy warehouse, thanks to which the iconostasis survived ^[7][20]. In the 1960s the Stroganov Church was transferred to the regional museum of local history as one of its branches, which occupied it until 1993 ^[7]. In 1960 the church was granted the status of a monument of state significance ^[8].

The 1960–1964 restoration

The major work of 1960–1964 was carried out by the Gorky Special Scientific Restoration Production Workshop: the author of the project was the restoration architect Viktor Yakovlevich Chashchin, while creative supervision was provided by the workshop's chief architect, Svyatoslav Leonidovich Agafonov ^[16].

The condition of the church at the start of the work gave serious cause for concern: cracks ran across the façades, and along the northern façade there was a wide one, in places several centimeters across, running almost the full height of the five-domed structure. The roof had not been repaired in fifty years, the drainage was disrupted, and the white-stone details were deteriorating rapidly. Test pits showed that the oak piles supporting a foundation of boulders weighing up to a ton, laid in clay mortar, had rotted — the cause was the failure of the ancient drainage system that had once kept the groundwater level steady ^[16]. This was how the church had originally been built: oak piles were driven around the perimeter of the foundation, boulders bonded with clay mortar were set on top of them, and wooden drainage pipes were laid ^[8].

For an engineering assessment, they invited K. E. Yegorov, Doctor of Technical Sciences, who had overseen the underground structures of the Moscow Kremlin. On his recommendations, the damaged sections of the foundation masonry were selectively repaired, and tell-tale gauges were fitted across the cracks. The roof of the refectory and the scale-pattern covering of the domes were replaced, lost details of the crosses, the decorative fringes, and the crown on the central dome were restored, and the drainage was put in order ^[16].

In test pits beneath the foundations of the altar screen and by the south wall of the refectory, ancient burials in oak log coffins came to light — from the cemetery of the Zadorinskaya Rozhdestvenskaya Church; the bosovichki found there, ancient burial footwear, were handed over to the museum-reserve ^[16].

The weathervane is a story of its own. A comparison of photographs from before and after the 1887–1896 restoration showed that the small flag installed then differed noticeably from the original, and later it was torn off altogether by a hurricane. The original appearance was reconstructed from a surviving photograph by the method of phototransformation, and the weathervane was installed on bearings, with the fate of its predecessor in mind ^[16].

The color of the façades proved the hardest matter of all. Exploratory probes revealed only small fragments of a ribbon-like ornament in three colors, in glue paint on a red glue-paint ground; Chashchin and Agafonov proposed restoring the painted decoration as it had been before the 1887–1896 restoration, but the Ministry of Culture of the RSFSR rejected the proposal to save money, and the walls were simply painted red ^[16]. The central dome was painted a deep blue, by dabbing dry blueing powder onto wet drying oil; many years later the author of the project himself considered this decision excessively pretentious and out of keeping with the refined style of the monument ^[16]. A 1971 Nizhny Novgorod guidebook responded to the new coloring with restraint: it had given the building a festive look, but also made it coarser ^[14].

The white-stone carving, painted over with white oil paint in the 1910s, was cleared with a thick layer of casein glue: as it dried in the sun, the glue cracked and peeled off together with the paint. The method was suggested by Bryagin, a restorer of ancient painting, and it worked on the southern façade of the refectory, but the workshop management found it insufficiently quick, and it was decided to simply whitewash the remaining façades with lime ^[16].

In the interior, the original appearance of the refectory was restored: the hewn lunettes of the vault and the white-stone cartouches were recreated, the openings walled up with brick in the wall between the refectory and the church were reopened, restoring the former spatial connection, and a uniform white coat of paint was preferred to the later painting of the vault. On the iconostasis, fallen-off details were put back in place, and part of the lost carving was cut anew ^[16].

The work was halted for reasons that had nothing to do with technology. After a speech by N. S. Khrushchev lashing out at those who restore monuments, the Gorky authorities needed only a single day: the director of the workshop was ordered to suspend the restoration but not to take down the scaffolding. Only in the summer of 1964 did the first secretary of the Regional Committee give the order to finish the work so that the scaffolding could be removed in September ^[16]. Chashchin singled out the craftsmen: the roofers Viktor Bushuev and Anatoly Rusakov, who restored the scale cladding of the domes and the ornamental valances, and Viktor Ivanovich Setvin, who carried out all the work on the white-stone details, the carving of the iconostasis, and the gilding ^[16].

The main purpose of this survey is to warn those who will carry on our work against the errors, misconceptions, and temptations that are so likely when approaching a monument so complex and idiosyncratic in style, whose restoration is far from complete

The Return of the Church and the Present Day

On June 3, 1993, the Stroganov Rozhdestvenskaya Church was consecrated anew by Metropolitan Nikolay (Kutepov) of Nizhny Novgorod and Arzamas, together with a host of clergy, before a great crowd of people. Present at the consecration were representatives of the city and regional administrations, the Grand Duchesses Leonida Georgievna and Maria Vladimirovna Romanova, the young Prince Georgy, and the film director Mikhalkov Nikita, who accompanied them and who later repeatedly helped with the restoration of the church. From that day the church returned to its parishioners ^[7][17].

The repairs of the early 2000s damaged the monument: in the course of the work it lost part of its historic appearance, as workers chipped away the stone of the carved columns ^[17]. At the same time, the white-stone details were covered with a protective layer, and a small portion of them was replaced with plaster casts; the ornamental painting of the facades was never restored ^[16].

In 2008, priority emergency-prevention and repair-and-restoration work on the church and bell tower was carried out by the St. Petersburg firm Nika, chosen through an open tender held by the Federal Agency for Culture and Cinematography; the source of funding was the federal budget ^[11].

On January 8, 2019, on the church's patronal feast day, after the liturgy an icon of All Saints and a blagovest bell (the bell used to call worshippers to services), cast with donations from parishioners for the church's 300th anniversary, were consecrated ^[17]. On October 4, 2023, three mosaic icons made by the diocesan workshop Kovcheg were consecrated for the bell tower — of the Protection of the Most Holy Mother of God, of St. Innocent of Irkutsk, and of St. Onuphrius the Great: the two latter saints were the dedicatees of the side chapels in the refectory part of the church, which have not survived ^[8].

Today the Rozhdestvenskaya Church is one of the city's principal and most revered churches; for many Nizhny Novgorod residents, the church their ancestors revered has become the main one in their own lives today ^[17]. Services are held daily: from Monday through Friday, the Liturgy at 7:00 a.m. and Vespers with Matins at 5:00 p.m. ^[7]. The church's rector is Priest Aleksandr Kalaganov ^[6].

Protected status

The church holds the status of an architectural monument of federal significance ^[2][7]. State protection was established in 1960, when the church was granted the status of a monument of state significance ^[8]; information about it was included in the two-volume illustrated catalog of cultural heritage sites of federal significance located in the territory of Nizhny Novgorod (2018), in which the church is given its own entry ^[12].

Concern for the monument at the state level was shown even before the Revolution: the case of the bell tower was considered by the Synod, the Imperial Moscow Archaeological Society, and the Technical and Construction Committee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, while the restoration of the interiors in the 1910s was approved by the Imperial Archaeological Commission ^[14][15].

The church in the city's culture

The layout of the church was noted in his travel notes by Alexandre Dumas, who visited Nizhny Novgorod in 1858 ^[8].

The Rozhdestvenskaya Church has traditionally attracted artists: students from art schools and the art college regularly work near it, and it would be hard to find a Nizhny Novgorod painter who has never painted it ^[17]. Filmmakers shooting in the city also rarely resist the temptation to include the church, if only in a distant shot ^[17].

The French director Emeric Nicolas made a film for the Franco-German channel Arte, "Le long de la Volga avec Gorki" ("Along the Volga with Gorky"), in which the Rozhdestvenskaya Church is shown as one of the main points of attraction; he managed to obtain permission to film a service in the church. The legend of the church's founding was depicted in his film by the Nizhny Novgorod filmmaker Evgeniy Kudelnikov, who used computer graphics to recreate the church's appearance at the time construction was completed ^[17].

Every tour of Rozhdestvenskaya Street invariably includes the story of the church's history and legends ^[17]. In the 2000s, a Nizhny Novgorod video guide to the city on the nnov.ru website devoted a separate segment to the church; the video itself was recorded in Flash format and no longer plays in current browsers, though the segment's page has been preserved in the web archive ^[21].

The church is also a feast for photographers: it is shot from its foot, with the crosses rising into the sky, from the Otkos as part of the whole ensemble, and in recent years from a bird's-eye view as well, revealing details once visible only to restorers ^[17].

Key dates

Links

• Official website (archive) (sobory.ru)

Sources

1. hramnn.ru — Church in Honor of the Synaxis of the Most Holy Theotokos — official parish website — Historical Background on the Church
2. hramnn.ru — Church in Honor of the Synaxis of the Most Holy Theotokos — official parish website — Description of the Church's Architectural Features (archive)
3. hramnn.ru — Church in Honor of the Synaxis of the Most Holy Theotokos — official parish website — Iconostasis (archive)
4. hramnn.ru — Church in Honor of the Synaxis of the Most Holy Theotokos — official parish website — History of the Unique Clock on the Church's Bell Tower (archive)
5. hramnn.ru — Church in Honor of the Synaxis of the Most Holy Theotokos — official parish website — The Stroganov Style in Architecture (archive)
6. hramnn.ru — Church in Honor of the Synaxis of the Most Holy Theotokos — official parish website — Clergy
7. nne.ru — Nizhny Novgorod Metropolia — description of the church in the diocesan registry — Church in Honor of the Synaxis of the Most Holy Theotokos (archive)
8. nne.ru — Nizhny Novgorod Metropolia — Mosaic Icons Consecrated in Nizhny Novgorod for the Stroganov Church (archive)
9. nne.ru — Nizhny Novgorod Metropolia — profile of the rector Sergiy Veysov — Defender of the Stroganov Church (archive)
10. nne.ru — Nizhny Novgorod Metropolia — report on the installation of the clock in July 2005 — The Chimes of the Nizhny Novgorod Clock Can Be Heard as Early as the End of the Week (archive)
11. nne.ru — Nizhny Novgorod Metropolia — on the 2008 restoration tender — Emergency Prevention and Repair-and-Restoration Work to Be Carried Out at the Church in Honor of the Synaxis of the Most Holy Theotokos (archive)
12. opentextnn.ru — Open Text — A. I. Davydov's study on the dating of the church and its builders (archive)
13. opentextnn.ru — Open Text — A. I. Davydov on the repairs of the first half of the 19th century — Davydov A.I. The Rozhdestvenskaya Stroganov Church. Restoration Work of the 19th and Early 20th Centuries (archive)
14. opentextnn.ru — Open Text — A. I. Davydov on the tilt of the bell tower and the restoration of 1887–1896 — Davydov A.I. The Rozhdestvenskaya Stroganov Church. Restoration Work of the 19th Century (archive)
15. opentextnn.ru — Open Text — A. I. Davydov on the restoration of the 1910s — Davydov A.I. The Rozhdestvenskaya Stroganov Church. Restoration Work of the 19th and Early 20th Centuries (Conclusion) (archive)
16. opentextnn.ru — Open Text — memoirs of the architect-restorer V. Ya. Chashchin — Memoirs of V.Ya. Chashchin on the Restoration of the 18th-Century Rozhdestvenskaya Stroganov Church in Nizhny Novgorod (archive)
17. Nizhegorodskaya Pravda — feature on the legends and fate of the church — A Treasury of Legends and an Artist's Dream: What Secrets the Rozhdestvenskaya Church Holds (archive)
18. Kommersant (Volga Region) — Petr Voronkov's account of the church — "No Services Were Held in the Cathedral Until the Death of Peter I" (archive)
19. KP — Nizhny Novgorod — guide to the buildings of Rozhdestvenskaya Street — Ghosts, a Salt Scam, and the Flophouse from Gorky's Play: What Secrets of the Past Rozhdestvenskaya Street in Nizhny Novgorod Holds (archive)
20. nn-grad.ru — city guide to landmarks — The Stroganov Church (archive)
21. nnov.ru — Video Guide to Nizhny Novgorod (nnov.ru, 2009) — archived copy — Video Guide to Nizhny Novgorod. Rozhdestvenskaya Street. The Stroganov Church