Pseudo-Russian Style

a conventional designation for several eclectic directions in late-19th-century Russian architecture, each of which had a different conceptual origin.

In the 1830’s church architects adopted, with official approval, a Russian-Byzantine style. In keeping with the official recognition by the Russian Orthodox Church of a connection between Byzantium and Russia, the architects borrowed many structural devices and decorative motifs from Byzantine architecture (as seen in the sketches of churches drawn by the architect K. A. Ton in the 1840’s). Another direction in the pseudo-Russian style developed under the influence of romanticism and Slavophilism (for example, the buildings designed by the architect A. M. Gornostaev). It was characterized by the use of arbitrarily interpreted motifs from ancient Russian architecture (Pogodin Hut, Moscow, 1850’s, architect N. V. Nikitin).

In the early 1870’s populist ideas influenced the appearance of a new democratic version of the pseudo-Russian style. It involved simply the decoration of buildings with motifs borrowed from Russian folk embroidery and wood carving. This direction, which characterized buildings designed by the architects V. A. Gartman and I. P. Ropet, became known as ropetovshchina. The movement was promoted by V. V. Stasov. It spread first to the design of wooden exhibition pavilions and small urban dwellings and later to the design of monumental stone architecture.

By the early 1880’s, ropetovshchina was superseded by a new official pseudo-Russian style, which copied almost exactly the decorative motifs of 17th-century Russian architecture.