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Arts in St. Petersburg in 1758 and two years later
apprenticed with Bartolomeo
RASTRELLI
.From
1761 to 1765, he studied in Paris and Italy, and
was honored with election to the academies of
Rome, Florence, and Bologna. Back in St. Peters-
burg he sought, without success, an appoint-
ment as professor at the Academy of Arts; he
would have to wait almost two decades, until
1784, to be elected to the academy. Bazhenov's
work, distinguished by lavish use of columns
and curves, added a “Russian” touch of Mus-
covite and baroque to the neoclassicist fashion of
the late 18th century. Although he was admired
and influential, few of his projects were built as
designed. His reputation rests largely on plans
for the reconstruction of the Moscow Kremlin,
which by the time of
CATHERINE II
's coronation in
1762 had fallen into alarming disrepair, and for a
new imperial palace in Tsaritsyno, to the south of
Moscow. Together with Matvei Fedorovich Kaza-
kov (1738-1813), Bazhenov worked on exten-
sive and grandiose plans for the Kremlin begun
in 1767 but abandoned after 1774 for unex-
plained, possibly financial, reasons. Bazhenov's
plans for Tsaritsyno (1776-85) featured a unique
Gothic style well before the Gothic revival in
western Europe. The project was also abandoned
after 10 years of extensive work; Kazakov later
built a more modest version of Bazhenov's
palace. The failure of the Kremlin and Tsaritsyno
projects and Bazhenov's role as a leading
Freemason contributed to his fall from favor in
the mid-1780s. He survived on private commis-
sions, the most important of which led to the
building of the Pashkov House (1784-86), situ-
ated on a hill across from the southwest side of
the Kremlin, today the Old Building of the Rus-
sian State (former Lenin) Library.
For most Orthodox Russians, however, the beard
was a fundamental symbol of religious belief and
self-respect, an ornament given by God, worn by
the prophets, the apostles, and Jesus himself.
Priests refused to bless beardless men, considering
them shameful, unclean, and beyond the pale of
Christendom. Attitudes toward beards, however,
were beginning to change in 17th-century Mos-
cow with the arrival of merchants, soldiers, and
engineers from Europe, where beardless faces had
long been fashionable. Peter's father, Czar
ALEK
-
SEI
, had already relaxed restrictions on shaving,
but few Muscovites had actually shaved their
beards off before Peter's decree. Peter's attack on
beards began in September 1698, on his return
from the
GRAND EMBASSY
, when he assembled his
grandees and surprised them by proceeding to
shave their beards with his own barber's razor. A
few exceptions were made, including the patri-
arch, but in the next few months the practice was
enshrined in a decree that exempted only clergy
and peasants from shaving. Peter's officials were
empowered to shave on the spot anyone they
encountered. As Peter's initial antibeard zeal
waned, eventually those who wished to keep
their beards could do so, providing they paid an
annual beard tax. The amount paid ranged from
two kopeks for peasants to 900 rubles for wealthy
merchants. The taxpayer then received a bronze
medallion with a picture of a beard and the words
den'gi vziaty
(tax paid) inscribed on it, which was
to be worn on a chain round the neck. Some Rus-
sians, like the traditionalist
OLD BELIEVERS
, wore
their medallion like a badge of honor, but over
time the decree was widely ignored and tax pay-
ments evaded, although it was reissued several
times and beards were not allowed in state service
until the 19th century.
Beard Tax
A tax on beards that resulted from
PETER I
the
Great's 1698 decree ordering all Russians, except
clergy and peasants, to shave. Peter considered
that beards were a symbol of all that was back-
ward and non-European about Muscovite society.
Beilis Affair
(1911-1913)
A judicial process that exposed and inflamed
feelings of
ANTI
-
SEMITISM
feelings in Russia. On
March 20, 1911, the body of Andrusha Iush-
chinsky, a 13-year-old member of a gang of
thieves, was found in a cave in Kiev. Coming
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