On the verge of extinction

This book, by the architectural historian Richard Davies, is remarkable in many ways — for the importance of its subject matter, for the excellence and variety of the many photographs, and for the imaginative choice of the accompanying texts. The fruit of ten years of long and difficult journeys in the far north of European Russia, it is a labour of love. It is also extremely informative.

Russian wooden churches are very varied; because it is difficult to travel over such often boggy terrain, each region tended to develop its own specific architectural features. All, however, are built from logs of hewn pine; the carpenters used neither saws nor hammers and nails — only axes. And they are crowned by onion domes or tent roofs whose aspen tiles have a silvery glint even in dull weather. Most of the churches are positioned on high points, so as to be clearly visible to distant travellers. The classic configuration is that of a troinik — a threesome, composed of a ‘summer church’, a smaller ‘winter church’, that is easier to heat, and a tall bell tower. Very few such threesomes survive.

With a little care, these churches can last for a surprisingly long time. Pines grow slowly in the far north, and so the logs cut from them are dense and strong; and hewn logs last longer than wood cut by saw. The rate of destruction of these churches has, however, been continually accelerating. Before 1917, there were many thousands of such churches; since then about 80 per cent have vanished. Some were destroyed during Soviet anti-religious campaigns, others in the war.