Uzkoye
Encyclopedia
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
. Before 1629, the area belonged to Prince Gagarin, then it passed to Maksim Streshnev, a cousin of Tsarina Eudoxia Streshneva
Eudoxia Streshneva
Eudoxia Streshnyova was the second wife of Tsar Mikhail. She was a daughter of a nobleman Lukyan Stepanovich Streshnyov from Mozhaysk, who died in 1630, and his wife Anna Konstantinovna Volkonskaya.- Biography :...
.
Upon the death of Maksim's grandson in 1692, the ownership passed sideways to a cousin, Tikhon Streshnev
Tikhon Streshnev
Tikhon Nikitich Streshnev was a Russian boyar and statesman during the reign of Peter I of Russia, one of the first members of the Governing Senate and the first governor of Moscow after the post was reformed by Peter....
. It was he who commissioned a singular five-domed church to be built there in 1698-1704. Its four-petaled plan was of Ukrainian Baroque
Ukrainian Baroque
Ukrainian Baroque or Cossack Baroque is an architectural style that emerged in Ukraine during the Hetmanate era, in the 17th and 18th centuries....
inspiration; but all five towers are equal in height and crowned by typical Russian onion dome
Onion dome
An onion dome is a dome whose shape resembles the onion, after which they are named. Such domes are often larger in diameter than the drum upon which they are set, and their height usually exceeds their width...
s. This five-towered church, dedicated to the Theotokos of Kazan, is quite extraordinary in Russian architecture
Russian architecture
Russian architecture follows a tradition whose roots were established in the Eastern Slavic state of Kievan Rus'. After the fall of Kiev, Russian architectural history continued in the principalities of Vladimir-Suzdal, Novgorod, the succeeding states of the Tsardom of Russia, the Russian Empire,...
. Its design is attributed to Osip Startsev, who was responsible for some of the major Baroque cathedrals of Kiev
Kiev
Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....
but also worked in Moscow.
Tikhon's granddaughter Sophie was the last of her race; she married Prince Galitzine
Galitzine
For Orthodox clergyman and theologian, see Alexander Golitzin.The Galitzines are one of the largest and noblest princely houses of Russia. Since the extinction of the Korecki family in the 17th century, the Golitsyns have claimed dynastic seniority in the House of Gediminas...
, whose son Alexis built a Baroque
Baroque
The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...
residence flanked by two wings. Alexis also built a regular park on the grounds and laid out a series of ponds. His daughter Marie was wife of Count Pyotr Aleksandrovich Tolstoy
Pyotr Aleksandrovich Tolstoy
Count Pyotr Aleksandrovich Tolstoy was a Russian general and statesman.Pyotr Tolstoy came from the Oryol branch of the Tolstoy family, his father Alexander Tolstoy was a grandson of Count Pyotr Andreyevich Tolstoy...
, who received Uzkoe as a dowry and had a larch
Larch
Larches are conifers in the genus Larix, in the family Pinaceae. Growing from 15 to 50m tall, they are native to much of the cooler temperate northern hemisphere, on lowlands in the north and high on mountains further south...
alley planted there. In the mid-19th century the estate passed through marriage to the Troubetzkoys who had the old country house swept away and replaced with a Neoclassical
Neoclassical architecture
Neoclassical architecture was an architectural style produced by the neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th century, manifested both in its details as a reaction against the Rococo style of naturalistic ornament, and in its architectural formulas as an outgrowth of some classicizing...
mansion, which borrowed many details from its predecessor. It was there that the Russian philosopher Vladimir Solovyov
Vladimir Solovyov (philosopher)
Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov was a Russian philosopher, poet, pamphleteer, literary critic, who played a significant role in the development of Russian philosophy and poetry at the end of the 19th century...
died in 1900.
After the Russian Revolution of 1917
Russian Revolution of 1917
The Russian Revolution is the collective term for a series of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which destroyed the Tsarist autocracy and led to the creation of the Soviet Union. The Tsar was deposed and replaced by a provisional government in the first revolution of February 1917...
, the Troubetzkoys were expelled from Uzkoe and their estate was given over to the Soviet Academy of Sciences, which has used it as a rest home for its members. Ski treks of Uzkoe were popular with Lev Landau
Lev Landau
Lev Davidovich Landau was a prominent Soviet physicist who made fundamental contributions to many areas of theoretical physics...
, while Andrei Kolmogorov liked swimming in the local ponds. The church had been stripped of its 17th-century icon screen
Iconostasis
In Eastern Christianity an iconostasis is a wall of icons and religious paintings, separating the nave from the sanctuary in a church. Iconostasis also refers to a portable icon stand that can be placed anywhere within a church...
(its whereabouts are still unknown) and until 1995 it housed libraries which were looted in Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
by the Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
; in 1995 it reverted to the Russian Orthodox Church
Russian Orthodox Church
The Russian Orthodox Church or, alternatively, the Moscow Patriarchate The ROC is often said to be the largest of the Eastern Orthodox churches in the world; including all the autocephalous churches under its umbrella, its adherents number over 150 million worldwide—about half of the 300 million...
.