The way from Suzdal to one of the earliest surviving specimens of Vladimir-Suzdalian architecture, the twelfth-century Church in village Kideksha, lays by the Saint Vasiliy Monastery. The village of Kideksha can be seen in the distance across the fields. The royal fortified residence was built here on the bank of the Nerl, near the mouth of the Kamenka. It is situated here, as well as in Bogolyubovo Intercession Church is situated near the confluence of the Nerl and Klyazma.
The river Nerl was the region's most important way. As early as the eleventh century the inhabitants of these parts used to travel down the Nerl, when there had been a bad harvest to look for grain in the distant lands of the Volga Bulgars.
The decision to build the Church here was justified by such events: the Russian princes Boris and Gleb, later glorified by the Orthodox Church as the first Russian saints, had stopped on this spot during their campaigns from Rostov and Murom against Kiev.
As in the Bogolyubovo here was built the royal residence. It was bordered on one side by the comparatively high bank of the Nerl and protected on the Northwest by earth ramparts with wooden walls.
Remains of the ramparts can be seen in some of the nearby homesteads, particularly by the house of the Sostigalov family.
The Church of Saint Boris and Saint Gleb was erected here in 1152. This Church is particularly striking by virtue of its solid simplicity. It stands close to the edge of the slope running down to the Nerl, with its bare apses facing the river. The white stone walls are somewhat rough enhancing the austere charm of the simple architectural lines.
The royal palace once stood not far from the Church, together with the wooden chambers of the courtiers and other domestic buildings.
North and south of the Church there are two slopes leading down to the river, which may originally have been paths from the jetty to the castle. In which case, there would have been wooden entrance towers at this point.
The Church has suffered many misfortunes. The Mongols evidently ravaged the royal residence, because Bishop Kirill of Rostov repaired the Church in 1239.
There has then come a period of neglect. For a long time the Church stood roofless and its vaults and dome caved in. The east part of the walls and the upper section of the apses also suffered.
Only in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was it repaired with the old white stone being used. The east part was not restored, however, and the Church was given a new, poorly constructed vault and hip roof, with a small dome none of which fitted in with the original design. New windows were made and the old slit-like ones, which can still be detected, were blocked up. A vestibule was added to the west wall in the nineteenth century.
We can picture the Church's original appearance quite easily, however, if we bear in mind the old Churches, that we can see in Vladimir and Bogolyubovo. It is similar in type to the Church of the Intercession on the Nerl and the Cathedral of Saint Demetrios: a cube-shaped main body with a single dome and three apses.
Many Churches of this kind were erected in royal courtyards and towns during the twelfth century. At the same time it presents a striking contrast to the Churches in Vladimir and Bogolyubovo: the refined delicacy and lightness of the Church of the Intercession, with its slender tiered ensemble and galleries, or the sumptuous, eloquent carving of the Cathedral of Saint Demetrios which embodied the royal might of Vsevolod III. By contrast the Church at Kideksha is simple, solid and austere.
It forms an almost perfect cube and has neither the slenderness of the Church of the Intercession, nor the bold harmony of the Cathedral of Saint Demetrios. It is serene and static. The large semicircular apses protrude openly and impressively from the main body of the Church. Originally the gentle arches of the zakomaras were crowned with a drum, as powerful as the apses, containing narrow windows and a helmet-shaped tin dome. The narrow windows stood out like loopholes on the bare white walls, divided into broad sections by flat pilaster strips. The portals are equally plain with no adornments on the base, side posts, capitals or archivolt. They are, in fact, more like simple, stepped entrance frames than portals.
The only piece of adornments is a band of cut stone and decorative arcade on wedge-shaped consoles, which emphasises the laconic solidity of the walls at the choir gallery level. A similar band or "skittle" cornice originally decorated the top of the apses and the drum. The building's plain clear lines create an impression of strength and majestic simplicity.
The Church's austere appearance is in keeping with the period, during which it was built by Yuriy Dolgoruky. The Vladimir principality's struggle for political supremacy was just beginning. It took the form mainly of arduous marches on Kiev and determined suppression of internal opposition from the boyars. The power of the sword was still the main factor in the struggle, which was later to assume a more complex, ideological nature. The princes had not yet begun to use architecture as a means of enhancing their prestige and furthering their political plans. Thus the small Churches erected in Yuriy's fortress townships were quite adequate to fulfil their simple functions. Plain and somewhat traditional they exude the tough spirit of their time and even remind one slightly of a fortress.
Nevertheless we can already detect an element of artistic display in the way that the Church is situated on a high bank dominating the surrounding countryside. This feature was fully developed later by the architects, building under Andrei Bogolyubsky and Vsevolod III in Vladimir.
The Church's dark interior is equally serene and immobile. Its appearance was altered considerably, when the building was restored in the seventeenth century. The east pillars were removed and a new wall erected with openings into the sanctuary. In its present form the interior is more like the two-pillar seventeenth-century Churches: the Cathedral of Saint Vasiliy's Monastery and the Church of Saint Lazarus. As a result of being lowered and divided from the main body by the new wall the sanctuary appeared more elongated and similar to those in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Churches. In spite of all these alterations the Saint Boris and Saint Gleb Church remains a fine specimen of early Russian architecture. Together with the Transfiguration Cathedral in Pereslavl-Zalessky, which was built at the same time and is better preserved, it is one of the oldest white stone buildings in Vladimir and Suzdal.
The interesting question arises, as to who built these Churches. We can see the builders' stamp in the geometrical clarity of line. They were familiar with a special technique of masonry (stone laying), unknown in the area of the Dnieper basin, which was where the builders of Vladimir Monomach's Cathedral in Suzdal came from. This technique was found only in Galich, where builders were familiar with Romanesque architecture of neighbouring countries of the West. Yuriy Dolgoruky's connections with the princes of Galich add further support to the assumption, that architects came from the banks of the Dniester to lay the foundations of a new branch of twelfth-century architecture in Northeast Russia, which was soon to eclipse that of Galich itself.
In the early stage of its development there is hardly any sign of interest in Romanesque styles. Yuriy Dolgoruky was a consistent Grecian (graecophil), and the Churches, built during his time contain no new features outside Russian-Byzantine traditions. The decorative band, held to be a Romanesque element, had actually been used for a long time in Kiev and Novgorod, during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Similarly the portals of the Kideksha Church have more in common with the plain niches, which decorated the earliest Russian Churches.
When the Church was built in 1152, burial niches were placed under the choir-gallery for the tombs of the royal family. Yuriy Dolgoruky died in Kiev, however, and the royal residence was passed on to his son Boris, who was buried here with his wife Mariya and daughter. Their tombs were placed in the niches under the choir-gallery, where they remain to this day.
The Church appears to have remained unpainted for some thirty or forty years after it was built. During this period its interior had the same austere appearance as the outside, relieved only by the icons on the altar screen. A number of specialists date the fragments of frescoes discovered in 1947 to the 1180s. It is quite possible that they were commissioned by Vsevolod III in honour of his father, who had built the royal residence at Kideksha, and his Greek mother, a princess of the Comnenian dynasty. She is depicted in the fresco of the burial niche in the north wall, wearing sumptuous imperial robes next to the figure of Saint Mary, the name of Prince Boris' wife, who is also buried here. The large, impressive figures in bright crimson robes stand out clearly against a white background surrounded by palms with red fruit, and trees with two peacocks, representing the Garden of Paradise.
It is interesting that the walls of the choir-gallery, where the royal family stood during Church services were also decorated with trees and birds in pinkish reds and violets, i.e., probably pictures of Paradise, contrary to the strictly prescribed canons of fresco painting.
This passion for brightly coloured decoration was developed in the frescoes of the thirteenth-century Suzdal Cathedral. Excavations in the Church central apse have revealed a painted frieze of curtains with yellow folds and reddish brown seven-branched candelabra and trees, as well as a semicircular stone seat for the priests.
The remaining frescoes are on the south and west walls by the new iconostasis. The adornments on the round medallion and the surfaces of the pilaster strip on the north wall are particularly interesting. Fragments of various compositions have survived on the south wall, including the figures of two horsemen. Some experts claim that they are Boris and Gleb, but some - that they represent the Magi (the Wise Men).
Reddish browns dominate in the frescoes, giving them a restrained colour scheme.
Vsevolod III appears to have decorated the Church with more than frescoes. Excavations in the central apse revealed fragments of a white stone ciborium, which stood over the altar and was embellished with beautiful carving reminiscent of the flat carving on the Cathedral of Saint Demetrios.
There is no trace of an entrance into the choir-gallery, and we do not know, how it was reached. It has been suggested that a wooden staircase led from the inside of the Church to the north vault of the gallery.
The Church was part of the royal residence. Future excavations may well throw more light on the original topography of the residence of Prince Yuriy Dolgoruky and his son Boris.
If we research Suzdalian architecture of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries we would noted on several occasions, that the builders of this period had made a careful study of earlier buildings in the area and borrowed certain features from them. It is likely that the plain white walls of the Church of the Ascension in the Monastery of Saint Alexander and its contemporary, the Church of Smolensk icon by the Holy Virgin Mary, with the strict arrangement of three windows in the upper tier, were influenced by the old Church at Kideksha.
A fair amount of later building went on at Kideksha. The Church was altered and restored, and new stone buildings were erected around it. At the end of the seventeenth century the elegant Holy Gates were built south of the Church on the path, leading down to the river. Their walls were richly decorated and crowned by an elaborately shaped roof. In 1780 the small, heated Church of Saint Stephen was added with a steep saddle-back roof, similar to that on the house by the Spaso-Yevfimiev Monastery. Finally, a tent-shaped bell-tower was erected to the west, which shows traces of the work of Suzdalian eighteenth-century builders and resembles other bell-towers, which we can see in the town. However, it also contains features of an earlier period, such as the tent-shaped tower, which is straight instead of curved and open windows. The adornments on the octagon of the bell-tower strongly resembles that on the Saint Nicholas bell-tower in the Kremlin.
Thus the Kideksha ensemble provides a clear example of the connection between the architecture of the early period, and that of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
If we go down to the river, and take a look at the ensemble from there, we would see on the tussocks-shaped slope barns and bathhouses, which cannot be very different from those, which used to stand there centuries ago.
Here we have yet another example of the skill, with which Russian architects blended their buildings with the surrounding countryside. The Church does not dominate the landscape. It fits in perfectly with the low bank of the Nerl, on which it stands.
As we look at the group of buildings standing next to each other, but divided by some five centuries in time we cannot help being struck once again by the organic unity between them. As in Suzdal the individual buildings go to form a single whole centred round the old nucleus - the Church. The laconic majesty and restraint of the latter is echoed in the simplicity and slight strict of the Church of Saint Stephen standing nearby. The whimsical adornments and intricately designed tower of the Holy Gates opposite produces a striking contrast to the plain solemnity of the Church of Saint Boris and Saint Gleb as does the bell-tower. Although the latter is somewhat restrained by comparison with other bell-towers of the same period in Suzdal, it seems extraordinarily rich in this setting.
If we go through its low arch we would see the Church slightly to one side in a dark frame, making the white walls even more dazzling.
Here in a simple Russian village unknown Suzdal architects left us with an exquisite example of their love and care for their great architectural heritage. They found a new, gay architectural language of their own. The new elements in their building, blended with old ones to form a perfect unity, which demonstrates the unity of Russian culture over the centuries.