Kizhi

Kizhi is an island in Lake Onega, part of an old network of villages and waterways between Novgorod and the White Sea. Churches on the island were recorded in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. After the old wooden churches burned late in the seventeenth century, a new Church of the Intercession was built, followed in 1714 by the many-domed Church of the Transfiguration. The Intercession Church acquired its nine-domed form in 1764.

The island gave its name to a large pogost encompassing villages on neighbouring islands. In the eighteenth century the crown required local peasants to work in mines and ironworks around Onega. The demands provoked the Kizhi uprising of 1769–1771, centred on the pogost. Petitioners were arrested, and troops suppressed the revolt; its leaders were flogged and exiled, while others were forced into military service.