page_title: Nationality Rooms
section_title: Russian
hierarchical_section_title: Nationality Rooms / Classrooms / Russian
caption_attribution_description: Russian Nationality Room in the Cathedral of Learning at the University of Pittsburgh
context_page_description: The Nationality Rooms are a collection of 31 classrooms in the University of Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Learning depicting and donated by the national and ethnic groups that helped build the city of Pittsburgh. The rooms are designated as a Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation historical landmark and are located on the 1st and 3rd floors of the Cathedral of Learning, itself a national historic landmark, on the University of Pittsburgh's main campus in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. Although of museum caliber, 29 of the 31 rooms are regularly used as functional classrooms that are utilized daily by University of Pittsburgh faculty and students, while the other two are mostly used as display rooms viewed through glass doors and are otherwise utilized primarily for special events and can only be explored via special guided tour. The Nationality Rooms also serve in a vigorous program of intercultural involvement and exchange in which the original organizing committees for the individual rooms remain as participants and includes a program of annual student scholarship to facilitate study abroad.
context_section_description: The Russian Classroom contains folk ornamentation with traditional motifs from Byzantium, the spiritual center of Russia.  The seminar table is made of oak slabs matched in contrasting grain and held together by ornamental keys. The cut-out apron is characteristic of massive tables in the Vologda district. The back of each student's chair has a cruciform circle pattern surmounted by triangles carved with symbols of regional or stylistic significance including the reindeer which symbolizes the tundra and the sturgeon that represents the Volga River.  The professor's chair has a back of spirals surmounted by two peacocks worshipping the tree of life.  The podium is ecclesiastic in character and suggests the analoi used in Orthodox churches to support heavy Bibles. The blackboard is patterned after a triptych, or three-leafed frame which holds icons.
  The doors of the blackboard are a grille of wooden spirals backed by red velvet.  Above them is a carved panel with Sirin and Alcanost, the twin birds of Russian folklore that depict joy and sorrow as indistinguishable. A dado or low wainscot of simple horizontal oaken boards surrounds the room and incorporates the blackboard, the corner cupboard, and kiot which is a Slavic term for a wall frame treated as a piece of furniture. Within the kiot hangs a vishivka (appliqué and embroidery) banner of Saint George, patron saint of Moscow since the 15th century. The banner was made with pieces of 16th and 17th century fabric from Venice and Paris and is an example of needlework once popular with the Russian aristocracy.  The words "Valorous youth victorious over forces of evil and darkness" are carved in both Russian and English below the banner. A copy of the Avinoff family icon in the room depicts the miraculous saving of the city of Kitej from a Tartar invasion in the 14th century.  The ceiling is cornered with designs resembling those used to form traditional Easter cakes and which symbolize the four seasons, with a bud for Spring, a sunflower for summer, grapes for Autumn, and a pine cone for Winter. A wrought iron chandelier was created by Russian-born Hyman Blum.
  Following a visit from Dmitry Medvedev in 2009, a display cabinet with carved ornamentation matching the rooms original carvings was installed to house three gifts presented by the then Russian President.
caption: The Russian Classroom
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