sentences:  Official Byzantine art was not absolute in Nicholas reign; it is scarce in our days, as the Byzantine churches, declared 'worthless' by Bolsheviks, were the first to be demolished in the Soviet era.Another direction taken by the Russian Revival style was a reaction against official Thon art, influenced by Romanticism, Slavophilism and detailed studies of vernacular architecture.The forerunner of this trend in church design was Alexey Gornostaev (in his later years, 1848–1862), notable for reinventing Northern Russian tented roof motif augmented with Romanesque and Renaissance vault structure.