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History of the Moscow City authorities >> Heads of the Moscow City administration before 1917 >> Vassily Yakovlevich LEVASHOV- Commander-in-Chief of Moscow (15 December 1744 – 7 April 1751)

Vassily Yakovlevich

LEVASHOV

1667–1751

Commander-in-Chief of Moscow

15 December 1744 – 7 April 1751

Vassily Yakovlevich Levashov took part in the suppression of the Streltsi uprisings (in 16-18th century Russia, the uprising of state infantry troops equipped with firearms), in the Azov campaign, the battles of the Northern War, the Persian campaign of 1722 and the Russo-Swedish war of 1741. He reached the rank of general-in-chief.

Just prior to Levashov's arrival in Moscow, following a Senate decree issued on 25 September 1744, vacant plots of land were distributed and many new buildings were erected in the city. Between 1745 and 1750 the walls of Byely Gorod were dismantled and the bricks used by the architect D.V. Ukhtomsky to carry out repair work on the stone buildings in the Kremlin. On 24 June 1745, the Senate issued a decree on repairing stone and wooden buildings, walls and towers in the towns of the gubernia. A shortage of roofing iron and tiles in Moscow compelled the government to issue a special resolution On Roofing Houses in Moscow with Boards and Shingles. Another novelty for the city residents was the requirement that wooden roofs be painted.

However, there was also a shortage of timber, since the forests around Moscow had been almost completely cut down for firewood to supply factories. Therefore another decree followed: On Not Building Near Moscow Any New Wine or Glass Factories Which Lack Aqueducts.

During the governorship of Vassily Levashov, there were a number of major fires. In 1748, for example, there were six fires in May alone, as a result of which, as A. Tatishchev, chief of police, reported, "1,227 houses and 2,440 chambers have been burned, and 27 seriously damaged. Of people, 49 of the male sex and 47 of the female". The government of Moscow took urgent measures: the police were ordered to mount twenty-four hour guard, gunpowder was to be stored only in specially equipped stone cellars, etc. Following the fires in 1748, Empress Elizabeth built for herself a new palace of stone in the village of Pokrovskoye, and also the Golovin Palace in Lefortovo.

Vassily Levashov was buried in the Church of the Exaltation of the Cross on Vozdvizhenka in Moscow.