church of sts peter and paul

A good description of the church of Sts. Peter and Paul is found on the Novgorod.ru website and I'll quote it directly here:

Beyond the remains of the rampart, on the left bank of the Volkhov (to the left of the bridge), is the Church of Sts Peter and Paul (1406), its beautiful silhouette can be equally well seen from any side. In older times, this area was called Kozhevniki. A 16th-century cadastre states that most of residents of the adjacent streets engaged in tanning leather. The church is among the most illustrious examples of the heyday of Novgorodian architecture. The Novgorodian architect's rational thought is reflected in the different decoration of the facades. Whereas the north facade giving on the rampart and the east facade overlooking the Volkhov are resolved in a rather modest manner, the western and southern walls profuse in decor. During the 1950s the monument was restored to its original state, with the walls left without stucco and white-washing, as they used to be in the 15th century. The surviving 16th-century icons from this church are exhibited at the Novgorod Museum of History, Architecture and Art. North of the Church of Sts Peter and Paul lay the princely sporting grounds, the zverinefs (warren), first mentioned in chronicles of the 11th century.

I was interested in the aspect of the tremendous amount of plastering or stucco used on all types and ages of buildings, and this description gives a clue to what I suspected; that originally brick buildings were later plastered over, perhaps as a maintenance strategy, until it became the norm.  In a brief interview with  Aleksy Petrovich Bichkov,  [Алексей Петрович Бычков] of the Novgorod region department of Culture (Historical Preservation Office essentially), I mentioned my curiosity and his reply was that churches were of course originally brick but that the white plaster had become fixed in people's minds as symbolic of Russian church architecture.  And that in some cases of restoration plaster was removed to reveal the brick, but it was more difficult to maintain in that condition.
This is a familiar dilemma in preservation approach because of the significance that attaches to later architectural alterations when enough time has passed to become fixed in the culture.