Short answers, pulled from the story.
Vasily Ivanovich Bazhenov was born in 1737 or 1738, though the exact year and place remain unknown. Historians still debate whether he arrived in Moscow or in the village of Dolskoye near Maloyaroslavets.
Catherine II shut down the Grand Kremlin Palace project in 1775 citing damage to the cathedral and unsuitable geology. The largest neoclassical complex ever conceived in Europe stretched 2,100 feet but never rose above ground level due to landslides and political concerns.
Matvey Kazakov completed the old downtown core of the University in 1793 after Bazhenov abandoned the project. Bazhenov initially designed Tsaritsyno starting in summer 1775 with a second master plan approved in spring 1776 before Catherine halted construction.
Bazhenov spent nearly a decade on a dead-end university campus project for Prokofi Demidov while remaining bankrupt at the mercy of his benefactor. He accepted an uninspiring job as architect of Kronstadt admiralty in April 1792 and died shortly after becoming vice-president of the Imperial Academy of Arts in 1796.
Pashkov House is attributed to him through nineteenth-century tradition supported by the majority of twentieth-century researchers and retains its original external appearance from 1784 to 1787. Yushkov House on Myasnitskaya Street is simply attributed to Bazhenov without definitive proof while other residences stand under unknown architect headings.