Now that the Red Army has driven the last fascist aggressors from our country, the time has come to think of the restoration of those fine monuments of art and antiquity which the German vandals outraged in malicious frenzy. Some few items have already been restored. Of various other monuments which astonished the world by their perfection, nothing is left but their foundations, but we can and must recreate at any cost whatever has in any degree survived. The world has never before witnessed a restoration task of such grandiose dimensions as confronts our country in the next decades.

In its aims, the theory and practice of the modern scientific restoration of artistic monuments is considerably different from the practice of the mid-nineteenth century.