Kondopoga, Russia, August 16, 2018
pravlife.org A great cultural and spiritual landmark of the Russian north was lost on Friday when a high schooler who identifies as a Satanist set fire to a unique and beautiful 18th-century wooden church in the Karelian village of Kondopoga.
95% of the entire Church of the Dormition was destroyed, and experts are currently working on estimating the damage and deciding whether to rebuild the architectural beauty.
According to at least one of them, Andrei Bode, an expert in the wooden architecture of the Russian north and the head architect of a local restoration design workshop, the church must be rebuilt, and all the necessary documents and materials are already available to do so. A he explained to TASS, there was a plan already in 2015 to restore the church, and so experts had already thoroughly examined the building.
According to Bode, restorers had managed to take the necessary measurements and study the design features of the now-destroyed church. “We know the site well, and the dimensional drawings were made in a size to make a good copy, a good recreation,” Bode explained.
Though the 2015 project was not implemented, the Ministry of Culture has already contacted Bode’s company about it, and the issue of rebuilding the church is now being discussed.
According to Andrei, the reconstruction of the church on the historic site is necessary, despite the fact that the original is lost forever. “This is a huge loss for Russian culture, because it was really the best, the most beautiful wooden church, the ‘face’ of wooden architecture. The loss is irreplaceable—that’s clear, we have already lost the original. But, it was an object of such value and of such artistic and architectural qualities that it is of course necessary to recreate it,” said the architect.
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