The fate  of ancient Russian wooden architectural masterpieces is a visivle embodiment of the Russian people's fate in its centuries-old historical section, with all its highest elevations and falls, unthought of  by the commom sense. To a certain degree they reflect also the history of spreading and development of Christianity  in Rus, its pure sources and subsequent pollution. The river of life in long-suffering Russia.
Ancient Russian wooden architecture forms  a mighty stratum of not only Russian, but also of our common, universal architecture .
Since time began they built in Rus 'according to the model and likeness', 'as usual',  'as in old times'. They respected thoughts of their forefathers and strengthened themselves by them.  At the same time all structures -- both small and big -- were not unchanged models, not altering in time and space.Their forms and structure  improved with the development of the people's building skill.
But unchanged remained the idea itself of this skill born by the attitude to life. Its essence consisted in the unity of usefulness  and beauty. The one could not exist without the other. Only that which  could improve the man's life was considered  useful and beautiful. The improvement of  life was understood as the spiritual development of the person, his approach to the absolute ideal  --  God.  The notions of  freedom and human happiness and consequently  of the beauty of life were inseparable from the concept of this ideal. Trifles, unimportant things and phenomena did not exist either in art, or in every-day life. All of them acquired meaningful importance as particles-steps of the developing  consciousness.                              
In the end the whole earthly life of the man  according to the notions of the ancient times represented a test, spiritual struggle freeing the man from dark impulses of the primordial world and in this way  improving this world. The apparent simplicity of the people's  thinking conceals the great wisdom of the nature's dialectics. Yes, it was the nature that the people learnt sense from, looked into,  thought about , comprehending its secrets. That is why the ideas of the Christianity , ideas of harmony  and beauty of the life in Christ  were adopted in Rus  as long-expected. It was more than one  thousand years ago.
These ideas form the philosophy of the universal unity -- the core of the centuries-old flow of Russian culture.
The gist  of the universal unity philosophy  is in  the integral perception of the world, in the 'integral knowledge' understood as a synthesis of faith and knowledge.
Faith is known to get its principles from the God, through a revelation, and not from human reason;  while  knowledge reflected in the construction of philosophical conceptions and scientific research  is based on achievements of reason and experience.
It is reasonable to look for the sources of the universal unity philosophy in the first centuries of Ancient Rus  Christian life, in works  by Metropolitan Ilarion  ('Slovo o Zakone i Blagodati'  -- 'Word about Law and Grace), by Kievan scholar Ioann ( 'Slovo nekoyego kalugera o chetii knig' -- 'Word of a Certain Monk about Reading Books'), by Kirill Turovsky ('Pritchi' -- 'Parables' and 'Slova' -- 'Words') , etc. The founder of the universal unity philosophy is considered to be Vladimir Soloviyov. Its ideas were also developed by such outstanding thinkers of Russia, as S.N. Bulgakov, the Trubetskies (S.N. and Ye.N.), V.F. Ern, S.L. Frank, I.A. Iliin, G.P.Fedotov, V.V. Zenkovsky, N.V.Lossky, L.N. Karsavin, P.A. Florensky, A. Shmeman and others.  
One way or another  the ideas of the universal unity are reflected in the most  significant literary and philosophical works of Russia in the 19th and 20th centuries, including  those written by the Russians living abroad. They are a prevision, presentiment, premonition  of the Russia's spiritual transfiguration.
The integral thinking possessed by our ancestors  who endorced the ideas of  Christianity by heart and  grasped them by reason let the creative man penetrate into the gist of the Devine harmony of the universe -- its indissoluble ties of the spiritual and phyisical  being.
The most characteristic feature of the ancient Russian wooden architecture  is employment of wood not only as a building material, but also as a material of art.  The unity of structural and technical purposes and  architectural and artistic features  is seen in each masterpiece, in each detail. It is both in  the true beauty of the wood itself, adorned by nothing, and in  contrasting combinations of differently treated surfaces of some parts in the building.
It is both in cold, silvery shades of the fir-tree  usually used for boards of roofing and in the warm,
golden colour  of the pine with its  lively, never repeating pattern of the amber  core and  in light sapwood with its unhurried alternation  of dark spots and a  moire play of fibres visible through the sapwood. It is also in the ability of smooth wooden planes, put at different angles, to reflect light in thinkin thinkingdifferent ways, providing a lively  play of light spots and in the skilful use of this property for the achievement of  striking contrasts.
The same unity of the building material and its artistic embodiment, similar to the Devine unity of the man's soul and body -- 'Donôt  you know that your bodies are the temple of the Holy Ghost living in you Whom you have from the God? '/Cor.6.19./ -- is also in the carving of load-bearing posts, where by the way it is felt particularly, because it is possible  to look at it from a small distance and at the same time to see the whole of it. Big springy lines of supporting structures contrast with the rhythm of small patterns. The horizontal  division of the log walls is contrasted also by smooth , as if silken,  planes of window and door surrounds.  Masses of domes covered with scale-like wooden shingles /lemekh/  with their elegantly drawn outlines and tiniest details look out as if alive like the sky -- they are either cloudy as if composed of silvery tears or  are illuminated radiantly by an undecayed joy of living.
We see and feel the all-embracing, cosmic comprehension of  being   in them , in particular  in memorial churches. They are extremely attractive, big and small , impressive and seemingly simple,  resembling a small hut or barn rather than a church or chapel. They warm the soul and fan it with the good. It is difficult  to go away from them. You move away and look back.  You make some more steps and look back again.  Not a quick departure.  Something familiar from the old times and native is felt in them, kind and warm, as your mother's smile, even if she is old, even though hunched, but dearest and closest in the whole world. You will go up to her  in joy, you will go up to her in sorrow --  it is a particle of yourself, particle of  your soul.
If we try to explain the force of the attraction of  ancient Russian wooden architectural masterpieces not by feelings, but by more objective causes, we should characterize it as a unity of architectural and artistic, structural and technical and practical tasks, whose total combination is always naturally beautiful a priori. And this beauty is so natural, that sometimes is almost  not seen. But without it the inner spiritual balance of the man is upset, the comprehension of the harmony of life and its profound meaning disappears. Not everyone can  understand this loss, but all of us --together and separately -- even if only subconsciously  respond to it.
And now let us look at the memorial churches and try  according to the above said to feel and comprehend them. Let us try to understand their perfection. Why ?  Because it is impossible to withdraw anything from their architectural appearance, as well as  there appears no thought  to add  anything. Here the beauty and measure reign, that is the most important condition which since olden times  was written in ' ryadny gramoty'  /contracts/  for the construction of wooden churches  '...and to build as in the old times, as the beauty and measure will  tell'.  Such qualities cannot appear from nothing. Their original mother  was a long and profound human thought. And it is present in every masterpiece, as an  injunction to the man.       
The Transfiguration Cathedral in Kizhi with its twenty-two domes is a symbol of  the multidomed unity in Christ; the Assumption  Church in Kondopoga, 'the acme of Russian shatyor /high pyramidal, usually octagonal roof/ wooden architecture  is a symbol of roaring of the human
soul to the sky, to the light -- my feet are on the ground, my head is in the sky; the cathedral with three shatyors in Kem is  a personification of the stable unity of the Devine Trinity and -- in earthly meaning -- of the heroic spirit of Christians... 'Consoler, the Holy Ghost , Whom the Father will send  for me,  will teach you everything and will remind you of everything...' /John. 15. 23/; 'Let  your heart be not confused and not frightened.' /John, 14. 27/... 
The names proper of some of the church's parts / 'glava'  -- 'head' -- dome, 'sheya' --''neck' -- narrow drum,  'stopa' -- 'foot' -- basement,  'glaznitsy' --  'eye-sockets' -- windows/ correspond symbolically to the human image. The severe beauty of architecture, its wise simplicity /not simplification/ , naturalness are  images of the Truth. 'The first to be created by  the God was the truth in men' -- this ancient postulate is the starting point  of the attitude of a true Christian. It is not  by chance that in the Russian language the word 'khristianin' /Christian/ and 'krestianin' /peasant/  are  in fact the same thing. 
As an original field  of the national culture the ancient Russian  wooden architecture was formed in those bygone times, when in Rus 'both princes and boyars and clergy and people and town armed detachments and other armed detachments  -- all classes and  all strata of the population  were full of  the same spirit, the same opinions, uniform notions, the same demand  for the common good.' (I.V. Kiriyevsky).
It was at that time that Grace came to reign  in wooden architecture. And it was based on the laws of the construction of the architectural form tested  for centuries. Grace is known to be above Law. It is from the God. That is why when building churches  contracts described their meaningful composition rather than the idea of construction itself: to erect a shatyor octagon on a quadrangle as in the Assumption Church in Kondopoga, a multidomed  'dvadtsatistenok' ('twenty-wall church' -- an octagonal church with four arms i.e. with twenty walls), that is the same octagon, but standing directly on the ground with four prirubs (annexes) like the Transfiguration  Church in Kizhi; or maybe instead of annexes  to encircle the octagon with  a 'nishchevnik-gallery' ('nishchevnik' -- 'for  beggars') like StGeorge's Church  from the village of  Vershiny, which stands now in 'Maly Korely', an open air museum near Arkhangelsk; to build a small church or a chapel of the 'kletsky' type (consisting of no less than two rect
Architects-carpenters were invited , as a rule, to build only  big churches. Small churches and chapels were built often by people themselves. Sometimes it took only one day  to build one.  Votive churches. Wood of course was prepared beforehand.  Such 'one-day' churches are a special phenomenon in the life of peasants, characteristic only of Russia.
Churches dominated the surrounding space as a visible Devine source in earthly being. Peasants' houses and other structures , also  built of logs, were like their younger brothers and sisters. They prepared one for the perception of the Devine,  the church. The grandeur of the church did not overwhelm. It was natural. Architecture  of the nearby log houses wth blind gables under board roofs, with heavy 'okhlupni '(logs with triangular grooves placed on and along the ridge of a roof), and fanciful 'kuritsas' (rafters with a  hook-shaped end supporting tht gutter),  on these roofs, with strict elegant windows and cordial solemnity  of high porches   displayed all  elements necessary for creating bright and complex composition  of  the church, the leading -- in all meanings of this word --image of an architectural and natural ensemble which appeared already at the edge of the village.   It was  the unity of earthly  beauty with the beauty of things made by human hands, it was 'world-embracing assembly'  (Prince
The Holy Ghost hovered above that log  Jerusalem.
We know that according to the formula of the IVth Oecumenical Council in Christ  two natures -- Devine and human are united. They are united  'separately', but at the same time 
'inseparably'. Such is also the essence of ancient Russian wooden architecture in whose masterpieces the  natural  Devine  source is linked inseparably with practical requirements of living. It is that they differ in from all other structures, also built of wood, but in which wood itself is used mainly  only as a building material, and its texture, its soul is not revealed.
And while ancient Russian icon painting is called 'speculation in paints', ancient Russian wooden architecture can be justly called -- speculation in forms.                 
Its examples have been retained mostly in northern Russia.   As early as the beginning of the 20th century painters called this area 'Russian Rome'. 
Little is left from the former beauty of northern  Russian villages. The causes are not only in the seven Bolshevist decades. They lie more deeply. They are to be looked for in the history of the Russian church, in its spiritual unity with the people and gradual estrangement, expressed in politization and bureaucratization of the church clergy after the appearance of the dissidence in the mid 17th century and reforms of Peter I in the late 17th century - the early 18th century. In 1721 Synod was established, the control of which was entrusted to the chief-prosecutor. Since the early 19th century  the word 'church' diappeared from official documents. It was replaced by  'administration of Orthodox confession'.
Architectural images change radically, and  they are distorted purposefully  in wooden architecture. Dry and featureless boarding covers log frames of churches inside and outside;  'lemekh' of domes is replaced by iron; interiors acquire bright colours, gilt; the notion of 'beautiful' is replaced by the notion of'expensive' and due to the absence of the latter -- by its imitation, pitiful imitation. Rebuilt edifices lost the former integrity, force and expressiveness of their architectural image,acquiring instead features of formal uniformed architecture... And only original composition and characteristic outlines of the spoilt buildings helped to guess that works of real and great art are concealed  under the dry and lifeless case of the later layers  (churches in the villages of Krasnaya Lyaga, Permogoriye, Piyala in Archangelskaya Region, Varauga, Kandalaksha,  Kovda in Murmanskaya Region, Yandomozero, Polya, Kosmozero in  Karelia). And we can add  Kizhi, besides  a lot of other masterpices of wooden arch
All these barbaric distortions of ancient churches  were called  'splendid renovation of dissident churches.'
My father, Academician Aleksandr Opolovnikov tried to reveal  the true original beauty of ancient Russian wooden architectural masterpieces in each of his restoration works. All his creative life -- which  is more than half a century  -- is devoted to the cause of resurrection from non-existence of wooden relics of Russia. In 1991 he established  the 'Opolo' firm, whose work is based  on the  tremendous archive of Opolovnikov,  in fact resurrecting  the whole 'Russian Rome'.  We hope  that in future on the base of this archive all wooden churches will be built, churches that are called 'in the Russian style', reflecting the real culture of   Russia, and not  its substitute.

                                                            Ye.A. Opolovnikova,
                                                             Candidate of  Achitecture,
                                                              Chairperson of the Russian Subcommittee
                                                              on Wood, ICOMOS  International Committee