Slowly, with a delicate touch and a sure hand, she removed each layer of newsprint. Then, staring back at her from behind the papers was a singular, beautifully-rendered eye. She removed more and more of the paper. Knowing that devout monks with very little religious training would sometimes complete icons of such intense beauty driven solely by faith, she was struck by the disregard with which the artwork was covered. She decided to follow restoration work as a career.
Majestic structures get as little respect in Russia as they sometimes do in the United States.
If you can't imagine why anyone would have planned to tear down Grand Central in the 1950s to replace it with an office building, consider Josef Stalin's plan years ago to raze the historic St. Basil's Cathedral in Red Square, simply because it stood in the way of his marching army. In a last-ditch effort, Yashina and her friends invited Stalin to visit the church, but the night before held a marathon restoration effort, spending all night painting and washing. The next day, when Stalin arrived, he was so moved by what he saw he decided to spare the church. But cries for preservation weren't always successful. In Moscow they used to have a nice cathedral.