An eighteenth-century manor survived Napoleon's invasion, revolution, nationalisation, collectivisation and the Great Patriotic War, but did not survive a drunken peasant

An eighteenth-century manor survived Napoleon's invasion, revolution, nationalisation, collectivisation and the Great Patriotic War, but did not survive a drunken peasant. In the 1950s it was burnt down by hard-drinking collective farmers who decided to warm themselves on a cold night within the walls of the great manor palace, where hemp fibre was being stored. A fire broke out, and the palace was destroyed, gutted completely.

For many years afterwards the building stood without roof or floors, slowly crumbling. Even today not everyone knows the true cause of Khmelita's desolation in the mid-twentieth century, and many put its decline down to the accursed fascists.

In the perfectly prosperous years of Soviet power the splendid palace was a veritable ruin: nothing remained but walls. The state's attitude to the nobleman's nest was one of indifference. Furtseva, when appealed to for help in similar cases, would reply: "we have plenty of monuments as it is".

In 1967 the celebrated restorer and guardian of Russian antiquity Pyotr Baranovsky came here with his pupil Viktor Kulakov, who would later take on the restoration of the ruined manor. And restore it he did. Or rather, he has been restoring it for the last 50 years. The very thought of this beauty, recreated by the will, the obstinacy and the strength of a single man, is deeply inspiring.