The history of the 20th century in Russia is marked by a series of upheavals that repeatedly tested the country and its heritage. Many religious monuments—churches, monasteries, and chapels—were deliberately destroyed by the Soviet regime, falling into disrepair, and crumbling. Rapid development and urbanization, in turn, did not contribute to the preservation of the historic architecture of Russian cities. Many notable buildings perished during World War II. Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky gave us a tremendous gift by capturing in color everything we today call 'vanishing nature': wooden architecture, monastic architecture, noble estates, peasant settlements, and everyday life. In his photographs, Russia on the threshold of the 20th century seems frozen in anticipation of the coming upheavals. Neither the contemporaneously widespread newsreels nor paintings—eloquent witnesses of the era, yet still somewhat unreliable—preserved this state. Prokudin-Gorsky's discoveries in color photography yielded unique material that now serves as a foundation for a wide range of fields of study and is of interest not only to antiquity enthusiasts. This book offers an insight into this material. The album is accompanied by a text by Tatyana Sokhareva.