With bitter regret and concern for the preservation of the monument, Nikolay Roerich wrote in his travel notebook: “The Smolensk walls. People talk a lot about Smolensk walls. Now you can already hope that the Boris’s construction will not be destroyed, however, of course, you should not dream of restoring walls and towers in their original form. Although one cannot touch the walls themselves, it is not forbidden to export sand from ancient ditches and ramparts. Take out the soil from under the walls, and the rest ... will be finished by time itself. Instead of a wonderful historical landscape, we see a ruin, and next to it, a mass of sandy dumps. It is time not only to stop destroying the monument itself, but also to stop making nasty things around it.”