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'We could not sleep for two days, listening and waiting for every scrap of news,' Kuchumov wrote in one of the letters given to us by his granddaughter.24 He found a 'cherished bottle of wine' and produced some goblets that had belonged to the tsars. 'People drank for the success of the Red Army. They were inspired and agitated, hopeful too. From this day on the packing begins. Everyone has the same objective - to return the treasures.'

In February 1944 Kuchumov boarded a train in Novosibirsk, summoned back home by a telegram from the Leningrad IsPolKom, 'travelling in a lettered train carriage, on a seat as if I was a foreign diplomat'. It was March before he arrived in 'our favourite beautiful Leningrad that still looks the same, but advanced in age, as a man after a wasting disease'. But before he had time to dwell on the terrible scenes of death and destruction that greeted him, the authorities promoted him to Chief of the Department of Museums and Memorials and head of Leningrad's Central Stores. Kuchumov was placed in charge of returning all evacuated treasures to their original palace locations.

Soviet troops re-entering the Catherine Palace, 1944

He immediately asked for permission to visit the Catherine Palace. 'The situation in the suburbs, I hear, is much worse, but I have not seen it for myself yet. The permit to the suburbs is in the process of validation and I will get it in two or three days. I hear that quite a few items have been found in the fields around Gatchina, pieces of furniture from Nicholas I,' Kuchumov wrote.

On 27 April 1944 the permit arrived and, accompanied by photographer Mikhail Velichko, Kuchumov 'took a tram to the outpost of the Four Hands, near the Middle Turnpike, and waited till a passing car bound for Pushkin came'. It was 'impossible to recognize the land, the traces of bitter battles are to be seen everywhere... pillboxes, obstacles, shell-holes, barbed wire and signs for mines are all about. Bodies in the road,' he wrote.

Kuchumov recorded practically every footstep and sent these accounts to his colleagues in Novosibirsk - letters that Vica Plauda now cherishes.

I will describe every unit as I see it with my own eyes,' Kuchumov wrote.

The parkland was 'ten stems without branches', a 'fountain's cup lies on the pitted ground, high burdocks and goosefeet grow on the places of former houses'. Along the way where once there were villages were only 'empty boxes, burnt from inside. Nuovo Suzi gone. Rekholovo demolished.'

Kuchumov glimpsed Pushkin in the distance across 'ditches, trenches, numerous rows of barbed wire, minefields'. There were mountains of abandoned helmets, great pyramids of German gas masks. 'A hurricane has swept over the park.' Along the roadside was a 'garbage heap of palatial doors, frames and even pieces of furniture'. He recognized a broken chair from the Silver Dining Room. What had happened to the Amber Room, the thing he had decided to disguise rather than evacuate?

Kuchumov and Velichko reached the Lyceum. 'Rejoice! The Pushkin statue is undamaged! My dream has come true: I am in Pushkin, I am home.' Then Kuchumov noticed 'five thick ropes hanging from the branches of the old birch before the church'. Here was the gallows used by the Gestapo: 'dreadful pictures were to be seen here... Oh, if only the walls could talk'. Despite his 'pain and fear', the curator made his way to the blue-and-gold-painted gates of the Catherine Palace, determined to complete the task he had set out to accomplish. 'I enter the Great Courtyard through the bright opened gates. I feel pain and fear while looking at the destroyed palace, empty and burnt. The sky is to be seen through the windows. The mighty statues of athletes are broken. Charred beams, broken things lie around.'

Strewn across the Great Courtyard was 'garbage, iron beds, broken furniture, scrap, dung, boxes from mines and shells and unbelievable variety of dirty clothes, a queasy, filthy stench'. Stepping gingerly through the mess,