A security exercise takes place along the River Thames on January 19, 2012 in London, England. The exercise including around 44 police officers, 94 military personnel, 15 boats and a Royal Navy Lynx helicopter was conducted by both the Metropolitan Police and the Royal Marines and designed to test their joint capability ahead of the 2012 London Olympic Games. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

Paramilitary policemen carry seized crystal meth at Boshe village, Lufeng, Guangdong province, December 29, 2013. Police in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong have seized nearly three tonnes of the drug crystal methamphetamine and arrested 182 people in raids on a village notorious for producing narcotics. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)

A picture made available on 16 August 2016 shows a young dare devil motorbike rider, Karmila Purba, 18, reaching for a tip while riding her motorbike inside a barrel locally known as “Tong Setan” or Davil's Barrel, at a traditional night carnival in Deliserdang, North Sumatra, Indonesia, 13 August 2016. (Photo by Dedi Sinuhaji/EPA)

Yingluck Shinawatra speaks with members of Parliament as the Thai parliament officially elected her as the country's first female Prime Minister August 5, 2011 in Bangkok, Thailand. In the lower house, 296 of the legislature's 500 members voted for Yingluck. Three members voted against and 197 abstained.Thai's cast their ballots back on July 3, 2011. Yingluck Shinawatra, is the younger sister of fugitive former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a 2006 coup. This is Thailand's 4th election on 7 years as the country continues on a bumpy road to democracy.
(Photo by Paula Bronstein /Getty Images)

Firefighters attempt to put out a fire at an abandoned building with the protection of St. Louis City Police in St. Louis, Missouri August 19, 2015. Police fatally shot a black man they say pointed a gun at them, drawing angry crowds and recalling the racial tensions sparked by the killing of an unarmed African-American teen in nearby Ferguson, Missouri, just over a year ago. (Photo by Lawrence Bryant/Reuters)

In modern Russia there are no free elections, therefore the political elite is almost constant.

Photo: Valentina Matvienko, Mayor of St. Petersburg, attends the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) on June 17, 2011 in St. Petersburg, Russia. Global business leaders have gathered in Russia for the three-day conference. (Photo by Alexander Aleshkin/Epsilon/Getty Images)

A rescue worker holds an injured boy after what activists said were airstrikes carried out by the Russian air force in Idlib city, Syria December 20, 2015. (Photo by Ammar Abdullah/Reuters)

While communism, collectivism, worms, dry rot and casual looting failed to destroy the majestic wooden churches of Russia, it may be ordinary neglect that finally does them in. Dwindled now to several hundred remaining examples, these glories of vernacular architecture lie scattered amid the vastness of the world’s largest country. Just over a decade ago, Richard Davies, a British architectural photographer, struck out on a mission to record the fragile and poetic structures. Austerely beautiful and haunting, “Wooden Churches: Traveling in the Russian North” (White Sea Publishing; $132) is the result. Covering thousands of miles, Mr. Davies described how he and the writer Matilda Moreton tracked down the survivors from among the thousands of onion-domed structures built after Prince Vladimir converted to Christianity in 988.