In 1941, following the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War, together with professors and students of the Academy of Arts he evacuated to Moscow and then to Samarkand; before leaving for Central Asia, he took part in an exhibition of the best works of Soviet artists.

The initiators of another repressive ideological campaign, in this case, first of all, Yevgeny Vuchetich and Zair Azgur, freed Soviet culture from "foreign elements".

[2] In 1989, a memorial plaque was installed at the house on 29 Lieutenant Schmidt Embankment in Saint Petersburg where he lived.

As an artist of international reputation, he was made a leader of the Soviet sculptor's union until the 1950s when the younger practitioners of socialist realism finally replaced him.

He was also a teacher for many years at the Academy of Arts of the USSR and the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture where he had studied as a young man.