He is credited with saving Saint Basil's Cathedral from destruction in the early 1930s, founding and managing the Kolomenskoye and Andrei Rublev museums, and developing modern restoration technologies.

In late 1920s, in the middle of anti-religious campaigns, he restored Saint Basil's Cathedral in Red Square, clearing the medieval landmark from alterations of later centuries.

From 1927 to 1934, he acquired and preserved wooden architecture from the Russian countryside, notably the House of Peter I which he brought from Arkhangelsk, the fortress tower of Sumskoy Ostrog on the White Sea, the Honey-Mead Brewery from Preobrazhenskoye [ru], and others.

Nikolai Savin, manager of Dorogobuzh museum, chose to flee his hometown; Pogodin lost his job as a "social alien".

Baranovsky himself received a formal reprimand in 1931 but was arrested later, in 1934, accused of Anti-Soviet propaganda, and sentenced to an exile in Mariinsk, where he earned a "Siberian Camp Udarnik" badge.