When Vadim Anikin stood beneath the excavator's scoop in Neskuchny Garden with a hundred other Muscovites recently, he wasn't defending his own apartment from demolition.


"I live a dozen of blocks away from there, and a construction project will not hurt my building," said Anikin. "But I do care about preserving the unity of the historical ensemble of Neskuchny Sad."


Anikin, 57, who is head of a volunteer committee on the preservation of Moscow historical sites, is running a campaign to prevent construction of two modern apartment buildings on the territory of Neskuchny Sad, a garden since the 18th century and one of the Moscow's oldest and most beloved green spaces.


"According to the construction project, flower beds and hothouses built in the time of Catherine the Great will be demolished," said Anikin. "And it will inevitably destroy the whole garden landscape."


Neskuchny Sad, a quiet corner near Gorky Park, is just one of the many Moscow historical sites that Anikin struggles to rescue from demolition or careless reconstruction.


His tiny office on Pokrovsky Bulvar is heaped with photographs of old Moscow, letters of protest to the city construction department and to Mayor Yury Luzhkov.


"Our committee doesn't depend financially on any commercial or governmental structures, that's why I can talk openly," said Anikin, who has written three volumes of articles -- "Moscow Lanes," "Moscow Mansions" and "Moscow Courtyards" -- on the abuse of historical sites in Moscow. Almost 100 of his stories have been published over the last few years by local newspapers.


"Isn't it vandalism when commercial firms invade the house memorials of well-known Russian composers and writers such as Prokofiev, Rubinstein, Turgenev?" fumed Anikin. He said he does not object to interior renovations in such houses -- in fact, he said, most of the sites are in terrible disrepair and need revitalizing. But he said that changing the mansions' exteriors destroys the historical significance of the architecture.


The public movement to preserve Russia's architectural heritage began shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution, but then some of its volunteers were persecuted for their interest in the "nobility's past." The movement received official approval only during the 1960s, when the pubic committees were organized across the country.


"Unfortunately, government has now stopped paying attention to public outcry," said Anikin, who has spent almost 30 years guarding Moscow historical sites. "But I am proud that some of my efforts have succeeded."


On his list of recent victories is the Kremlyovskaya Naberezhnaya house of the composer Alexander Alyabyev, who lived in Moscow from 1830 to 1850.


Although Anikin has yet to receive a personal response from Luzhkov, his letters have prompted the Moscow construction department to reconsider the sale and reconstruction of a 19th-century stationery store on the Arbat and a small log house of a legendary 19th-century actor of the Maly Theater, Michael Schepkin.


Anikin, who receives a salary of 400,000 rubles ($90) as one of the few paid members of the preservation society, said he must work as a full-time night watchman at a bookstore to make ends meet.


Anikin fears that Western influences will encroach upon Moscow's unique image. "With concrete and glass buildings erected in its historical center, Moscow is losing its traditional identity," he said. McDonald's restaurants and new Western hotels on Tverskaya Ulitsa impose an absolutely alien architectural sensibility onto the city, he said.


"Old Moscow has always been famous for its small cozy courtyards and low buildings, and well as for its special landscape full of hills and slopes," said Anikin. "And the modern generation should try to keep it."