PHOTO: the Russian Crown Jewels, confiscated past the Bolsheviks

There is no greater example of such a big-scale and criminal auction in history, than that of the jewels of the Russian Purple Court – perhaps, the finest collection in the world. The Bolsheviks inherited an impressive legacy, and wasted footling time in profiting from the sale of many pieces to eager buyers in the West during the 1920s.

Interesting testimonies accept survived to this day almost how the jewels were sorted and catalogued, and how the fate of these historically important treasures was determined. They are today preserved in the RGASPI (Russian State Archive of Social and Political History) in Moscow.

PHOTO: early on 20th century view of the Gokhran building in Nastasinsky Lane in Moscow. Gokhran was created in 1920, in the commencement post-revolutionary years, the Gokhran nerveless jewels from the Romanovs, the Armoury, the Russian Orthodox Church, also every bit valuables confiscated from private individuals. Many of these items were sold abroad.

Gokhran

The Bolsheviks made their first try to sell the Romanov jewels in May 1918. Then, in New York, community officers detained 2 visitors with jewels (worth 350 thousand rubles) that belonged to M Duchess Olga Alexandrovna (1882-1960), the youngest girl of Emperor Alexander III.

The following year, the founding congress of the Third Communist International was held in Moscow. From that fourth dimension, the agents of the Communist International (Comintern) regularly exported gold jewellery and precious stones from Moscow. At first, there was practically no command over the agents, so many items were stolen rather than helping to "finance a globe revolution".

In club to stop this "lawlessness", in February 1920, "Gokhran was created to centralize, store and account for all values ​​confiscated by the RSFSR, consisting of gold, platinum, silverish bullion, diamonds, coloured precious stones and pearls". The dearth that began in the summer of 1921 forced the Bolsheviks to await for funds to buy bread. In improver, Poland had to exist paid off. According to the Riga Peace Treaty of 1921, the western lands of Ukraine and Belarus were withdrawn to Poland, in add-on to this, the Bolsheviks pledged to pay Poland xxx meg gold rubles within a year.

Here they remembered the crown jewels that were kept in the basements of the Armoury (they were brought here from St. petersburg at the beginning of the First World War, without inventories, and in 1917 jewels from the "Regal palaces" were added). Crown values ​​were forbidden to give, change or sell past the prescript of Peter I, issued in 1719. For most 200 years, the Imperial Treasury was only replenished. Needless to say, the Bolsheviks ignored the autocrat'south Royal decrees. The Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU outlined a program for the implementation of the and then-called "Romanov Jewels". At beginning, the Bolsheviks only planned to sell the treasure, simply in the stop they decided to sell the jewels away for difficult currency. Before the auction, the treasures had to exist sorted and evaluated. Gokhran, still, lacked the specialists to behave out such a task. Back in 1921, after thefts were discovered, three appraisers were shot, while many were imprisoned. Therefore, the Deputy People's Commissar for Finance Krasnoshchekov in Leningrad reached an understanding with one-time experts and jewellers from Faberge: Franz, Kotler, Maseev, Mekhov, Utkin, and Bock. They started to work for Gokhran, and began to sort and evaluate the Romanovs jewels.

Photo: appraisers sort and catalogue the Romanov jewels and other items

The boxes of the "former tsarina"

On 8th March 1922, boxes marked with the "property of the "sometime tsarina" (the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna) were opened in the Armoury Chamber of the Moscow Kremlin. Two commissions were in charge of jewels: the kickoff in the Armoury was responsible for sorting and creating an inventory; while the second sorted and evaluated them at Gokhran.

"In warm fur coats with raised collars, we walked through the frozen rooms of the Armoury," later on recalled a member of the committee, Academician Fersman. – "They brought boxes, there were five of them, amid them a heavy atomic number 26 breast, tied, with large wax seals. Everything was whole. An experienced locksmith easily, without a primal, opened an unpretentious, very bad lock. Inside there were jewels of the former Russian Courtroom, each ane hastily wrapped in tissue paper. With our hands freezing from the cold, we took out one sparkling precious stone after some other. There were no inventories found among the jewels."

The following day, Kotler and Franz (both "serious jewellers," according to Trotsky), said that "if there was a buyer for these valuables, and then the judge would be 458,700,000 gold rubles". And this, in addition to the coronation treasures, which lay in 2 split up boxes and were estimated "at more 7 million gilt rubles." The jewels were examined hastily, within an hour and a half, without a detailed determination of the quality of the stones. The Bolsheviks questioned how much the gems would sell for if they were sold equally a dissever commodity (they feared a scandal in Europe that could arise in connection with the sale of the crown jewels), experts estimated the amount of 162 meg 625 thousand gilt rubles.

The members of the committee were amazed. Truly cute jewels that belonged to the House of the Romanovs … For example, a diamond necklace with a sapphire cost 3 million rubles, diamond pendants 5 million. The amounts are impressive. Especially when you consider how much these treasures are worth now. For instance, the Faberge "Lilies of the Valley" Easter Egg, which in 1898 Nicholas II presented to his married woman Alexandra Feodorovna, cost 6,700 rubles. A little more than a century later, it sold for $10-12 meg USD at Sotheby'south, acquired by Viktor Vekselberg and at present on display at the Faberge Museum in Petrograd.

Every bit a outcome of such an optimistic assessment, the treasures were quickly (note, once more without making inventories) from the Armoury to the Gokhran edifice in Nastasinsky Lane in Moscow. In the boxes from the palace of Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, in addition to the empress's jewels, rare works of jewellery were kept. Only a few of these items later ended upward in Soviet museums, while the rest were sold cheaply to foreigners …

Photograph: the Majestic Crown of Russian federation can be seen on the table among two Faberge eggs

Poles – the all-time diamonds

By mid-May, the sorting and appraisal of the crown jewels of the Empresses Maria Feodorovna and Alexandra Feodorovna in Gokhran had been completed. The items of the "one-time House of Romanov" were divided into three categories, taking into account, first of all, the value of the stones, the artistry of the work and the historical significance of the item. The showtime category – the inviolable fund – included 366 items valued at 654,935,000 rubles, of which the coronation regalia busy with selected diamonds and pearls was valued at 375 1000000 rubles. As reported to Leon Trotsky, Deputy Special Commissioner of the Council of People's Commissars (Council of People's Commissars) for the registration and concentration of the values ​​Georgy Bazilevich wrote, "when selling these items abroad, the receipt of 300,000,000 rubles is guaranteed." Products of the second category, which had historical and creative value, were estimated at vii,382,200 rubles.

At the cease of his work, Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars and the Quango of Labor and Defence force Alexei Rykov asked Faberge and Fersman if it was possible to realize coronation values ​​in the foreign market place. They answered: it is possible, although there should exist no rush. Simply the Bolsheviks were in a hurry to sell these pieces for the much coveted foreign currency they hoped to gain from such a sale.

In 1922, emeralds from Gokhran were sold in London and Amsterdam under the guise of those mined in the Urals. A yr after, Gokhran pearls and diamonds were brought to Amsterdam. In the years post-obit, the Bolsheviks continued to quietly sell diamonds and pearls from Gokhran in Paris.

Equally for the debt to the Poles, they decided to repay information technology with jewels. Bazilevich sent Trotsky a memo marked "Top Secret", which provides a brief estimate of the value of the former "Firm of Romanov and valuables handed to Poland nether the Riga Treaty":

"In the preparation of of the Bolshevik debt to be paid to Poland the finest diamonds, pearls and coloured stones were selected. In addition to the stones, Gokhran selected gold items, including chains, rings, cigarette cases, bags, etc. in the corporeality of ii.728.589 rubles … ".

PHOTO: the Romanov jewels on display in Moscow, 1920s

Wholesale export

The apogee of the work of the Gokhran experts was the advent in 1925-1926 of four issues of the illustrated catalogue "The Diamond Fund of the USSR". The publication was translated into English language, French and German in lodge to attract foreign buyers and was distributed in Europe.

As a result, "fine art connoisseur" Norman Weiss was not long in coming. He purchased items from the Diamond Fund in bulk, weighing nine.644 kilograms. The masterpieces of Russian jewellery art toll him 50 thousand pounds! In 1927, the resourceful merchant held an sale in London "Jewels of the Russian State". The majestic wedding crown, a diamond diadem, and the jewels of Empress Catherine II "floated abroad" from him.

While the crown jewels were being sold in London, the head of the Armoury Sleeping accommodation Dmitry Ivanov (he as well participated in the cataloguing of the Romanov jewels in 1922) begged the officials to return the museum items sold by Gokhran. His efforts, nonetheless, were in vain. At the kickoff of 1930, Ivanov became aware of the upcoming seizures of items from Russian museums to be sold abroad. Ivanov could no longer tolerate the theft and auction of Russia'due south treasures, and concluded upward committing suicide.

In 1932, the Romanov treasures bought by Armand Hammer could be purchased at American department stores. Later, he opened an antique shop, which sold Easter eggs that belonged to the empresses, icons in jewelled frames of Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna, a Fabergé cigarette case commissioned by Maria Feodorovna, her notebook embossed with her monogram and an Imperial crown, among many other items.

Of the 773 items of the Diamond Fund, 569 were sold in the 1920s – 1930s. These Romanov treasures were stolen from the Russian Imperial Family unit past the Bolsheviks, and bought upward past greedy, materialistic buyers in the West. It is hardly possible to find in history an example of such a large-scale and criminal sale.

Farther reading: I highly recommend History'south Greatest Heist: The Looting of Russian federation by the Bolsheviks by Sean McMeekin. Published past Yale University Press in 2009

© Paul Gilbert. 9 October 2020

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