Trophies of the great patriotic war, inherited by the ussr (7 photos). Forgotten Names: German Collector Otto Krebs Trophy Art

After the end of the Great Patriotic War, many trophies were exported from occupied Germany to the USSR. Were becoming trophies various subjects arts, military equipment and much more. This post will introduce us to the most interesting trophies of the war.

Zhukov's Mercedes

At the end of the war, Marshal Zhukov became the owner of an armored Mercedes, designed by order of Hitler "for the people necessary for the Reich." Zhukov did not like Willys, and the shortened Mercedes-Benz-770k sedan turned out to be very useful. This high-speed and safe car with a 400-horsepower engine was used by the marshal almost everywhere - he refused to ride in it only to accept surrender.

"German armor"

It is known that the Red Army fought on captured armored vehicles, but few people know that it was doing this already in the early days of the war. Thus, in the "combat log of the 34th Panzer Division" it is said about the capture of 12 German tanks on June 28-29, 1941, which were used "to fire from place at the enemy's artillery."
During one of the counterattacks of the Western Front on July 7, military technician Ryazanov broke into the German rear on his T-26 tank and fought the enemy for 24 hours. He returned to his friends in the captured Pz. III ".
Along with tanks, the Soviet military often used German self-propelled guns. For example, in August 1941, during the defense of Kiev, two fully operational "StuG III" were captured. Junior Lieutenant Klimov fought very successfully on self-propelled guns: in one of the battles, being in "StuG III", in one day of the battle he destroyed two German tanks, an armored personnel carrier and two trucks for which he was awarded the Order of the Red Star. In general, during the war years, domestic repair plants brought back to life at least 800 German tanks and self-propelled guns. Armored vehicles of the Wehrmacht came to the court and were used even after the war.

"U-250"

On July 30, 1944, the German submarine U-250 was sunk by Soviet boats in the Gulf of Finland. The decision to raise it was made almost immediately, but a rocky bank at a depth of 33 meters and German bombs dragged out the process. Only on September 14, the submarine was raised and towed to Kronstadt.
During the inspection of the compartments, valuable documents were found, an Enigma-M encryption machine, as well as T-5 homing acoustic torpedoes. However, the Soviet command was more interested in the boat itself - as an example of German shipbuilding. They were going to adopt the German experience in the USSR. On April 20, 1945, "U-250" was added to the USSR Navy under the name "TS-14" (trophy medium), but it could not be used due to the lack of the necessary spare parts. After 4 months, the submarine was excluded from the lists and sent for scrap.

"Dora"

When Soviet troops reached the German training ground in Hilbersleben, many valuable finds awaited them, but especially the military and personally Stalin's attention was attracted by the super-heavy 800-mm Dora artillery gun developed by the Krupp company.
This cannon - the fruit of many years of searching - cost the German treasury 10 million Reichsmarks. The gun owes its name to the wife of the chief designer Erich Müller. The project was prepared in 1937, but the first prototype was released only in 1941.
The characteristics of the giant are striking even now: "Dora" fired with 7.1-ton concrete-piercing and 4.8-ton high-explosive shells, its barrel length - 32.5 m, weight - 400 tons, vertical guidance angle - 65 °, range - 45 km. The striking ability was also impressive: armor 1 m thick, concrete - 7 m, hard ground - 30 m.
The speed of the projectile was such that at first an explosion was heard, then the whistle of a flying warhead, and only then the sound of a shot reached.
The history of Dora ended in 1960: the gun was cut into pieces and melted down in the open-hearth of the Barrikady plant. The shells detonated at the Prudboy training ground.

Dresden gallery

The search for paintings from the Dresden Gallery looked like a detective story, but ended successfully, and in the end, the paintings of European masters made it safely to Moscow. The Berlin newspaper "Tagesspiel" then wrote: "These things were taken as compensation for the destroyed Russian museums of Leningrad, Novgorod and Kiev. Of course, the Russians will never give up their booty. "
Almost all the paintings arrived damaged, but the task of the Soviet restorers was facilitated by the attached notes about the damaged places. The most complex works were made by the artist State Museum fine arts them. A. S. Pushkin Pavel Korin. We owe him the preservation of the masterpieces of Titian and Rubens.
From May 2 to August 20, 1955, an exhibition of paintings by the Dresden Art Gallery was held in Moscow, which was attended by 1,200,000 people. On the day of the closing ceremony of the exhibition, an act was signed on the transfer of the first painting to the GDR - it turned out to be "Portrait of a Young Man" by Dürer. A total of 1,240 canvases were returned to East Germany. To transport paintings and other property, 300 railway cars were needed.

Troy Gold

Most researchers believe that the most valuable Soviet trophy of World War II was the "Gold of Troy". The "Priam's Treasure" (as the "Gold of Troy" was originally called), found by Heinrich Schliemann, consisted of almost 9 thousand items - gold diadems, silver clasps, buttons, chains, copper axes and other items made of precious metals.
The Germans carefully hid the "Trojan Treasures" in one of the towers of the air defense system on the territory of the Berlin Zoo. Continuous bombing and shelling destroyed almost the entire zoo, but the tower remained unharmed. On July 12, 1945, the entire collection arrived in Moscow. Some of the exhibits remained in the capital, while others were transferred to the Hermitage.
For a long time, the "Trojan gold" was hidden from prying eyes, and only in 1996 the Pushkin Museum organized an exhibition of rare treasures. The "Gold of Troy" Germany has not been returned to this day. Oddly enough, but Russia has no less rights to him, since Schliemann, having married the daughter of a Moscow merchant, became a Russian subject.

Color cinema

A very useful trophy turned out to be the German AGFA color film, on which, in particular, the Victory Parade was filmed. And in 1947, an ordinary Soviet viewer saw color films for the first time. These were films of the USA, Germany and other European countries brought from the Soviet zone of occupation. Most of the films were watched by Stalin with a specially made translation for him.
Popular were the adventure films "Indian Tomb" and "The Hunters for Rubber", biographical films about Rembrandt, Schiller, Mozart, as well as numerous opera films.
The film by Georg Jacobi "The Girl of My Dreams" (1944) became a cult film in the USSR. Interestingly, the film was originally called "The Woman of My Dreams", but the party leadership considered that "it is indecent to dream of a woman" and renamed the tape.

On the top floor of the Hermitage there is one of the museum's "special depositories", where part of the trophy works of art that were exported to Russia from Germany after World War II is located

On the top floor of the Hermitage is one of the museum's "special depositories", where part of the trophy works of art taken to Russia from Germany after the Second World War is kept. Until recently, only the director and the direct curator of the hall had access here.

"Over the past 55 years, none of the works stored there have been studied by specialists," admitted Boris Asvarishch, curator of the Department of the History of Western European Art. it sad fact, because the special room contains about 800 paintings.

Most of the trophy works of art are planned to be transported to the modern storage facility of the Hermitage when it is completed. According to experts, it will take several more years if the museum finds a source of funding to complete only half of the completed building.

Some of the paintings are damaged, but Hermitage experts claim that this happened during the Second World War, when the paintings were kept in German banks.

The finest examples of trophy painting belong to the brush of Van Gogh, Matisse, Renoir and Picasso. They are now on public display in the halls of the Hermitage. In addition, among the works that are in special storage, there are paintings by El Greco, works of the schools of Titian, Tintoretto and Rubens. Most of the paintings came to the museum from private collections, for example, the German industrialists Otto Gershtenberg and Otto Krebs.

The origin of some canvases has not yet been established, but some of them came to the museum from the personal collections of Adolf Hitler and other leaders of the Third Reich.

One floor below, on the second floor of the Hermitage, not far from the main exhibitions, there is another special storehouse, which contains up to 6,000 items of oriental art. Most of them were exhibited earlier at the Museum of East Asian Art in Berlin. These works have also spent the last half century in complete oblivion. Among the tops of the collection are wall murals from the 8th-9th centuries from a Buddhist monastery located in western China. All of them are still (!) Stored in metal boxes that soldiers used to transport them.

There may be fragments of frescoes removed in the 1900s from the Bezeklik temple by the German archaeologist Albert von le Cock. Von Le Coq discovered the caves near the city of Turpan in the Xinjiang province and all their contents (and this is no less than 24 tons of cargo!), Took them to Europe in three stages. Later, the British archaeologist Orel Stein also removed the rarities from Bezeklik, now these treasures are stored in National Museum Delhi. After two such "successful" scientific forays, practically not a single work remained on the spot.

If there are indeed Bezeklik's frescoes in the boxes of the Hermitage, then their re-discovery could have a serious impact on the further study of Asian antiquities.

Other art objects in this room are hundreds of Japanese paintings on silk dating from the 18th and 19th centuries, as well as various Japanese and Chinese arts and crafts.

The Hermitage storerooms contain about 400 items from the Schliemann collection dating back to the Trojan War. Of the 9,000 items in the Schliemann collection, about 6,000 are re-exhibited in Berlin, but 300 of the most valuable gold artifacts "went" to the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts. About 2,000 more are irretrievably lost.

Other objects of art in this section are from Roman and Celtic civilizations and from the Merovingian period. The latter constitute a significant part of a large collection of several hundred items, which the Hermitage management plans to place together with their colleagues from Berlin, possibly already in 2002.

“The British Empire is dead. As well as the era of cultural trophies, "- these words conclude an article by the English art critic Jonathan Johnson in The Guardian. He is echoed by J.J. Charlesworth in Art Review: the very fact of the referendum in Scotland showed that the system of the British Empire is hopelessly outdated and it is time to abandon its political illusions, and at the same time all the claims to dominance in the art sphere. Ancient Greek statues, which have been in the British Museum for the last 150 years, are called nothing more than "plundered trophies". Hence the campaign unfolding in the country to return antiques to their homeland.

Now a second wave of restitutions is starting in Europe. The issue of returning art objects illegally exported from the conquered countries is also acute in France and Germany. However, it would be a mistake to consider this only European problem: Japan was also forced to return about 1400 pieces to South Korea. This trend is explained by globalization, when a national idea is placed below interstate interests.

In Russia, the situation is different. After World War II, Soviet troops removed a huge number of works from museums and private collections of the Third Reich. Later, in 1955, the USSR returned the paintings to museums in East Germany and the countries that signed the Warsaw Pact. Exhibits from the Federal Republic of Germany were kept for a long time in Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev under the "Secret" stamp, although the rest of the winning countries had already given away most of the exported items. As a true empire, the Soviet Union did not take into account the opinion of the European public. It was only in 1992 that Helmut Kohl and Boris Yeltsin began to discuss the possibility of returning the exported works to Germany. However, at this stage it all ended: in 1995, Russia imposed a moratorium on restitution.

The problem of the return of works, which stands in Western Europe, extends only to the plane of post-war trophies, while in Russia everything is much more complicated. After the revolution, Soviet museums were enriched by private "dispossessed" collections. Therefore, critics of restitution fear that when transferring things to foreign heirs, Russian descendants of collectors will be able to claim their rights. So it is safe to say that the items listed below in the list will remain in Russian museums forever.

"Unknown masterpieces" in the State Hermitage

Works by French artists of the 19th and 20th centuries from the collections of Otto Krebs and Otto Gerstenberg were hidden during World War II and then taken to the Soviet Union. Many paintings from the collection were returned to Germany, but some are in the Hermitage.

The central place is occupied by the work of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists. These are Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Cezanne - more than 70 paintings by artists of the first magnitude.

Pablo Picasso "Absinthe", 1901

Seated Dancer by Edgar Degas, 1879-1880

Baldin collection of graphics in the State Hermitage

The collection consists of over 300 drawings by renowned Western European artists such as Durer, Titian, Rembrandt, Rubens and Van Gogh. The collection was accidentally found by Soviet soldiers in one of the castles, where it was transported from the Künsthalle in Bremen. Captain Baldin saved the precious sheets from theft and sent them to Moscow. They are now in the Hermitage.

Albrecht Durer " Ladies' bath", 1496

Vincent Van Gogh "Cypresses on a Starry Night", 1889

Frans Koenigs collection at the Pushkin Museum

Banker Frans Koenigs was forced to sell his rich collection of drawings by old masters, and by the beginning of World War II it ended up in the Dresden Gallery, from where it was taken out by Soviet troops. Until the early 1990s, the drawings were secretly kept in Moscow and Kiev. Then, in 2004, Ukraine handed over the sheets that it kept to the heirs. Moscow is not inferior: 307 drawings are in the Pushkin Museum.

Drawing by Peter Paul Rubens

Drawing by Rembrandt van Rijn

Schliemann's Gold at the Pushkin Museum and the State Hermitage

The items were found by the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann during excavations in Troy in 1872-1890. The collection consists of 259 items dating from 2400 - 2300 BC. NS. Before the war, items made of gold, silver, bronze and stone were kept in Berlin. Now the most valuable of them are in the Pushkin Museum, the rest are in the Hermitage, and it is unlikely that anything will change. Irina Antonova, the former director of the Pushkin Museum, said about restitution: "As long as we have the gold of Troy, the Germans will remember that there was a war and that they lost it."

Large diadem, 2400 - 2200 BC

Small diadem, 2400 - 2200 BC

Gutenberg Bibles in the Russian State Library and the Moscow State University Library

European typography originated in Germany in the 15th century. Johann Gutenberg in the mid-1440s in the city of Mainz published the first book - a 42-line Bible. Its circulation was 180 copies, but by 2009 only 47 of them survived. By the way, one sheet of this book costs 80 thousand dollars.

Soviet troops removed two Bibles from Leipzig. One of them is kept in the library of Moscow State University, and the existence of another government was announced only in the 1990s. This copy is in the Russian State Library.

For more than 15 years now, flaring up and then fading away, debates have been going on about the fate of the "trophy art" exported from Germany during the Second World War to the territory of the USSR. The director of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow, Irina Antonova, declares: “We don’t owe anything to anyone,” Nikolai Gubenko, the former chairman of the State Duma Committee on Culture, suggested changing German paintings for Russians stolen by the Nazis, and Mikhail Shvydkoy, head of the Federal Agency for Culture and Cinematography, cautiously advocates the return of certain collections of "trophy art" under the "displaced cultural property" law. The word "restitution" (this is how the return of property to the rightful owner is called) has become a part of the lexicon of scandalous publications in the Russian press. But what is restitution in world practice, when did this concept arise and how in different eras belonged to the "art of prisoners of war", the Russian reader is practically unknown.

A tradition to take away artistic masterpieces a defeated enemy has arisen in ancient times. Moreover, this act was considered one of the most important symbols of victory. The tradition is based on the custom of capturing statues of foreign gods and placing them in their temples, "subordinating" them to those who are stronger and more fortunate. The Romans even developed a special ritual of "triumph", during which the captives themselves brought their "idols" into the Eternal City and threw them at the feet of Jupiter Capitoline and Juno. The same harsh people were the first to realize the material, and not only the spiritual and moral value of "art of prisoners of war." There was a real art market where some commander could help out more money for a couple of statues of Praxiteles than for a crowd of Greek slaves. Robbery at the state level was supplemented by private looting for understandable purposes of profit.

From a legal point of view, both were just a way of obtaining legitimate booty. The only law governing the relationship of owners works of art at the time of the military conflict, the right of the winner remained.

Relief triumphal arch Titus depicting trophies from the Jerusalem temple captured in 70 CE. NS.

Survival Law: Trophies Don't Burn

The history of mankind is full not only of examples of "artistic robbery" of the enemy, but of real cultural catastrophes of this kind - catastrophes that turned the entire course of world development.

In 146 BC. NS. the Roman general Lucius Mummius plundered Corinth. This city was the center of the production of special bronze with the addition of gold and silver to its composition. Sculptures and arts and crafts made from this unique alloy were considered a special "secret" of Greece. After the destruction by the Romans, Corinth fell into decay, and the secret of making this bronze has sunk into oblivion forever.

In June 455, the Vandal king Geyserich plundered Rome for two weeks in a row. Unlike the Goths of Alaric, who forty years earlier were the first of the barbarians to break through the city walls, these people were interested not only in precious metals but also marble statues. The loot from the temples of the Capitol was loaded onto ships and sent to the capital of Geiserich - the revived Carthage (the former Roman province of Africa was conquered by the Vandals ten years earlier). True, on the way, several ships with captured art sank.

In 1204, the crusaders from Western Europe captured Constantinople. This great capital has never before fallen into the hands of the enemy. Not only were stored here best samples Byzantine art, but also famous monuments antiquity, exported from Italy, Greece and Egypt by many emperors, starting with Constantine the Great. Now most of these treasures went to the Venetians in payment for financing knight's campaign... And the greatest robbery in history fully demonstrated the “law of survival of art” - most often trophies are not destroyed. Four horses (the same Corinthian bronze!) By Lysippos, the court sculptor of Alexander the Great, stolen from the Constantinople hippodrome, eventually adorned the Cathedral of St. Mark and survived to this day. And the statue of the Charioteer from the same hippodrome and thousands of other masterpieces, which the Venetians did not consider valuable trophies, were melted by the crusaders into copper coins.

In May 1527, the army of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V entered Rome. Mercenaries from all over Europe have turned into an uncontrollable crowd of assassins and destroyers. The churches and palaces of the papal capital were devastated, full of pictures and sculptures by Michelangelo and Raphael. Sacco di Roma, the robbery of Rome drew a line under the High Renaissance in art history.

Robbing is bad form: you give an indemnity!

The Thirty Years War in Europe in 1618-1648 revolutionized not only military affairs, but also international relations. That was reflected in the problem of "art of prisoners of war". At the beginning of this pan-European conflict, the unwritten right of the victor still prevailed. The imperial Catholic troops of Field Marshals Tilly and Wallenstein plundered cities and churches just as shamelessly as the Protestant armies of the Bavarian Elector Maximilian and the Swedish king Gustav Adolf. But by the end of the war, "civilized generals" had already begun to include lists of works of art in claims for contributions (this is how payments in money or "in kind" are called in favor of the winner, imposed on the defeated). This was a huge step forward: centralized, agreed payments made it possible to avoid excesses harmful to both sides. The soldiers destroyed more than took away. There was even an opportunity to redeem some of the masterpieces from the winner: the indemnity document included a clause stating that he could sell them to the side only if the loser did not pay the “ransom” agreed in advance on time.

A little more than half a century has passed since the end of the Thirty Years' War, and it has become good form among enlightened princes not to plunder art at all. So, Peter I, having imposed a fine on Danzig (Gdansk), after signing the deed of indemnity saw Hans Memling's "Last Judgment" in the Church of St. Mary and wanted to receive it. He hinted to the magistrate to give him a gift. The city fathers answered: if you want, we will rob, but we will not give it up ourselves. In the face of European public opinion, Peter did not dare to be branded as a barbarian. However, this example is not entirely indicative: the robberies of works of art did not become a thing of the past, they were simply condemned by peoples who considered themselves civilized. Finally, Napoleon updated the rules of the game once again. He not only began to include lists of art objects in the acts of contributions, but also stipulate his right to own them in the final peace treaties. An unheard-of-scale operation to "confiscate" masterpieces from the vanquished was even given an ideological basis: the French, led by the genius of all times Napoleon Bonaparte, will assemble a supermuseum in the Louvre for the benefit of all mankind! The paintings and sculptures of great artists, scattered earlier in monasteries and palaces, where they were not seen by anyone except the ignorant clergy and arrogant aristocrats, are now available to anyone who comes to Paris.

"Casus Louvre"
After Napoleon's first abdication in 1814, the victorious allied monarchs led by Alexander I did not dare to touch the Louvre, full of confiscated works. Only after the defeat of the “ungrateful French” at Waterloo did the patience of the allies burst and the “distribution” of the supermuseum began. This was the first restitution in the world. Here is how the reference book "International Law" of 1997 defines this word: "From lat. restitutio - recovery. The return in kind of property (things) unlawfully seized and taken out by one of the belligerent states from the territory of another state that was its military adversary. " Until 1815, masterpieces captured by the enemy could either be redeemed or recaptured. Now it has become possible to return them "according to the law." To do this, the victors had, however, to cancel all the peace treaties concluded by Napoleon during the period of his victories. The Congress of Vienna denounced the "robbery of the usurper" and ordered France to return the artistic treasures to their rightful owners. In total, more than 5,000 unique pieces were returned, including the Van Eyck altarpiece in Ghent and the Belvedere Apollo statue. So the widespread assertion that the current Louvre is full of treasures plundered by Napoleon is a delusion. There remained only those paintings and sculptures that the owners themselves did not want to take back, considering that the "transportation costs" did not correspond to their price. Thus, the Tuscan duke left the French "Maesta" Cimabue and the works of other masters of the Proto-Renaissance, the significance of which in Europe no one then understood, except for the director of the Louvre, Dominique Vivan Denon. Like the French confiscation, restitution also took on a political dimension. The Austrians used the return of values ​​to Venice and Lombardy as a demonstration of their concern for the rights of these Italian territories annexed to the Austrian Empire. Prussia, under whose pressure France returned the paintings and sculptures to the German principalities, strengthened the position of the state capable of defending general German interests. In many cities in Germany, the return of the treasures was accompanied by an explosion of patriotism: young people unharnessed their horses and literally carried carts with works of art in their arms.

"Revenge for Versailles": compensatory restitution

XX century with its unheard of brutal wars rejected the views of the humanists of the 19th century, such as the Russian lawyer Fyodor Martens, who fiercely criticized the "right of the strong." Already in September 1914, after the Germans fired at the Belgian city of Louvain, the famous library burned down there. By this time, the 56th article of the Hague Convention had already been adopted, which stated that “any deliberate seizure, destruction or damage ... of historical monuments, works of art and science is prohibited ...” During the four years of the First World War, many such cases accumulated.

After the defeat of Germany, the victors had to decide how exactly to punish the aggressor. According to Martens' formula "art outside the war" - the cultural values ​​of the guilty party could not be touched even for the sake of restoring justice. Nevertheless, Article 247 appeared in the Versailles Peace Treaty of 1919, according to which Germany compensated for the losses of the same Belgians with books from its libraries and the return to Ghent of six altar doors by the Van Eyck brothers, which were legally bought by the Berlin Museum in the 19th century. So for the first time in history, restitution was carried out not by returning the same values ​​that were stolen, but by replacing them with similar ones - in value and purpose. Such compensatory restitution is also called substitution, or restitution in kind. It was believed that at Versailles it was accepted not in order to make it a rule, but as a kind of warning, "so that others would be discouraged." But as experience has shown, the "lesson" has not achieved its goal. As for the usual restitution, after the First World War, it was used more than once, especially during the "divorce" of countries that were part of three collapsed empires: German, Austro-Hungarian and Russian. For example, under the 1921 peace treaty between Soviet Russia and Poland, the latter, returned not only the artistic values ​​evacuated to the east in 1914-1916, but also all the trophies taken by the tsarist troops since 1772.

All to the camp: "big restitution"

Hardly in 1945, the guns died down in Europe, when the process of returning cultural property to its rightful owners began. The fundamental principle of this greatest restitution in the history of mankind proclaimed the return of values ​​not to a specific owner: a museum, a church or an individual, but to the state from whose territory the Nazis took them out. This state was then given the right to distribute the former "cultural trophies" among legal and individuals... The British and Americans created a network of collection points in Germany, where they concentrated all the works of art found in the country. For ten years they distributed to third countries-owners what they managed to identify in this mass as loot.

The USSR behaved differently. Special trophy brigades indiscriminately exported cultural values ​​from the Soviet zone of occupation to Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev. In addition, receiving from the British and Americans tens of thousands of their books and works of art that ended up on the territory of West Germany, our command gave them almost nothing in return from East. Moreover, it demanded from the allies part of the exhibits of German museums, which came under Anglo-American and French control, as compensatory restitution for their cultural heritage, which perished in the flames of Hitler's invasion. The USA, Britain and de Gaulle's government did not object, although, for example, the British, who lost many libraries and museums during the Luftwaffe air raids, refused such compensation for themselves. However, before giving anything away, the sworn friends of the Soviet Union asked for exact lists of what had already turned out to be within its borders, intending to "deduct" these values ​​from the total amount of compensation. Soviet authorities they flatly refused to provide such information, claiming that everything that was taken out was trophies of war, and they had nothing to do with "this case". Negotiations for compensatory restitution in the Control Council, which ruled the occupied Reich, ended in nothing in 1947. And Stalin ordered, just in case, to classify "cultural booty" as a possible political weapon for the future.

Protection from Predators: Ideological Restitution

... And this weapon was used already in 1955 by the leader's successors. On March 3, 1955, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR V. Molotov sent a memo to the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU (this is how the supreme party body was named instead of the Politburo). In it, he wrote: “The present situation concerning the paintings of the Dresden Gallery (the main“ symbol ”of all the artistic conquests of the USSR. - Ed. Note) is abnormal. Two solutions to this issue can be proposed: either declare that the paintings of the Dresden Art Gallery as trophy property belong to the Soviet people and provide them with wide public access, or return them to the German people as a national treasure. In the current political situation, the second solution seems to be more correct. " What is meant by "the real political situation"?

As you know, realizing that the creation of a unified communist Germany is beyond her ability, Moscow embarked on a course of splitting this country and forming a satellite of the USSR in its east, which the international community would recognize, and was the first to set an example, on March 25, 1954, declaring the recognition of full sovereignty GDR. And just a month later, an international UNESCO conference began in The Hague, which revised the Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in Armed Conflicts. They decided to use it as an important means of ideological struggle during the Cold War. “Protecting the world cultural heritage from the predators of capitalism” became the most important slogan of Soviet propaganda, like the slogan “fight for peace against warmongers”. We were among the first to sign and ratify the convention.

In 1945, the collection of the Dresden Gallery was exported to the USSR, and most of the masterpieces returned to their place ten years later.

But then the problem arose. The allies, having completed the restitution of the loot by the Nazis, took nothing for themselves. True, the Americans are by no means saints: a group of generals, with the support of some museum directors, attempted to expropriate two hundred exhibits from Berlin museums. However, American art critics raised a fuss in the press, and the case died out. The USA, France and Great Britain even handed over to the FRG authorities control over the collection points, where mainly items from German museums remained. Therefore, the stories about the Amber Room, Russian icons and masterpieces from German museums, which are secretly stored overseas in Fort Knox, are fictions. Thus, the "predators of capitalism" appeared in the international arena as heroes of restitution, and the "progressive USSR" - as a barbarian who hid the "trophies" not only from the world community, but also from his own people. So Molotov proposed not only to “save face”, but also to seize the political initiative: to solemnly return the collection of the Dresden Gallery, pretending that it was originally taken out for the sake of “salvation”.

The action was timed to coincide with the creation of the Warsaw Pact Organization in the summer of 1955. To give weight to one of its key members, the GDR, the "socialist Germans" were gradually returned not only works from the gallery, but all values ​​from museums in East Germany. By 1960, only works from West Germany, capitalist countries like Holland, and also from private collections remained in the USSR. According to the same scheme, artistic values ​​were returned to all countries of the "people's democracy", including even Romanian exhibits transferred to Tsarist Russia for storage back in the First World War. German, Romanian, Polish "returns" turned into big political shows and became an instrument of strengthening the socialist camp, and the "big brother", emphasizing not the legal, but the political nature of what was happening, stubbornly called them not "restitution", but "return" and "an act of goodwill."

The SS man's word versus the Jew's word

After 1955, the FRG and Austria, naturally, already independently dealt with the problem of "stolen art". We remember that a certain part of the cultural property looted by the Nazis could not find their owners who died in the camps and on the battlefield, and settled in "special stores" like the Mauerbach monastery near Vienna. Much more often the robbed owners themselves could not find their paintings and sculptures.

Since the late 1950s, when the "German economic miracle" began and the Federal Republic of Germany suddenly became rich, Chancellor Konrad Adenauer launched a program of monetary compensation for the victims. At the same time, the Germans abandoned the "state" principle that formed the basis of the "Great Restitution" in 1945. However, by the beginning of the 1950s, the Americans also began to partially abandon it. The reason was the numerous "episodes" in which the governments of the socialist camp simply nationalized the returned property, and did not transfer them to collectors or churches. Now, in order to get the thing belonging to him, the owner - whether a museum or a private person - himself had to prove that he not only had the right to a painting or sculpture, but that it was not criminals or looters, but the Nazis who stole it from him.

Despite this, the payments very soon reached multi-million dollar amounts, and the Ministry of Finance of the Federal Republic of Germany, which paid compensation, decided to put an end to the "disgrace" (most of its officials in the recent past in similar positions served the Third Reich and did not suffer from a "guilt complex"). On November 3, 1964, right at the entrance to this department in Bonn, he was arrested Chief Specialist for the handling of compensation cases for stolen works, attorney Dr. Hans Deutsch. He was accused of fraud.

The main trump card of the German prosecutor's office and the government in this case was the testimony of the former SS Hauptsturmführer Friedrich Wilke. He said that in 1961 Deutsch persuaded him to confirm that the paintings of the Hungarian collector Baron Ferenc Khatvani were confiscated by the Nazis, when in fact it was the Russians. The word of the SS man Wilke outweighed the word of the Jew, Deutsch, who denied the conspiracy. The lawyer was held in prison for 17 months, released on bail of two million marks and acquitted many years later. But the process of paying compensation was discredited and by the time Deutsch was released, it had come to naught. (Now it turned out that some of Khatvani's paintings really ended up in the USSR, but Soviet soldiers found them near Berlin.) So, by the end of the 1960s, the "big" post-war restitution had died out. Sporadically there were cases of paintings from private collections stolen by the Nazis and suddenly "surfaced" at auctions or in museums. But it became more and more difficult for the plaintiffs to prove their case. Not only the deadlines set by the documents on the “Great Restitution” have expired, but also those that were stipulated in various national laws. After all, special laws governing rights private property on objects of art does not exist. Property rights are governed by ordinary civil law, where the statute of limitations is common to all cases.

Interstate restitution also seemed complete - only from time to time the USSR returned to the GDR paintings from the Dresden Gallery, caught in the antique market. Everything changed in the 1990s. Germany was united and the Cold War became history ...

Fyodor Martens - Father of the Hague Convention
The optimistic 19th century was convinced that humanity was able to protect art from war. International lawyers got down to business, the most prominent figure among whom was Fyodor Martens. “The child prodigy from the orphanage,” as his contemporaries called him, became a star of Russian jurisprudence and won the attention of the reformer Tsar Alexander II. Martens was one of the first to criticize the concept of law based on force. Strength only protects the right, but it is based on respect for human personality... The lawyer from St. Petersburg considered the right of a person and a nation to own a work of art to be one of the most important. He regarded respect for this right as a measure of the civilization of the state. Having drafted an international convention on the rules of warfare, Martens proposed the formula "art outside of war." There are no pretexts that can serve as a basis for the destruction and confiscation of cultural property. The draft was introduced by the Russian delegation to the Brussels International Conference in 1874 and formed the basis for the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907.

“What was yours - became ours”?

... And the problem of the so-called "displaced values" came to light again - more precisely, it got into the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation between the USSR and the FRG in the fall of 1990. Article 16 of this document reads: "The parties declare that stolen or illegally exported artistic values ​​discovered on their territory will be returned to their legal owners or their heirs." Soon, information appeared in the press: there are secret depositories in Russia, where hundreds of thousands of works from Germany and other countries of Eastern Europe have been hiding for half a century, including paintings by the Impressionists and the famous Gold of Troy.

Germany immediately announced that the article applies to "trophy art". In the USSR, at first they said that journalists were lying and everything was returned back in the 1950s-1960s, which means there is no subject for conversation, but after the collapse of the country new Russia recognized the existence of "prisoner of war art". In August 1992, a special Commission for Restitution was formed, headed by the then Minister of Culture of Russia, Yevgeny Sidorov. She began negotiations with the German side. The fact that first-class art treasures have been hidden in storerooms for half a century has complicated the Russian position. It was perceived in the West as a “crime against humanity”, which, in the eyes of many, partly counterbalanced the crimes of the Nazis against Russian culture during the war years. Official Bonn refused to start everything from scratch and to take into account some of the art exported from Germany as compensatory restitution for Russian values killed during the Nazi invasion. Since the USSR took out everything in 1945 secretly as booty and refused to settle the issue in the Control Council, it means that it violated the Hague Convention. Consequently, the export was illegal and the case falls under article 16 of the 1990 treaty.

In order to turn the tide, Russian special guards began to gradually declassify. German specialists even got access to some of them. At the same time, Sidorov's commission announced that it was starting a series of exhibitions of "trophy" works of art, since it was immoral to hide masterpieces. Meanwhile, some German owners, believing that the official German position is too tough, tried to find a compromise with the Russians ...

Bremen Kunstverein (" artistic association") - a society of art lovers, a non-governmental organization - expressed its readiness to leave to the Hermitage several drawings that were once stored in the city on the Weser, as a token of gratitude for the return of the rest of the collection, taken out in 1945 not by official trophy brigades, but personally by the architect, the captain Viktor Baldin, who found them in a hiding place near Berlin. In addition, Bremen raised money for the restoration of several ancient Russian churches destroyed by the Germans during the war. Our Minister of Culture even signed a corresponding agreement with the Kunstverein.

However, already in May 1994, a campaign began in the Russian "patriotic" press under the slogan "We will not allow a second robbery of Russia" (the first meant the Stalinist sales of masterpieces from the Hermitage abroad). The return of "artistic trophies" began to be seen as a sign of recognition of our defeat not only in the Cold War, but almost in World War II. As a result, on the eve of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Victory, negotiations with Bremen reached an impasse.

Then the State Duma came into play, which developed a draft federal law "On cultural values ​​transferred to the USSR as a result of World War II and located on the territory of the Russian Federation." It is no coincidence that there are no terms “trophies” or “restitution” there. The document was based on the thesis that the Western allies, by the very fact of recognizing the USSR's moral right to compensatory restitution, gave the Soviet occupation authorities carte blanche to export works of art from East Germany. Therefore, it was perfectly legal! There can be no restitution, and all the valuables imported into the territory of Russia during the hostilities by the official "trophy brigades" become state property. Only three moral exceptions were recognized: property had to be returned if it previously belonged to a) countries that themselves fell victims of Nazi aggression, b) charitable or religious organizations, and c) individuals who also suffered from the Nazis.

And in April 1995, the Russian parliament - until the adoption of the Law on Restitution - even declared a moratorium on any return of "displaced art". All negotiations with Germany automatically became useless, and the fight against restitution became for the State Duma one of the synonyms for the fight against the Yeltsin administration. The ultra-conservative law was adopted in 1998, and two years later, despite a presidential veto, it came into force by the decision of the Constitutional Court. It is not recognized by the international community, and therefore “displaced masterpieces” do not go to exhibitions abroad. In the event that, under this law, something is returned to Germany, as, for example, in 2002 the stained glass windows of the Marienkirche in Frankfurt an der Oder, official Berlin pretends that Russia is complying with Article 16 of the 1990 treaty. Meanwhile, inside our country, a dispute continues between the government and the State Duma about which categories of monuments fall under the law and who gives the final "go-ahead" for the return of "displaced art". The Duma insists that any return must by all means be carried out by itself. By the way, it was this claim that was at the heart of the scandal around the government's attempt to return the Bremen drawings to Germany in 2003. After this attempt failed, the then Minister of Culture Mikhail Shvydkoi lost his post, and then, in December 2004, he ceased to chair the Interdepartmental Council for Cultural Property Displaced by the Second World War.

The last return to date on the basis of the Restitution Law took place in the spring of 2006, when rare books taken to the USSR in 1945 were handed over to the Sarospatak Reform College of the Hungarian Reformed Church. After that, in September 2006, the current Minister of Culture and Mass Communications Alexander Sokolov said: "There will be no restitution as a return of cultural property, and this word can be taken out of use."

On the restorative trail
The editors made an attempt to find out what the current state of the issue of restitution of cultural property in Russia is. Our correspondents contacted both the Federal Agency for Culture and Cinematography (FAKK), headed by Mikhail Shvydkoy, and with the State Duma Committee for Culture and Tourism, whose member Stanislav Govorukhin was involved in many issues of restitution. However, neither the leaders of these organizations, nor their employees found in their "bins" a single new normative document on the return of cultural property, did not provide a single comment. The FAKK, they say, does not deal with this problem at all, the Parliamentary Committee on Culture nods to the Committee on Property, in whose report on the results of its work for the spring session of 2006 we find only a declaration: a draft law on restitution. Further - silence. The "Legal portal in the sphere of culture" (http://pravo.roskultura.ru/) is silent, the widely advertised Internet project "Restitution" (http://www.lostart.ru) does not function. The last official word is the statement by the Minister of Culture Alexander Sokolov in September 2006 about the need to withdraw the word "restitution" from use.

"Skeletons in the closet"

In addition to the Russian-German debate on "displaced values", a "second front" in the battle for (and against) restitution unexpectedly opened in the mid-1990s. It all began with the scandal with the gold of the perished Jews, which after the war "due to the lack of clients" were appropriated by Swiss banks. After the outraged world community forced banks to pay debts to the relatives of the victims of the Holocaust, it was the turn of the museums.

In 1996, it became known that, according to the “state principle” of Great Restitution, France after the war received from its allies 61,000 works of art, seized by the Nazis on its territory from private owners: Jews and other “enemies of the Reich”. The Paris authorities were obliged to return them to their rightful owners. But only 43,000 pieces made it to their destination. For the rest, according to officials, no applicants were found within the established time frame. Some of the bottom went under the hammer, and the remaining 2,000 went to French museums. And a chain reaction began: it turned out that almost all interested states have their own "skeletons in the closet." In Holland alone, the list of works with a "brown past" was 3,709 "numbers", led by the famous "Poppy Field" by Van Gogh worth 50 million dollars.

A strange situation has developed in Austria. There, the surviving Jews in the late 1940s and 1950s, it seems, were given back everything that was once confiscated. But when they tried to take out the returned paintings and sculptures, they were refused. The basis was the 1918 law banning the export of "national property". The families of the Rothschilds, Bloch-Bauers and other collectors had to "donate" more than half of their collections to the very museums that robbed them under the Nazis in order to now get permission to export the rest.

“It turned out” no better in America. Over the fifty post-war years, wealthy collectors from this country have bought and donated to museums in the United States many works "without a past." One by one, the press became the property of the facts that testified: among them there is the property of the victims of the Holocaust. The heirs began to file their claims and go to court. From the point of view of the law, as in the case of Swiss gold, museums had the right not to return paintings: the statute of limitations expired, there were export laws. But in the courtyard there were times when the rights of the individual were placed above the talk of "national treasure" and "public benefit". A wave of "moral restitution" has risen. Its most important milestone was the 1998 Washington Conference on Holocaust Property, which adopted principles that most countries in the world, including Russia, agreed to follow. True, not everyone can do this and they are not always in a hurry.

The heirs of the Hungarian Jew Herzog never got a Russian court ruling on the restitution of their paintings. They lost in all instances, and now there is only one left for them - the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation. The Association of Museum Directors of America was forced to set up a commission to review its own collections. All information about exhibits with a "dark past" should now be posted on museum websites on the Internet. The same work - with varying success - is being carried out in France, where restitution has already affected such giants as the Louvre and the Pompidou Museum. Meanwhile, in Austria, Culture Minister Elisabeth Gehrer says: “Our country has so many artistic treasures that there is no reason to skimp. Honor is dearer. " On currently this country has returned not only the masterpieces of the old Italian and Flemish masters from the Rothschild collection, but also “ business card"Austrian art itself," Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer "by Gustav Klimt.

Despite the unusual atmosphere new wave returns, we are talking about the remnants of the "Great Restitution". As one of the experts put it: "We are now doing what our hands did not reach in 1945-1955." And how long will "moral restitution" "last"? .. Some are already talking about the beginning of its crisis, because the returned masterpieces do not remain in the families of the victims, but are immediately sold on the antique market. For the aforementioned painting by the same Klimt, his descendants received from American Ronald Lauder $ 135 million - a record amount paid for a canvas ever in history! The return of valuables to their rightful owners is turning into an instrument of "black redistribution" of museum collections and a lucrative business for lawyers and art dealers. If the public ceases to see restitution as something fair to the victims of war and genocide, and sees only a means of profit, it will, of course, stop.

Even in Germany, with its guilt complex for those killed at the hands of the Nazis, there was a wave of protests against the "commercialization of restitution." The reason was the return in the summer of 2006 of the expressionist Ludwig Kirchner paintings from the Berlin Brucke Museum to the heirs of the Jewish Hess family. The canvas "Street Scene" was not confiscated by the Nazis. It was sold by the family itself in 1936 - already when the Hessam managed to get out with their congregation to Switzerland. And I sold it back to Germany! Opponents of the return claim that the Hessians sold the painting to a collector from Cologne voluntarily and for good money. However, in the declarations of 1999 and 2001 adopted by the German government following the Washington Conference, Germany itself, and not the plaintiff, must prove that the sale in the 1930s was fair, and not violent, carried out under pressure from the Gestapo. In the case of the Khessov, no evidence could be found that the family received money for the 1936 deal at all. The painting for 38 million dollars was already sold by the heirs at Christie’s auction in November 2006. After that, the Minister of Culture of the Federal Republic of Germany Berndt Neumann even stated that the Germans, without abandoning the restitution of the property of Holocaust victims, in principle, can revise the rules for its implementation, adopted by them in the declarations of 1999 and 2001.

But so far, the situation is still different: the museum workers, shocked recent developments are afraid of expanding the field of "moral restitution". And what if not only in the Czech Republic, Romania and the Baltic States, but also in Russia and other countries with a communist past, the return of the masterpieces nationalized after the revolution begins? What if the church insists on the total return of its nationalized wealth? Will a dispute about art between the "divorced" republics of the former Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and other collapsed countries flare up with renewed vigor? And it will be very difficult for museums if they have to give away the art of the former colonies. What happens if the Parthenon marbles, taken by the British from this restless Ottoman province at the beginning of the 19th century, are sent back to Greece? ..

Where is the temporary line behind which the trophy cultural values ​​of other countries become an integral legal part of the cultural layer of another country, if, of course, this is not a gift, not an official purchase, but a robbery?

PASSION FOR TROPHY CULTURAL VALUES

As long as mankind remembers itself, so much and is engaged with demonic rapture large-scale and petty theft of everything and everyone: a neighbor from a neighbor, a firm from a firm, the state from the state. At the same time, the majority have no shame in front of each other for their abduction. This phenomenon, boggling the imagination, is difficult to comprehend.
The best representatives of the human race understood the fatal sinfulness of unceremonious trampling on one of the most important biblical commandments. And on the threshold of the twentieth century, international norms were adopted providing for the obligation to return to the "historical homeland" spiritual values ​​- objects of art, libraries, archives, exported (read - stolen) as a result of riots, revolutions, brutal civil and international wars, and in general, - to compensate for the damage caused to the so-called "national economy" of the ruined kingdom-state.
The authors of these wonderful conventions seemed to have foreseen the coming devastating revolutionary storms and the most terrible global military tragedy in the history of mankind in 1939-1945, during which they were engaged in international theft with special passion.
There is an opinion that the craving for the beautiful is alien to villains, misanthropists who do not shudder at the sight of the painful death of thousands of people. An eternal mystery for psychologists: why some, looking at the paintings of Raphael or listening to the sounds of the music of Verdi, Wagner, become even more ennobled and in the future are unable to raise their voices and throw a stone at the most pitiful dog; others, receiving no less aesthetic pleasure from the same creations, are ready, a moment later, to do black deeds.
We are talking about the leaders of the Third Reich. Nursing plans for conquest eastern countries Europe, preparing their peoples for the life of servile slaves, they also had plans to seize all significant works of art.
On the European continent, they did not yet know what desecration their spiritual shrines would be subjected to; as by the will of the new "masters of the world" they will mysteriously disappear and orphaned admirers of the beautiful.
The fate of cultural masterpieces was a foregone conclusion on May 1, 1941 at the headquarters of the Reichsmarschall of the German Reich, life-lover G. Goering, when he signed a circular letter on the creation of headquarters in all the occupied territories with the aim of "collecting research materials and cultural values ​​and sending them to Germany." As usual in such cases, all party, state and military organizations were instructed to provide all kinds of support and assistance - the Chief of Staff of the Operational Headquarters Reichsleiter Rosenberg, the Chief of the Imperial Main Bureau Utikalo and his deputy, the head of the field department of the German Red Cross, von Beru, in fulfilling them. tasks.
However, the highest bosses of the Third Reich did not have a unanimity of views on the problem of plunder in the conquered countries. Too many people wanted to be first. German Foreign Minister Baron von Ribbentrrop, roughly speaking, spit on Goering's directive. This conclusion can be drawn from the following established circumstances.
October 13, 1942 in the area with. Achikulak, northeast of Grozny, was captured by Soviet troops SS Obersturmbannfuehrer Norman Paul Förster, the son of a manufacturer, who graduated from the law faculty of the University of Berlin in 1936, supplemented his knowledge at the universities of Leipzig, Geneva, London, Paris and Rome (for the robbery of the great Slavic art far from simpletons!). After being mobilized for military service, he took part in small battles on the western front. And somehow, in August 1941, Foerster met with his comrade SS Untersturmfuehrer Dr. Focke Ernst Gunther, who was working at that time as an employee of the press department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who invited his friend to join him. Who didn’t want to slip away from the disastrous eastern front then? But Foerster did not even imagine that, when he went to serve in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he would just be drawn into a secret and shameful adventure on this very eastern front.
Then - in August 1941 - Foerster was recalled to the order of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the next day he appeared in Berlin. There he learned that he was assigned to the SS Sonderkommando, which existed under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The team was led by Baron von Künsberg. The latter popularly explained to the educated recruit that his team was created on the personal instructions of Ribbentrop. She had to closely follow the advanced German units in the occupied territories in order to protect museums, libraries, art galleries, archives from looting - do you think by whom? - their own heated battles, not very aesthetically educated soldiers. And then everything that was of cultural or historical significance should be exported to Germany.
The team zealously got down to business. Already in late autumn, the company of Hauptsturmführer Gaubold from Tsarskoye Selo near St. Petersburg competently and cleanly removed the contents of the world-famous palace-museum of Catherine II. First of all, Chinese silk wallpapers and gilded carvings were requisitioned. Diligently dismantled the typesetting floor of a complex fantastic pattern. Lists of works of art located in the palaces of the suburbs of Northern Palmyra were drawn up in advance, and the work was argued. In the palace of Emperor Alexander I, the invaders of the beautiful were attracted by antique furniture and a unique library in French, numbering 7 thousand volumes, among which there were many works of Roman and Greek classics, which made it attractive. About 5 thousand Russian ancient manuscripts were also stolen from here.
The Sonderkommando, which consisted of about half a thousand specialists, spread its tentacles from north to south. She managed to "work" in Warsaw, Kiev, Kharkov, Kremenchug, Smolensk, Pskov, Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozhye, Melitopol, Rostov, Krasnodar, Bobruisk, Roslavl. The activity of the "Sonders" in Ukraine was especially "fruitful". So, the library of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR was stirred up like an anthill. First of all, they confiscated the rarest manuscripts of the Persian, Abyssinian and Chinese writing, Russian and Ukrainian chronicles, the first copies of books printed by Ivan Fedorov. Ukraine lost about 200 thousand books. This operation was performed by Dr. Paulsen.
The Kiev-Pechersk Lavra did not remain undisturbed, from where, together with the rarest originals of ancient Russian church literature, the originals of Rubens' works were sent to Germany.
And how many canvases, sketches by Russian painters of the IXX century - Repin, Vereshchagin, Fedotov, Ge, Polenov, Aivazovsky, Shishkin disappeared from central museum them. Shevchenko, Kharkov Art Gallery. At the same time, from the Kharkiv library. Korolenko sent about 5000 thousand books to Berlin, including 59 volumes of Voltaire's works, in luxurious yellow leather bindings. The Slavic "barbarians" had so many excellent books that less valuable ones were simply destroyed on the spot.
The most rare books and canvases were sent directly to the leaders of the Reich. So, two albums of engravings, including those autographed by Rubens, - to Goering; 59 volumes of a rare edition of Voltaire - Rosenberg; two huge albums of watercolors of roses - to Ribbentrop. Hitler and Goebbels were not forgotten. The first was presented from the royal palace near St. Petersburg about 80 volumes in French about Napoleon's campaign in Egypt, but Goebbels, knowing his passion for propaganda work, received a set of newspapers "Neustroyter" for 1759.
The Sonderkommando showed great persistence and amazing hypocrisy during the robbery of the Pskov-Pechersk monastery. Archpriest N. Macedonian was even given a letter in Russian: “The sacristy remains the property of the monastery. It will be returned under favorable conditions. " But look for the wind in the field. In 1944, three boxes with rare gold and silver utensils of the monastery - only 500 items - went to Germany through Riga.
Moscow remained the main target of Rosenberg's team. Personally, Foerster was to supervise the seizure of all state archives, the commissariats of foreign affairs and justice, the Tretyakov Gallery, the library. Lenin. For obvious reasons, this act of vandalism did not take place, and the poor fellow Foerster did not know that the overwhelming majority of archives, books and paintings from Moscow were evacuated to the depths of Russia or safely hidden in the capital itself.
Modern seekers of lost valuables from the former USSR and other countries have always been interested in the question: where exactly was the loot brought in Germany and what further destiny treasure? While the highest ranks of the Sonderkommando were the masters of the situation, they had certain information on this score, so to speak, by the nature of their service, but when they were captured, they could not say anything worthwhile (or did not want to). It is only known that in 1941-1942 some of the valuables were delivered to Berlin and there, in the premises of the Adler company, a closed exhibition for distinguished guests was arranged. Who visited her? For example, the head of Hitler's personal office - Walter Butler, Himmler's brother - Helmut, Secretary of State Kerner, Ambassador Schullenberg (the same one who was shot in connection with the unsuccessful attempt on Hitler), an employee of the former embassy in Moscow - Gilgers, one of the highest ranks of the SS - Obergruppenfuehrer Jutner, adviser to the Ministry of Propaganda - Hans Fritsche, Secretary of State of the Ministry of Propaganda - Gutterer, Secretary of State of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs - Luther.
The exhibition was organized on a grand scale: music sounded, they drank brandy, watched trophy films; then there was a pleasant ceremony of presenting gifts to senior officials for impeccable service. Among them were Himmler, Buhler, Dyullenberg and others.
What was Rosenberg's headquarters? He was the administrative apparatus in the occupied eastern territories with very broad powers. The robbery of cultural property was in the background. As evidenced by the investigative documents, Rosenberg's main task was the mass extermination and internment of people. The volume of bloody deeds of these "jack of all trades" is amazing. The robbery of valuables was a kind of relief from the executions. Rosenberg had mobile teams (headquarters) of 4-5 specialists, dressed in a distinctive brown uniform. A few days after the capture of this or that city, "specialists" arrived there to select cultural works and were often late, because Ribbentrop's people - from the Sonderkommando of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs - burst into the defeated cities, figuratively speaking, on the shoulders of the Wehrmacht combat units and left Rosenberg's people only "horns yes legs. " Rosenberg then ordered his men to enter the cities at the same time as the "Ribbentropists", and luck smiled here at the most agile.
Another subordinate of Rosenberg is interesting for his stories about robberies and destruction in the USSR - Obergruppenfuehrer SS and police in the "Ostland" Ekkeln Friedrich, born in 1895, a native of Hornberg, the son of a manufacturer. This rank in April 1942 was on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, mainly in the famous Krasnoye Selo.
The meaning of the Vandal destruction committed by the Nazis on the outskirts of Leningrad and in the city itself becomes clear after the conversation (as follows from the interrogation of Ekkeln) that took place between the latter and Himmler, who arrived on the Neva banks for a short time. Eckeln expressed his firm point of view that, in principle, Leningrad can be captured and that this opinion is shared by many military generals. Himmler stunned them by the fact that, according to Hitler, one should not rush to seize the city, so as not to feed the blockade, but next year the city will be taken by storm and destroyed. It turned out that Hitler did not need the architectural and other beauty of Northern Palmyra and its uniquely beautiful suburbs. That is why the Germans did not stand on ceremony with the palaces of Peterhof, Tsarskoye Selo, Pavlovsk, Gatchina. The Peterhof Palace, for example, was not destroyed by accidental artillery, as they say, by shelling, but purposefully burned.
Eckeln watched as the people of Rosenberg's headquarters in the Catherine and Alexander palaces in Pushkin (in Tsarskoye Selo) and in the Gatchina palace tore, knocked down, tore off jewelry, tapestries, furniture from their eternal places, giving these actions an even more terrifying look of dilapidated palaces. A special subject of attention was the precious stones from the palace of Catherine II, carefully transported to the estate of Koch, who was supposedly going to donate them to the Konigsberg Museum.
The attitude towards works of art testified, first of all, to the low cultural level of German officers (I emphasize, officers, not soldiers), because these objects were created in many ways not even by Russians, but by Western masters (including Germans). Only barbarians could have moved luxurious 18th century Rococo furniture from palaces to officers' casinos to satisfy their vanity based on strength and stupidity. How wonderful it is, lounging in graceful armchairs, splashing beer foam on the perfectly polished surface of tables with pretentiously curved legs, inlaid with valuable species of wood!
Only a smile can now cause the stupid attempts of the Baltic would-be nationalists to justify or silence many of the villainous actions of the "Rosenbergists" and their accomplices from among the "patriots" in relation to the Baltic states. Had the Nazis conquered the Baltic for ten years, the original names of the Baltic lands would have disappeared from the memory of the people.
Rosenberg, the main character within the "Ostlands", preparing to settle for a long time in the Baltics, staffed his headquarters mainly with German Baltic barons, who, like himself, hated Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians. The robberies in the Baltics began already in August 1941. By order of Rosenberg, it was decided to requisition the Tallinn archive, the Dorpat university library, art objects from numerous Estonian estates, such as Erlene, Vodja, Lahmese.
It is thanks to the Germans in Riga that entire neighborhoods built in the 15th-17th centuries were erased from the face of the earth. It was they who burned the Riga city library, which had existed since 1524, together with 800 thousand books, and another 100 thousand, the most valuable, were taken out across the cordon.
These "friends" of the Lithuanians burned the old library of the Evangelical-Reform synod together with 20 thousand volumes of books from the 16th century. And they also took the paintings of Repin, Levitan, Chagall, sculptures of Antokolsky to Frankfurt-am-Main.
One of the greatest follies of the Baltic nationalists is their blind anger towards the "offenders" from Moscow, their inability to understand the essence of the issues, the sequence and timeliness of solving problems - political, social and cultural. Gaining independence after the collapse of the USSR is happiness for the Baltic countries compared to the "freedom" that the Nazis brought them in 1941.
If the archives of the Hanseatic cities had not been taken by the Red Army as a trophy, Tallinn residents would not have seen their old city archive, stolen by the Germans, in the 21st century - the national pride of Estonia. But the authorities of the USSR, freeing the Tallinn archive literally on the eve of the collapse of the Soviet empire, gave Germany for it three times more in terms of the volume of documents from the funds of Hanseatic cities, which contain interesting information about the history of Russia. Here is a true act of friendship, not appreciated by Estonians. Nezavisimov saw with his own eyes in the national archives of Germany how Estonian and German archivists openly rejoiced at the blatant behavior of their Moscow colleagues to the sound of champagne glasses. But this is so, to the question of historical incidents.
The fact that the teams of Rosenberg, Ribbentrop, Himmler were faced with the task of destroying works of architecture and theft of cultural property was traced everywhere. That Leningrad, that Kiev - they were preparing an equally sad fate.
In Kiev, the city of stone poetry, it was decided to blow up the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra and destroy the central quarters of the city. It all started in mid-October 1941, when SS Sturmbannfuehrer Derner, Himmler's staff officer, came to Ekkeln in Kiev, and presented the head of the eastern police with a mandate signed by the chief, who ordered to blow up the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra. Ekkeln was not surprised at this, because even earlier, according to Himmler, he knew that the Fuhrer desired the complete destruction of both Kiev and the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra as a religious and national symbol of Ukrainians, hoping that the next generations of "Ukrainian slaves" would completely forget their culture and traditions.
Despite such a formidable mandate, it was not so easy for Derner to carry out the Fuhrer's venture, for purely German pedantry interfered. The fact is that the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra was under the protection of army units that did not get along with the SS. Derner also asked Ekkeln, as an influential person, to transfer the Lavra to the jurisdiction of the police. Eckeln, apparently, was afraid to take responsibility to bless such a demonic deed and invited Derner to inform the chief about the situation on the radio. The next day the answer was received: “According to the order of the Fuehrer, the military guard at the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra should be removed and the Lavra transferred to the SS and the police. Himmler ". Preparing for the explosion took a long time, more than a month. During this time, Ekkeln managed to travel to Riga and Kremenchug for his thieves' affairs, and the Lavra temples still did not live their golden heads in the autumn sunbeams. What's the matter? And there was no reason for the fact that for no apparent reason even such blowing beasts as the SS men did not dare to commit sacrilege. And the reason was found. In early November, the President of Slovakia Tissot arrived in Kiev, either of his own free will, or by the agreement of the Germans, to admire the beauty of the Lavra. The explosion of the Lavra, or rather its dominant, unique in its divine beauty - the Assumption Cathedral, erected in 1075-1089. Prince Svyatoslav, took place on November 3, 1941, 30 minutes after President Tissot left the Lavra. After that, the Germans reported that the Assumption Cathedral was blown up by Russian saboteurs in order to assassinate the president of friendly Germany, Slovakia. Sometimes there is a hole in the old woman. A more helpless version of the "Fritzes" could not have been invented. It seems that the puppet Tissot at that time was of little interest to the Soviet special services.
What did the Nazis do? About this the words of the Metropolitan of Kiev and Galicia: “You cannot look without sorrow at the heaps of the ruins of the Assumption Cathedral, created in the 11th century by the genius of immortal builders. The explosions formed several huge holes in the ground in the territory surrounding the cathedral, and, looking at them, it seems that even the earth shook at the sight of the atrocities of those who have no right to a human name. Like a terrible hurricane swept through the Lavra, threw everything upside down, scattered and scattered the mighty Lavra buildings. " You still experience this sensation and an aching regret for the disfigured temple.

Two more German "knights" were in Soviet captivity - Axel Konrad Spongolts, a native of Tartu, captain and translator of the "Nord" group, and Major General Dr. Leber Max Heinrich. They are interesting in that they were involved in the disappearance of the famous Amber Room.
Shpongolts - especially civilian, of poor health, inclined to the fine arts, studied at the Gallery of Old Artists, in Munich, and then worked as a conservator and restorer at the Cologne City Museum. Despite the creative nature of his nature, Spongolts nevertheless became a member of the NSDAP, because, according to him, he shared Hitler's views on art. Shpongolts was used as a consultant in the plundering of the museum property of the palaces near Leningrad. From his words it is known that the headquarters of the Spanish "Blue Division", which also turned out to be greedy for other people's art, unexpectedly made a competition for Rosenberg's headquarters. The Spaniards with a southern temperament in the blink of an eye stole the church property of the cathedrals and monasteries of Novgorod. There is a reason to ask a question on this delicate topic to Spanish art critics: have they come across something Russian in the Pyrenean public or private collections?
Spongolts is the only prisoner from Rosenberg's Sonderkommando who confessed that, together with von Solms, an officer of the "protection of the arts" under the "Nord" group, he was taking out the Amber Room from Pushkino (along with the collections paintings XIX century, the sculptural group of the Neptune fountain from the upper park of Peterhof, individual icons and entire iconostases of the 13th and 16th centuries from the churches of the Novgorod Kremlin, inlaid parquet from the Catherine Palace ...). However, from his explanations it is difficult to learn anything about the route of the Amber Room and the place of its new, let's say, storage. Shpongolts for all his "sins" in combination with other crimes got 25 years of imprisonment in the Gulag. However, like all the other dvadtsatipyatniki, he was soon released.
Major General Dr. Max Heinrich Leber had nothing to do with Rosenberg's Sonderkommando, but by the will of fate in September 1941 he got to Krasnogvardeysk, where he learned from the officers of the 50th Army headquarters about a special commission that seized valuable items from all palaces on the Leningrad front art and antiquity. Here he met Solms, apparently a key figure in organizing the robbery of objects of Russian culture. From him, Leber learned that it was from Krasnogvardeysk to Konigsberg that two carriages with valuables were sent, and a little earlier, along the same route from Tsarskoe Selo, the famous Amber Room proceeded to the same Konigsberg.
There were other staff officers of the 50th Army Corps who knew a lot about the actions of Rosenberg's team, including the fate of the Amber Room. In particular, the chief of staff, Lieutenant General Sperl. He was a convinced Nazi, extremely hostile to the USSR and did not want to give any testimony in captivity.
It must be admitted that the Soviet leadership was either extremely self-confident, believing that it would not allow German troops in the vicinity of Leningrad, or showed obvious shortsightedness in evacuating cultural property from these places. After the evacuation, more than 30 thousand museum exhibits remained in Petrodvorets (!!). And not some mediocre fakes, but originals. And it never occurred to anyone that, first of all, it would be necessary to disassemble and take out, and if there was no such opportunity, to securely walled up the Amber Room on the territory of Leningrad itself.
There was no mercy for the Slavs in anything. Goering's circular letter of May 1, 1941 provided for the unceremonious seizure of cultural objects in the Slavic states and the ostentatious observance of the rules of decency when seizing works of art in Western countries. If this is Yugoslavia, hated by Hitler, it is the categorical confiscation of valuables and books in Esseg, Ragusa, Zagreb. If it is Belgium or France - gentlemanly relations with the sellers of masterpieces of medieval art for the new Hitlerite museums in Linz and Konigsberg. It was useless to object to the Nazis in the West either. Behind the seemingly decent act of sale and purchase, the possibility of the use of force was guessed. A lot was purchased. Why not buy when the entire European economy was in the pocket of the Nazis.
Pictures from the Demeter collection were sent from Belgium to the Linz Museum: “ Holy family"Massis (16th century)," Neptune and Amphitrate "by the Italian painter Giordano (17th century), Piranese's copper products; from Hungary to the Dresden Gallery - Gothic paintings by ancient German artists; from the Netherlands to the Dresden Gallery - drawings by French, Dutch, German, Flemish artists(royal assembly), Gordon Crang's theater collection and library; from France to the Konigsberg Museum at the personal request of the Fuhrer - works of gold, enamel, porcelain, glass (Mannheimer's collection).
Hitler also swung into the world-famous collection of Adolphe Schloss in Paris, in which he was attracted by masterfully executed genre works little-known artists... About 50 thousand Reichsmarks were allocated for the purchase. In the same place, in France, negotiations were underway with Count Trefolo to acquire a collection of weapons from the times of Napoleon for a museum in Linz. Extensive correspondence has survived about the purchase for the Fuhrer of two Lenbach paintings from a private collection in Florence, as well as paintings by Dutch artists and Flemish Peter Ertsen (16th century). For the sake of self-interest, the benevolent intermediaries of the Nazis were ready to sell anything to Hitler. Thus, a certain Phillip von Hansen received a large sum to buy the painting Leda by Leonardo da Vinci.
These are just a few examples from the predatory practices of the Nazis in countries that their grabbing hands reached out to. Only the approximate figures of works of art and archives exported from European countries are known. As a result of behind-the-scenes intrigues, they spread to the castles of the highest and middle bosses of Hitler and to other secluded places, such as the Goering estate in Karinhall, the Hohenfurt vault on the upper Danube, the salt mines in Bad Aussee, possibly the dungeons of the powerful forts of Konigsberg, etc.

But the allies finally finished off the fascist monster, as they say, in his lair and started, especially the USSR and France, looking for cultural values ​​stolen from them. Little is known about the success of the French in this field. The Soviets returned their fair share, but, of course, not everything they wanted, for example, the Amber Room. At the same time, according to the ancient rule of the winners, German archives, libraries, art galleries - everything that they found was taken to the USSR.
The short post-war world gave way to a protracted Cold War. Having come to their senses little by little, the Europeans, led by France, having counted the losses from their cultural heritage, began to scratch their heads and think about how to arrange a fair restitution. And they turned their eyes primarily to the USSR and not without reason.
Among the trophies of the Red Army were not only rarities of German origin, but also the cultural treasures of many European states plundered by Germany, which were both Soviet allies and neutral ones, which did not cause any harm to either Hitler or Stalin, significantly exceeding them in volume. The feeling of an absolute and indisputable winner dictated to the Soviet leadership the wrong decision regarding trophy cultural values. Its approximate definition is as follows: everything taken is ours, be it Germany, France, Belgium or Liechtenstein. But somehow the whole world did not really want to announce such a decision; in words, the Soviet government supported many international agreements.
The fact of finding trophy documents and art objects in the USSR was immediately classified. All - from time to time in the West - questions on this delicate problem were invariably followed by "simple-minded" answers: we know nothing, we have nothing. And, indeed, how to declare that over a million files of the most important funds of the French war ally "Surté General", the General Staff of the army, the family funds of the Rothschilds, Dupons and others are in a secret Special Archive. In those days, hot on the heels - an international scandal!
Well, what about the former allies? The USA, England, France did not consider it shameful to admit the fact of their confiscation of German documents in 1945. They honestly declared that they needed German documentary materials for their long-term study. But at the same time, the allies did not obstruct the researchers of the FRG to the German documents. After micro-photocopying of the funds they needed, the originals were handed over to the FRG, although not all.
The "Stalinists" have always professed a double morality. If the USSR had not collapsed, the French funds would have remained under Soviet obscurity for many decades. How could it be possible to return such a tasty morsel on the move! Here, you understand, day and night, plans for a worldwide communist "mastery" of mankind are hatched, and how can you not take advantage of such an important socio-political and intelligence information of the country, which has information about everything in the world.
And for what, for example, harmless Liechtenstein suffered? A total of one thousand dossiers, taken by the mighty Soviet hand from a defenseless country, but what kind! A thousand old thick tomes in calf leather bindings in a language that no one else can read. And for Liechtenstein, these books are national pride, for they contain detailed information about the succession to the throne. They also hid them, believing that they were our national treasure.
The same position was taken by those who were entrusted with supervising the trophy books, paintings, sculptures. With genuine pride in her uncompromising adherence to principles in the 90s of the last century, the then Deputy Minister of Culture N. Zhukova broadcast to the whole country: in the yard was not the end of the twentieth century, but 1945 - A.P.), finding out where the values ​​that they considered "their", and I considered and still consider Russian. I replied that they are in Russia, in the reliable hands of specialists, but I didn’t have the right to say where they were ”. Irina Antonova, Director of the Museum. A.S. Pushkina, too, like a partisan, was silent about what was stored in the storerooms of the cultural center entrusted to her. And what have these and other venerable ladies achieved by their silence? Confusion and absurdities. Where has it been seen that the great masterpieces of the art of the Germans (and by no means only the Germans) were found in the darkness of cellars for decades, instead of being put on display by admirers of painting. When they were finally allowed to do this, Schliemann's golden collection was born. How sad it is to overcome injustice by order! For a person who is free in spirit, this is savagery, for a person devoid of considerations of spirituality, it is a familiar state.
And what a disgrace the "patriots from culture" have done with thousands of priceless trophy books from many European countries, which they once immured (you cannot say more precisely) in a church building in the town of Uzkoye near Moscow. Piled on top of each other, many of them deform over time under their own weight. A brilliant, truly "scientific and applied", application of these storehouses of knowledge and enlightenment was found by our Cerberus from culture!

The announcement by the Independents of the honest world about the gigantic layers of trophy archival documents in the USSR caused a lot of thought movements in the heads of responsible officials, both in Western countries and in Russia. Some, as you know, especially in France (it is fair to say that the Germans modestly did not stick their heads out), demanded the return of rarities on the basis of reasonable agreements, while others, represented by the deputies of the State Duma, lit the burdensome pseudo-patriotic turuses on wheels.
The French were so taken aback by the news that the holy of holies - the giant Syurte General Foundation was located in Moscow and must have been turned upside down by the KGB that they did not believe it until they received confirmation from the Russian government.
Our "patriots" strained a little. Accidentally or not, exactly at this time in the Special Archive the writer, as he called himself, Platonov pored over the Masonic funds (just not to confuse him with the real writer Platonov, thus, by the will of the same false patriots as the aforementioned namesake, he was then the courtyard at the Literary Institute). And this namesake pored over the manuscripts of free masons solely with one purpose - the reader guessed rightly - well, of course, in order to finally prove, with documents in hand, that the phenomenon of Freemasonry was exclusively generated by the Jews! All the harm in the world, especially for Russia, is, as you know, from the Jews, from, as the nationalists put it, the "world behind the scenes", into the possession of which they never manage to penetrate. And since the fighter against "Zhidomasonism" could not get anything so fried out of impartial manuscripts about Pierre Bezukhov's like-minded people, he looked sadly through the barred window of the office allotted to him. And once the view of the street was blocked by something huge and opaque bodily ... A terrible guess dawned on him. Trailers with French plates were parked at the entrance. Didn't come to pick up your French, ugh! - our Russian national treasure? And immediately countermeasures were taken - in the form of patriotic brainwashing, of course, with the help of exclusively Orthodox newspapers in terms of content. " Literary Russia" and tomorrow". The editorial and journalistic staff of these publications was a bunch of "staunch humanists-Leninists," wrote a good friend of Nezavisimov, the writer and folk healer B. Kamov, "who, if not according to" their "Orthodox faith, what will Marxism-Leninism do out of ignorance violate, shoot to such and such a mother from typewriters(bye!), mixed with the ground, drowned in the outhouse ”.
The writer Platonov, "out of phase" on the basis of the intrigues of the "world behind the scenes", managed to ignite with righteous anger his like-minded people in the State Duma, "opening their eyes" to the unheard-of crime against their own Motherland by those who started the transfer of French archives to the banks of the Seine. Well, how can one not believe such words: “It was not in vain that Hitler collected the trophy documents in one place. For concentrated together, they represented a powerful weapon of secret influence on humanity - a kind of Archive of Secret Power; the politician received not only knowledge of the technology of secret work, but also a ready army of agents, many of whom could be led by bribery or blackmail. Possessing lists of members of Masonic lodges and information about their various machinations, especially financial ones, the Gestapo officers forced the Masons to work for themselves ... Stalin and the political leadership of the USSR immediately understood the enormous importance of the Archive of Secret Power for strengthening their own regime. An order is immediately given to transport the archive to Moscow, where a special building with blind windows and iron doors is being built for it by the hands of prisoners of war. Only a few even in the highest echelons of power know about its existence ..., the technology and evolution of secret power are being investigated, but later the efficiency of its action drops sharply. " (Apparently the secret power has ceased to interest the leadership of the USSR - A.P.)
Platonov also pointed out the reasons for the "destruction" of the Special Archive: modern Western civilization (ie our direct enemy - A.P.) ”.
Identified Platonov and the initiators: "The impulse of destruction came from the mondialist (really, what a terrible word? - AP) structures of the West, in which they were considered not strangers, in particular, members of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU Yakovlev and Shevardnadze (now members of the Masonic club" Magisterium "). The first act of destruction (spring 1990) coincides in time with the official resumption in Moscow of the Masonic organization within the jurisdiction of the Grand National Lodge of France and the creation in our country of the lodges "North Star", "Free Russia", "Harmony" and some others ".
And, finally, the most important thing: “A certain Nezavisimov, who worked as a director, was involved in a serious malfeasance, as far as I know, secretly selling archival data abroad (the case was even discussed at the board of the Main Archive Directorate). Nezavisimov went to great lengths to "light up" the Special Archive. In one of his conversations with a journalist, he admitted that he once decided to nudge the French so that they still ask where such invaluable archival materials are actually located ... in the spring of 1990 he fully discloses the secret nature of the archive, and in the fall of 1991 it comes out with a proposal to transfer it to the West. The employees' protests are brutally suppressed (right, some kind of Chekist! - AP) ”.
Further, Platonov sagaciously notes that this anti-patriot Nezavisimov “went for a promotion - he became the deputy head of Rosarkhiv and is the closest employee of A.N. Yakovlev in the Commission for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Stalinist Repression ”. The latter are mentioned in order to understand the criminal connection between the "thief" Nezavisimov and the "mondialist" Yakovlev. He immediately clearly presents himself as Nezavisimov somewhere out there, in offices inaccessible to the people on the Old Square, says:
- Well, Alexander Nikolaevich, will we give France her documents?
- Why not give it up, - agrees the designer of the destruction of the USSR.
And after that, Foreign Minister Kozyrev, suspected of Jewish Masonry, signs an agreement on the transfer of the archive. It is difficult to think of a more terrible and insulting secret for false patriots. And ordinary people, having read this, will also be offended for the state. This is how clumsy, but deliberately, a lie is constructed.
Platonic statements greatly amused the already mentioned B. Kamov. In an article on this subject, prepared in 1995 for the Spy magazine, he wrote the following: “... My most superficial acquaintance with the funds of the Special Archive was enough to understand that colossal historical and informational riches were collected here. Thousands of inquisitive historians had a chance, exploring these materials, to make many sensational, and even great discoveries of interest to individuals, to individual states and to the planet as a whole.
Together with German documents, hundreds of thousands of folders - the archives of the French intelligence service - fell on the shelves of the Special Archive. The Nazis captured it in 1940, easily entering Paris.
For me, the French intelligence archive was interesting first of all because it contained dossiers on all some notable figures of the Soviet Union - from politicians, military leaders, scientists - to writers, actors, journalists, factory directors. The life of thousands of our compatriots was seen through the eyes of illegal scouts.
All this ocean of information was used only by "historians" from the Lubyanka for forty-five years. They looked for incriminating references to "fellow citizens" in foreign documents.
They say - let's be fair - by researching French and German sources, our counterintelligence officers have exposed many genuine agents of foreign intelligence. But a much larger number of innocent people suffered only because they were mentioned in some documents.
In 1988, Stefan Stepanovich Nezavisimov, a historian and professional archivist, was appointed director of the Special Archive. However, the main thing was that he was a Germanist by vocation. As a young man, he studied German, knew and understood German culture. Having become the head of an unmarked facility, five floors of which were filled with documents, he himself, without translators, leafed through and read folders for many hours a day. I fully admit that Nezavisimov was one of the few who became aware of the value of the repository documents, not only for the purposes of political investigation.
That is why in 1991, when the stifling power of Bolshevism collapsed, he took an unprecedented step: he invited an Izvestia correspondent and told about the existence of a previously unknown Special Storage.
Series sensational articles"Five days in the Special Archive" attracted the attention of thousands of Soviet (then still) historians, writers and journalists. Hundreds of newspapers of the planet have reprinted them in whole or in retelling. Hitlerism, World War II, tens of millions of deaths - all this in the minds of people has not yet overgrown with moss.
If you, dear reader, have ever faced such a mindless, dangerous and uncontrollable phenomenon as the Soviet secrecy regime was, behind which stood an even more dangerous and even less controlled institution called the KGB, then you should appreciate the not ostentatious courage of Stefan Stepanovich Nezavisimov ... He challenged the then not yet strongly shaken System.
The first step was followed by the second.
In May 1995, mankind will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Victory over fascism, but there are still families on Earth for whom the Second World War has not yet ended, because in these houses the fate of loved ones who have not returned from it is unknown.
And the director of the Special Archive, even at a time when a grain of any information was considered a state or military secret, discovered heaps of documents, which, in fact, were a crime against humanity to hide. And when they stopped imprisoning and shooting for disclosing imaginary secrets, Nezavisimov published letters from dead German soldiers that he found in the store. But this was only the first application.
... Throughout the post-war years, when the Japanese authorities asked about the fate of tens of thousands of officers and soldiers taken prisoner by the Soviet army, the Soviet government replied that only four thousand people died in our camps. And all other claims to our country are in vain.
And Nezavisimov discovered documents from which it followed that in fact, not four thousand, but tens of thousands died. There was no mistake here. In the same papers, the burial places of each prisoner were precisely indicated.
Nezavisimov handed copies of the lists to the President of the All-Japan Association of Siberian Prisoners of War (Japanese) Mr. R. Saito. The ceremony was covered by the largest television companies in the world. We wrote newspapers and magazines.
After some time, Nezavisimov circulated through TASS channels a statement that the Special Archive contains information about hundreds of thousands of soldiers and officers who fought on the side of Nazi Germany and died in prisoner-of-war camps. The governments of the countries - former allies of Nazi Germany, did not have any information about these victims of the war. Meanwhile, these documents also indicated exactly who was buried and where. The discovery made by Nezavisimov had such a powerful resonance that most European countries immediately concluded bilateral agreements on the mutual transfer of the lists of the dead and respectful attitude to the graves of foreigners in their territories.
These facts alone would have been enough to bow low to Stefan Stepanovich Nezavisimov for his humanity and courage, for his personal contribution to the introduction of wild, truly bastard Russia, to civilized relations with other states. After all, it has long been known: where the dead are not respected, they walk with their feet on the living.
But Nezavisimov had the bitter happiness to once again shake the minds and hearts of millions of the inhabitants of our planet.
When the International Red Cross in the post-war years repeatedly turned to The Soviet Union with a request to help find traces of the victims of the Nazi genocide, the then leadership replied that they did not have the slightest information on this matter.
And Nezavisimov, studying the funds of the Special Archive, discovered the Books of Death. These were with German accuracy the inventories of those who were poisoned and burned at Auschwitz.
Twice, on behalf of the new democratic Russia, in the most solemn atmosphere, Nezavisimov handed over these lists to the representatives of the International Red Cross. Twice millions of people cried while watching the ceremony on TV. And there was a reason. In total, there were two hundred twenty thousand names in thick bound volumes.
This humane action not only allowed a great many families in different countries to finally find out how and where their relatives and friends ended their life. On the basis of these lists, the widows and children of the victims acquired the right to receive compensation from the FRG government.
More recently, the French part of the documents that were kept in the Special Archive was sent to Paris by the decision of the government of the Russian Federation. But by that time, Nezavisimov was no longer working in the Special Archive and had nothing to do with the return of documents to France.
Now that we have got some idea of ​​"a certain Nezavisimov", let's see why two newspapers were angry with him at once.
Since the instigator was "LitRossiya", and the newspaper "Zavtra" only rebroadcast, then let's take a look at what they tried to open our eyes to.
According to the writer Platonov, he personally became reliably aware that Nezavisimov was “involved in a serious malfeasance - the secret (!) Sale (!!) abroad of archived data (!!!)”. The same writer Platonov also learned that “Nezavisimov’s malfeasance was discussed at the board of the Glavarchiv”.
Let's start with the fact that, according to the inquiries made by the "Spy" editorial board, Nezavisimov's personal file was never submitted to the board of the Glavarkhiv and was never discussed. There was simply no such meeting. The writer Platonov, delicately speaking, misled the readers of his newspaper.
In addition, as our readers are well aware, the "secret sale abroad ... of data" constituting a government or military secrets, referred to in the Criminal Code as "treason to the Motherland in the form of espionage." Or the writer Platonov “did not graduate from the gymnasiums” and therefore does not know that such cases are usually considered not by the board of the Glavarchiv, but by the board of the military court (its long, permanent leader was the favorite of the party and the people, Comrade Ulrich).
Or, on the contrary, from childhood, the writer Platonov knows very well which board is considering what, and therefore decided to give one of them a job, to present the “enemy of the Russian people”. But the writer Platonov was a little late. For forty years. Otherwise, nationwide fame could have awaited him. As "the great Russian patriot Lydia Timashuk." This cavalier lady was even awarded a gold-cast order with a bald platinum profile. True, then she had to carry it back. Her patriotism was not confirmed. Denunciation too.
Another thing is interesting: why did the competent authorities, which continue to stay on the same square and work in the same lanes near it, as before, still did not respond to the appeal of the writer Platonov to deal with Nezavisimov?
There was nothing to understand. Fooling their few readers, "Lithuania and" Tomorrow "- the organ of" spiritual opposition ", meant by" secret transfer of archival data abroad "- the transfer of lists of German soldiers who died on the Soviet front, Japanese soldiers frozen in Siberian camps, names civilians. Including women and children gassed at Auschwitz.
I am not going to enter into a discussion of the moral character of the representatives of the "spiritual opposition". They have no appearance. These people still live according to the "moral code" that Stalin, Yezhov and Beria introduced in the country and in concentration camps.
But I inform the reader: almost all the documents published by Nezavisimov in our and foreign press were copied and transferred abroad with the permission of the Glavarkhiv leadership, with the participation of the Foreign Ministry services and the government apparatus, because they were presented on behalf of the government of the Russian Federation. And those that were handed over to them on their own did not contain any secrets.
A cynical lie is the statement that Nezavisimov sold the archive data. If Platonov has a receipt from Nezavisimov in receipt of stamps, yen or dollars for the transfer of materials abroad, then let him present it. If he does not have such a receipt, then the writer Platonov will have to pay Nezavisimov an impressive amount in domestic convertible rubles. According to the court. For insulting a person.
Although this is rather disgusting, we have to grasp the essence of yet another accusation brought forward by the writer Platonov against Stefan Stepanovich Nezavisimov. In the article "The End of the Special Archive of the USSR" we read: "... in the fall of 1991 (Nezavisimov - B.K.) comes out (add - to the government of the Russian Federation - B.K.) with a proposal to transfer it (the Special Archive - B.K. .) West ". Listen to the intonation. It was in such terms that the newspaper Pravda, this main guillotine of the Bolshevik Party, informed the happy Soviet people about the next exposure of some espionage and sabotage gang.
Nezavisimov, in fact, guided by international norms, proposed to transfer part of the materials from the Special Archive to the countries from which they were exported. In December 1991, in the Rossiya newspaper, he wrote: “What about the French archives that came to the USSR? Return to the rightful owner. "
In this part of his accusations, the writer Platonov was absolutely right. He was wrong only in the fact that, continuing to consider the subscribers of his newspaper to be sheared rams, he hid the continuation of the quote from them.
“The future agreement ...” wrote Nezavisimov in the newspaper “Russia”, “should be based on the following principles:
- recognition of the unconditional need to transfer originals with preliminary copying (here and further emphasized by me - B.K.)
- removal from the agreement of documents of Russian origin and former international organizations;
- the return of Russian documents in French archives that came to France during the October coup and the Russian emigration that followed. "
In particular, Nezavisimov pointed out the need to return to Russia 50 boxes of documents weighing about 6 tons, which were transferred to France by Count A.A. Ignatiev; archive of the Russian embassy, ​​etc.
This part of Nezavisimov's article was omitted by the writer Platonov. For what? And in order to reproach the same Nezavisimov for allegedly not demanding that the French side return to us "the archives of the Russian embassy in Paris, the archive of the Russian expeditionary corps", etc.
I have already said that I am not going to discuss the moral character of the representatives of the “spiritual opposition”. I will only refer to an old Russian custom, when the hairstyle and sideburns were severely thinned out to the culprit for twitching cards.
It remains for me to answer the last, trivial question: What did this "spiritual opposition" in general need from Nezavisimov? Why did these sister newspapers grab hold of him?
But for what. The French papers, which, together with the archives of the French intelligence service, were sent home to Paris, contained the documents of Masonic lodges collected over five centuries. In one of his articles, Nezavisimov noted that real Masons had nothing to do with that scarecrow, with those secret intriguers - destroyers of the universe with which imaginary patriots frighten us.
"Freemasonry is not engaged in politics," Nezavisimov quoted authentic documents, "the methods of Masonic construction are directly opposite to the methods of political ... Freemasonry seeks to replace the principle of struggle with the unity of brothers in the name of the triumph of truth." The principles of real Freemasons did not at all resemble the "designs of the Jewish Masons" with which true anti-Semites tirelessly frighten us.
Doctor of Economics, member of the Writers' Union of the RSFSR Oleg Platonov, like most of the "spiritual opposition", is seriously ill. They suffer from Judeo-Mason-phobia. "

Platonov nevertheless inflamed the suspicion and determination of the leading false patriots. And one of them personally arrived at the Special Archive, a deputy of those distant times of the State Duma, imposing in appearance, but staunch inside S. Baburin and with a powerful hand stopped the "destruction" of the Special Archive. With lightning speed, a law is being born that declares cultural values ​​displaced to the USSR as a result of World War II and located on the territory of the Russian Federation as its property.
So, "Musyu French", as they say, "sorry". And you, gentlemen "Fritz", do not stick your head out at all! The "patriots" smiled broadly and quite enough on the occasion of the adoption of such a wonderful protective law, and the enlightened world was once again perplexed, amazed at the ability of Russians to think in an unpredictable and original way. For to consider Russian law from the point of view of law, it was meaningless. The history of mankind impartially testifies to the fact that in endless military clashes, alas! - the right of the winner has always triumphed, the right of the strongest, which does not fit well with the idea of ​​justice.
Where is the temporary line behind which the trophy cultural values ​​of other countries become an integral legal part of the cultural layer of another country, if, of course, this is not a gift, not an official purchase, but a robbery? Where is she? At the turn of the bloody crusades? Thirty Years War? French campaign of Napoleon to Russia? Conquest of the Kazan Khanate by Ivan the Terrible? World War I? Where is she? There is no answer and cannot be. The earlier the “withdrawal” of other people's cultural values ​​took place, the more timid are the claims of the victims. For this reason, few are outraged by the fact that the treasures of Egypt, Greece, Italy, the Middle East, North Africa are found in the museums of France, the USA, Spain. Once Schliemann dug up the Trojan Treasure and thieves took it to Germany without asking permission. The Germans are sure that the "gold of Troy" is theirs, Russia is even more so. And it must belong to the country in whose land it originally rested.
The robberies of the wars of fifty years ago cause fierce controversy: to whom, what and in what volume, from the displaced (read stolen), should belong. For the participants in the recent bloody events are still alive, for not everyone has healed mental wounds and mutual grievances.
"Duma members" could not think of anything better how to change the "piece" stolen from us for the "piece" of the cultural trophy stolen by us. There is something hopelessly flawed in this.
The past cannot be returned. But one should think broadly. Adopted Law dangerous in that, declaring everything exported to the USSR - a national treasure, it kind of pushes you to think about the inevitability of future military conflicts and, therefore, about the inevitability of stealing trophies, as well as about the possibility, secretly burying values, to pretend that nothing we know, we don’t know that "our hut is on the edge."
Decisions on the "piece by piece" principle are almost impossible, because they are the product of the dense obstinacy of people who see only black and white in the world. So, following this principle, whose "Schliemann's gold"? Who and with what "piece" is obliged to compensate for these treasures to their current owner - Russia?
How should the principality of Liechtenstein act in accordance with this ridiculous principle, which absolutely did not steal anything from Russia, but Russia appropriated a thousand of its rare documents? Russia, in the end, gave them to Liechtenstein, but how
This exchange was a disgrace for a huge country in the eyes of the rest of the world!
If you read the Russian press of the mid-90s, then everything looked quite decent. Here is a note from Izvestia: “The exciting question of what to do with the 'trophy art' and who owns the cultural values ​​that entered the territory of another state during and after the war seems to be finding a way of civilized resolution. An example for the rest was given by Russia and the principality of Liechtenstein. With mutual consent and to everyone's pleasure, they exchanged antiques, which are of undoubted interest for both sides.
A pleasant ceremony took place in the building of our embassy in Switzerland. The director of the Federal Archival Service of Russia V. Kozlov solemnly handed over to Prince Nikolaus, a confidant of the ruling prince Hans Adam II von Lichtenstein, a complete inventory of archival materials belonging to the princely house, which members of the great family had not seen for over 50 years.
For his part, the prince, on behalf of the prince, handed over to Russia the diaries of N. Sokolov, an officer of the tsarist army, who at his own peril and risk in 1918-1919. investigated the circumstances of the death of the family of Nicholas II.
The diaries were bought a couple of years ago at the London Sotheby's auction at the initiative of the famous philanthropist - Russian Baron Eduard Alexandrovich Faltz-Fein, who, in fact, advised the prince to exchange them for family archives. The decisions of the State Duma and the government last summer helped to formalize the deal in a legal sense.
Despite the fact that the dimensions are incommensurable (the papers of the princely house barely fit in two trucks, and Sokolov's diaries - in a small box), by all accounts, the deal is quite equivalent. "
Nezavisimov knew that in reality everything was far from as blissful as the newspaper described, and he knew this from the words of Falz-Fein himself, whom he had met more than once when he was looking for the Amber Room.
In fact, the prince of Liechtenstein, as a person who clearly understands the principles of justice, believed that Russia would finally fulfill what it should have done - return his family values ​​to the "historical" homeland in Vaduz without any stupid conditions such as a mutual deal ....
But ours, how can we disobey the "Baburintsy" who have settled down in the Duma with their "piece by piece"? And Hans Adam II did not have such and such a "thing". The situation was corrected by the generous baron (the reader would have known how much he bought at various auctions of Russian cultural goods and donated all this to the homeland of his ancestors, who founded the brilliant reserve in the south of Ukraine "Askania Nova"), to help his neighbor and old friend - the ruling prince, really like. Reluctantly, not understanding why the Russians need to pay for their family relics, the prince made a deal, but vowed that he would never have anything to do with these petty traders from Russia. However, for our great power the squeamish attitude of the prince of some dwarf country is like water off a duck's back!
But Nezavisimov had warned them long before this shameful action by Russian officials, both in print and privately: “Don't try to arrange a bargaining with Liechtenstein. It must be solemn, in fact high level, to commit a gratuitous act of transferring his legal heritage to the owner. Such an act of democratic Russia there, in Liechtenstein, will always be remembered with gratitude. " But, as always, it did not work out - due to the special thinking of the Russian rulers.
And what to do with the Germans? Russia has conscientiously compiled a collection of its cultural values, absorbed by the Moloch of World War II (there are more than 40 thousand titles in it). The Germans also prepared such a conduit: not only Russia, but also
other countries. Perhaps this will help Russia to somehow resolve the problem of restitution. But the proposed exchange is futile and not because of the ill will of the Russians or the Germans. There are, as they say, objective circumstances in which mutual aspirations will certainly rest. This is the inviolability of private property in Western countries and in Germany, in particular. What can you do if she is sacred there, like a cow in India.
V state archives and museums in Germany, there are no Russian trophies, for sure. Even if the German Chancellor appeals to his population with a request to scrape the bottom of the barrel and return Russian cultural values ​​for the sake of returning their own from Russia, nothing will come of it. You need to know the psychology of private traders. "For nothing" they will not give anything to anyone.
What if Russian rarities are hidden in underground tunnels and at the bottom of alpine lakes? But even these data, according to Nezavisimov, the German government does not have. He himself would have to learn the secrets of the treasures, as well as dozens of adventurers from all over the world, many of whom died under unexplained circumstances in the vicinity of these very lakes.
And then there are many secret vaults that attract attention. In the Kaliningrad region, not far from Baltiysk (in the past - Pilau), a mysterious structure rises, a cross between a man-made mountain and the tomb of the Egyptian pharaohs. No one today can answer when this mountain was built, for what purpose and what is in its womb. According to military engineers, the structure may have been cleverly mined. In any case, its design is such that a violation of any proportions can cause a collapse.
TO mysterious mountain when it became possible, sightseers from Germany often came. A former soldier turned out to be in one of these groups. While the rest of the tourists showed an almost childish interest in the structure, he stood a little further away and smiled with restraint. It suddenly became clear to all those present that the former military man was contemplating the "tomb of the twentieth century" not for the first time, that he knew much more about it ...
Studying German documents in the Special Archive, Stefan Stepanovich unexpectedly discovered maps of the Konigsberg fortified area, in particular its famous forts. He called the General Staff and asked to send specialists familiar with the area.
Soon a whole team of topographers arrived. They brought their maps, drawn up in 1945, when Königsberg was taken Soviet Army... The arriving officers established the discrepancy between our maps and German topographic plans. Many passages, corridors, trenches, and chambers were missing from the Soviet blueprints. According to the specialists of the General Staff, the premises were skillfully camouflaged. Naturally, it was not the air that was hidden in them. After all, the Amber Room was originally brought to Konigsberg.
There was a lot of enthusiasm. But then the August events of 1991 came and everyone forgot about the walled up dungeons. This, in the opinion of Nezavisimov, is the object of the joint efforts of the Russian Federation and the Federal Republic of Germany to unravel the secrets of the grandiose structures.
And who has not heard about the exemplary German colony on the territory of Paraguay, full of mysteries about its inhabitants, mainly the founders and successors of the Third Reich? I have heard it. For no one is really familiar with the inner life in this mini-state behind the Iron Curtain. And what if European cultural values ​​are acquired there, delivered by the Nazis to these protected areas ahead of time? Nezavisimov once said to the author of these lines that he would not be surprised to hear about the discovery of the same Amber Room in Paraguay.
The Germans, who do not possess, whatever one may say or twiddle, an adequate amount of trophy Russian cultural values, could bring such great joy to Russian connoisseurs of beauty and grace, about which the writers of the dead-end law did not
guess. In exchange for their rarities, both archival and pictorial, they could give Russia such money, for which (unless, of course, officials plundered, as already happened with German financial injections) churches and monasteries destroyed by the Nazis would be restored, dilapidated cathedrals and fortifications of Pskov, Ryazan, picture galleries were built. After all, in the storerooms domestic museums a great many works of Russian masters of the brush and chisel are immured, for which there is no place in the permanent exhibition, often for political and taste reasons. The Russians would know that along with the replicated exponents of the Soviet way of life Vuchetich, Nalbaldyan, Serov, Mukhina, there are Shemyakin, Safronov, Ivanov and others.
But no! Only "piece by piece"! Well done, Duma members! For many seekers of their goods, stored in Russia since the post-war years, this principle will discourage them from stuttering on this score. The Czech Republic and Slovakia, Serbia and Switzerland and Italy will poke their attention to us. And we answered them: "Where is ours?" And that's all. Ah, Norway wants its 12th century parchments? What about the arrogant and arrogant British Expeditionary Force Foundation? Drive back our "pieces". And we won't give the genealogies of princely families to the Poles out of harm at all. This is our great state value and secret!
Who else do we have here? Aha, Masonic lodges! I must say that not only were their documents stolen from the Masons (first Hitler, then Stalin), but at the same time they took religious objects, many of which were adorned with precious stones. Hitler did not have time to put them into action, and the Soviets rushed in advance immediately. In general, a huge number of jewelry has disappeared somewhere. Only a thick inventory with the name of these jewels remained in the Special Archives.

Nezavisimov repeatedly returned to the idea that mankind at all times with manic constancy seeks to eliminate the consequences in its home, and not the reasons leading to chaos. And thus makes a senseless run like a squirrel in a wheel. And he continues to go mad, blindly pleasing the ambitions of power-hungry and radical-minded subjects who imagine themselves capable of ruling nations, imposing on them norms of life that contradict the laws of the Creator, leading time after time to bloody and destructive catastrophes. This practice, having arisen thousands of years ago, manifests itself in more and more sophisticated forms of cruelty and senselessness.
Because of a stubborn unwillingness to improve their spirit, - the first and only condition for a harmonious and happy existence on planet Earth, people doomed themselves to painful Sisyphean labor. Indeed. From century to century, they lovingly create creations of unspeakable beauty, many of which, even in ancient times, were called "wonders of the world." They build cities with unique palaces, bridges, parks, highways, air and sea ports. The galleries are filled with wonderful canvases and sculptures, libraries and archives are lovingly fostered. And also, from century to century, filled with inexplicable hatred for each other, forgetting overnight the wise commandments of Buddha, Christ, Muhammad, the messengers of one God, destroy themselves and everything that is created in the name of false national, religious, state ideas. Another peaceful respite is coming. Towns and villages are being revived again. The peoples are counting the losses and demanding compensation from each other: in money, "greyhound puppies", stolen creations of human genius ...
And nothing changes with time under the eternal sky. States are puffed up, trying to punish the defeated aggressors with show courts, national and international, so that others do not know. The Nuremberg trials of the Nazis took place. But the court failed or did not want to reveal all the details of the barbaric mechanism for the destruction of humanity. Punished the top of the Third Reich, those who specifically started the aggression. But the creators of eugenic racist theories - psychiatrists - remained in the shadows and continue their devilish activities to destroy the souls of human beings. The Hague Tribunal judges modern terrorists. Just declarations are born by the United Nations Organization. And the planet Earth is washed with blood over and over again and covered with hot ash of destroyed cities and towns.
Sometime this madness on Earth will end. It is then that Christ's commandment will triumph: “Do not be conquered by evil. And conquer evil with good. " It doesn't matter whether it is fast or not. Everything in this world is predetermined, and everything is within the power of the people themselves.
Sooner or later, such strange concepts and expressions as "displaced values", "restitution" will disappear from the lexicon of mankind, and with them shameful disputes and verbal fights of states over who owes whom, how much and for what money.
And spiritual wealth - paintings, sculptures, masterpieces of book art, handicrafts, archival rarities will forever remain in the countries whose creators revealed them to the world, traveling to other lands only by the good will of their rightful owners, in order to delight with their beauty all connoisseurs of beauty and unique. For cultural works forcibly taken away from another people and not returned to them under all sorts of false pretexts cannot give satisfaction to people who know the value of justice and goodness.
Since Masons were mentioned in this chapter, it is just right to ponder over these mysterious, freemasons.