Commentary – »Potential equivalents« as a strategy to compensate cultural losses

In 1945, so-called »trophy brigades« were sent to the territories occupied by the Red Army. As a result of their actions, significant collections of art objects were relocated to the USSR. Many documents concerning the actions of »trophy brigades« remained classified for a long time, and the art objects themselves hidden in secret repositories, mostly in the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow and the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg. To date, after almost 75 years even the number of translocated objects is still unavailable to researchers.

In 1943, Soviet art historians were asked by the Soviet authorities to think about the elaboration of principles for the evaluation and compensation for the loss of Russian cultural objects during the War, something they had never considered nor wished to happen.

Assessing the losses of the Soviet Union during the war had already begun in 1942 when the Extraordinary State Commission (ChGK) was established by decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. The name of commission explains its duties: Extraordinary State Commission on the Registration and Investigation of the Crimes of the German-Fascist Occupiers and their Accomplices and the Damage Done by them to Citizens, Collective Farms, Public Organizations, State Enterprises, and Institutions of the USSR. One of the active members of ChGK was Igor Grabar. In June 1943 he proposed to establish a special Expert Bureau inside the ChGK to discuss compensation for Soviet art treasures destroyed in the war by art from Germany and its allies »to elaborate the lists of objects from the museums and private collections in Germany, Austria, Italy, Hungary, Romania, and Finland, which can be put forward as potential equivalents [editor’s note: Grabar speaks of эвентуальных эквивалентов (letter to N. Shvernik, 15.06.1943, in: Aponasenko 2014, p. 80), which used to be translated incorrectly; »эвентуальный« is used very rarely, it means »possible under appropriate conditions, circumstances, in a particular case«]. To carry out this work, there is no need to travel abroad, since the libraries of some Soviet art historians contain complete sets of catalogs of all European museums, and their personal handwritten notes contain comprehensive additional information regarding these museums.« (GARF f. Р-7021, op. 121, d. 17, l. 144).

According to Grabar, a well-chosen circle of experts would allow for more efficient work. Except for Grabar, this organization was headed by Viktor Lazarev, former deputy director at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow and Sergei Troinitskii, the former director of the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad. Grabar’s opinion was trusted at the highest levels of government; therefore, the authorities received his proposal with great interest. The number of experts was expanded and the Bureau of Experts was established by ChGK Decree No. 12 from 8th September 1943.

Their main idea was to plan for the transfer of paintings and other cultural values as a part of »restitution in kind«. Accordingly, the main task was to evaluate the damage caused to the cultural heritage of the country as well as to compose lists of so-called »potential equivalents.« This had actually been discussed already six months earlier, as this previously unpublished archival document shows.

However, the transcript of the meeting of experts shows how difficult this approach was. Before evaluating material losses, the Soviet authorities needed to compile lists of their own lost art objects, including unique architectural monuments. During the meeting, the architect Ivan Mashkov, who had acted as Moscow City Architect after the 1917 Revolution, notes that experts »must give information indicating how much the Germans owe us« (GARF f. Р-7021, op. 121, d. 17, l. 28). Two years later, in 1945 it was clear that despite the efforts this plan had failed since the Soviet authorities were not able to put a number on the actual cultural losses. The Extraordinary State Commission completed its list only in 1946. According to this data, 564,723 museum objects were removed, damaged, or destroyed in the USSR (GARF f. P-7021, op. 116, d. 298). However, the list had no monetary estimates. In real life, this immense task appeared to be impossible.

The other problem was to develop a strategy that would, under conditions of a war-time information vacuum, provide an opportunity to compose a lists of art works from the collections of Germany and its Allies. But the most difficult issue according to the expert community was to compare the value of the destroyed art objects and to derive a specific material value for each item intended for translocation to the USSR. Grabar addresses this problem by comparing the Pergamon Altar to the Saviour Church on Nereditsa – an orthodox church built in 1198 which was located on the front line between 1941 and 1943 and then destroyed. Grabar was confident of the Soviet authorities’ success, expressing no doubt that »we will certainly take out the Pergamon altar but the challenge is what they will be credited for it.« However, Grabar, who had visited Western countries after the 1917 Revolution, was certainly aware that there was a lack of interest in and knowledge about Russian art, and therefore no specific art market for such works at that time. Grabar knew what he was talking about not only because of having had the opportunity to travel abroad. He had also participated in the secret sales of art objects, mostly from the State Hermitage Museum during the first Five-Year Plan (1928–1932). As the Russian researcher Konstantin Akinsha states, »such experts working for the Bureau as Vladimir Levinson-Lessing, Nikolai Vlasov, and Grabar himself had taken active part in the sales and were aware of the prices the Soviet government received from Western art dealers« (Akinsha, p. 201).

Trying to legitimize their approach in the eyes of Western authorities, Soviet experts discussed previous parallels in implementing relevant international practices. During the meeting the architect Alexey Shchusev, who among other projects designed the Lenin Mausoleum on Red Square, asked if it had been »taken into account, that after the First World War the French asked the Germans for Reims Cathedral, etc.« (GARF f. Р-7021, op. 121, d. 17, l. 31). Grabar claimed that the Treaty of Versailles »evaluated separate glass [panels], paintings on glass from Reims Cathedral«. Apparently, Grabar was convinced that the Versailles Treaty set out specific values for the damages and wanted to use them as a precedent. The reference to the Versailles Treaty was a preferable strategy for international dialogue.

The experts even shared a dream to found a new museum in Moscow, which was supposed to be »a museum of a kind that has not existed until now in the world« (GARF f. Р-7021, op. 121, d. 17, l. 24). However, the lists of »potential equivalents« remained no more than »wish lists composed by art historians« (Akinsha, p. 211). In the two years after 1943, the Soviet authorities dramatically changed their concept in favour of total removal of cultural assets by trophy brigades. Although documents stated that the purpose was the enrichment of state museums, the objects were in fact kept in storage.

Documents on the trophy brigades remained classified for a long time. Akinsha cites decrees and special orders signed by Josef Stalin not from originals on the grounds that they were »still classified and unavailable for researchers (as of mid-2010). We are aware of the existence of several of the most important of them only through the sensational publication of Dobycha in 1994 by the late Russian military historian Pavel Knyshevskii« (Akinsha, p. 196). It is also revealing that the title of the book »Dobycha« can be translated as plunder, loot or spoil. Akinsha notes that »The author [Knyshevskiy], a military historian, who died a year after the book appeared, had special access to the former Communist Party and military archives, but most of the documents cited are still classified in Russia« (Akinsha, p. 197).

These documents are now available for researchers and include the decrees and special orders signed by Josef Stalin who was the head of the State Committee of Defense (GKO). The dates of the documents tell a lot about the thought process and the logic of Soviet authorities. From 4th to 11th February 1945, the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union – Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin – met at the Yalta Conference. A few days later, on 21th of February, Stalin issued the »Decree of the State Committee of Defense No 7563cc (top secret) on the establishment of permanent commissions at the operating Red Army fronts and on orders for removal of industrial equipment and materials from Germany and Poland« (RGASPI f. 644, op. 2, d. 372, l. 173–175).This decree established the creation of different trophy brigades supposed to send movable goods including engineer equipment to Russia. The final version of the document submitted to Stalin for approval had been deсlassified. In the upper right corner of the list it is annotated in Stalin’s hand »from [Lavrentiy] Beria«, and the underlined signature »Advocate (рус. За) I. Stalin« diagonally crosses the entire list (RGASPI f. 644, op. 2, d. 453, l. 179–180).

Shortly after the engineering equipment, cultural property followed. On 31st of May, 1945 GKO issued the decree 8894сс (top-secret, declassified) »On the removal of the collection of jewelry, coins, and medals, paintings, and fine porcelain from the area of Dresden.« The document ordered to »send five specialists to the Dresden area to determine the value of paintings, fine porcelain, sculptures, museum furniture, and libraries« (RGASPI f. 644, op. 1, d. 421, l. 165).

On the 26th of June, 1945 GKO issued decree 9256сс (top-secret, declassified) »On removal of art values from the trophy warehouses in Dresden.« It commanded their removal »to Moscow for the enrichment of state museums the most valuable art works of painting, sculpture and applied arts and also antiquarian and museum valuables in quantities not exceeding 2000 items from the trophy warehouses in Dresden« (RGASPI f. 644, op. 1, d. 430, l. 177). The decree 9725сс (top-secret, declassified) from the 3rd of August, 1945 »On the export of special equipment and material values from warehouses in Berlin« contained a list of seven items, where not only machine tools (56 pieces), typographical paper (200 tons) and laboratory tools (200 boxes) but also »Architectural and art museum values (collections of ceramics, majolica, porcelain, etc.)« amounting to 220 crates were listed (RGASPI f. 644, op. 1, d. 449, l. 113–114).

In light of these developments, the work that had been done over many years by the Bureau of Experts looks like a futile attempt. In 1945, the Bureau of Experts provided the final list of equivalents to Andrei Konstantinov, the deputy head of the Committee on Arts of the Council of People’s Commissars. They included 1,745 pieces of art from the museums of Germany, Austria, Hungary, Italy in the amount of 70,587,200 US dollars: »Painting 813 items to the amount of 49,155,200 US dollars, drawings 382 items to the amount of 1,147,000 dollars, sculptures 107 items to the amount of 2,766,000 dollars, ancient art 217 items to the amount of 13,026,400 dollars, Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia 210 items to amount 3,835,500, Byzantine art 16 items worth 647,000 dollars« (GARF f. Р-7021, op. 116, d. 291, l. 293–296). The Sistine Madonna was evaluated at $2,000,000, the Pergamon Altar at $7,500,000.

But in 1946 there was almost no practical need for these documents. The lists of equivalents for prints, paintings, sculptures, antiquities, and so on were transferred to the Inter-Allied Reparation Commission in Berlin (Aponasenko, p. 29). But there were no corresponding lists of objects which had in fact been translocated to the USSR. The declassified documents show that in the orders received by the trophy brigades, art objects were counted by hundreds of crates or thousands of unspecified items. The bulk removal of cultural assets as »military trophies« led to a situation where the Soviet authorities consistently refused to provide lists of cultural items already removed from Germany.

At the same time, in January 1946, a quadripartite Special Working Group within the ACC Reparations, Deliveries and Restitution Directorate was finalizing the draft text of the »Special Instructions Concerning Replacement by Similar or Comparable Property of Objects of a Unique Character.« The transcript of the meetings demonstrates the new attitude of the Soviet government that replaced the »potential equivalents« approach:

R. (USSR) »How shall we understand the requirement for presenting lists ›The property that was taken away from the Zone of Occupation since May 1945, and the present location of this?‹«

A. (USA) »That refers to German-owned works of art that were in this country at the end of the war and that have been removed since the seventh of May.«

R. »It is not necessary to present such lists. Objects belonging to the Germans that were exported after the seventh of May are Soviet property, as military trophies, and there is no case of replacement. The Germans hid property such as valuable works of art to save them from military action. Such property and property taken by troops, especially the Red Army, is without doubt military trophies and cannot be used for replacement; it is useless to make a list for such property« (cited after Akinsha, p. 208).

Anna Pushakova is a lecturer at Moscow City University, specializing on the history of museum collections in the USSR. From 2013 to 2018 she was working as a keeper of Japanese and Chinese collection in the The State Museum of Oriental Art (Moscow), where she curated several exhibitions.

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