A spate of thefts of rare Russian classics worth millions of euros from libraries across Eastern Europe has left a trail that points all the way to auctions in Russia.
Shelves of 19th century Russian literature have been ransacked over the past two years in Poland and the Baltic states, with originals replaced by fakes.
The University of Warsaw library only found out last month about the thefts, including first editions of works by Alexander Pushkin and Nikolai Gogol.
A university employee with knowledge of the matter estimated the value of the stolen books at “around a million euros.”
“It was like gouging out the crown jewels,” Hieronim Grala, a former diplomat, an expert in Russia policy and professor at the University of Warsaw told AFP. “Fortunately, not everything was picked out, but a few emeralds, diamonds and rubies are lost,” said Grala, who has helped the university assess the damages.
The theft in Warsaw was not an isolated event. Libraries in the three Baltic countries have also fallen prey to thieves, and in each case Russian literature was targeted.
Experts believe the stolen works have found their way to Russia, with at least some sold off at hasty auctions in Moscow. The first known case of what turned out to be a series of similar raids was detected at the National Library of Latvia last year, when three books were stolen. A Georgian citizen was later found guilty of stealing them and sentenced to six months in prison, but his accomplice remained at large.
In the same month, two men claiming to be studying censorship and printing policy in early 19th-century Russia showed up at the university library in the Estonian city of Tartu and asked for the nearly 200-year-old works of Pushkin and Gogol.
It was only four months later that the library realized they had left behind eight convincing-looking copies, not the books that were later estimated to be worth a total of 158,000 euros ($170,000).
In May, Lithuania’s Vilnius University library discovered 17 of its rare Russian books had gone missing too.
According to Lithuanian investigators, the stolen books were worth around 440,000 euros.
