Rare Russian books were stolen from libraries in Poland, Lithuania and other Baltic countries

Clues to theft of rare Russian books lead to auctions in Russia.

The University of Warsaw library learned about the thefts only last month. Among the stolen values ​​are the first editions of the works of Alexander Pushkin and Nikolai Gogol.

One university employee estimated the value of the stolen books at around one million euros.

“It’s like peeling off the crown jewels,” Hieronim Grala, a former diplomat, expert on Russian politics and a professor at the University of Warsaw, told AFP.

“Fortunately, not everything was taken, but several emeralds, diamonds and rubies were missing,” said H. Grala, who is helping the university assess the damage.

Thefts in Warsaw are not the only ones – thieves have also targeted libraries in the three Baltic states. All of them also refer to Russian literature.

Experts believe the stolen books ended up in Russia, where at least some of them were sold at hastily arranged auctions in Moscow.

“Industrial scale”

For the first time, such thefts were noticed last year in the Latvian National Library; three books were missing.

A Sakartwell man was later found guilty of their theft and sentenced to half a year in prison, but his accomplice remained at large.

That same month, two men came to the university library in Tartu, Estonia, claiming to be studying censorship and print policy in early 19th-century Russia. They asked for almost 200-year-old books by A. Pushkin and N. Gogol.

It wasn’t until four months later that the library realized the men had left behind eight convincing-looking copies of the books. Later, it was estimated that the loss amounts to 158 thousand. euros.

In May, the Vilnius University library discovered that 17 of its rare Russian books were missing.

“Most of the stolen books were replaced with non-original ones,” Gintarė Vitkauskaitė-Šatkauskienė, a representative of the General Prosecutor’s Office of Lithuania, told AFP.

According to Lithuanian researchers, the stolen books are worth approximately 440 thousand. euros.

The University of Warsaw has already discovered that 79 books are missing, making it the biggest loss of all four countries.

“Thieves were operating here on an industrial scale,” one employee of the University of Warsaw library, who did not want to be named, told AFP. “When I saw what they took, I broke into a sweat.”

Among the fakes left behind by thieves seen by AFP are poor imitations and scrupulous forgeries where the fake can only be identified by a different stamp color or label size.

Before the libraries knew anything, the originals were being sold in Moscow.

“There is a record of December 22, 2022, that these books are in their place,” H. Grala said. – On the same day, one of these books was sold at an auction in Moscow for 30.5 thousand. euros.”

“Organize from Russia”

Sources close to the investigation into the thefts from the Warsaw library have shown AFP screenshots of auctions organized by Russian auction house Litfond, which show books with Warsaw University stamps and catalog numbers.

“It is clear to me that all actions were centrally organized from Russia,” H. Grala said.

AFP contacted Litfond, but the company’s CEO Sergey Burmistrov neither explicitly denied nor confirmed any wrongdoing.

“Litfond auction house works in accordance with the existing laws of the Russian Federation (…), we do not accept for sale and do not sell any books with stamps of existing state libraries,” said S. Burmistrov.

However, according to H. Grala, there is a clear Russia-related connection between the thefts in Poland and the Baltic states. That connection, he says, is neither surprising nor accidental.

“The first three blows were delivered to those countries that the Russians accuse of fighting against the Russian language and Russian culture,” H. Grala said. – They quite well understood that Reddish (things related to Russian culture) are not so closely guarded in our region (…), and less guarded means more accessible.”

Poland’s relations with Russia have long been strained; Warsaw strongly criticizes the Kremlin and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Warsaw and Moscow often exchange scathing remarks about protecting each other’s cultural heritage.

H. Grala struggled to contain his emotions when speaking about, in his words, the irreversible loss of rare Russian books that survived two national uprisings and two world wars in Poland.

“Librarians at the University of Warsaw risked their lives during the war to secretly install a double ceiling and hide these books so they wouldn’t disappear or burn,” he said.

“And we couldn’t protect them from being stolen,” the professor added.