For comprehensive, detailed accounts of what happened to the cultural and artistic treasures of imperial Russia under Lenin and his successors, see the journal Canadian American Slavic Studies/Revue Canadienne Americaine d'etudes Slaves, Spring-Summer-Fall-Winter 2009, v. 43, nos. 1-4. The theme of the 2009 edition was "Treasures into Tractors: The Selling of Russia's Cultural Hertiage, 1918-1938."
"We now know that plans to nationalize private art collections (including those of the Romanovs) and sell them off to the West began almost immediately after the Bolshevik Revolution in November 1917. We know the sales mechanism was extensive, including Antikvariat, the Commissariat of Foreign Trade, museums, the Diamond Fund, and even the police. Virtually every museum in every major city lost works of art to the massive campaign to sell art for hard currency to the West. So did private collections, churches, monasteries, and libraries.... The Soviet Union, a nominally Marxist and revolutionary society, sold art in the capitalist marketplace it hoped someday to demolish, and thereby helped finance its own drive for socialism in one country" (Robert C. Williams, "Preface," Canadian American Slavic Studies, Nos. 1-4, 2009). The volume also includes an article, "The Czar's Library: Books from Russian Imperial Palaces at the Library of Congress," by Harold M. Leich, as well as two other articles about books currently held in United States libraries that were once owned by Romanovs or Russian nobility.
