Soviet Plunder

During and after World War II, large-scale looting and seizure of cultural, industrial, and personal property took place in areas of Central and Eastern Europe at the hands of the Soviet armed forces.

The art seizure happened after the plunder of Russian and related culture's art treasures by the German soldiers and 'art brigades' during the initial years of World War II when Germany rapidly advanced into Russian territory. From the Soviet government perspective, it was an attempt at self accomplished reparations for the USSR's wartime cultural losses, coupled with the traditional desire for enrichment exhibited by the victorious soldiers. The looted items ranged from artworks and museum collections to industrial equipment and household goods. Despite some early post-Soviet efforts at restitution, Russia has largely maintained legal and political justifications for retaining these materials, often citing them as compensation for Nazi crimes against the USSR, and ignoring the fact that some of the items it holds belonged to other victims of Nazi looting.

Background

Plunder and looting has been a traditional consequence of military activities through human history. Russian forces have plundered before the establishment of the USSR, for example during World War I, and in the conflicts following it, such as the Soviet invasion of Poland in the aftermath of World War I.

World War II

Bureau of Experts

In 1943 Soviet artist and scholar Igor Grabar proposed tit-for-tat compensation of Soviet art treasures destroyed in World War II with art to be taken from Germany. The idea was approved by the Soviet authorities, leading to the establishment of the Bureau of Experts, tasked with compiling lists of items which the USSR wanted to receive as "restitution in kind" to compensate for its own cultural losses, both from state institutions but also from various private collections. The Bureau was headed by Grabar himself; its other members included Viktor Lazarev and Sergei Troinitsky. While this topic would be subject to discussion among Allies of World War II, eventually it was not subject to any common ruling. Estimating the losses proved difficult, since many Soviet cultural institutions had no reliable catalogues, and the poorly developed art market in Russia made establishing market value of many Russian works of art virtually impossible. Additionally, once the Soviet forces entered non-Soviet territories, they quickly engaged in large-scale and poorly documented looting, while refusing to provide the lists of items removed from the Soviet occupation zone in Germany. The Bureau's own list was not finished until 1946, and even then it was highly incomplete.

Looting by individuals

In 1944 a Soviet counteroffensive on the Eastern Front succeeded in pushing German troops back, and Soviet troops began entering non-Soviet territories. On December 26, 1944, an official Soviet decree authorized soldiers to mail packages, monthly, from the front, with the weight varying according to rank ( for rank-and-file soldiers, for officers, and for generals). It was inspired by a similar system introduced by the German army, and "was considered an open invitation to ovietsoldiers to seize what they could" and the beginning of the Soviet institutionalization of looting. This resulted in a significant increase of the packages sent by Soviet soldiers, which led to the overburdening of the official system. In turn, families of soldiers began to make requests of specific types of items (such as items of clothing) that they wanted to be "acquired". Soldiers also carried large packages when returning home; in extreme cases individual soldiers had declared "bags" weighting close to a ton.

Polish territories were among the first non-Soviet territories that the Red Army units entered. However, Polish authorities were generally not allowed to assume control over a town for several days after it was occupied by the Soviet forces, which was understood as a period of grace during which the Red Army soldiers were allowed to loot it. In some cases, looting and victory celebrations by the Red Army soldiers led to additional damage, for examples from fires (over 80% of the Polish town of Lubawa was damaged by a fire attributed to the drunk Red Army soldiers celebrating their capture of the town). Bogdan Musiał estimates that through large scale vandalism and arson, that "In pre-war East German territories, Red Army soldiers destroyed more cultural assets and works of art than they managed to confiscate and take to the USSR." Complaints by Polish communist authorities about looting by Soviet soldiers were often ignored by the relevant Soviet authorities; in extreme cases, this even led to violent clashes between Red Army soldiers and police forces operated by the Polish communists. The devastation and robberies became increasingly severe in territories Soviets considered to be German.

Institutionalized looting and the trophy brigades

In February 1945, shortly after returning from the Yalta Conference Joseph Stalin issued several decrees outlining the principles and rules for the Soviet removal of cultural and industrial property from foreign territories controlled by the Red Army. They concerned not only German territories, but also other regions, such as Axis-aligned countries like Hungary, and also Allied countries, such as Poland or China (in territories captured from the Japanese, particularly in Manchuria). This led to institutionalized looting carried out by specialized groups operating on the orders of the Soviet government, the so-called Soviet "trophy brigades", composed of experts including art historians, museum officials, artists and restorers, tasked with finding objects of cultural value to be seized and sent to the USSR. Items seized were stored in places called "trophy warehouses". The brigades were operated by several agencies of the Soviet government; their coordination was poor and in some cases, they were described as competing with each other.

In addition to art, household and luxury items (clothing, furniture, vehicles), other major categories of items seized by the Soviets included scientific (see Russian Alsos), and, in particular, industrial equipment. Bank vaults were also emptied. Soviets dismantled and moved entire industrial plants, leaving empty walls. They also removed infrastructure elements, such as thousands of kilometers of train tracks. The first theater of operations for the trophy brigades, in February 1945, was the German part of Silesia and adjacent areas. Once stripped of items of interest to the Soviets, these would be handed over to Poland, as Recovered Territories. In a number of cases, the Soviets also looted areas which were part of the Second Polish Republic in the interwar period (for example, the towns of Września, Włocławek and Grudziądz). In other cases, the Soviet authorities, after initial looting of an industrial object, relinquished it to the Polish communist authorities for repair, then seized it again for another round of looting, before returning it again.

As the war ended, the Soviet Union also instituted rules legitimizing "trophy" purchases, some covered by the state, and based on soldier's rank. Anecdotal evidence from the period suggested that some highly placed officials, such as General Georgy Zhukov, acquired so much loot that they chartered entire planes to carry it. In better documented examples, from June 1945, Red Army generals in Germany and similar territories could receive, at no cost, a car, while lesser officers were offered motorcycle or bicycles. Other items distributed by the Soviet authorities to its personnel, at no cost or for a small fee, included items such as furniture (including pianos and clocks), wristwatches, carpets, cameras and similar items. Even more items were traded on the black market. This resulted in a significant influx to the Soviet Union of luxury items initially acquired and used by the family members of the military personnel serving in non-Soviet, occupied territory.

After the war

Konstantin Akinsha wrote that "by the second part of 1945 the necessity to compensate for Soviet cultural losses by equally important artifacts from specifically named German collections was forgotten and replaced by the concept of total removal of cultural property from the Soviet-occupied territories".

After the war, the process of looting was further transformed into that of war reparations (specifically, the World War II reparations). Soviet looting of occupied territories, including those nominally under control of their allies, such as Polish, continued for several years after the war ended.

The vast amount of industrial loot (machinery, resources, and associated technologies) have been described as a significant factor for the fast rebuilding of the USSR after the war, leading to its emerging as a global power in the second half of the 20th century.

Concealment and museum storage

Initially Stalin had plans for a "super museum" celebrating the Soviet victory, similar to Hitler's planned Führermuseum. Most cultural items seized by the Soviet state were concentrated in few institutions in major centers, such as Moscow and Leningrad (in particular, the Pushkin Museum in Moscow and the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad), with little compensation reaching cultural institutions in provincial areas. Exhibitions of trophy art were prepared, but never opened to general public, accessible only to high-ranking Soviet officials. Shortly afterwards, Stalin ordered such collections to be considered top secret, which has been understood as an attempt to hide the scope of Soviet looting from the international public opinion. Since then, the USSR has been generally denying that it held significant seized trophy art.

Soviet authorities have been described as very tolerant towards the theft of enemy property, although there were cases of more or less official taxation, extending into bribery, as well as resulting in arrests, including for soldiers who were considered too ambitious and greedy. Theft from trains and warehouses carrying loot, including reparations, became a serious problem for several years. Some crimes were committed by armed gangs; others involved corrupted officials illegally seizing and reselling goods. In some cases, corrupted officials would steal from veterans and their families, including the seizing of decorations and documents, that gave them access to privileges. To address the issues, particularly the theft of state property, a number of new laws were passed, particularly in 1947. Around that time, Stalin has used the argument about misuse of war trophies in a number of cases, reining in the power of the military; one of the most high profile victims of this accusation was Marshal Georgy Zhukov.

Post-1991 revelations

The scope of Soviet looting came to light in the early 1990s, with revelations about the Soviet trophy brigades and stockpiles of looted art from World War II still lingering in hidden warehouses. The initial revelations came from Russian art historians Konstantin Akinsha and Grigorii Kozlov, who published their findings in the American ARTnews magazine. They were covered by major media outlets worldwide, leading to public discussion such as the symposium on the The Spoils of War. One of the notable early works on this was the 1994 book ''Loot: The Secrets of German Reparations'' (''Добыча: тайны германских репараций'') by Russian military historian Pavel Knyshevskii (Павел Николаевич Кнышевский).

In Russia, following a slight thaw in relations with the West after the collapse of the Soviet Union, international pressure by public option led to some early restitutions. Growing opposition from nationalists in the Russian Duma, however, led to a law halting further cultural restitution. Subsequently, the legality of Soviet removal of cultural objects from Germany has been addressed by the 1998 Russian cultural property law, which broadly justifies the Soviet actions, affirms the legality of de facto nationalization of World War II-era "trophies", and continued the Soviet trend of denying most compensation claims. Additionally, information about Western Allies' restitution of Soviet property to the USSR has been suppressed in the Soviet Union and is still mostly unknown or denied in Russia, with incorrect claims