THE 400TH ANIVERSARI OF THE ROMANOV

The Soviets, as brutally and thoroughly as any foreign invader, looted the Romanov collections of art, jewelry, furniture and books. In the 1920s and 30s aged Russian scholars and curators were forced to catalog treasures, so that foreigners could browse and buy them from the Communist government.When the Romanov goods for sale were laid out on tables in the Soviet Union, shoppers smirked and tried on crown jewels. One would see the ridicule with which some of these sales were conducted, the historian Edward Kasinec sai d during a l...[Read more]