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Selling Russia's treasures : the Soviet trade in nationalized art, 1917-1938 / edited by Natalya Semyonova and Nicolas V. Iljine ; project concept, Natalya Semyonova, Nicolas V. Ilijine ; general editor, Natalya Semyonova ; foreword, Mikhail Piotrovsky ; afterword, Pavel Khoroshilov ; text, Rifat Gafifullin, Elena Emlianova, Alexey Petukhov, Yuri Pyatnitsky, Elena Solomakha ; translation from the Russian, Andrew Bromfield, Howard M. Goldfinger.

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Paris, France : MTA Publishing, The M.T. Abraham Foundation Center for the Visual Arts Foundation ; New York, NY : Distributed by Abbeville Press Publishers, c2013.

Gosudarstvennyĭ Ėrmitazh (Russia) -- History -- 20th century.

Art and state -- Soviet Union.

Art -- Collectors and collecting -- History -- 20th century.

Cultural property -- Soviet Union -- 20th century.

361 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 31 cm

The lessons of the museum sales / Mikhail Piotrovsky -- The temple of fine arts / Amir G. Kabiri -- Inspired by the past / Dmitry Gourji -- Citizens, preserve monuments of art! -- The Romanov treasure trail -- The pillage of the Russian Church -- Russian icons and art market / Yuri Pyatnitsky -- The palace-museums / Rifat Gafifullin -- The destruction of the Hermitage / Elena Solomakha -- Museum of Modern Western Art : bargain sales of the 1920s-1930s / Alexey Petukhov -- Books for sale / Elena Emelianova -- Buyers, collectors and collections -- In place of an epilogue / Pavel Khoroshilov -- The Russian crown jewels / Victor Nikitin -- Russian icons in European collections / Yuri Pyatnitsky.

Selling Russia's Treasures documents one of the great cultural dramas of the twentieth century: the sale, by a cash-hungry Soviet government, of the artistic treasures accumulated by the Russian aristocracy over the centuries and nationalized after the October 1917 revolution. An astonishing variety of objects, from icons and illuminated manuscripts to Fabergé eggs and Old Master paintings, entered the collections of wealthy Westerners like Andrew Mellon and Armand Hammer in the 1920s and 30s. Written by the leading experts in the field and long regarded as the definitive book on the subject, the original Russian edition of Selling Russia's Treasures is sought after scholars and laymen alike. Now, for the first time, it is made available in English, in a revised and expanded edition that includes a new chapter on the secret files of the Hermitage, previously considered lost, as well as new research on the sale of religious art, and of twentieth-century French masterworks from the Museum of New Western Art. Numerous color plates reunite long-dispersed works in a virtual museum that illustrates the powerful blow inflicted on Russia's cultural heritage by these secretive sales, and rare photographs and archival documents help bring this buried history to light.

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