UKRAINE SUFFERED “COLOSSAL” LOOTING DURING WORLD WAR II
Research challenges Russians’ claim that they own many cultural valuables from the independent state
By John Varoli | The Art Newspaper, June 2009
After the war, the Soviets recovered many works of art from Germany, but research shows that Germany was not alone in depriving Ukraine of its cultural heritage. According to Ms Grimsted, the Americans returned to the Soviets about 534,000 cultural items from 1945 to 1948, and about 167,000 of these items originated from Kiev. However, many items never made it home, and instead settled in cultural institutions in Leningrad and Moscow.
Mr Kot said Russian museums rarely want to cooperate in determining just how much looted Ukrainian art they possess. At the end of the 1990s, however, Ukrainian researchers learned Russia was in possession of 26 mosaics and frescoes from the walls of the 12th-century St Mikhail’s Cathedral in Kiev that the Soviets destroyed in the 1930s. After years of negotiations, 11 of the frescoes, held in the Hermitage, were returned to Ukraine in two shipments: February 2001 and February 2004. The others remain in Russia.
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