Elena A. Osokina
Antikvariat (Art exports during Soviet industrialization),
in: Ekonomicheskaja istorija. Ezhegodnik (Economic Hystory. Yearbook). 2002, Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2003, p.233-268.

Summary
At the end of the 1920s the leaders of the Soviet Union, headed by Stalin, launched a massive industrialization campaign. Its main goal was the high-speed development of heavy industry and military production. This highly ambitious industrialization campaign required considerable financial resources for the import of equipment and supplies for the industrial giants. However, the gold reserves of the Russian Empire, which the Bol'sheviks seized along with power, had been exhausted during the revolution and war. The government feverishly searched for gold and hard currency. In their "rush for gold" the leadership of the Soviet Union did not disdain the use of any means. Mass art exports seemed promising. In Imperial Russia the poverty of the majority of the population existed side by side with the untold wealth of the nobles and the state treasury. Russian tsars and nobility even in their worst nightmare could not have foreseen that in decorating their palaces they were creating a gold and currency reserve for Soviet industrialization. This article discusses the beginning of the Soviet mass art exports. It introduces its "engineers", sellers-executioners and buyers. The article documents the peculiar intertwining of practical reason and political goals with a passion for art collecting.

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