Soviet sale of Hermitage paintings National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. In the late 1920s, the Soviet government urgently needed foreign currency to finance the rapid industrialization of Russia ordered in the first Five Year Plan. The government had already sold off collections of jewelry, furniture and icons seized from the Russian nobility, wealthy classes, and the church. In February 1928, the State Hermitage Museum in Leningrad, along with the Russian Museum, was ordered to make a list of art works worth at least two million rubles, for export. A special agency called 'Antiquariat' was created under the "Narkompros" (the People's Commisariat of Enlightenment)
Soviet sale of Hermitage paintings were made in the same period, notably the Codex Siniaticus from the Russian National Library, sold in 1933 to the British Museum (after 1973 British Library) for £100,000 raised by public subscription (worth £ in 2019), and "The Night Café" by Vincent van Gogh. In the 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Parliament of the Russian Federation passed a new law prohibiting the sale of Russian art treasures to foreign countries. For many years the National Gallery was reluctant to lend the paintings it had bought from the Hermitage back to that Museum, for fear that the