The State Hermitage Youth Education Center the history and traditions of different countries and nations. The Youth Center was launched in 2000 when Mijaíl Borisovich Piotrovsk, Director of The Hermitage, signed the order for the creation of the Student Club which bears the same name as the museum. Since 2011, it has been located in located in the east wing of Saint Petersburg’s General Staff Building, and since its founding it’s been supervised by curator Sofía Vladimirovna Kudryavtseva. At the core of the Student Club are thematic sections, which are managed by museum staff. Membership is open to students or graduates from universities in Saint Petersburg
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