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)
Glinsk Hermitage Glinsk Hermitage The Glinsk Hermitage (formally known as the Nativity of the Theotokos Stavropegial Male Monastery) is a Russian Orthodox stavropegial monastery located in Ukraine, near the Russian border. In the 19th and early 20th centuries it was a major spiritual center of the Russian Orthodox Church, and many of its elders have been recently canonized as saints. The monastery is under the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) in the diocese of Konotop and Hlukhiv. According to tradition, the monastery was founded in the 17th century in a wooded thicket not far from the city of Putivl, in the village