The Hermitage thefts uncovered in 2006

On 31 July 2006 the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg told the Russian authorities that 221 objects were missing from its stores. The next day, 1 August, its director, Mikhail Piotrovsky, gave the police a statement and held a press conference. He said the theft could not have happened without help from inside. RFE/RL gives his words as “a stab in the back”.

The objects came from the Hermitage’s Russian store of precious metals and jewellery. The notes name church silver, icons with silver and silver-gilt mounts, chalices, crosses, enamels, jewellery, watches, cigarette cases and table silver, mostly of the 19th century. They were in storage, not on show, and were not insured. The Hermitage put their value at about 130 million roubles, or about $5 million, according to AP. Five more objects were added in the autumn, which made 226. A retired police colonel, Vladislav Kirillov, told the newspaper Moskovskij Komsomolets in 2021 that 202 of the 221 were entered under curators who had since died, and that the last full check of the store was in 1979.

The curator who kept the store, Larisa Zavadskaya, had died suddenly at her desk in autumn 2005, as a stock check of her collection began. Most outlets report a heart attack. Piotrovsky gives the date as 8 November 2005. She was never charged, and she died before any charge. Investigators and the court later said she took part in an organised group, Reuters reported in 2007. Lenta.ru reports that the Prosecutor General’s office opened and closed a case against her after her death.

Recoveries began on 3 August 2006, when an icon, the Assembly of All Saints, was found in a rubbish bin near the police antiques department after an anonymous call. A Moscow dealer then told police she held a silver-gilt chalice from the list. That led police to the Zavadsky family. They found many pawn tickets at the family’s flat. The number is given as about 100 by Itar-Tass, quoted by the BBC, and about 50 by the family’s lawyer. Other objects came back from railway luggage lockers and from outside police buildings.

Her husband, Nikolai Zavadsky, a university history lecturer, and their son, Nikolai Zavadsky Jr., were detained in early August. On 17 August the Prosecutor General’s office charged the husband, the son and a university lecturer, Ivan Sobolev, with theft. The son was released and was never tried or convicted. Sobolev’s case ended because the time limit had run out, and he was not convicted.

On 15 March 2007 the Dzerzhinsky District Court in St Petersburg found Nikolai Zavadsky guilty of theft in an organised group on a very large scale. It gave him five years in a general-regime colony. The prosecutor had asked for six. He had confessed. He said he sold objects at pawnshops and antique shops and used the money for his wife’s insulin. Most reports say the court tied him to 77 objects. He was ordered to pay the Hermitage 7.388 million roubles, about $283,000. About 150 other objects went into a separate case against unidentified people. No one has been found.

The count recovered has risen slowly. It was 21 in mid-August 2006 and 31 at the verdict. Kommersant reported 34 of the 221 on 27 January 2019. Piotrovsky wrote in 2023 that one or two more had been found since then and that most are still lost. He says icons and small silver have no imperial marks and few photographs, so they are hard to identify. No final official count has been found.