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 It often happens that an object of undisputable value is of
little interest for the public, unless it is a part of some intricate scheme or
an element of a bigger picture. This object may be forsaken in some obscure
chest or glass case far from the public eye and be occasionally brought to
light, and even admired, but without much vigor. If, however, it gets involved
in some notorious criminal or - better even spy - plot, it immediately becomes
the hot issue, and everybody wants to learn more about the object in question
and is hungry for any detail. The story of the jewels of the Romanov Imperial
House developed along these lines - while they were stored in the royal vaults,
few knew and cared about them, but as soon as they disappeared, the imperial
heirloom became a subject of countless speculations, legends and conspiracy
theories.
As a matter of fact, the
Romanovs jewelry became a hot topic only after the Romanovs had lost
power and
those who survived had fled to Europe leaving the royal treasures to the
Bolsheviks who usurped the power. The history of the Russian jewelry
goes back
over one thousand years. However, it was not until Emperor Peter I the
Great
that real innovations and exchanges with the west changed Russian
jewelry style
forever. In 1719, Emperor Peter I founded the earliest version of what
we now
know as the State Diamond Fund of the Russian Federation. Peter I had
visited
other European nations, and introduced many innovations to Russia, one
of which
was the creation of a permanent fund to house a collection of jewels
which
belonged not to the Romanov family, but to the Russian State. Peter left
all of
the pieces used in the coronation ceremony to the Diamond Fund, as well
as many
important pieces of 15th, 16th and 17th century jewelry. The pieces were
housed
in a special secure room in the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, first
called
the Renteria, and subsequently called the Diamond Chamber.
In 1914, with the threat of a possible German invasion due
to World War I, the entire collection was carefully packed and sent from
St.
Petersburg to Moscow, where it was placed in vaults beneath the Kremlin
for
safety. But Russia's political troubles, including the Revolution in
1917 and
the ensuing Russian Civil War made the history of the state jewels even
more
complicated. The jewels were forgotten for a time, and it was not until
1926
that they were found in the Kremlin, and the pieces opened, catalogued,
and
photographed in their entirety. An enormous selection of the pieces was
sold to
an American consortium, and the pieces, which comprised close to 70% of
the
original collections, were sold at Christie's Auction house in London in
1927.
The pieces which were sold were dispersed all over the globe, and many
of their
locations are now unknown. In total, in 1920-1930 569 items from the
Diamond
Fund collection, which previously included 773 items, were sold.
The remaining pieces, which are the historically and
artistically most important from the collections include the coronation
regalia, and a spectacular collection of eighteenth and ninteenth
century
jewelry. The pieces went on display for the first time in 1967 as a
commemoration
of the 50th Anniversary of the revolution, when they were displayed in a
special vault beneath the Kremlin to high-ranking officials and foreign
dignitaries. Since the fall of communism, the pieces are on display to
the
public, who can buy tickets to visit the Diamond Fund when they go to
the Kremlin
Armory Museum in Moscow, while the jewelry that has fallen into the
hands of the
Romanov descendants is auctioned off with regrettable regularity. For
instance,
in November 2009, Christie's auctioned nearly 100 «Romanov» items, with
the
starting price of 1 million pounds per item.
Last year, some British intelligence archives were
declassified and revealed that in 1920 the Bolsheviks smuggled to
England
40,000 pound worth of jewels. The money obtained from selling of the
jewels was
used to finance British leftist political parties. Smugglers were quite
devious
in fulfilling their task - first the jewels were smuggled to Sweden, and
then
delivered to England by regular mail disguised as a box of chocolate.
In addition, there is a conspiracy theory claiming that the
jewelry of the Russian imperial house has been allegedly hidden
somewhere in Ekaterinburg,
a small town in the Ural where the last Russian tsar Nicolas II and his
family
were brutally murdered by the Bolsheviks. The Imperial family had
carried their
valuables, which included, among others, not less than a million gold
rubles
worth of jewels, with them from Tsarskoye Selo to Ekaterinburg. Yet in
the
aftermath of their murders, the officials of the Ural Regional Soviet
were able
to recover only a portion of what ought to have been there. This part of
the
Romanovs' wealth was transferred to Moscow and lodged in the treasury.
This
collection of items included the following: a platinum cigarette case,
numerous
gold chains, brooches, pendants and gemstones; silver tea and coffee
services;
gold and silver forks and spoons; men's and women's watches, etc.
The question of the missing Romanov treasure had confounded
the Soviets for more than a decade. Retrieving these valuables became
almost an
obsession with the Soviet government; many of the objects were unique
pieces of
Russian art and craftsmanship, and could be considered part of the new
nation's
patrimony. They never emerged at any of the auctions or in private
collections
so some believers still treasure hope that the Romanovs jewelry is
safely
hidden and waiting to be unearthed.
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