Rare Russian-language Books Worth Millions of Euros Stolen from Libraries in Poland and Baltic States

Over the past two years, unknown persons have stolen rare 19th century Russian and Russian-language literature, worth millions of euros, in Poland and the Baltic States. The thieves replaced the originals on library shelves with fakes. This was reported by LRT.

The University of Warsaw Library learned about the theft only last month. The stolen books included first editions of Alexander Pushkin and Nikolai Gogol. One of the university's employees estimated the value of the stolen books at about 1 million euros.

The thieves targeted Russian literature in all three Baltic countries. Experts believe that the stolen books were taken to Russia and at least some of them were sold at hastily organised auctions.

The first such theft occurred last year at the Latvian National Library, where three books disappeared. A Georgian was later found guilty of the theft. He was sentenced to six months in prison.

In the same month, two men came to the University Library in Tartu, Estonia, claiming to be studying censorship and printing policy in early 19th century Russia. They asked for books by Pushkin and Gogol that were almost 200 years old.

Only four months later did the library realise that the men had left eight convincing-looking copies instead of the originals. The damage was estimated at 158 thousand euros.

In May, Vilnius University Library also discovered that 17 rare Russian books were missing.

"Most of the stolen books were replaced with non-original ones," Gintare Vitkauskaite-Shatkauskienė, a spokeswoman for the Lithuanian Prosecutor General's Office said.

According to Lithuanian investigators, the value of the stolen books is approximately 440,000 euros. Among them are poems by Alexander Pushkin from 1826, Mikhail Lermontov's 1840 novel The Hero of Our Time, Nikolai Gogol's 1841 The Inspector, Pushkin's play Boris Godunov, published in 1831, and his book The History of Pugachov.

Also among the stolen publications are poems by Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko from 1840.

79 books also disappeared from the University of Warsaw. At least some of these books were sold at auctions in Russia.