Romanian Treasure

Although the campaign started favorably with Romanian troops advancing into Transylvania, soon after, German, Austro-Hungarian, and Bulgarian forces took the initiative, occupying Dobruja, Oltenia, and Muntenia in the fall of the same year.

Costinescu also mentioned the option of transferring the treasure to London but considered the route too dangerous, given the additional threat posed by German submarines.

Although the banker Mauriciu Blank advised him to send it to London or to a neutral country, such as Denmark, Brătianu feared the German submarines of the North Sea and chose another ally of Romania in World War I, the Russian Empire, using the argument that "Russia would feel offended if we sent it to England".

On December 12, 1916, the Council of Ministers approved the transfer of the treasure to Russia, after the Russian minister in Iași, General A. Mossoloff, communicated on December 11 that he was authorized to sign the protocol regarding the loading of the BNR treasure onto a special train, adding that the imperial Russian government guaranteed its integrity both during transportation and during its stay in Moscow.

Documents, manuscripts, ancient coins, paintings, rare books, treasures from monasteries in Moldavia and Muntenia, archives, deposits, collections of many public and private institutions; 2.

Upon completion of the loading operations, a Protocol was signed in three copies, one for the Russian side, one for the Romanian Ministry of Finance, and one for the National Bank.

Delegated from the National Bank to accompany the transport were director Theodor Capitanovici (who was also tasked with remaining in Moscow and keeping two of the keys to the compartment where the valuables were to be deposited), censor A. Saligny, and central cashier M.Z.

The Russian revolutionaries quickly gained control of the capital sparked by the economic crisis facing Russia during World War I, as well as the provocations of German agents.

To ensure the safety of the Romanian valuables stored at the Kremlin, 20 rural gendarmes dressed in civilian clothes were sent, departing from Iași on November 15th, 1917.

However, the Allies could not guarantee the safety of the transport; this was not surprising, given that the treasure would have to traverse the entire Siberian region during a period of great social disorder.

Near Iași, at Socola, a genuine Bolshevik headquarters had been established with the objective of removing King Ferdinand I, instituting a Soviet regime in Romania, and assassinating Shcherbachev.

On January 26th, Russia, through Trotsky, the Commissioner for Foreign Affairs, announced the severance of diplomatic relations with Romania, and General Shcherbachev was declared an outlaw and an enemy of the people.

On the evening of June 16, 1935, at the Obor train station in Bucharest, 17 freight cars arrived, loaded with 1,443 crates, coming from Moscow, upon the order of the USSR government, which decided to return to Romania a large part of the goods that had been stored in the Kremlin.

This transport marked the first return in the history of Romania's Treasury in Moscow, consisting of old documents, rare books, plans, maps, archives, deeds, manuscripts, church objects, carpets, rugs, deposits, paintings, pictures, sketches, drawings, art collections, and goods belonging to private individuals or state institutions.

On June 28, 1935, Romanian delegate G. Paraschivescu signed a report of receipt for these goods, specifying that no quantity of gold, jewelry, or other valuable items were handed over.

After the communist forces took power in 1945 and the presence of the Red Army in Romania, the issue of the treasury was no longer raised by the Romanian authorities and was almost forgotten.

The official statement asserted that "the Soviet people have carefully preserved all these works of art, which represent great historical and artistic value.

The new leadership in the Kremlin received the official letter from the Presidential Administration in Bucharest and responded that "for Russia, the so-called issue of the Romanian Treasure deposited in Moscow no longer exists."

The Moscow delegation presented President Ion Iliescu with a solution to solve the problem, by exponentially increasing economic and commercial exchanges between the two countries, offering Romania a package of 32 economic and commercial projects to be carried out through private companies, with project number 32 to be called "the restitution of the component of precious metals to the National Bank of Romania."

The Russian side complied and immediately sent a delegate to Bucharest in December 1994 with the 12 gold coins requested by Ioan Talpeș, but no Romanian authority wanted to accept them thereafter.

The Head of the Numismatic and Historical Treasure Department at the National Museum of Romanian History, Ernest Oberländer Târnoveanu, signed the acceptance document and certified that "all the presented coins are authentic."

The issue of the Romanian treasure was raised for the first time internationally by Romania at the Paris Peace Conference during the session of the Reparations Commission, held on April 8, 1919.

The Treaty of Versailles, concluded in June 1919, did not mention this issue, but held Germany and its associates responsible for all losses caused to the allied governments.

Given the fraternal relations between the communist governments of Romania and the Soviet Union, potentially litigious issues between the two countries were carefully avoided by the Romanian side.

One of them was the issue of the full restitution of the treasure, during the communist period, relatively few real efforts were made to discuss the problem with the Soviet side.

One of the attempts - probably the most important one - took place in 1965 when Nicolae Ceaușescu made his first visit to the USSR as the General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party.

The commission met for the first time from October 19 to 21, 2004, in Bucharest, with its co-chairs being Professor Ioan Scurtu and Academician Alexandr Oganovich Ciubarian.

The commission met five times through 2019; some progress was made in returning smaller archive materials and minor assets, but the artistic pieces, the gold, and other valuables are still in Russia.