NYT: Thieves steal early editions of Pushkin’s books from libraries across Europe

In April 2022, two men came to the university library in Tartu, Estonia’s second largest city. They claimed to be related and fleeing the war. The couple requested a first edition of Alexander Pushkin’s books, saying he was researching censorship in Tsarist Russia, so the nephew could apply for a scholarship in the United States. The librarians were happy to help them.

The men spent ten days “studying” the books. But four months later, during a routine annual inventory, the library discovered that eight books requested by the men had disappeared. Instead of them, there were very convincing forgeries in the library, The New York Times describes.

At first it seemed like an isolated case. But police are now investigating a large-scale coordinated series of thefts of rare 19th-century Russian books across Europe. Thefts mainly concern the first and early editions of Alexander Pushkin’s works – the perpetrators always replace the books with extremely faithful forgeries, which are usually only detected by the eye of a real expert.

Since 2022, according to Europol, more than 170 books worth over 2.6 million dollars have disappeared from libraries in Latvia, Germany, Finland, France or the Czech Republic in this way. The library of the University of Warsaw was the most affected, from which 78 books disappeared. Each work alone is worth tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The disappearance of so many books of the same kind from so many countries in a relatively short period of time is unprecedented, according to experts. The thefts prompted libraries to step up security and retailers to be on high alert about the origins of Russian books.

Authorities arrested nine people in connection with the thefts. Four people were detained in late April in Georgia along with more than 150 books. In November, French police arrested three suspects. Another man was convicted in Estonia and a fifth suspect is in prison in Lithuania. However, investigators believe the books are being traded by “smaller fish” who work for larger organizations. However, it is not yet clear who is behind the organized thefts.

The prices of books published during the lifetime of the so-called holy trinity of Russian romantic writers – Pushkin, Gogol and Mikhail Lermontov – have risen dramatically over the past 20 years as the wealth of Russian collectors has grown. According to dealers, it’s a small market with relatively few books and collectors who often have a list of books they want. According to experts, it is therefore possible that the books are traveling to Russia – because the collectors there cannot buy similar works legally in Europe due to sanctions.

The trade organization the International League of Antiquaries has listed many of the recent book thefts on its Missing Books Register. According to Pierre-Yves Guillemet, a London-based dealer specializing in Russian rare books, Russian books stolen from European libraries are unlikely to appear at official auctions in the West.