The State Hermitage Museum: Information

RIA Novosti North-West Interview
31 May 2004

In an interview with Russian Information Agency Novosti, Hermitage Director Mikhail Piotrovsky commented on the assertions in certain sections of the foreign media that the celebrated Amber Room was destroyed by the Red Army and not by the Nazis by declaring that “the destruction of the Amber Room during the Second World War is the responsibility of those who started the war.”

“There are many different theories about the Amber Room, and this is one of them. I do not know what really happened in the turmoil of Konigsberg and I don’t think that can be settled yet,” said Mikhail Piotrovsky.

“I can only say one thing and that is a matter of principle: all the acts of destruction that take place during a war are the responsibility of whoever started the war. That applies to everything: whoever begins a war is answerable morally and legally for all the subsequent destruction. If we are talking about who is guilty in this particular instance, we should remember that the Amber Room was removed from Tsarskoye Selo by the Germans,” Pitotrovsky stated.

Tatyana Zharkova, the press secretary of the Tsarskoye Selo State Museum Preserve, where the original Amber Room was kept and where its replica is now displayed, told RIA Novosti that at the museum they do not take the version that the Amber Room was destroyed by the Red Army and not the Nazis seriously.

“The story of the Amber Room contains many versions, suggestions and hypotheses. This is one more of them and nothing beyond that. It’s not taken seriously in the museum,” Zharkova added.

“As yet there is no evidence either for or against this version and so everything remains only at the level of suppositions. But the appearance of one more version in the story of the Amber Room only confirms the interest in it,” Zharkova added.

Claims that the Amber Room was burnt by the Red Army and not by the Nazis were made in articles in the British newspapers The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian.

Two British researchers have come to the conclusion that the Amber Room perished by fire in Konigsberg in 1945. Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark in their book entitled The Amber Room: the Untold Story of the Greatest Hoax of the Twentieth Century published in Britain by Atlantic Books. The book goes on sale on 3 June.

The Amber Study (amber panels for the decoration of an interior) were presented to Peter I by King Frederick William I of Prussia in 1716. In 1755 the Amber Cabinet came to adorn one of the halls of the Great Palace at Tsarskoye Selo.

During the Second World War Tsarskoye Selo was occupied. The Amber Room was dismantled and dispatched to the East Prussian city of Konigsberg. Until now its fate is unknown. Searches have been fruitless.

In 1979 the Council of Ministers of the Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic approved a decision to recreate the Amber Room. In May 2003, the recreated Amber Room was opened as part of the celebrations of St Petersburg’s 300th anniversary.