1920: The Hermitage transfers 460 items to the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow

Simultaneously with the mass acquisition of new items, the Hermitage was also coming under pressure from the state to yield up some of its own treasures as part of a new Soviet policy to reduce the importance of St Petersburg (a symbol of monarchy). Moscow - the old and now the new capital - should have her own Hermitage, to be organised on the basis of the Alexander III Museum of Fine Arts (now the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts). There were endless negotiations between the two museums regarding which paintings should be transferred from the Hermitage to Moscow. Alexandre Benois, Curator of the Hermitage Picture Gallery, insisted that items from the permanent exhibitions and those which were associated with the history of certain national schools should not be sent. Originally it was also hoped that paired works or series should not be separated, although in the end this proved impossible to enforce.

The final agreement was signed on 28 November 1927, according to which over 500 paintings were transferred to Moscow. This group included works by such celebrated masters as Rembrandt, Rubens, van Dyck, Nicolas Poussin and Paolo Veronese. In the early 1930s, an additional group of 70 paintings was sent from the Hermitage to Moscow.