Between 2022 and 2023, as many as 170 rare and valuable editions of Russian classics were stolen from libraries across Europe. Were the thieves merely low-level opportunists, or were bigger forces at work?
O
n 16 October 2023, a young man and woman sat down in the back row of the second-floor reading room of the university library of Warsaw, Poland. Their reading cards carried the names Sylvena Hildegard and Marko Oravec. On the desk in front of them were eight books with yellowing pages that they had ordered up from the library’s closed-storage 19th-century collection: rare editions of classic works of poetry, drama and fiction by two greats of the Russian canon, Alexander Pushkin and Nikolai Gogol. They studied the books closely, taking photographs on their phones and measurements with rulers.
When the duo did not return from a cigarette break and the invigilators checked their desk, they found that five of the eight books had gone. One of the missing Pushkin works was a narrative poem about the adventures of two outlaws, The Robber Brothers. It was as if the thieves had wanted to send a message.
In the days that followed, a more thorough investigation of the library’s stocks revealed that a further 74 books of Russian literature had been stolen in the weeks, or even months, leading up to the final swoop. The thieves had managed to avoid detection by replacing the books they had stolen with what one newspaper described as “high-quality facsimiles” of the originals. They did not have to worry about causing a scene when they left the building. Most books in the Warsaw library have been fitted with a magnetic strip that raises an alarm at the exit unless deactivated. But older books went without this, as an expert had advised that the glue on the magnetic strip could damage the paper.
