The chapters on the looting of archives, libraries, and art by the Nazis and the plunder of cultural "trophies" organized in all the occupied territories by the Soviet authorities form a fantastic and tragic thriller. Patricia Grimsted's admirably thorough inquiry- in German, Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, and American archives-has meticulously shown the inner workings of the Nazi plundering and the Soviet counter-plunder. Additional details will, of course, still come to light, especially on the fate of displaced archives of which all traces have been lost. But the history of the greatest archival tragedy of modern times will not have to be rewritten. With this book we know what happened and how it happened.

That tragedy has not yet come to an end. The law adopted in 1996 by the two houses of the Russian parliament (and signed by Yeltsin only in 1998) on the nationalization of foreign cultural property made the Russian State heir and continuator of the practice of plunder both of the Third Reich and of Stalin's USSR. By its July 1999 resolution that prescribed the restitution of looted cultural property to the allies of the USSR during the War, the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation cut at least the disastrous linkage with Nazi Germany. It confirmed, however, Russia's right to disregard international law, including the clauses on the respect and restitution of cultural property, contained in various international instruments and treaties subscribed to by the Russian Empire before 1917, the USSR, and even the Russian Federation, when joining the Council of Europe in 1995.

Historians and political scientists can probably explain why democracy end the rule of law became antagonistic concepts in post-communist Russia. Her readers will, however, agree with Grimsted that, notwithstanding this unhappy development, the Second World War must be finished.

Patricia Kennedy Grimsted's Trophies of War and Empire, opens a new chapter in the history of archival literature. It places archives in the very heart of 20th-century politics, wars, cold wars, and power games.

Exerpted from the Foreword by Charles Kecskemeti

Publication of this volume has been made possible by the Jaroslaw M. and Olha Duzey and the Myroslav and Irene Koltuniuk endowed publication funds for Ukrainian studies at Harvard University.

(c)2001 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
ISBN 0-916458-76-8

A Ukrainian-language version, edited by Dr. Hennadii Boriak, deputy chief of the State Committee on Archives of Ukraine (DKAU), will be published in Kyiv under the auspices of the DKAU and the State Service for the Control of the Transmission of Cultural Treasures Across the Borders of Ukraine, Ministry of Culture of Ukraine. For information on this edition, contact the editors at the Ukrainian Research Institute, at: HURI Publications, 1583 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138 USA, E-mail: huri@fas.harvard.edu.