Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts

You know, I'll give you one example that's just kind of ludicrous and almost funny, but that encapsulates this rejection.

The former director of the Pushkin Museum in Russia, Elisaveta Ilyichova, she gave an interview not so long ago On War and Peace, this great novel by Lev Tolstoy.

And she said that it is half written in French.

And Maria Zakharova, the Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman, came out to refute this remark.

The actual answer was far more bureaucratic than any of that.

In nineteen ninety-four, the Pushkin Museum finally admitted the gold of Troy had been sitting in its storage rooms the entire time.

Russia still holds it and treats the collection as lawful compensation for the destruction of Russian cities and the wartime plunder of Soviet museums.

A nineteen ninety-eight federal law made the wartime acquisition permanent, effectively legislating finders keepers into international law.

Moscow.

The Pushkin State Museum.

2022.

A cat and a dog got in at the same time.