U.S. Returns Rare Documents to Russia

(RIA Novosti – MOSCOW, June 18, 2013) The United States has returned to Moscow eight historical documents, taken out of Russian archives during the turbulent 1990s and recently recovered by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The documents, including handwritten orders by Tsarina Catherine the Great and Russia’s last Tsar Nicholas II, and a personal letter by composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky, were recovered at auction houses in New York, Chicago and Atlanta.

US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul said at a ceremony to hand over the documents last week that the recovery of the documents was a result of five-year meticulous work and close cooperation between Russian and US law-enforcers and cultural authorities.

According to McFaul, in the past five years the United States has recovered and returned more than a hundred rare documents and historical artifacts smuggled out of Russia during the turbulent years that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Representatives of the Russian Culture Ministry, who were present at the ceremony last Thursday, said the US side is set to return several other artifacts to Russia, but gave no further details.