THE LOST FORTUNE OF THE TSARS By William Clarke. Illustrated. 312 pp. New York: St. Martin's Press. $24.95.
BILLIONS, billions, who's got the billions? The gold, jewels, land, cash, art and palaces of the Russian imperial family had an estimated value of over $45 billion when the House of Romanov fell in 1917. A great deal of that wealth can be easily accounted for -- the Bolsheviks grabbed it. But enough to make dozens of people gloriously rich eluded their grasp and has been sought and claimed ever since. The mystery of the missing wealth has also given rise to subsidiary mysteries: How did a czarist tiara end up on the head of Queen Elizabeth? Did the British royal family fleece their Russian cousins when buying up their jewelry? Did any of the pretenders -- the Anastasias, the Alexises -- have even a toe to stand on? And if there is any Romanov wealth extant today, who has the right to it now that the principal thieves, the Soviets, have themselves landed on the dustbin of history, to use an expression of which the Marxists were exceedingly fond?
His book is divided into three sections -- "Loss," "Search" and "Fortune." The first details the wealth of the Russian empire on the eve of the revolution. It is worthwhile to be reminded of how well Russia was doing economically as it was about to come apart politically. In the opening years of the 20th century, the country's growth rate had reached an annual average of 3.25 percent, and by 1914 the Russian economy "was the world's fourth largest, almost equal in total output to that of the United Kingdom." Part of the problem, of course, was that too much of the wealth was in too few hands. It is impossible to separate Czar Nicholas II's wealth from the state's -- as Mr. Clarke notes, Nicholas had as much right as Louis XIV to say, L'etat c'est moi -- but some estimates placed 70 percent of Russia's land under his control, meaning the Czar owned one-tenth of the earth's surface.
Even after it became clear that the Czar would abdicate, the situation in Russia remained fluid and unclear. Among the (figurative) gems Mr. Clarke has unearthed is this report to the home office from a field representative of National City Bank, New York's leading overseas bank, sent in early 1917: "We are working hard and I think the position of our Petrograd branch at the end of this year will be a most pleasant surprise, even to you."
IT is in the second part of his story, "Search," that Mr. Clarke's narrative picks up steam. Now the plunder and confusion begin. Lenin and company, who had been in power for eight months, passed a decree nationalizing the Czar's properties three days before the executions; either they considered that a decent interval or it was simply how long it took for instructions to move through the pipeline. It wasn't long, however, before severe financial difficulties drove the Bolsheviks to peddle whatever they could abroad: Rembrandts, Faberge eggs (ultimately Malcolm Forbes ended up with more of them than Moscow), crown jewels and the more than 550 tons of silver confiscated from the church. The Bolsheviks also claimed whatever wealth the royal family had abroad, while at the same time refusing any responsibility for Czarist debt -- a tack Western governments and banks did not find exactly endearing.
But there were rival claimants, bizarre characters who were demented, cunning or both. Anna Anderson, who, the author concludes, was a Polish factory worker, convinced many people that she was indeed the "real Anastasia." Among the more enigmatic people posing as the Czarevitch Alexis was one Michel Goleniewski, a lieutenant colonel in Polish intelligence, who defected to the United States after providing Washington with services the Central Intelligence Agency termed "truly significant." Mr. Clarke ably reduces these claims to nothing, while at the same time noting that the recent DNA tests performed on the remains of the royal family still leave Alexis and one of his sisters unaccounted for.
But as Mr. Clarke recounts in "Fortune," the third and most fascinating section of his book, the real missing wealth was not in art, jewels or cash in foreign banks but in a billion dollars' worth of gold, some of which was en route to the Remington Arms Company to buy weapons for the White Army battling the Reds during the civil war that began in 1918. Bullion and billions have a way of disappearing in Russia. In 1914 Russia held the world's largest gold stock, but it had essentially run out of gold by late 1921. Something similar occurred at the end of the Soviet era "when the total gold and currency reserves dropped from $11 billion to zero in less than 18 months," Mr. Clarke writes. "Only $7 billion of this recent drain could be accounted for by normal trade transactions. The whereabouts of the remaining $4 billion remains a mystery."
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/08/06/books/they-couldn-t-take-it-with-them.html
Estimates of Nicholas II's personal wealth have been vastly exaggerated. As Emperor of All The Russias, and an autocrat, the resources under his command were virtually incalculable. However, the vast majority of this was owned by the state as Crown property; the Romanov family's personal wealth was only a small fraction of this. As monarch, the income of Nicholas was 24 million gold roubles per annum: this derived from a yearly allowance from the Treasury, and from the profits of Crown farmland.[136] From this income, he had to fund staff, the upkeep of imperial palaces and imperial theatres, annuities for the royal family, pensions, bequests, and other outgoings. "Before the end of the year, the Tsar was usually penniless; sometimes he reached this embarrassing state by autumn."[136] According to the Grand Marshal of the Court, Count Paul Benckendorff, the family's total financial resources amounted to between 12.5 and 17.5 million roubles.[137] As a comparison, Prince Felix Yussupov estimated his family's worth in real estate holdings alone as amounting to 50 million gold roubles.[138]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_II_of_Russia#Wealth
