Robbery of the sacristy in the bell tower of Ivan the Great

On January 30, 1918, Archimandrite Arseniy, the custodian of the Patriarchal sacristy, discovered the theft in the sacristy, located on the third tier of the Ivan the Great Bell Tower.

“All gold items were stolen, including icon settings, emeralds, sapphires and pearls. The summoned police detachment easily established that the robbers entered the museum from the outside, climbing the wall, using numerous ledges and a drainpipe, sawed the bars on the window and broke the metal shutters. Everything spoke of the premeditated work of professional thieves. Only a few weeks later, a small part of the church treasures was found in Saratov and near Moscow. They were transferred to the Armory. The Patriarchal Sacristy itself ceased to exist as a museum,” according to Mikhail Vostryshev’s book “Stalin’s Moscow” (quoted from M. Vostryshev’s “Stalin’s Moscow”. Moscow, ed. Rodina, 2020).

As it turned out later, the thieves stole the cover on the tomb of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich made of red velvet with an eight-pointed cross, a green velvet border embroidered with pearls, an incense strewn with diamonds, a 12th-century Gospel, a 1648 Gospel adorned with diamonds in a gold setting weighing more than a pood, a gold pectoral royal cross times of Ivan the Terrible. In addition, greedy blasphemers took away almost all the golden bowls, vessels, dishes, large emeralds the size of a pigeon’s egg, Ceylon sapphires, many pearls, several beautiful sardonyx, and other precious church utensils. In total, valuables worth up to 30 million rubles in gold fell into the hands of criminals. Among the missing was a particularly valuable relic – the so-called August crab. One of the experts remarked: its loss is a bad sign. This vessel, presumably made in Western Europe, according to legend, once belonged to the Roman emperor Octavian Augustus. It came to the territory of Rus’ from Byzantium during the time of Ivan Kalita and became a symbol of supreme power and the idea of ​​the rise of the principality, most accurately reflected in the popular comparison “Moscow is the third Rome”. Later, with the help of the August crab in Rus’, anointing to the kingdom was carried out. It is not surprising that many saw a hidden meaning in the loss of the sacred vessel – the loss of power over the country.

The Presidium of the Moscow City Council immediately became aware of this crime. A commission was immediately set up to coordinate all work to investigate the theft.

The book of the veteran of the internal affairs bodies, candidate of legal sciences, honored worker of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR Veniamin Polubinsky “Meet MUR” (Chapter 1 “Origins”) tells:

“The Presidium of the Moscow Soviet appealed to all citizens of the Russian Republic to assist in the search for criminals and the return of jewelry, which are masterpieces of culture and art of the past and have now become the property of the people.”

(Quoted from the book by V. I. Polubinsky “Meet: MUR”, Moscow, ed. “DOSAAF”, 1988)

It was also decided to apply through the Commissioner for Foreign Affairs to all countries with a proposal to provide assistance through the detention of Russian national treasures at border points.

Meanwhile, as Veniamin Polubinsky reported (the material prepared according to his stories was published in the newspaper “Petrovka, 38” in No. 25, 27 of July 14, July 28, 2015), a group of employees of the Moscow Criminal Investigation Department checked all jewelry stores and workshops of famous Moscow dealers in antiques:

“The duty of operatives in the markets was established, a survey was conducted of doormen and maids of hotels, waiters, and other servants of restaurants, taverns and coffee houses. In Glazunov’s jewelry store in the Upper Trading Rows (now GUM on Red Square), more than a hundred grains of pearls stolen from the Patriarch’s vestry were found.

Further, according to Veniamin Polubinsky, there was a failure in the investigation of the theft:

“However, a day later, a glimmer of hope for an early resolution of the mystery of this criminal case glimmered again. Operatives who worked in bazaars and flea markets “spotted” a woman who was trying to sell an antique pectoral cross decorated with skillful carvings and precious stones at the Sukharevsky market. Something similar happened in the description of the stolen valuables from the sacristy. In the evening, they raided her apartment with a search. The hostess was caught at dinner in the company of two men: as it turned out later, “cranberries” – professional church thieves. In a closet behind the kitchen, criminal investigators found a whole warehouse of church utensils, several pounds of precious stones and pearls, a pile of robes embroidered with gold and silver. It seemed that the denouement in the case of the theft from the bell tower of Ivan the Great was close. However, representatives of the clergy invited to identify the seized things firmly stated that everything found during the search was not from the Patriarchal vestry, but from the recently robbed Church of the Ascension.

After that, the head of the Moscow Criminal Investigation Police, Karl Rosenthal, suggested that the criminals decided to sell the stolen goods outside Moscow. An appeal was once again sent to large provincial cities for assistance in the search, and already at the end of March a telegram was received from Saratov about the detention of one of the thieves and the seizure of part of the stolen from him from the Patriarchal sacristy.

Ivan Svitnev, head of the local criminal investigation police, was sent to Moscow. He told his Moscow colleagues about how the criminal was exposed. According to him, on the evening of March 12, an operative Shcheglov, who was on duty there, called Svitnev from the restaurant “Tovarishchestvo” and said that a man and a woman had appeared in the restaurant, offering restaurant regulars gold bars and some kind of “pebbles”. He immediately went to a restaurant on Alexandrovskaya street. A man and a woman were detained. During a search in their apartments, they found several more bars of gold, a large emerald, several sapphires and pearls. During the interrogation, the detainees stated that they did not know the origin of the jewelry, the gold and stones were given by a certain Samarin and they should meet with him for settlements in the same restaurant in three days.

Svitnev understood that it was impossible to wait three days. Having learned about the arrest of his “pedlars”, this Samarin will hide. Svitnev recalled that several years ago, the famous Moscow thief Konstantin Polezhaev came to Saratov. Didn’t Samarin-Polezhaev come to the banks of the Volga, where he once bought part of an old merchant’s house on Rozhdestvenskaya Street? The operational group left for Rozhdestvenskaya. This same Samarin was detained in house number 6. During a search in an ingenious hiding place in a Dutch oven, mutilated golden bowls, trays, dishes weighing one pound and ten pounds, about a thousand diamonds, pearls, bracelets were found.

Arrested at the very first interrogation, he confessed that his real name and surname Konstantin Polezhaev and everything confiscated from him was stolen from the Patriarchal sacristy of the Kremlin. He categorically denied the participation of other persons in the theft, arguing that he had sold the missing part of the jewelry. Of course, they did not believe him and sent him to a prison cell. And in the morning he was found dead. He committed suicide.

So, thanks to the interaction of the employees of the criminal-investigative police of Moscow and Saratov, the theft was uncovered and the valuables were returned to the Kremlin. As reported in the book “Meet MUR” (Chapter 1 “Origins”), when this was reported to Lenin, through Vladimir Bonch-Bruevich, the head of the SNK of the RSFSR, he conveyed to the assistant chief of the Saratov criminal investigation police Ivan Svitnev, who led this operation, gratitude from name of the Soviet government. Later, Ivan Svitnev went to work at the MUR.

Sergei Ishkov.

A photo moskultura.ru