On September 15, 2026, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London hosted a conference entitled “Ukrainian Cultural Heritage and UK Institutions: Shifting Perspectives and Practice,” dedicated to the preservation, research, and presentation of Ukrainian cultural heritage. It brought together museum professionals and researchers from Ukraine and the United Kingdom.
The Kyiv Pechersk Lavra National Reserve was presented by Anna Yanenko, Head of the Research Department of Museum History and Museum Affairs. As part of the session “Collecting Ukraine: Objects, Provenance and Memory”, she delivered a report “How the USSR Sold Ukraine: Mechanisms of Appropriation and Commercialization of Ukrainian Cultural Heritage in the 1920s–1930s.”
Based on the preserved inventory books of the All-Ukrainian Museum Town and photographs from the Reserve’s collection, the researcher traced how the Soviet state systematically confiscated monuments and turned them into an economic resource.
The first documented transfers of museum objects to state trading institutions date back to 1929. The most valuable items were transferred to the State Trade and Mostorg for sale, in particular to finance industrialization. In 1931, pearls and precious stones were removed from 18th-century church vestments, separating them from the fabric and violating the integrity of the monuments.
In 1933–1935, sales through Intourist and Torgsyn became widespread. The goods sold included icons, crosses, liturgical fabrics, church silver, and items of sacred heritage from Kyiv synagogues.
Anna Yanenko paid special attention to the Tsar’s Gates. The inventory books record at least three cases of their removal from the Lavra temples. The marks “Gosbank” and “Int?” in the records give reason to assume a two-stage path of the monuments: first, transfer to the State Bank under the pretext of “preservation”, and later – sale on the international market.
The study shows that these were not isolated losses, but a bureaucratically organized state system. Its consequence was not only the dispersion of collections, but also the erasure of the Ukrainian origin of objects that ended up abroad.
Restoring Ukrainian monuments to their historical and cultural context is one of the key areas of cooperation between the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra National Reserve and the V&A. An important condition for this work is the full participation of Ukrainian researchers and museum professionals in the study and presentation of Ukraine’s heritage.
