A new scandal concerning the return of ''displaced valuables'' has flared up in Moscow

A new scandal concerning the return of ''displaced valuables'' has flared up in Moscow, as the Ministry of Culture pledged to give a large collection of paintings taken from Bremen at the end of WW II by Soviet army captain Viktor Baldin back to Germany. Russian lawmakers, outraged by the Culture Minister Mikhail Shvydkoi’s decision, urged the president to block the ministry’s plans. Soviet army captain Baldin, an architect by profession, stumbled across a collection of exquisite paintings, which included works by such masters as Titian, Rembrandt, Rubens, Delacroix, Manet, Van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec, as well as paintings by Durer and Goya, in a cellar of a German castle in 1945. Baldin immediately realized their value, carefully packed them in a suitcase and took them home to the Soviet Union, on the way gathering several more paintings from Soviet soldiers. For three years he kept the collection at home and in 1948 presented it to a state museum. In 1991 it was transferred to the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. In the early 1970s Baldin – at that time a museum director – wrote to the Soviet leaders asking them to return the collection to Germany. However, his requests were ignored. In the 1990s the Bremen authorities made Baldin an honorary citizen for preserving the paintings. Finally, in 2003 the Russian government moved to restore historic justice and to return the paintings to the Bremen Kunsthalle, where the collection belongs by law, since it was taken out of Germany not on the orders of Soviet high command, and therefore could not be considered a war trophy.