Museum director Ivan Bondar evacuated Scythian gold from Kyiv in September 1941

Continuing my series of notes on the feats of scholars, museum staff and cultural workers during the war, today I shall tell the story of a unique collection of historical treasures in the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra.

In the second week of September 1941 the front line came right up to Kyiv, and proposals to abandon the city were heard at every turn. The hasty evacuation was on the point of being wound up, although there was as yet no order to blow up the bridges and destroy important installations.

The State Historical Museum, housed in the Lavra, had by this time not been fully evacuated. Among other things, the museum still held its collection of treasures, which included coins, plate, weapons set with precious stones and, above all, the Scythian gold.

It is astonishing, of course, how it came about that the manuscripts of Khmelnytsky, the decrees of the Ukrainian hetmans and the works of serf craftsmen were the first to be taken out! A similar situation was developing in other museums and archives of the USSR, where, for example, Lenin's letters and Marx's manuscripts were evacuated first, and only afterwards the paintings of the Flemish masters. Though, perhaps, the catastrophe of the treasures left behind came about solely for want of time.

The gold had to be removed from Kyiv as soon as possible, before the city was surrendered to the enemy. Military units were already leaving the Ukrainian capital, which meant that there would be virtually no one left to guard the museum's holdings even against looters and thieves.

The museum's director, Ivan Vasilyevich Bondar, took matters into his own hands. The museum's Scythian gold came to 16 kilograms. Bondar stuffed it into a sack of potatoes and literally hauled it on his own back. He chose the moment when a field kitchen was passing the Lavra and tacked himself on to the cart, thus securing an escort for his precious cargo. The director was heading for the State Bank, which might be able to assist in removing valuables. Alas, the State Bank's train had left Kyiv a week earlier. Bondar set about telephoning other institutions that had evacuated their valuables, but all refused to take the gold under their responsibility.

Whether it was luck or the patronage of the museum gods, a barge chartered for the exhibits of the museums of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine was moored at Podil, and Bondar managed to arrange for his cargo to be placed aboard. Old members of the museum's staff, who had been neither mobilised nor evacuated, helped Bondar with the packing and loading onto the barge. After the cargo was dispatched, Ivan Bondar went to the front. On 19 September 1941 Kyiv was taken by the Fascists.

The collection of treasures of the Historical Museum of Ukraine was saved. However, tracing the holdings after the war proved none too simple: the museums that had received the evacuated valuables could not find in their storerooms the gold delivered from Kyiv in 1941. In the end the trail turned up in Moscow, and led on to the Urals. Chelyabinsk and Ufa had received all 47 crates taken out of the museum. When the exhibits returned home, receiving them alone took 6 days. Soon it was decided to arrange the collection of Scythian gold as the "Golden Treasury", which in 1967 became the Museum of Historical Treasures.