A work by the great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin was counterfeited at the University of Warsaw Library (Poland).
AFP news agency reported on November 23 that a series of rare Russian classics worth millions of euros were stolen from libraries across Eastern Europe and then auctioned in Russia.
Shelves of 19th-century Russian literature have been ransacked over the past two years in Poland and the Baltic states, and originals replaced with fakes.
The University of Warsaw Library (Poland) only discovered the scheme last month, including first editions of works by Alexander Pushkin and Nikolai Gogol. A university employee familiar with the matter estimated the value of the stolen books at around one million euros.
Professor Hieronim Grala, a former diplomat and expert on Russian policy at the University of Warsaw, said it was like "cutting out the jewels from the crown".
“Fortunately, not everything was taken, just some emeralds, diamonds and rubies were missing,” said Mr Grala, who helped the school assess the damage.
Counterfeit books are sometimes very carefully crafted and look exactly like the original.
Not only in Poland, libraries in the Baltic countries also became victims of book thieves targeting Russian literature.
Experts believe the stolen works made their way to Russia, with at least some being sold in hasty auctions in Moscow.
In the case discovered at the Latvian National Library last year, three books were stolen. A Georgian citizen was later convicted of the theft and sentenced to six months in prison, but an accomplice has yet to be arrested.
The counterfeit books left behind by the thieves ranged in severity from sloppy to extremely meticulous, detectable only by the color of the stamp ink or the mismatched size of the label.
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