Lifting the Lid on Russia's Art of Lavish Gift Giving
MOSCOW — Until recently, Aleksandr Y. Khochinsky occupied a special niche in this capital, known as much for its corruption as for its wealth. He was an antiquarian who specialized in providing high-class grease for the best-connected palms in the government and other high-level circles.
Harried businessmen would rush in off the streets to his gallery here, Bogema, and think nothing of spending tens of thousands of dollars for the right item to delight the powerful, whether a set of dueling pistols, a suit of armor, antique Rolex watches or a $2 million seascape by the Russian artist Ivan Aivazovsky...
... There is little chance that the dispute that has embroiled him and forced him to leave the country will be resolved; in Russia, high-level spats like this seldom are. But the deal, as described by Mr. Khochinsky, illuminates an aspect of life here for people at the intersection of business and politics at the highest levels, including the most powerful politician of them all: Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin.
The current entanglement began with the purchase, in 2006 at a Sotheby’s auction in Paris, of 26 letters written by Voltaire to Catherine the Great, dating from 1768 to 1777. Mr. Khochinsky said he bought them for $869,000 — a world record for 18th-century handwritten texts, according to Sotheby’s — for a Russian billionaire who had made his money in banking and real estate...
... Mr. Khochinsky’s client wanted to give the letters to Mr. Putin, who was then president, with the idea that he could then donate them to a Russian library. In this, the billionaire was following a more recent tradition of currying favor with the Kremlin by returning cultural and historic artifacts to Russia. In the most prominent instance, Viktor F. Vekselberg, an oil and aluminum magnate, returned the Forbes family collection of Fabergé Imperial Easter eggs to Russia in 2004, at a cost of $100 million.
Mr. Khochinsky said he saw special value in the letters as a gift to Mr. Putin. Voltaire, though critical of the 18th-century French monarchy, had famously praised Catherine the Great as an enlightened despot.
In the letters Mr. Khochinsky purchased, Voltaire also wrote in support of Russian military campaigns in what is now Ukraine and Poland. In essence, here was a pre-eminent European philosopher supporting a leadership role for Russia in eastern Europe, an idea back in vogue in Moscow these days.
But now, Mr. Khochinsky says, the letters have vanished and he is out the $869,000 purchase price because the gift was not delivered. He says the letters disappeared sometime after he gave them to Russia’s Channel One, a state television outlet, to arrange a televised transfer of the documents to Mr. Putin...
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Harried businessmen would rush in off the streets to his gallery here, Bogema, and think nothing of spending tens of thousands of dollars for the right item to delight the powerful, whether a set of dueling pistols, a suit of armor, antique Rolex watches or a $2 million seascape by the Russian artist Ivan Aivazovsky...
... There is little chance that the dispute that has embroiled him and forced him to leave the country will be resolved; in Russia, high-level spats like this seldom are. But the deal, as described by Mr. Khochinsky, illuminates an aspect of life here for people at the intersection of business and politics at the highest levels, including the most powerful politician of them all: Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin.
The current entanglement began with the purchase, in 2006 at a Sotheby’s auction in Paris, of 26 letters written by Voltaire to Catherine the Great, dating from 1768 to 1777. Mr. Khochinsky said he bought them for $869,000 — a world record for 18th-century handwritten texts, according to Sotheby’s — for a Russian billionaire who had made his money in banking and real estate...
... Mr. Khochinsky’s client wanted to give the letters to Mr. Putin, who was then president, with the idea that he could then donate them to a Russian library. In this, the billionaire was following a more recent tradition of currying favor with the Kremlin by returning cultural and historic artifacts to Russia. In the most prominent instance, Viktor F. Vekselberg, an oil and aluminum magnate, returned the Forbes family collection of Fabergé Imperial Easter eggs to Russia in 2004, at a cost of $100 million.
Mr. Khochinsky said he saw special value in the letters as a gift to Mr. Putin. Voltaire, though critical of the 18th-century French monarchy, had famously praised Catherine the Great as an enlightened despot.
In the letters Mr. Khochinsky purchased, Voltaire also wrote in support of Russian military campaigns in what is now Ukraine and Poland. In essence, here was a pre-eminent European philosopher supporting a leadership role for Russia in eastern Europe, an idea back in vogue in Moscow these days.
But now, Mr. Khochinsky says, the letters have vanished and he is out the $869,000 purchase price because the gift was not delivered. He says the letters disappeared sometime after he gave them to Russia’s Channel One, a state television outlet, to arrange a televised transfer of the documents to Mr. Putin...