The Pushkin job: unmasking the thieves behind an international rare books heist

普希金案件:揭开国际珍贵图书盗窃案背后的盗贼面纱

The Audio Long Read

2025-11-17

40 分钟
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单集简介 ...

Between 2022 and 2023, as many as 170 rare and valuable editions of Russian classics were stolen from libraries across Europe. Were the thieves merely low-level opportunists, or were bigger forces at work? By Philip Oltermann. Read by Daniela Denby Ashe. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/longreadpod
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  • On the 16th of October 2023,

  • a young man and woman sat down in the back row of the second floor reading room of the University Library of Warsaw,

  • Poland.

  • Their reading cards carried the names Sylvanna Hildegard and Marko Orovec.

  • On the desk in front of them were eight books with yellowing pages that they had ordered up from the library's closed storage 19th century collection.

  • Rare editions of classic works of poetry,

  • drama and fiction by two greats of the Russian canon, Alexander Pushkin and Nikolai Gogol.

  • They studied the books closely.

  • taking photographs on their phones and measurements with rulers.

  • When the duo did not return from a cigarette break and the invigilators checked their desk,

  • they found that five of the eight books had gone.

  • One of the missing Pushkin works was a narrative poem about the adventures of two outlaws,