Imperial Bank of Russia was supposed to possess about $580,000,000
gold, for which the Government that seized it is accountable. But the
adventures of that gold reserve were mysterious.

“The common version is that about $350,000,000 of it was sent
for safety to the Volga before the revolution and subsequently fell
into the hands of the anti-Bolshevist General Kolchak, its final dis-
position being disputed. A considerable part of what was left at
Moscow was turned over by the Soviet to Germany, under the
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and after the war was surrendered by
Germany to France, A lawsuit based on the supposition that the
Soviet ‘Government still holds the old ‘Czarist gold reserve’ would
apparently have to unravel these and numerous other intricacies.

“It must be remembered that the contempt of ‘bourgeois insti-
tutions,” entertained and expressed by. Lenin and his disciples during
the early years of the Soviet experiment, was abundantly bestowed
on gold. Whether this sentiment went so far as to exclude retention
of a secret governmental reserve, to be used in buying real things
from the simple-minded bourgeois countries, is not so certain. It is
left a matter of conjecture, also, what would have happened if the
New York banks which received the $5,200,000 gold in February
had been in a position to ‘guarantee title,” and if the gold had then
been duly assayed by our Government and deposited in the Federal
Reserve.”

xa