Can Sotheby's sell Russian awards?

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MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti commentator Anatoly Korolev) - Russia's Federal Service for the Supervision of Mass Communication and Cultural Legacy Legal Compliance has asked for the cancellation of the announced sale of several high Soviet state awards, scheduled by Sotheby's for late November.

London is surprised: why not sell Russian orders at a highly reputable international auction house if the awards' owners wish to do so? It is their personal business and certainly not the business of the government. The government has no right to decide for the owners or their heirs whether they want to sell the relics. This would have been understood if the orders had been stolen, but if everything is clear on this count, the whole problem is more ethical than legal.

The officials say that the Russian law bans buying and selling state awards. Anatoly Vilkov, the spokesman for the cultural watchdog, says that the recipients of the awards - a Suvorov Order, an Ushakov Order, a Kutuzov Order, a Nakhimov Order and a Bogdan Khmelnitsky Order - lived and died in Russia, and not a single permission has ever been issued to take the orders abroad. This means Russia suspects theft and illegal trafficking.

The orders, of course, have material value well into five digits for many collectors. The Lenin Order is made of pure gold, and Lenin's relief in the center - of platinum; the Suvorov Order has a gold relief on platinum field. However, there is another, more powerful, moral aspect to it. When a person is decorated, he signs an unwritten contract with the nation, saying that the state award belongs, in a sense, to the state as much as to the recipient because it marks his personal achievements as well as the glory of the entire country.

Arguably, this is the key source of contention. Gone are the heroes who displayed exceptional valor and courage. Gone is the country which bestowed the awards on its heroes. Selling an order looks like selling a deed it was awarded for, like breaking a moral taboo. Maybe it is a purely Russian attitude to state awards; in any case, it is a reality Sotheby's has just woken up to.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and may not necessarily represent the opinions of the editorial board.

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