Istoricul „Fondului de Aur” al României de la Moscova în documentele rusești din colecția „Microfilme – RUSIA/URSS” a Arhivelor Naționale ale României și în arhivele din Federația Rusă
The historic of the Romanian “Gold Fund” in Moscow in the Russian documents within the “Microfilms – RUSSIA/USSR” collection from the National Archives of Romania and the Russian Federation archives

Summary/Abstract: In this paper, the history of the Romanian “Gold Fund” in Moscow is completed by prizing some unpublished Russians documents from the National Archives of Romania and the Russian Archives, as well as a recent Russian bibliography. Our demarche has also spotlighted new Russian archival funds and collections that include documents or any type of information referring to the Romanian Treasure, and, as well, has traced testimonies that might show the leads of its route. The beginning of this research coincides with the activities of the „Romanian-Russian Joint Commission for studying the issues arising from the history of bilateral relations, including the issue of the Romanian Treasure deposited in Moscow during the First World War”. The National Archives pointed out for the Commission the docu-ments concerning the Romanian gold stock in Moscow, which entered in its repositories during 1965-1994 as microfilms; but these were ignored by the majority of the Romanian researchers due to the inaccessibility of the Russian language. Precisely to make up for this impediment and other possible unskilled approaches of the archival sources, this paper offers within its annex a data base, as aid that assembles the most important documents about the Romanian gold stock and an authentic research tool for assimilating the field. This study presents the diplomatic activity prior to the movement of the Romanian Treasure to Russia, mainly the negotiation of the guarantees offered by the govern in Petrograd in order to maintain its integrity during transportation and storage in Moscow. The focus is on: the effective transferring of the “Gold Fund”, the pillage perpetrated by the Bolsheviks, its route through the Soviet Russia during the civil war, its statute within the context of the reopening of the “Bessarabian issue” and the problem of Romanian-Russian mutual financial reimbursement for the WWI. The invoked documents clarify what could have remained as simple hypothesis, namely: the Romanian gold was incorporated in the gold reserve of the Russian Empire, the Soviet of the People Commissars of RSFSR financed the revolutionary movement in Bessarabia and Romania with amounts taken from the Treasure immediately after its seizure, happened in January 1918, and, in the summer of the same year, the Romanian stock was displaced in the interior of the Soviet Russia, then later returned to Moscow with losses. The data revealed within the documents from our Archives and supported by the Russian archival sources, also inferred from the critical filter of the Russian authors, lead to the state-of-the-art conclusion that the Romanian Treasure was to a large extent no longer intact at the beginning of the ’20. New scientific results depend on the scale and rhythm of the investigation in the Russian archives and libraries.

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