The booty is enormous!”
So savored Leon Trotsky, rubbing his covetous hands and salivating at the Russian Orthodox Church’s cache of “fabulous treasures.” He and Vladimir Lenin greedily eyed up the gems.
Lenin was furious when the Church wouldn’t give him and his minions its valuables. He instructed Trotsky and the Politburo to make sure that all churches were “cleansed.” By November 1922, the mass heist from the churches included 828,275 pounds of silver; 1,220 pounds of gold; 35,670 diamonds; and much, much more. Lenin grinned impishly at the “hundreds of millions” of rubles before him.
