In 1920, John Reed was given between one and two million in diamonds, jewels, gold and artifacts to fence in America to fund the Communist Party USA. Armand Hammer was the Kremlin's most loyal and longest lasting fence. What Bolsheviks couldn't fence, they melted down. In 1931, heavy weight champ Gene Tunney visited a smelter outside Moscow. He wrote:
. . .They had been gorgeous works of art, decorated with bas-reliefs of the saints, the apostles, of Christ, of His parables. Here was a huge bass bell on the sides of which the story of the Annunciation had been told by a sculptor; and near it was another beautified with the story of Bethlehem."Probably they'd laugh at me," I said to McClenahan, "but this seems unnecessary. What a shame. How many tons have you in this hill?"
"I don't know," replied McClenahan, "but thus far we've smelted six hundred thousand tons of them for their bronze, gold, silver, copper and so on . . .
I noticed what were bundles of icons of brass, gold, silver and platinum; candelabra of the same metals; holy vessels and altar pieces. They were all in machine-pressed blocks ready for the furnace. On top of this mound I saw what seemed to me to be a man asleep . . .I asked the president of the workers' council about it . . .He winked at another Russian and, catlike, leaped up the hill of confiscated altar pieces . . .He raised his right foot and rolled the prostrate figure over with a thrust of his heel. It teetered on the edge and then came rolling down, crashing in a moment at our feet.
It was a great bronze figure of Christ, a magnificent sculpture. It was more than life size and apparently had been wrenched from its huge cross. . .more