The Extraordinary State Commission 

was a Soviet government agency formed by the Council of

People's Commissars on 2 November 1942, by a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. It
was tasked with investigating World War II crimes against the Soviet Union and collecting
documentation which would confirm material losses caused by Nazi Germany. Its full ceremonial name
was: "Extraordinary State Commission for Ascertaining and Investigating Crimes Perpetrated by the
German-Fascist Invaders and their Accomplices" (Russian: Чрезвычайная Государственная
Комиссия, ChGK). The official aim of this agency included "punishing for the crimes of the German–
fascist aggressors." According to its own data, 32,000 organization staff took part in the work of ChGK
and around 7,000,000 Soviet citizens had participated in the collection of materials and evidence.
The Extraordinary State Commission was also tasked with compensating the state for damages
suffered by the Soviet Union because of the war. This specific aim of the agency is usually referred to
by historians as the work of the Trophy Commission which led the trophy brigades behind the
frontline. The plunder of artwork was directed by Igor Grabar of the Bureau of Experts. The commission
became instrumental in the removal of industrial installations, materials, and valuables from all Soviet-
occupied territories during the Vistula–Oder Offensive of the Red Army including Hungary, Romania,
Finland and Poland (within its prewar borders), and later, from the Soviet Zone of Germany. The
commission's Arts Committee headed by Andrei Konstantinov was in charge of the registration and
Soviet distribution of trophy artworks beginning June 1945. The transports included valuables stolen by
Nazi Germany from as far as Latvia and Italy, appropriated by the Soviets.

Investigation Crimes
The 27 reports of the ChGK were the majority of Soviet evidentiary material in the Nuremberg
process and the Japanese war criminals' process. The reports appeared in English in the daily
publication Soviet War News issued by the Press Department of the Soviet Embassy in London. The
first report, Protocol on the plunder by the German–Fascist invaders of Rostov Museum at Pyatigorsk,
was published on June 28, 1943 and the last report, Statement on "Material Damage caused by the
German-Fascist invaders to state enterprises and institutions, collective farms, public bodies and
citizens of the U.S.S.R" was published on September 18, 1945. A complete collection of the 27
communiqués issued by the commission appears in the Soviet Government publication, Soviet
Government Statement on Nazi Atrocities.

Communiqués
Some of the reports prepared by the Commission are now considered erroneous or outright
fabrications. Particularly, the first report of the commission among notable others — published on 24
August 1944 — with the title "Finland demasked". This report purported that Finland had put the whole
Soviet population of the occupied territories into concentration camps in East Karelia during
the Continuation War of 1941 to 1944, where 40% had died according to Commission.
Another falsification (confirmed the Russian State Duma) concerned the 24 January 1944 communiqué
about the Katyn massacre, published under the title "The Truth about Katyn". This lengthy document
purported that the mass shootings of the Polish prisoners had been done by the Germans. In fact, the
crime was committed by the Soviets on Joseph Stalin's orders. The truth was first revealed by the
international Katyn Commission but confirmed by Soviet documents only after they had been
declassified and made public by the Government of the Soviet Union in 1990 during the last days of
the USSR. They proved conclusively that 21,857 Polish internees and prisoners of war were executed
by the Soviet Union after 3 April 1940 including 14,552 prisoners from three largest Soviet POW camps
at this time. Of the total number of victims, 4,421 officers were shot one by one at the Kozelsk Optina
Monastery, 3,820 at the Starobelsk POW camp, and 6,311 at the Ostashkov facility, in addition to
7,305 Poles secretly eliminated in Byelorussian and Ukrainian SSRs political prisons. The head of the
NKVD department, Maj. General P. K. Soprunenko, organized "selections" of Polish officers to be
massacred at Katyn and elsewhere.
Soviet Trophy Brigades
Already in 1942, the special Red Army Trophy Brigades were formed by the USSR. They were put in
charge of removing valuables from occupied territories including Germany and taking them back to the
Soviet Union usually by train convoys. The organization made responsible for receiving and cataloging
these items was the "Commission on Reception and Registration of Trophy Valuables". It was
established just before the war's end in April 1945. The institution was soon disbanded as it has been
overwhelmed by the sheer number of objects being sent back to Russia by their troops. The early part
of 1946 saw some 12,500 crates of books and documents, along with other valuables from German
libraries, which were allocated to the State Historical Museum in Moscow and the Hermitage in
Leningrad, and as far a field as Turkmenistan and Tajikistan. These items were nationalized by the
Russian Duma in April 1998 under Boris Yeltsin, which also relieved any claims made on all Russian
property still remaining in foreign lands.
A part of the Trophy Brigade concept was to dismantle anything of usefulness in Germany, and use it to
rebuild the Soviet economy as retributions. “…The most important dismantling action, however, was
carried out beginning in March 1946. Leuna [the Leunawerke, an I.G. Farbenindustrie manufacturing
plant in Merseburg] deployed 30,732 of its workers and 7,376 other plant personnel to assist 400
Soviet officers and 1,000 to 1,200 soldiers from the Red Army to remove 120,000 tons of machines and
structural iron and steel from the works. Included in a long list of affected installations were eight
working compressors for synthetic gas, large scale installations for methanol synthesis, and various
machines, apparatus, and installations for synthetic gasoline production. What is more, the Soviets
seized 117 journals and 514 books from the works library, in all a total of 1,067 volumes.”
Looting of Germany
Vladimir Shabinsky, a Russian officer who later defected to the West, gave his personal account of his
own service as member of a Soviet Trophy Brigade.
At that time [1945], I was a lieutenant colonel in the Red Army. I was working in Berlin for the 'Special
Committee' of the Soviet Government. Formed in late 1944 and headed by Georgy Malenkov, the
committee was charged with removing factories, manufactured goods, raw materials, livestock, farm
machinery, fertilizer, crops, laboratories, libraries, museums, scientific archives, engineers and
scientists from all of Eastern Europe. The Soviet Union, after years of devastating war, was in
desperate need of such items and experts. It also wanted to make sure that Germany would never
again be a military and industrial power. When the Americans left Saxony and Thuringia, the Berlin
staff of the Special Committee ordered me to evacuate a cement plant from the city of Nordhausen.
Since the committee had 70,000 greedy agents operating in East Germany, I moved fast to claim this
plant for my branch, the Ministry of Building Materials...” — Vladimir Shabinsky
The library section of the Russian Trophy Brigades was known as the "State Agency for Literature",
or, "Gosfond". The Soviet government had created this agency to allocate the confiscated literature to
Soviet libraries and cultural institutions. The plan was that Gosfond would allocate the materials to
enhance existing collection in Russia and to acquire meaningful additions. They were, instead,
overwhelmed with the numbers of books sent from Germany. Eventually, it degenerated into a
mechanical process of distribution, and the beneficiary libraries were unable to absorb the works, or in
some cases, to even store them. “In a meeting of March 14, 1946, a committee distributed 1,857 crates
from some thirty institutional and private libraries (including those of top Nazis as von Ribbentrop and
Goebbels) among five Soviet libraries: the National Lenin Library of the USSR, the National
Historical Library, the National Polytechnical Library, the National Library for Foreign
Literature and the National Saltykov-Shchedrin Public Library.”
Lieutenant Colonel Margarita Rudomino, director of the Library for Foreign Literature in Moscow, and
an associate on the staff of the Plenipotentiary State Special Defense Committee, and part of the Soviet
Trophy Brigade, argued that the German Library (Deutsche Bibliothek-Deutsche Bücherei)
in Leipzig was needed for re-building Germany and restoring their cultural identity. Thus, over two
million volumes were evacuated to Thuringia, but they were then returned to the Leipzig library.
However, she also argued for the return of the books from the Sächsische Landesbibliothek (Saxon
State Library) in Dresden, but they were sent to Russia by mistake, and they were returned, in part, in
1957. Not all endings of captured documents went well. Many of the books sent to the Soviet Union by
the Gosfond and the various Trophy Brigades did not benefit either the Soviets or anyone else. With the
overwhelming numbers of materials received, they were often parceled out to smaller libraries and
institutes, who often received materials wholly inappropriate for their missions. As a result, many of the
items were stored haphazardly, seldom cataloged or inventories, and often were destroyed by neglect
and inattention. Items which were needed at large research institutes were sent to smaller public
libraries and agricultural stations, where the books were never cataloged and could not be recalled for
inter-library loan or other useful activities.