Found this gem on X!
"Questions surrounding Russian history continue to engage researchers and the public. Since the Soviet archives became more accessible over two decades ago, a flood of new knowledge, in a variety of fields, has been able to be established.
Russia was involved in some of the most dramatic events of the twentieth century, from world war and revolution to a cold war that lasted until 1991. In many ways, Sweden and the rest of the world share this history - a history that continues to affect our lives today .
An important episode that we now know more about thanks to access to new archival sources is Sweden’s role after the Russian Revolution.
Vladimir Lenin, who with the Bolsheviks took power in October 1917, had few allies. Shortly after the peace treaty with Germany at Brest-Litovsk on March 3, 1918, relations between Moscow and Berlin broke down, and Soviet Russia was de facto completely isolated. At the same time, the economy was in free fall.
The communist regime had previously nationalized all banks and industries, as well as suspended payments on the tsarist national debt. The losses for Western European industries were significant, not least for Swedish ones. Companies like L.M. Ericsson, SKF and the Nobel brothers’ oil company were heavily invested in Tsarist Russia.
What distinguishes Sweden is that our good relations with Russia continued even under the new regime. Sweden was the first country to actively engage in trade with the Bolsheviks, and Swedish banks assisted Moscow in laundering the Tsarist central bank’s significant gold reserves.
The leader was the banker Olof Aschberg, who through his contacts received around 500 tons of confiscated gold during the years 1917-1921. The gold was remelted in Stockholm, and received Swedish insignia where previously the Tsarist ones had been.
schberg later participated in the sale of tsarist jewels at European auction houses, and his own collection of Russian icons was one of the world’s most exclusive (today at the Nordic Museum).
Some of the icons, surely, came from some of the thousands of churches looted by the Communists.
The sale of the Tsarist gold through Stockholm is not only one of the biggest organized thefts in modern history. More importantly, this hard currency could be used to place orders on Swedish and later German industry, which significantly strengthened the position of the Bolsheviks.
Through its trading office on Kaptensgatan in Stockholm, Moscow purchased everything from aircraft engines to rifles, locomotives and agricultural equipment. The large deliveries began within two weeks of the end of the First World War in November 1918, and had the more or less unspoken support of the Swedish government.
Greatest Heist. The looting of Russia by the Bolsheviks (Yale University Press, 2009).
expressen.se/debatt/sverige…
The Ashberg Diamond
The Ashberg diamond takes its name from Olof Aschberg, a Swedish banker and businessman, who was also a left-wing sympathizer and helped finance the Bolsheviks in Russia, before and after the October Revolution of 1917.
Aschberg provided financial assistance to the Bolsheviks through his Stockholm-based bank “Nya Banken” the first Swedish bank for trade unions and cooperatives, founded in 1912. The Bolshevik government led by Vladimir Lenin allowed Aschberg to do business with the Soviet Union, during the 1920s, and when the fledgling Soviet state started its first international bank in 1922, known as “Ruskombank”, Olof Aschberg was appointed as its first manager.
The Ashberg Diamond was apparently not part of the Russian Crown Jewels sold in 1927 to a British-American consortium, or pledged to Ireland around the same period and returned to Russia in 1950. The diamond was undoubtedly among the third part of the Crown Jewels retained and preserved in Kremlin Diamond Fund, because of their immense historical and cultural value.
However, the diamond was later released for sale in 1934, probably due to its later addition to the Crown Jewels, following the discovery of diamonds in South Africa in the 1860s, and hence its lower historical and cultural value. The diamond was reported to have been acquired by Olof Aschberg in 1934, when a Russian trade delegation visited Stockholm in that year. The Soviet Union’s sale of crown jewels in its early years was necessitated by a severe shortage of foreign currency in order to make essential payments abroad, and Olof Aschberg’s Stockholm-based “New Bank” and the Guarantee and Credit Bank for the East established in Berlin in the 1920s helped to a large extent to alleviate the situation.
antique modified brilliant cut diamond. The exact color and clarity grades of the diamond are not known. Amber color is a vague term. It is a variable color that can mean anything between yellow, orange and brown, i.e. a combination of two of these colors. Therefore, the term is not appropriate to describe a diamond. However you look at the photographs of the diamond, Ashberg appears to be a dark brown-yellow diamond.
Aschberg diamond mounted as the centerpiece of a pendant surrounded by a single layer of smaller diamonds
The Ashberg diamond is probably a type Ib diamond.
If the diamond is a dark brown-yellow diamond, it must be a type Ib diamond, because intense yellow colors are associated with the distribution of nitrogen as single atoms, scattered throughout the crystal. These atoms absorb visible light in the blue region of the spectrum, causing the complementary color yellow to manifest. If the nitrogen atoms are found as groups of atoms, the colors will be pale to medium yellow, which is found in type Ia diamonds. The brown color is possibly caused by plastic distortion of the crystal in certain areas.
Ashberg diamond occupies the 27th position in the list of famous yellow diamonds weighing more than 100 carats
In the list of famous yellow diamonds weighing more than 100 carats, the Ashberg diamond occupies the 27th position. See the table below. There are only three brown-yellow diamonds in this list. They are the 407.48 carat shield-shaped Incomparable diamond, the 170.49 carat pear-shaped Star of Peace diamond and the 102.48 carat cushion-shaped Ashberg diamond.