The Russian Diamond Fund — Imperial Regalia in the Kremlin Armoury
The Russian Diamond Fund — Imperial Regalia in the Kremlin Armoury
State repository of the Romanov crown jewels, the Orlov, the Shah, and modern Soviet and Russian gem production
The Russian Diamond Fund — formally the State Diamond Fund of the Russian Federation, Almazny Fond Rossiyskoy Federatsii — is the state repository for historic and modern gemstones, gold and platinum nuggets, and the surviving regalia of the Russian Empire. The collection sits inside the Moscow Kremlin Armoury and operates as both a working state reserve and a public exhibition. The Fund was established in 1922 from nationalised Imperial and private collections seized after the 1917 Revolution and has been augmented through the Soviet and Russian Federation periods with diamonds from Yakutian production. Together with the Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom and the French regalia in the Louvre, it is one of the principal national gemstone collections in the world.
Origin and legal status
After the 1917 Revolution, the Bolshevik government nationalised the Romanov family's jewellery, the regalia of the empire, and substantial private collections. Items were sorted, inventoried, and partially sold abroad through the 1920s and 1930s — a controversial sale programme that placed several major Imperial pieces in foreign collections, including the Marie Antoinette earrings and a number of Fabergé Imperial Easter Eggs. What remained was consolidated in the Diamond Fund, formally established by Lenin's decree in 1922, with the explicit instruction that the core regalia and the most important historic stones not be sold.
The Fund's modern legal status places it under the Gokhran of Russia (the State Repository of Precious Metals and Stones, part of the Ministry of Finance). The collection is inalienable state property; pieces cannot be sold or permanently transferred. Items occasionally travel for international exhibition under high security, but the regalia and the principal historic stones generally remain in Moscow.
The historic stones
The Orlov diamond is the most celebrated stone in the collection — an Indian diamond of approximately 189.62 carats, cut in a high-domed rose-cut style and set in the Imperial Sceptre commissioned by Catherine the Great. Its provenance traces to Golconda in southern India, with a long chain of ownership through Persia and into Russia in 1774. The stone is documented in GIA reference literature as an exemplar of the high-rose style of Indian cutting.
The Shah diamond is a yellowish-brown Indian diamond of approximately 88.7 carats, inscribed with the names of three of its historic owners (Burhan Nizam Shah II, Jahangir, and Fath Ali Shah). It was presented to Tsar Nicholas I in 1829 by Persia as recompense for the murder of Russian envoy Alexander Griboyedov. The inscription history makes it one of the most documented major historic diamonds.
The collection also holds the 398.72-carat red spinel atop the Imperial Crown of 1762, brought to Moscow by Russian envoy Nikolay Spafariy from Beijing in the 1670s. The stone is a Burmese spinel by current geological consensus and was historically misidentified as a ruby — a typical pre-modern conflation of red spinel and ruby that affected the British and French regalia equally.
Beyond these named stones, the Fund holds the Imperial Crown, Imperial Orb, Imperial Sceptre, the Small Imperial Crown of 1801, and a series of Imperial diadems and parures. The Crown of 1762, made by Jérémie Pauzié for Catherine the Great, is set with nearly five thousand diamonds totalling over two thousand seven hundred carats and remains one of the most consequential pieces of European regalia.
Modern Russian production
From the 1950s onward, Yakutian diamond production supplied the Diamond Fund with major stones reserved from commercial sale. The collection holds a series of named modern Russian diamonds, including the Star of Yakutia (232.10 carats rough) and several other large stones cut by the Smolensk-based Kristall enterprise. The Fund also holds historic and modern gold and platinum nuggets from Ural and Siberian production. The largest, the Big Triangle nugget at 36 kilograms, was found in the Urals in 1842 and is among the largest surviving nineteenth-century gold nuggets in any collection.
Public access and exhibition
The Diamond Fund maintains a permanent public exhibition inside the Kremlin Armoury, separately ticketed from the main Armoury collection. Access is by timed entry only and is subject to high security; photography is not permitted. The exhibition rotates lesser items but the principal regalia and named stones remain on continuous display. International loans are infrequent — the most prominent recent loan was the 1996 to 1997 tour of the Treasury of the Czars to Houston and Saint Petersburg.
Position in the trade and in scholarship
For dealers and historians of Imperial Russian jewellery, the Diamond Fund is the primary reference collection. The catalogue of holdings published periodically by the Gokhran is the working documentation, supplemented by Hermitage and Kremlin Museums research. Authentication of Imperial Russian jewellery from outside the state collection is regularly anchored against Diamond Fund comparators, particularly for diadems and parures with documented provenance.