Статья посвящена трагической истории поисков и обретений драгоценностей царской семьи Романовых после ее гибели на Урале. Теоретической основой статьи является концепция модернизации. Для преодоления социально-экономической отсталости России требовались огромные капитальные вложения. После провала мировой пролетарской революции большевики взяли курс на ускоренную модернизацию страны, использовав для этой цели на первых порах ресурсы, оставшиеся от царской России, в частности драгоценности Романовых, о чем до недавнего времени было мало известно. На основе рассекреченных документов 1930-х гг., а также современных материалов исследуются пути и методы советской власти по привлечению золотовалютных ресурсов для нужд модернизации страны, трагические судьбы людей, прятавших и искавших сокровища царей. Attempting to obtain foreign currency to pay for numerous purchases of the industrial equipment, representatives of the Soviet regime sold out tsars’ jewels via their trade agents abroad. One of them was the son of an American communist A. Hammer, who arranged large-scale sales in Berlin, Vienna, London and New York. A legitimate ground for sale was the decree on nationalization of the Romanovs’ property, issued three days before the death of the last Tsar and his family, as well as a special decree of the Council for Labor and Defense “On the use of values for the trade turnover”, issued in October 1919, and a number of specifi c decisions adopted in the 1930s. The author concludes that the proceeds of the sale of tsars’ jewels could not provide the ever-growing demand of industrialization for gold and currency resources. Each major enterprise required not less than a ton of gold for its construction, while large plants needed tens of tons to pay for their projects and imported equipment. According to offi cial estimates during the fi rst fi ve years plan almost 5 billion dollars were spent for this purpose. It was covered mainly by a sharp increase in gold production in the USSR. Nevertheless, huge gold and foreign exchange resources that were required for the so called Stalin’s modernization were obtained to a certain extent due to the export of the tsars’ jewels. Thus, the Romanovs made a posthumous “contribution” to the formation of a new Russian identity. This contributed to the advancement of Russia at the level of world industrial civilization, while it also led to a loss of its considerable historical and cultural heritage of the three centuries of the Romanov dynasty’s rule. It also resulted in deaths and sufferings of many people. The mysterious and tragic fate of the tsar’s treasures left a lot of mysteries that disappeared forever with the participants of these events of the bygone days. It is important, yet diffi cult to implement the task of fi nding and identifying pieces of jewelry that previously belonged to the Romanov dynasty and currently are scattered in private collections of the Western world.