The seven sealed boxes containing the books were opened by Bishop Csomós, political state secretary of the Ministry of Culture and co-chairman of the Russian-Hungarian restitution committee Lajos Vass, deputy state secretary of the Foreign Ministry Ferenc Gémesi and director general of the Széchényi Library István Monok.
Bishop of the Trans-Tisza Diocese József Csomós, who is responsible for the maintenance of the Sárospatak library, said the return of the volumes to Hungary was a historic moment. However, he expressed reservations about the Russian decision to withhold ten volumes. ?We will not give up on those missing ten volumes,? Csomós said.
The treasured books and prints arrived at Budapest?s Ferihegy Airport on Wednesday evening, after being transported from a library in Nizhniy Novgorod to the Hungarian Embassy in Moscow on Monday.
The volumes, which include rare prayer books, and Bibles, as well as works on medicine and law, were taken to the National Széchényi Library in order to assess their condition and to undergo a preservation treatment. The books will be put on public display at the Hungarian National Museum from March 1 to mid-June.
The books were kept in poor conditions in the Soviet Union until 1960, when they were taken to the Nizhniy Novgorod library. Restoring the collection may take several years because each volume may require several hundred hours of work, Monok said.
The books are in good condition and a cursory examination has revealed no signs of mould, head of the restoration department at the Széchényi Library Beatrix Kastaly told the Hungarian News Agency (MTI).
Monok said the assessment of the books? condition is expected to take a day and a half. The collection will be cleaned by Saturday and it will be transported to the National Museum in the boxes they came in from Russia.
A total of 170 volumes of the Sárospatak collection were kept in the vaults of several Budapest banks during World War II, most of them were seized by the Red Army and taken to the Soviet Union in 1945, but no information is available about the rest, Monok said. Hungary presented a list of 146 volumes to Russia in 1999, but only 136 of these have been returned. There is still no trace of what is considered to be the most important book in the collection: the so-called Polish Bible, also known as the Sárospatak Codex, he added.
Lajos Vass told MTI that he considers it a special gesture from Russia that Hungary has been the first country to get back such valuable items under the restitution law. Germany and Austria have also submitted claims to Russia.
Cultural relations between Hungary and Russia have livened up in recent years. The two countries shared a cultural season last year, which played an important role in the return of the books.
