The Russian government has set up a website detailing some 46,000 of the country's artworks missing due to looting by the Nazis during the Second World War.

The internet database — in Russian — was created to help scholars and law enforcement agencies track and locate cultural treasures that have been listed as missing from 13 state museums. Printed editions of the database are available in English.

Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941 and for four years systematically removed art and antiquities from dozens of museums. 

Russian officials acknowledge most of the looted items might have been destroyed, but they remain hopeful that many may still be uncovered.

"We would like to believe that our artworks will soon return home to their rightful places in our museums,'' Lidia Romashkova, deputy director of the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, told Bloomberg News this week.

"There are quite a few incidences when artworks previously thought lost suddenly surfaced.''

In October 2006, The Vilchik Hills at Dusk in the Middle of September (1896) by Alexander Borisov was recovered after a Moscow collector realized the origin the work and returned it without compensation.

American billionaire art collector Ronald Lauder did the same in 1998 when he discovered the provenance of Portrait of Pyotr Basin, an 1829 piece by Orest Kiprensky. Lauder promptly returned it to the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg.

According to the database of looted works, the Tsarskoe Selo Estate Museum, located in St. Petersburg, was the hardest hit, with about 13,200 artworks missing. The Pavolovsk Estate Museum — also in St. Petersburg — comes close behind, with 7,306 items unaccounted for.

Among the highly-valued works missing are three classical 19th century paintings:

• Blind Poor People at a Market in Ukraine by Vladimir Makovsky.
• Pine Trees Above the Gorge by Ivan Shishkin.
• Turbulent Seas by Ivan Aivazovsky.

These three are said to be able to fetch between $500,000 and $3 million US each.

Many of the missing works are believed to be in private collections in Europe and the United States.