ST. PETERSBURG -- The Hermitage Museum offered a sneak preview Thursday of a controversial exhibit of 74 paintings seized from Germany at the end of World War II and kept secret by the Soviet Union for nearly 50 years.


The existence of the paintings, by such artists as Degas, C?zanne, Daumier, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir and Van Gogh had remained a state secret until the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.


Museum officials unveiled three of the best-known works at a news conference Thursday: "Place de la Concorde," the Degas masterpiece which is frequently reproduced in art books with the annotation "Missing. Believed destroyed"; "The White House at Night," which Van Gogh finished six weeks before his death in 1890; and "Two Sisters from Tahiti" by Gauguin.


The exhibit, showing only some of the scores of works of art plundered from private collections in Germany after the war, raises the touchy question of whether the paintings should be returned to Germany -- in exchange for Russian treasures seized by the Nazis.


"We felt we should show everything we have," said Mikhail Piotrovsky, director of the Hermitage, emphasizing cooperation between the two countries. "We are prepared to show a list of what Russia lost, and everything we have."


Meanwhile, the German consul general in St. Petersburg, Hans von Puttkamer, said, "We agree that it is right and good that these art works are again available to the public."


Von Puttkamer added, however, that the German government will continue to insist on the return of seized art works according to agreements signed by the two countries.


The impressionist and post-impressionist paintings will be displayed at the Hermitage from March 30 until August.


Many St. Petersburg residents still harbor painful memories of the war, and feel the works should remain in Russia as restitution for the suffering caused by Hitler's blockade of then Leningrad in World War II.


Some are more flexible.


"The most sensible thing would be an exchange," said one elderly St. Petersburg woman, standing near Peter the Great's snow-covered Winter Palace, which houses the Hermitage. "We give the Germans back their things, and they give back ours."