The Hermitage collection is so large that there is no way you can see most of it in any single day. We (along with lots of Russians) decided to visit the Hermitage for a second day. The line going in to the main building was quite long.
Luckily we were heading to the portion of the museum in the General Staff Building. This portion of the museum houses a collection of impressionist and post-impressionist art by Degas, Cezanne, Daumier, Toulouse-Lautrec, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, van Gogh, and others.
A significant portion of the collection represent booty from World War 2 when Russian troops confiscated German artworks.