Endless repression: state does not wish to return the property of victims of Stalinism

Journalists of the Russian Air Force Service prepared and published a very sad material about how Russia, which recognizes itself as the legal heir of the USSR, continues to mock the victims of Stalin's terror, in fact, refusing to return them the apartments in which their parents lived before the repressions. This also applies to Moscow and other large cities of the country. Moreover, this happens illegally, since the descendants of the repressed back in 1991, the state guaranteed the right to return. The corresponding decision was also made by the Constitutional Court, it was supported by the UN, but the state believes that the victims should wait for an apartment on an equal basis with the beneficiaries, while the queue can last 20 or 30 years.

On Thursday, a State Duma deputy in the first reading adopted a bill on changing the rules for providing housing to victims of Stalinism, but even on it they will not receive guaranteed housing earlier than decades later...

The victims themselves call this situation openly - a state robbery. Not only did the Soviet government break their relatives and themselves all their lives, the Russian government does nothing to somehow fix it. Vladimir Gorobets, whose father once lived on the Arbat, and then felled forests in Siberia for 10 years, tells this to journalists. For the same 10 years, and even more, 64-year-old Gorobets, who has lived half of his life in the Siberian village in which his parents lived in exile after the camps, is trying to return his apartment by right. He never saw the people who now live there - the guards would not let him into the entrance. Back in 2007, he began to draw up documents for a return or refund in order to get into the queue, which in Moscow lasts at least 25 years. However, even this he fails: the Moscow property department, as well as the courts, have repeatedly denied him this...

And this is just one example of many given in the material. Meanwhile, the 1991 law "On the rehabilitation of victims of political repression" obliges the Russian authorities to compensate those who were sent into exile or the gulag camps, as well as their children born in these places.

Since most of the repressed have already died, this law applies to their children - the children of the Gulag. But even this became virtually impossible for them: in 2005, the State Duma delegated powers to the regions, according to which they themselves can dictate the conditions under which the victims must return their property. For example, in Moscow everything is extremely monstrous: you can get into the queue for social housing only after living in the capital for at least 10 years, not have your own living space and have the status of poor, - wrote Kommersant. That is, the path to restoring justice is essentially closed for the victims of Stalinism. And they often continue to live in truly hard labor conditions - just look at the photographs published in this material.

And so the Ministry of Construction, at the direction of the Constitutional Court, began to amend the law on the rehabilitation of victims of political repression, submitting its bill to the State Duma back in April this year. Even during the discussion, he was harshly criticized by human rights ombudsman Tatyana Moskalkova, government representative at the Constitutional Court Mikhail Barshchevsky, and many other specialists, the same Kommersant wrote.

But the government commission still approved it and sent it to the State Duma for a vote. According to this draft, in fact, only one change is being made to the existing law. If previously the regions could establish the same rules for victims as for ordinary people on the waiting list, then from now on, returning to their former place of residence, they have the right to be provided with housing, regardless of the length of time they have lived in this place; and possessed property. And that's all. As for the rest, everything is the same: they, as before, must take the queue "in the manner prescribed by the constituent entities of the Russian Federation".

That is, they will not wait for any return. And this is despite the appeal of UN representatives to provide the children of the repressed apartments or compensation within two years.

True, back in September this year, the deputies from Fair Russia, Galina Khovanskaya and Sergey Mironov, created and submitted an alternative bill, according to which victims of repression should receive payments for the purchase or construction of housing in cities that the victims were forced to leave - within a year. But the deputies voted by a majority for the government option. At the same time, the government estimated the number of applicants for housing compensation - only 1600 people.

“In practice, this is a mockery of people. They will be put on a queue, they will stand there for 25 years. We don't live so much, - says Khovanskaya. "These people are very few... They... I don't know... You just need to feel sorry for them".