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News Links / RUSSIAN ARISTOCRATS WANT REAL ESTATE RESTITUTION
« on: April 19, 2005, 09:57:25 AM »
An interesting article from today's news
Izvestia
April 19, 2005
RUSSIAN ARISTOCRATS WANT REAL ESTATE RESTITUTION
[from RIA Novosti's digest of the Russian press]
Some members of Russian aristocratic families, who owned palaces and mansions before the 1917 Revolution, have intervened in the upcoming
privatization of historical monuments in Russia.
They are indignant at the fact that the state is going to sell out their property. The members of the best-known noble families in Russia the Obolenskys, Shakhovskois and others have decided to hold a meeting in St.
Petersburg, where their ancestors lived.
According to Boris Turovsky, chief of the St. Petersburg department of the Russian Imperial Union-Order (an organization of Russian aristocrats living abroad), practically all buildings in the center of Russia's northern
capital have legitimate inheritors. Now that the sale of historical buildings begins in Russia, the state faces new problems. It looks like these buildings will have two owners a purchaser and an heir, who will be
able to prove his property rights in an international court, Turovsky said.
"We simply want the state to admit officially that privatization in the 1920s was unlawful and apologize officially for driving people from their houses and country, humiliating them," Turovsky said.
In the opinion of Princess Vera Obolenskaya, a citizen of France, the Russian state should recognize the right of the heirs to take part in the fate of historical monuments. "We feel for Russia. We are of the Rurich
stock and are used to do something for our country during eleven centuries," said Prince Dmitry Shakhovskoi, who is also a citizen of France.
There can be two approaches to the aristocrats' claims, said Alexei Komech, one of Russia's most competent experts in the monuments of architecture, who heads the Art History Institute. Real estate may be returned to them under a general denationalization law, but such a law does not exist. And there is yet another possibility of doing this in keeping with the present
privatization laws privileged restitution procedures may be used.
The demands of the heirs are supported by Alexander Chuyev, a member of the lower house of the Russian parliament. A moral assessment of nationalization should be made on the state level and apologies should be presented. And if historical monuments are privatized while the rights of their former owners are ignored, it will be unlawful, he said.
Izvestia
April 19, 2005
RUSSIAN ARISTOCRATS WANT REAL ESTATE RESTITUTION
[from RIA Novosti's digest of the Russian press]
Some members of Russian aristocratic families, who owned palaces and mansions before the 1917 Revolution, have intervened in the upcoming
privatization of historical monuments in Russia.
They are indignant at the fact that the state is going to sell out their property. The members of the best-known noble families in Russia the Obolenskys, Shakhovskois and others have decided to hold a meeting in St.
Petersburg, where their ancestors lived.
According to Boris Turovsky, chief of the St. Petersburg department of the Russian Imperial Union-Order (an organization of Russian aristocrats living abroad), practically all buildings in the center of Russia's northern
capital have legitimate inheritors. Now that the sale of historical buildings begins in Russia, the state faces new problems. It looks like these buildings will have two owners a purchaser and an heir, who will be
able to prove his property rights in an international court, Turovsky said.
"We simply want the state to admit officially that privatization in the 1920s was unlawful and apologize officially for driving people from their houses and country, humiliating them," Turovsky said.
In the opinion of Princess Vera Obolenskaya, a citizen of France, the Russian state should recognize the right of the heirs to take part in the fate of historical monuments. "We feel for Russia. We are of the Rurich
stock and are used to do something for our country during eleven centuries," said Prince Dmitry Shakhovskoi, who is also a citizen of France.
There can be two approaches to the aristocrats' claims, said Alexei Komech, one of Russia's most competent experts in the monuments of architecture, who heads the Art History Institute. Real estate may be returned to them under a general denationalization law, but such a law does not exist. And there is yet another possibility of doing this in keeping with the present
privatization laws privileged restitution procedures may be used.
The demands of the heirs are supported by Alexander Chuyev, a member of the lower house of the Russian parliament. A moral assessment of nationalization should be made on the state level and apologies should be presented. And if historical monuments are privatized while the rights of their former owners are ignored, it will be unlawful, he said.