The Petrovsky District Court of the Stavropol Territory declared illegal the refusal to register the housing at the former place of residence of the family of one of the «children of the Gulag» — 71-year-old Nikolai Mitkin. Grigory Vaypan, a lawyer for International Memorial*, announced this on Facebook. p class=»SingleImage_caption__2bWvj»>
Nicholas Mitkin's mother Frieda Keller in the special settlement (left). Photo: Grigory Vaypan/Facebook
“This is the first court decision known to me, when stubborn local officials are obliged to recognize the right of “Gulag children” to housing,” Vaypan wrote.
p>
The lawyer clarified that now Nikolai Mitkin would have to be put on a waiting list for housing in the Stavropol Territory.
According to Vaypan, the court's decision could be influenced by the fact that other «children of the Gulag» sent for court certified copies of their documents with examples of good practice from other regions. Mitkin's interests were represented in court by lawyer Kristina Semyonova with the legal support of International Memorial.
“Mitkin’s mother, the German Frida Keller, was deported from the German farm Nikolaevka in the Ordzhonikidzevsky (now Stavropol) Territory to Kazakhstan in 1941, and from there they were sent to Usollag. Mitkin was born in 1951 in a special settlement in the village of Ust-Yazva in the Molotov Region (now the Perm Territory) and still lives there. It is 330 kilometers north of Perm. The Nikolaevka farm gradually died out after the deportation, and in 1966 it was officially recognized as ceasing to exist,” Vaypan said.