Today, many victims of Soviet terror are still living in exile, sometimes literally in the same place where they served their sentences or were deported. The Gulag continues for them. Since 1991, Russian law has guaranteed victims of repression the right to return to the place from which they or their families were expelled. The state is obliged to provide them with free housing in exchange for what was illegally taken away. However, in practice, the law does not work, and the “children of the Gulag” still cannot return home. In 2019, the Russian Constitutional Court ruled in their favor and ordered the authorities to immediately resolve this problem.
As part of this program, we are conducting a public campaign for the execution of the Constitutional Court ruling, representing the interests of the “children of the Gulag” in courts and administrative bodies, and advising them on the implementation of their right to housing.
In January 2023, the program’s lawyers, together with the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), released an expert report “Overcoming the Past: A Review of Memorial’s Judicial Practice in the Field of Transitional Justice in Russia”, which summarizes the results of the program.
The program is coordinated by lawyer Grigory Vaypan.