Addressing Historic Injustice in Russia: The Cases of the Children of Political Repression Victims

Abstract

The Russian Law on the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repressions, adopted in 1991, was aimed at protecting the rights of persons affected by abuse of power, their rehabilitation, restoration of civil rights, eliminating the consequences of arbitrariness and ensuring adequate compensation for material damage. The law also contained a number of special measures to restore the rights of children of repressed parents born in places of deprivation of liberty, exile, deportation, and special settlement. However, these rights were diluted by subsequent legislation.

In a landmark decision on 10 December 2019, the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, upheld the housing rights of three Russian citizens, Alisa Meissner, Elisaveta Mikhaylova and Eugenia Shasheva, all born to parents who had lived in Moscow but been deported or resettled in the 1930s. This seminar will address the decision’s legal basis and its wider political significance.

 

Speaker biography

Marina Belykh is an Associate Professor at the Ural State Law University in Yekaterinburg, Russia and concurrently holds the position of Chair of the Constitutional Law Division of the Charter Court of Sverdlovsk Region. Until recently, she was a Director of a Law Clinic of the Institute of Justice of the Ural State Law University.

She holds a PhD in Constitutional Law. Her research has mostly been in the fields of Russian Constitutional Law and Comparative Constitutional Law. She has also investigated new methods of teaching law, particularly while a recipient of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Chevening Scholarship and of a joint grant of the German Academic Exchange Service and Russian Ministry of Education and Science. Prior to the establishment of the Law Clinic at the Ural State Law University, she researched law clinics in the UK and wrote, inter alia, about the synergy between legal education and student experience of law ‘in real life’ though volunteering at a law clinic.

Dr Belykh is a member of the Editorial Board of the Russian legal journal Business, Management and Law.

 

Discussant biography

Jane Henderson is an academic lawyer with a long-standing interest in foreign and comparative law, and particularly the Russian legal system. Until recently she was Senior Lecturer in Russian Law at The Dickson Poon School of Law. She retired last September but continues her main research interest in Russian constitutional law. She is the rapporteur on Russia for the journal European Public Law.

 

About the Human Rights, Development and Global Justice Series

Our series aims to create an open, interdisciplinary academic platform for the discussion of issues related to human rights, development and global justice. Special attention is given to the global south, but not to the exclusion of other places.

We hope to generate exchanges furthering academic insight and creativity, to strengthen the School’s connections with scholars around the world, and to enrich undergraduate and postgraduate teaching curricula among the School’s wide offering of modules related to the jurisprudence of human rights, transnational human rights, and global justice more widely.

The events series is currently convened by Professor Eva Pils. It is supported by funding provided by The Dickson Poon School of Law. For information about other events in the series, please visit the King's College London website.