Kuban authorities reach Russia's SC in dispute with repression victims over housing right

The Ministry of Labour and Social Development of the Krasnodar Territory (also known as Kuban by the name of the main river) has filed a complaint with the Supreme Court (SC), asking that the demand of Ivan Panaetidi's family to receive free housing be declared unjustified. In their turn, lawyers have noted that Ivan Panaetidi has the right to this, since his parents were deported from Kuban to Central Asia in 1942. According to the law, authorities must allocate money for his family to return to their parents' homeland.

In November 2022, the court declared illegal the officials' refusal to provide housing to four members of the Greek Panaetidi family, whose parents were repressed in 1942.

According to the above Ministry, members of the Panaetidi family should live in the villages of Ilskaya or Severskaya.

Ivan Kalgin, a lawyer, treats this requirement as unjustified, since authorities must register all the "Gulag children" with housing in their native places without any conditions, including without registration.

"It turns out to be a vicious circle: in order to exercise the right of return, those rehabilitated are required to first return – and at their own expense," Grigory Vaipan, a lawyer, has noted.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported citing Ivan Dzhukha, a researcher, some 13-14,000 Soviet Greeks were repressed in 1937, and other 61,000 – in 1942 and 1949. Ivan Dzhukha has noted that these statistics are incomplete, since not all archives have been opened yet.