Taking winter

At the end of last week, the appellate board of the Supreme Court of Karelia evicted from an apartment on the island of Valaam the family of the guide of Irina Smirnova - her husband, historian Oleg Yarovoy, daughter Jaan Yann and seven -year -old granddaughter Alisa Merkushev. The house itself was declared overhaul and promised to turn off the light, gas and water. So the confrontation between the Valaam Stavropigial Monastery with local residents, which has been going on for a decade and a half, has reached the climax. “The people here begin to create a self-defense detachment, we will be on duty near the house,” wrote a resident of the island of Philip Muskevich in mid-August, whom the monastery evicted from his apartment-in the same way, in court-back in 2007.

The apartment, which the company, managing monastic real estate, suited Irina Smirnova, went to her in 1985-a year after she got a job in the excursion department of the newly opened Valaam Museum-Reserve. In Soviet times, Valaam was known to the House of Disabled War, which was opened on the island in the fifties. In 1984, he was closed-more precisely, transferred "to the mainland." Irina Smirnova recalls that when she came to the island with the “museum”, she saw a helicopter on which the last disabled people were evacuated. Instead, young specialists came to the island - to develop tourism.

At first, Smirnova lived in a room in the building of the Voskresensky monastery in the east of the island. Then the housing commission allocated her an apartment in a winter hotel - this is very close to the monastery, in the main village. “Young workers created families, and it was easy to get housing,” she says. The winter hotel is a beautiful whitewashed building, one of two apartment buildings on the island and an architectural monument of the mid -19th century. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, about two hundred people lived here. In the second residential building, the "work of the work", there lived those who came to the island in the fifties to work in the house of the disabled, and then did not want to leave Valaam.

The museum-reserve lasted eight years-until 1992. In the nineties, many neighbors and colleagues parted, recalls Smirnov who - to the cities, who - abroad: “There were those who did not want to abandon their business,” she says; It was not affordable to keep the reserve at that time.

The natural park remained from the museum-reserve, which is responsible for the specially protected territories of the Valaam archipelago-two people work there. And the pilgrimage service established by the monastery is now engaged in excursions.

“We were not taken to work in the pilgrimage service, but then they became - they realized that they needed specialists,” says Smirnova. So she became an individual entrepreneur and conducts her own excursions: shows tourists the defense structures of Valaam: part of the famous Mannerheim line and the ancient Karelian fortresses, which pilgrims usually do not see.

In collaboration with his second husband, historian Oleg Yarov, who arrived at the island several years later, Irina Smirnova wrote several books: “Valaam Islands. History in monuments and landscapes ”,“ Valaam Monastery and the Orthodox Church in Finland. 1880-1920 ”and others. Yarova defended his dissertation on Valaam, and now he is the chief specialist in the history of the island, on which he lost the right to live.

The daughter of Smirnova Yaan Yurn early began to show artistic and linguistic abilities. After the second grade, the girl left for her grandmother in Petrozavodsk, and in the summer she came to her mother. When she had a daughter, she was also registered on Valaam - in the only housing that her mother had.

They decided to evict them last fall.

The trial was started by LLC “Service for Operation of Real Estate and Territories” (SETT), established by the VALAAM stavropigial male monastery - this is a company that runs all real estate on the island. The first lawsuit came to the Sortavalsky City Court last fall. The proceedings did not work out - the plaintiff did not provide documents confirming the right to represent the interests of the monastery in court: there is no such clause between the Sant and the monastery - the document says only about the transfer to the trust management of buildings on the island. The court left a lawsuit without consideration.

From Sortaval to Valaam - forty kilometers along the Lake Ladoga, in winter it freezes, and does not reach the mainland. Sent was able to submit a second statement to the court only in March - when navigation resumed. An additional agreement was concluded between the company and the monastery, where the item “on its own behalf to perform in arbitration courts and courts of general jurisdiction appeared”. True - a small legal detail - the right to represent in court was spelled out in the section “Rights of the Monastery” - apparently, the Valaam lawyer was mistaken - and from a formal point of view the plaintiff could not be again, but this inaccuracy did not interfere with the consideration of the claim. The SENT SENT meeting took place on May 26.

The monastery company justified its requirements with two mutually exclusive arguments. First: Winter hotel is a non -residential room.

The second - the inhabitants of the Winter Hotel are subject to eviction, as they violate housing legislation, follows from the claim. “According to available information, the building of the winter hotel is registered at the place of residence of the person: a) permanently residing, b) living only in the summer - summer residents, c) not living at all,” the monastery lawyers wrote.

Those who “according to reliable, but officially not confirmed data” do not live in a winter hotel constantly, reported in the lawsuit, “have housing on the mainland on the right of ownership or for hiring”. These residents of the winter are obliged to free the living space - the management company insists.

A specific article of the Housing Code was also indicated in the statement, on the basis of which, according to the plaintiff, the residents of the winter do not have the rights to the premises- the 83rd (“termination and termination of the social rental agreement of the dwelling”): “In the event of the employer and members of his family to the other place of residence, the residential contract is considered terminated from the day of exit, unless otherwise provided by federal law ".

Smirnova, Yarov and Yurn had to defend himself. The guide brought a receipt to the court on the payment of the apartment, contracts concluded with the pilgrimage service, and even the photographs that the judge showed: here it is in the fall on the island, but here in the winter. She showed a certificate that her daughter did not live on Valaam, because she studied at the university. The granddaughter went to first grade in Petrozavodsk: this year, a primary school teacher quit the island, who led the lessons at the same time at the first, second and third classes, so now the children were simply “scattered” for the remaining teachers. In Petrozavodsk, Yaana and her husband have no housing.

The Sortavala prosecutor’s office, whose representative participated in the meeting, took a compromise position: Yarovoy, Yurn and Merkushev to evict, Smirnov - to leave.

The decision did not suit any of the parties, and in September the appeal was appointed - in Petrozavodsk. There, prosecutors tightened their position, and after them tightened their position and the court. All four were evicted from the winter.

“From the very beginning, the status of premises from which the family is evicted was not determined: representatives of the monastery say that they are non -residential, and the court applies housing legislation,” says lawyer Dmitry Shamin, representing the interests of Yaana Yurna. “How can one recognize the right to use the premises if the monastery claims that it is non -residential?”

Based on the current decision, you can withdraw the family from registration, however, for eviction it is necessary to make a separate decision, the lawyer argues: “There is a problem here: how to evict a minor girl to Alice if her mother has no other housing?”

“The position was proved by one hundred percent, there is a decision of the Supreme Court: going to work or study is forced and cannot be considered the basis for depriving the right of social employment,” says the lawyer. - It is impossible to get higher education on Valaam, which means that you need to choose between the university and the right to housing. "

“There was no surprise, I was already at a conscious age, when the Muskevich family was evicted, so I was already familiar with the methods of the monastery,” says Yana Yurn.

She means the court that the monastery won in 2007. On the street then appeared as a former head of the nature department of the Valaam Museum-Reserve Philip Muskvich, his wife and two daughters. The family occupied the premises in which the hotel of the pilgrimage service of the monastery is now located-in the very Voskresensky monastery where Smirnova once lived. The abbot of the monastery father Pankrati (Zherdev) explained how much better the locals in Sortaval would be. There, for the Valaam, it seems to be built a comfortable house - however, there are no jobs that creates a flow of tourists on the island on the mainland. The case turned out to be scandalous: the central channels came to remove the stories about Muskevich. Deprived of registration, the scientist has remained on the island and has been living on acquaintances for the past seven years.

The final solution of the Valaam issue

The day after consideration of the decision in the Smirnova case in the Service of the Primnic Court of the first instance at the stand, nailed to the wall of the Walaam grocery store - next to the Meteor schedule for the mainland and an announcement on the sale of the old boat - a message from the Saint appeared: the building of the winter hotel is “subject to major repairs”, and the residents will be granted “other comfortable housing in A house under construction in the city of Sortavala. " All questions were proposed to residents to address the management company.

And again - a legal incident: even in the announcement, the company referred to paragraph 4 of Article 85 of the Housing Code, although a day earlier a monastery lawyer spoke in court about the "non -residential premises of the former hotel."

The winter hotel became the object of attention of the state last 2014. Then the residential building was included in the FCP "Strengthening the unity of the Russian nation and the ethnocultural development of the peoples of Russia for 2014-2020."

At a meeting of the Board of Trustees to restore the Valaam monastery, during his visit to the island, Patriarch Kirill said that last August he wrote a letter to the president with the request “On assisting in financing the overhaul of the winter hotel building and resettlement of residents living in it”.

Already in November, RBC reported that the Russian Orthodox Church would receive almost two billion rubles from the federal budget for the creation of spiritual and educational centers. Most of all - 358 million - was due to Valaam. At Valaam, the creation of the spiritual and educational center was planned in the building of the Winter Hotel, the publication reported.

As follows from the Patriarch’s speech at the Board of Trustees, in December Vladimir Putin gave federal and regional governments an order to include in the plan of the main events related to the preparation and conduct of the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the formation of the Republic of Karelia, “Events for the restoration of the winter hotel and the provision of residential premises living in them”.

The money was allocated in June 2015, however, the amount turned out to be slightly less than the predicted-322 million rubles. This follows from the decree signed in June by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and published on the government’s information Internet portal. Formally, not the monastery itself disposes of the means, but the autonomous non -profit organization Valaam, registered in February of this year - just at the same time as a second lawsuit against the family of Irina Smirnova.

The project to move the population from Valaam to the mainland should be completed in 2016, followed from the speech of the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church. After that, the sluggish negotiations of the monastery with local residents were sharply activated about the resettlement, they were offered to "contact the management of the monastery company on issues of moving."

“Residents of the winter, of course, were suppressed by a court decision in the Smirnova case,” says Philip Muskvich. - Nobody began to be publicly indignant, people chose a passive protest. But to agree on the apartments to Skobeleva (Vera Skobeleva, director of Sant - MZ) did not go. "

In mid -July, the new announcement again called the residents to meet with representatives of the management company - now it was about "the draw of apartments in the Sortaval." The faithful tactics of passive resistance, the inhabitants of the initiative of Sent again ignored.

And in August, the monastery company decided on a demarche. Two ads appeared on the store. The first - already on behalf of ANO “Valaam” (which became the recipient of budget funds to arrange a pilgrimage center) - notified that a meeting of residents would soon take place where the draw of apartments would be held in Sortavala. The second vocabulated that overhaul begins in winter, and residents - it turns out who did not agree to the move - would turn off electricity and water. The announcement was signed by the monastery company Sent LLC. On August 20, the light really disappeared in the winter, but a short -lived investigation showed that the shutdown with the repair was in no way connected. In the apartments of monastery workers, hotel rooms located on the second floor, and laundry electricity was supplied uninterruptedly. It disappeared only in the apartments of the residents prescribed on Valaam-someone simply turned off the rubblers, the residents found out.

"It was outlandish and curious"

In the 1917-39s, before the start of the Finnish war, the Finnish military were stationed in the building of the monastery hotel; built on the southern part of the island of fortifications, which historians belong to the Mannerheim line, did not allow the Red Army to quickly occupy the Finnish Valaam then. However, due to shelling and bombing-the island in January-February 1940 was especially actively fired-the monks inhabiting it were evacuated. In the same year, in Finland, on the territory of the purchased estate, they founded the Novo-Laam monastery.

In March 1940, the Red Army entered the island; For a short time, the Jung school was here - its pupils later defended Leningrad. Later, the island again moved to the Finns. The monks still visited the abandoned monastery and monastery - to maintain buildings in proper condition in order to return after the war. However, in 1944, the last of them receded with the Finnish army. The monks returned only in 1989.

Ironically, Philip Muskevich, whom the monastery evicted from the house in court, was one of those residents of Valaam who met the first monks 26 years ago. One of the December evenings, a small ship was moored in the Nikon Bay, next to the Voskresensky monastery-now there are guides of the pilgrimage service, and used to live guides of the museum-reserve.

“A small ship arrived, six people with some boxes got out,” says Philip. - I met, Natasha Kornilova - she worked in the library, Sergey Sakiryan from the forestry.

- To get to the village, a car was needed, they climbed into the monastery building - there was a telephone on the ground floor (it seems to be given the car). While waiting, they invited him to drink tea, it was cold. The monk saw me Roerich and said something disapproving-I was already surprised at such assertiveness.

Then there was Christmas, recalls Philip. In the first service in the temple there was a full house, the whole village gathered: “It was outlandish and curious,” he recalls. “Grandmothers came, who did not yet know how to be baptized.”

The monks settled in the central estate. Then everyone helped a small community - with firewood, for example: they drowned the temple when the first monks were going to service.

The monastery has increasingly affirmed its power over the island. The rights of the former residents of Valaam were more and more cut by a year. In 2006, local self-government was liquidated, and Valaam from the village became the area of ​​the city of Sortavala.

Two islanders - Alexander Shcherbakov and Nina Balaya - appealed to the Supreme Court, there they decided the local administration to restore, but then the decision was canceled with a special ruling - supposedly on the complaint of another local resident. Nobody knows this person on Valaam.

By transport to the mainland-“meteors” on the underwater wings-the company “Valaam-Service” is disposed of. The shops that local entrepreneurs opened in the nineties are now under the jurisdiction of the same Sant LLC. In the northern and southern wings of the winter hotel, the school is still working - 11 children are studying there, which have six teachers. Today, 64 people remain in winter - of those who do not want to leave; In total, there are about 130 inhabitants on the island - and almost 200 monks.

“They tell me - you are writing open letters now, but why didn’t you come out with the crimson when they arrived?” - says Philip. Muskevich does not agree with the radicals and believes in the possibility of the coexistence of secular and religious communities: "This is still an invented confrontation."