How in Nice the court was held, which will decide the fate of the last “battle” of rebellious Russian emigration with the Government of the Russian Federation and the Russian Orthodox Church

The court went to Nice for the right to own the historical Russian cemetery and the oldest Russian church in France. On the stake, on the one hand, the prospects of a particle of a large -scale project of the Russian Orthodox Church to collect land abroad, on the other hand, the life and fate of several dozen descendants of Russian emigration, opposing the “imperial claims” of Moscow. In addition, it is difficult for me to get rid of the mercantile layman from the thought that the section of the three plots of land in the center of Nice with a total area of ​​just more than 3,500 square meters has some value for the sides of the process.

It began with the fact that the Acor-Nice association (reduction from the French Orthodox Russian parish community in Nice), in whose management the Russian cemetery of the Kokad, and the Church of St. Nicholas and the martyr of the Queen of Alexandra in Nice (on the city of the city), were already 93 years old, and was re-attacked by the authorities of the Russian Federation. Then the community sued. And she demanded that the rights to these objects, as well as to three plots located on both sides of another temple-the largest Russian Orthodox Church in Western Europe-the Holy Nicolaev Cathedral in Nice (hereinafter-the Council), declared the rights to these objects.

In 2013, by the decision of the French courts, the cathedral was transferred to the property of the Russian Federation, since then it has been restored in the amount of 17.5 million euros (as it was officially declared several years ago, perhaps the amount later grew) from the budget of our great country. After all, our country is also so great that it does not spare money for its greatness abroad. And at the same time, he fights there even for the smallest heels of the land that he considers to be his own.

So soon after the accession of the cathedral, representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church showed the rights to the temple of St. Nikolai and St. Alexandra (hereinafter - the Old Church or the Church ) , and to the cemetery, and to three plots of land - referring to the "correcting notarial act". Corrections were made by a Nitstsky notary named Hugounenc in 2014.

Corrections, judging by the arguments of the lawyers of the Russian Federation, were made taking into account the following logic:

• At the time of the purchase of this property in the 19th century, the Holy Synod was the structure of the Russian Empire;

• And since the Russian Empire is the “successor” of the Russian Empire, it means that the state continues to remain the owner of the objects;

• And the fact that in 1927 these objects were transferred to Acor Association Metropolitan Evogy, who was managing Russian Orthodox parishes of the Moscow Patriarchate in Western Europe illegally .

To reinforce the positions, the lawyers of the Government of the Russian Federation referred to November 17, at this first and only meeting in the Civil Chamber of the Nice Court (hereinafter there will be a verdict) to decisions of the French courts to transfer the Council to the state.

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Alexei Obolensky, the chairman of the Acor-Nice and the headman of the Church, says that - unlike the cathedral built in 1912, the cemetery and the old church were acquired for "private donations from parishioners", "they did not have relations with the Russian state, and I want to hope, they will not have."

Obolensky was the initiator of filing a lawsuit against the Russian Federation and a notary public by the name of Hugound - demanding to invalidate the corrected notarial documents. In addition, the association requested compensation for losses: 360 thousand euros (this is in six years of lost rent). According to the “new” secretary and treasurer of the community Tatyana Shirinskaya-abolen, the money was lost as a result of the abolition of the construction project on Earth near the cathedral: the clinic located nearby was going to rent these lands and build a parking there. “So we discovered the substitution of documents, ” says aboard.

The French Catholic newspaper La Croix reported that the Russian Embassy itself planned a parking for these lands.

“But compensation for losses is not at all the main, even a secondary thing, ” says another representative of Acor-Nice. “Our main task is to preserve the church and the cemetery.”

The lawsuit was filed in 2015, but the court was transferred all the time, because the Russian state side dragged it on, assures the elder Obolensky.

The representative of the other side, Archpriest Andrei (Eliseev), the abbot of the cathedral, an employee of the Moscow Patriarchate declared a “new” for another reason that the leisureness of the “true owners” is a gesture of “goodwill” in relation to the association occupying alien property.

Both the church and the cemetery are like the “apartments” of the Russian Orthodox Church, in which the owners, of course, were absent for a long time, but they wanted to return,

The holy father emphasized: "When you let the tenant into your apartment, and after some time the tenant declares that now this is his apartment, you can, to put it mildly, disagree with this."

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The “some time” has passed since then 93 years have passed, and even if the objects that were disputed now were really acquired at the expense of the Russian state, then in this case, the Acor-Nice association is also found, its representative insists: “The French law has the concept of Prescription Acquisitive , this is 30 years. All these 93 years we contained and carried out work at our own expense in the cathedral and at the cemetery, we made taxes and utility bills, we received subsidies from the city, region and the country - we were recognized as conscientious owners. ”

Lawyers representing the interests of the Russian Federation said at a meeting that the Presscription Acquisitive should not apply to the "property of a foreign state". They (all these 93 years) were managers, but not the owners, - lawyers said about their opponents.

As for the very “correcting notarial act” in 2014, which “confirms the property of Russia as a successor to the Russian Empire over the territory purchased in 1867 under the Kokad and Church cemetery,” the Nitsk notary “corrected the unauthorized changes that were submitted to the cemetery and the church,” explained the new Fr. Andrey. The priest of the Russian Orthodox Church gave examples: “The Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church was crossed out in the documents, and the Cultural Acor-Nice Association appeared in this place . ” I did not show documents. As, however, the opposite side.

But both of them call the documents of their opponents “falsified”.

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“Having learned in 2015 about the existence of the“ correcting notarial act ”, which on February 19, 2016 Andrei Eliseev waved before my nose to the cemetery, we immediately invited the Russian Federation and the notary’s service to the City of Nice, ” said the “new” old man Oboylensky in hot pursuit of the churchyard, which, of course, did not begin.

The personnel priest Father Andrei and the descendant of the princely kind of Obolensky, a philologist and an artist, a sculptor and a chorist, then collided face to face.

The hot battle lasted two days, on February 18-19, 2016 - with the participation of locksmiths (on both sides) who cut off the castles on the gates of the cemetery, and two bailiffs.

In response to the Printing Leaf of the “Property of the Russian Federation” attached to the Pogost gate, Obolensky hung a handmade message on a white sheet: “Putin, paws away! We are not in Crimea and not in Ukraine! Leave our dead to rest in peace. ”

Obolensky here, in the cemetery of Kokad, rest. Here is the chapel, which, if the Earth court decides in favor of the Government of the Russian Federation, will also depart, do not understand what forces. “Then I will lose all faith ... in French justice, ” says the headman.

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In February 2016, the positional battle for the Cocadus’s height prevailing over Nice ended in that it would be more accurate to name French Cessez-La-Feu ( truce, ceasefire.- * Yu. S. * ): Each side received the keys to the cemetery. Since then, representatives of the Moscow Patriarchate have not interfered in the affairs of the old church and almost did not interfere in the work of the cemetery. “Although some pressure is still felt, ” Obolensky complains.

“ All the time some people who are not visible, who are entrusted with the keys.”

And besides, “now no burial can be carried out without the permission of the embassy,” says the headman. - As in all such matters, both local authorities and the state authorities of France make concessions to Moscow. They cannot declare their final owners, but they made them so that from now on they must be resolved from them. ”

- And how do you continue the activity in such conditions? - I ask.

“ Over the past year there were three burials, ” Obolensky replies.

Acor-Nice community was engaged in everyone: the opposite side “has no lists of people, nothing ... They don’t know who has the right to what. And we, of course, do not share with them. ”

It’s not about selfish interests, says the headman: “We have a lot of petitions , there are a lot of people who wish, but we refuse. Because, firstly, there is almost no more place, and in the end, we believe that the cemetery should remain parish. ”

Here, on the western outskirts of Nice, on a hill above the Mediterranean Sea, six thousand souls rest in the Russian cemetery of Kokad. Poet Georgy Adamovich, General Nikolai Yudenich and many warriors of the White Guard, surgeon Sergey (Samuil) Voronov - the probable prototype of Professor Preobrazhensky, Egyptologist Vladimir Golenishchev, researcher of Siberia and philanthropist Alexander Sibiryakov, Tsarist Foreign Minister Sergei Sazonov, Morganatic wife of Alexander II Princess Ekaterina Mikhailovna Dolgorukova ...

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The name of the princess again began to be vividly discussed recently - in the fall of 2018, when the Russian authorities managed to win another “victory” over Obolensky and the Acor-Nice community, which was later noted under the chairmanship of the Russian ambassador in Paris.

The embassy received a shirt of Alexander II, in which he was at the time of a fatal attempt, a vest and uniform of the emperor, three scarves with a monogram, as well as his portrait.

The princess Dolgorukova settled in Nice shortly after the attempt on the king and brought her husband’s personal belongings here. After the death of the princess, in 1922, things were transferred to Acor-Nice and remained in storage in the cathedral. Then the cathedral from the community was taken - in court. Do not give things out - without trial ...

Obolensky then told Nice Matin to the local newspaper, as on November 8, 2018 they knocked on his church: “The bailiff said that (...) If I do not open, he will break the castles. I opened. A brigade stood in front of me: a bailiff, police officers, a representative of the Russian Federation.

They came to pick up historical relics belonging to Katya, the widow of Alexander II. They said that Putin would like to show them to Macron on November 11. They had a Nice court. I had no choice. "

“For thirty years, my career has not yet seen that the French court urgently made a decision based on the desire of the head of a foreign state alone,” said Jean-Mark Shepetovski's Acor-Nice lawyer. The next day after the seizure of values, on the 9th, the Nice prosecutor signed a decision to refuse to institute criminal proceedings against Obolensky, which was still suspected of “embezzlement” of these objects.

Putin, who flew to Paris, celebrate the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War, did not stop looking at the emperor’s things. At least there were no public reports about this.

Nevertheless , do not cancel the holiday - the 10th in Paris solemnly celebrated the return of relics. The Russian embassy emphasized: things were in the cathedral ( before its transition to the jurisdiction of the Russian Federation. - Yu. S. ) , and now they will return there - "for public display." Things returned to where Catherine wanted to see them, ” said Andrei Eliseev, Figaro.

Obolensky says that he sued and is still waiting for the result.

The chances of winning are almost zero: Russia as a state has legal integrity. What I took - you are unlikely to be taken away.

However, in the voice of the headman, when he talks about this story, humility is heard.

Another question is the final battle for the main thing of life: the Russian Orthodox community of Nice. They will take away the church and the cemetery from her from the chapel - and what will remain of her? From the descendants of Obolensky, the Bolshevik authorities took possessions in the Crimea and Vyborg. Now the “post-Bolshevik” power intervened in his fate. Neither one nor the other have nothing to do with the church, ” says the headman.

The meeting on the history of Russian emigration on November 17 took place in an hour. The judge asked the lawyers not to spread especially to the half -empty hall - and because she would understand the essence of the case from the documents submitted, and because the courtyard is a difficult epidemiological situation.

The verdict should be made on February 25, 2021.

PS

Whatever the result of this court, many thousands of “our” residents of the “Russian city of France”*, he did not arouse interest. Who is the “Russian community” of Nice for? - I ask Obolensky. He replies: the majority - with the exception of those who constantly go to church or the cathedral - "live without feeling history, and they have no idea that such a dispute is going on."

The Acor-Nice community Obolensky decided a year ago that “their” Church of St. Nicholas and Alexandra would leave the Russian exarchate of Constantinople and move to the bosom of the Romanian Orthodox Church. The fact is that the former head of the exarchate, Bishop John (Renneto) last fall, turned towards the Russian Orthodox Church, and led about half of the 122 parishes.

But those days of 2016, when representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church came to change the castles at the cemetery in Nice, Father John turned to parishioners with a fiery commander: “...” In 2014 (...), the Ambassador of the Russian Federation without the knowledge of the parish community and a usurpathic manner sent an act with amendments and the requirement of the recognition of the property of the Russian Federation over the cemetery of the cemetery. Kokad, above the three sites adjacent to the cathedral, and above the Church of St. Nicholas and Alexandra. (...) Dear brothers and sisters, these actions bring us embarrassed and raise the question of the goals pursued by the Moscow Patriarchate through the Russian Federation. The Russian Federation declares itself the successor to the Holy Synod of the Russian Empire. Those who manipulate history forget that the Soviet government, which replaced the Russian Empire, destroyed the churches on Russian land for 70 years, destroyed the priests of the Orthodox Russian Church and brutally pursued Russian Orthodox Christians, not taking care of the churches here in France.

History remains history, and no one has the right to falsify it at their discretion. Throughout the period of the agony of Russian Christianity, believers and the leadership of the Archbishop of the Orthodox Russian churches in Western Europe in the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, with the greatest respect, contained all these places and piously kept the memory of those who were resting on them.

Therefore, we cannot understand the persistent desire of the Russian state and the Russian Church to force their Russian and Orthodox relatives, who managed to preserve and supported these memorable places financially (...).

I urge every parish and every community to pray and fast so that the Lord will strengthen our elders and all responsible persons of our churches, which are fighting for the protection of rights recognized by our parish communities by decisions of French justice. I urge you to remember in the prayer and post of the suffering of our brothers and sisters, who are threatened by the expulsion from the places of departure of worship. We will everywhere appeal to the human court, but we ask one God about justice and that He enlighten secular and spiritual authorities, so that the world will reign in the holy of God's churches. ”

• The words of extremely friendly towards the Kremlin of the local mayor of estrose.