Russian aristocrat reclaims estate taken by Bolsheviks

[Kire]

Russian aristocrat reclaims estate taken by Bolsheviks
By Andrew Osborn in Moscow
Published: 23 July 2005

Russia's dispossessed aristocrats have been given something to celebrate after one of their number succeeded in buying back his family's sumptuous country estate almost 90 years after it was confiscated by the Bolsheviks, a reported first in modern Russian history.

Up till now, descendants of Russia's property-bereft aristocracy were able only to rent "their" forefathers' homes but not buy them back, and countless attempts to introduce some kind of restitution law have fallen flat.

But Sergey Leontev, a businessman descended from a famous Russian general who fought against Napoleon in 1812, has become the first person to persuade the Russian state to sell him his family's sprawling estate in the Yaroslavl area.

In the Soviet era, the estate was used as a camp for young Pioneers, the Communist equivalent of Scouts and Guides with a Leninist ideological twist, but after the Soviet Union crumbled in 1991 its popularity naturally began to fade until it was finally closed three years ago, paving the way for a private sale.

http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article300999.ece