Elderly Finnish man seeks return of family property in Vyborg

Karelia being given back in court process

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A Finnish citizen has filed a suit in a Russian court demanding back a family property in the centre of Vyborg, now in Russian Karelia.
      This property is a plot of land which the man’s father owned when the Soviet-Finnish Winter War began in 1939. A Russian bomb destroyed the building on the plot, and today there is a playground for children on the site.
      Monday was the second day of the court proceedings, and most of the time was used for formalities.
      For example, it is unclear whether the defendant should be the City of Vyborg or the regional administration.
     
Attorney Kari Silvennoinen advertised last year in Finnish newspapers, looking for former landowners and their descendants, who are now potential landowners in the former Finnish territory of Karelia, annexed by the Soviet Union after World War Two.
      In Silvennoinen’s view, the border changes of states do not affect private land ownership, and last year he took the matter to the European Court of Human Rights. The Court stated that it cannot give a verdict on the case, as it had not been handled in a Russian court.
     
According to Silvennoinen, who is himself a staunch advocate of the return of the ceded areas of Karelia, the case will set a precedent, and the proceedings are expected to take a long time. The court will reconvene at the end of October.
      However, many Finnish lawyers doubt the success of the test case, though Silvennoinen himself is ready to file further similar lawsuits.
     
The Finnish Bar Association gave Silvennoinen a formal warning as a consequence of his seeking customers through newspaper advertisements. However, Silvennoinen has made an appeal against the warning to the Court of Appeal.
      Silvennoinen and his Russian colleagues intend to be persistent, and if the court decision is negative, they are ready to appeal to a higher court.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Yeltsin´s Russia secretly calculated price for Karelia (5.9.2007)

Links:
  Vyborg (Wikipedia)
  Karelian Isthmus (Wikipedia)

Helsingin Sanomat