Russian Church property restitution

Russian Church property restitution is an inaccurate term used by some mass media (the issue of restitution in the Russian Federation (RF) has never been officially raised by anyone) to refer to the process of transferring to the ownership of religious organizations (primarily the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC)) certain categories of property owned by several religious structures before 1918 (the ROC, as a centralized religious organization with the rights of a legal entity in the Russian Empire, did not have the rights of a religious organization) and transferred, in accordance with the decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic of 20 January 1918 "On Separation of Church from State and School from Church", to the ownership of the state – the Soviet Union, and after 1991, by succession, to the Russian Federation. On 30 November 2010, Russian president Dmitry Medvedev signed the Federal Law of the Russian Federation # 327-FZ "On the Transfer of Religious Property Owned by the State or Municipalities to Religious Organizations", which defines "the procedure of free transfer of religious property owned by the federal government, constituent territories of the Russian Federation or municipalities to religious organizations for ownership or free use".

Source: Wikipedia — Russian Church property restitution (CC BY-SA 4.0)