After years of living as an ordinary Soviet citizen in Ukraine, one man returns to reclaim a heritage he had presumed was lost forever.

ALABINO, Russia -- Surveying his ancestral estate, Prince Eugene Alexeyevich Meshchersky can't help but smile.

Under his gaze, young Prince Dmitry, age 4, skitters about on ice-covered ground that is just beginning to give way to an early spring thaw. A few meters away, Princess Yekaterina, 11, gathers firewood. Inside the house, 14-year-old Prince Mikhail is fixing a window. And down the road, Meshchersky's wife, Princess Lyudmila, is slogging home from a trip to the market, a bag of assorted chicken parts in her hand.

A year ago, Prince Meshchersky was a balding 45-year-old building engineer squeezing out a living in Ukraine. Today, still balding but with a certain regal bearing behind his goatee and steel-rimmed glasses, he is lord of his manor and master of his domain.

True, the manor is a wreck and the domain isn't exactly his. But Prince Meshchersky has come home.
Unlike some former Soviet bloc countries that have begun to settle accounts with those whose property was seized under communism, Russia has not yet enacted any meaningful restitution laws. But among the remnants of Russia's pre-Revolutionary aristocratic class, there is a growing clamour for the land that was once theirs. And in a few cases, such as Meshchersky's, hardy princes and counts have simply taken it back.

It was nearly a year ago that Meshchersky -- a descendant of a noble family that can trace its roots back eight centuries -- piled his family into their car and drove 1,100 kilometres from Ukraine to Alabino, a rustic village about 40 kilometres west of Moscow.

Once here, he reclaimed the estate that was taken from his family following the 1917 Bolshevik revolution. He did it by kicking out the "thieves and bums'' who had been squatting in the three large houses that surround the ruins of the family palace. "I didn't ask anyone,'' he says defiantly. "The state didn't ask us when they had the revolution in 1917.'' Now that the state has decided, in effect, that the revolution was a mistake, it isn't sure what to do with the likes of Meshchersky.

He is among several dozen people who have filed suit in Russian courts demanding the return of ancestral lands. For the most part, the courts have tossed the cases out, saying Russia has no law enabling them to return the property.

Vladimir Lisichkin, a member of the State Duma, Russia's lower house of parliament, has proposed a package of eight restitution bills that he believes would solve the problem. But those that would return land to private individuals appear to have little chance of passage.

Lisichkin, a monarchist and member of Vladimir Zhirinovsky's nationalist party, faces opposition from nearly every other faction in parliament, from communists to Western-oriented liberals. He says he doesn't understand how self-proclaimed democrats can oppose property restitution. "We will fail to build an open society if we do not conquer this problem,'' he says. But the mere idea of allowing the sale of state land, let alone giving it back to aristocrats, is enough to make Russia's remaining communists see red. And communists still control the Duma.

Still, a few aristocrats -- who, for the most part, are as poor as everyone else in the country -- have succeeded in at least persuading local authorities to let them return to family estates. Count Alexei Kamensky, an artist active in Moscow's tiny noble society, says officials in his ancestral village recently allowed him to reclaim the ruins of his family's palace. They would have given him the place if the law allowed it, he says. For now, he's being allowed to occupy it rent-free. Kamensky, who restores Russian Orthodox Church icons for a living, is still living in Moscow, but dreams of restoring the palace. Lacking money, he hopes to at least restore a church on the grounds. "If nobody helps me, I will do it myself, with my hands and with my money,'' he says. "Maybe not right away, but maybe by in the future.''

Like Kamensky, Meshchersky has little money to repair the wreckage of his ancestors' estate. He and his family are living in decidedly ignoble fashion, essentially camping in three cramped rooms in the least gutted house on the estate. They have no telephone. They chop wood for heat and cooking and haul drinking water from a spring. To make their way through the house, they side-step missing floorboards, climb rickety stairs and grope their way through darkened hallways. But Meshchersky has a clear-eyed view of the future. He will renovate the houses, one room at a time. As rooms become available, he will open a hotel. And with the revenue, he will slowly rebuild what once was a magnificent estate.

He grew up with the proud knowledge of his aristocratic roots, but until now, he couldn't do much about it. Bluebloods weren't exactly popular in the Soviet Union; his grandfather, he says, was executed for having a noble lineage.

Now he dreams of taking part in a movement to restore the Russian monarchy -- a toned-down, modern version more like that of, say, Denmark, than of Ivan the Terrible. If there is a widespread yearning for this among the people of Russia, it remains well hidden to everyone outside a small circle of monarchists. Still, many Russians share Meshchersky's passion for history and pride in his country's past.

Sitting behind his kitchen table, he draws out a silver spoon stamped "A.M.'' That would be Alexander Meshchersky, an 18th century ancestor, he says. Then he pulls out a book about the Russian aristocracy and opens it to a two-page spread: his family tree, stretching back to 1198. His lawsuit to legally reclaim his family's land was thrown out of a local court; he has appealed to the Russian Supreme Court.

But Meshchersky seems little troubled by his uncertain legal status. He has the blessing of local administrators, he says, and his neighbours -- who, it's true, smirked a bit when asked directions to his estate -- seem happy to have him here.

There is just one small matter that's troubling him: The estate seems to have a ghost. Just the other night, a bundle of wood left in a fireplace appeared to spontaneously ignite.

"I don't believe in strange things,'' he says, "but the stove was set alight on its own.'' He even has an idea who did it: a great-aunt whose son was the last owner of the estate before the revolution. When she later refused to help the son return from exile in Paris, he died there, a broken man. "She refused him,'' Meshchersky says. And now, in her eternal misery, she's come back. He seems a little annoyed, but hardly surprised. In places like this, ghosts come with the territory.

by: Mitchell Landsberg