at the applicant was placed at a significant disadvantage {vis-a-vis} the opposing party (see Groshev v. Russia, No. 69889/01, § 29, 20 October 2005).
53. The Court also notes that the applicant made three applications to the courts to have a legal-aid lawyer appointed, but his requests were either implicitly dismissed or simply ignored. The Government argued that Russian law did not provide for legal aid in cases of that category. However, the Court observes that under section 11 of the USSR Advocates Act (see paragraph 26 above) it was in the courts' power to appoint a legal-aid lawyer to any litigant and for any type of case if that litigant had no sufficient means to pay for the lawyer himself.
54. Alternatively, the Government may be understood as claiming that the system of legal aid in civil cases was not operational in practice at that time. However, this is not a convincing argument either. Indeed, as a general rule there is no right to free legal assistance in civil cases, but there are exceptions to this rule (see, for example, the case of Airey, cited above). In the Court's opinion, where the effective participation of a detainee in civil proceedings cannot be secured by other means, the law must provide for some form of legal aid. It is a fortiori true in the present case where the applicant did not appear to be a vexatious litigant. The authorities had refused to bring him to the court or to hold a court session in the correctional colony, whereas the other party had been present at the two hearings and had been free to attend the hearing before the court of appeal as well.
55. Finally, the Government noted that the applicant could have requested one of his relatives or friends to represent him. However, the availability of that option depended on too many factors out of the applicant's control. First of all, the applicant would have needed to have a relative or a friend willing to represent him. Furthermore, the Court emphasises that the authorities gave the applicant virtually no time to make necessary arrangements for the representation. The applicant did not receive any reply from the court to his original application for legal aid. He learned of the date of the second hearing (that of 6 September) only on 28 August 2001. The time left to the applicant, who was being detained, was barely enough to find a representative of his own. In addition, it took the colony administration seven days to post the applicant's letter in which he repeated his request for legal aid. As a result, the letter was received by the court when the hearing had already been held. There was a repeat of the same situation before the court of appeal: the judge notified the applicant of the date of the appeal hearing only one day in advance (on 9 October 2001). Even in the unlikely event that the notification reached the applicant on the same day, the applicant would have had no time to find any representative.
(c) The Court's conclusions
56. In the present case the authorities failed to notify the applicant of the civil case in which he was a defendant. Furthermore, they refused him the right to participate in the subsequent proceedings in person, ignored his numerous applications for legal aid, and did not give him any time to find his own representative. The plaintiff, on the contrary, fully enjoyed his procedural rights. In such circumstances, the Court concludes that the applicant was deprived of the opportunity to present his case effectively and on an equal footing {vis-a-vis} the opposite party. There has therefore been a violation of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention.
II. Application of Article 41 of the Convention
57. Article 41 of the Convention provides:
"If the Court finds that there has been a violation of the Convention or the Protocols thereto, and if the internal law of the High Contracting Party con
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