Blog about Urals

Recently documentary series “the Ridge of Russia” appeared on russian TV. They tell russian history related to the Urals region and show its wonderful places. One of them is the mountain Kolpaki – natural reserve and the favourite point for people looking for wild nature of Urals.

After we saw this mountain on TV, we decided to go there and without “putting it in the cooler” for the time, on early Saturday morning we set out.

The mountain Kolpaki is situated not far from the border between the Sverlovskaya area and the Perm region. Additionally an idea arose to add one more point to our travel route – the ancient rural town Verkhoturye, founded in the end of 16th century, an orthodox center of Urals.

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We’d like to tell you about the most famous and historically significant place in Yekaterinburg – the Church on the Blood. This place is a shrine where the pilgrims from all over Russia gather.

The Church was built on the site of the house of engineer Ipatieff, where the royal family Nikolai II, his wife, sun and four daughters were assassinated and the 300 year old monarchy of the Romanov dynasty came to an end.

In April 1918 because of the onset of white army the Ural Regional Council (Urals Bolsheviks – Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party) decided to confiscate the house to carry out a hasty assassination over the royal family in it.

Yakov Yurowski was appointed a commandant of the house. He offered to invite the royal family into the basement in pretence of giving them a shelter, then he told them that «their friends» (the white army) were coming up and therefore they are sentenced to death, the shootings followed.
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On the 30th of January we went to Nevyansk – the oldest city-plant in the Urals. The weather forecast was good enough for that day, so early in the morning we began the journey. Our goal was to see how the Demidov’s empire began, and to hear one of the most interesting pages in the history of the Urals.
Nevyansk was founded by a decree of Peter I in 1701 in connection with the foundation of ironworks. This was the first city-plant in the world. One year later Peter I granted the plant to Nikita Demidovich Antufiev together with new surname “Demidov”. That’s how the Demidov’s dynasty appeared.
Nevyansk is located in 80km from Yekaterinburg and it took us about an hour to get there. The road to Nevyansk comes through the foothills of the Middle Urals and is like russian roller coaster.
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Last week we decided to go to Ganina Yama – that particular place where the Bolsheviks tried to hide dead bodies of Tsar Nicholai II and his family, leaving them in an abandoned mine. These events gave ill fame to new soviet authority and are related with one of the most frightening pages of russian history.

The mine is located in a pine forest and is now called Ganina Yama (in translation Ganya’s Pit). «Ganya» -  is the short name for Gavriel. In the era of the Urals “Gold Rush” (the middle of XIX century) a contractor Gavriel bought this plot of land hoping to find a gold in it. Soon it became clear that the mine doesn’t contain gold, but it contains iron ore. By the beginning of 20th century the mine got abandoned and became overgrown with a forest.

Early on the morning of July 17, 1918, Ganina Yama met remains of the Tsar, his family and their faithful servants. The bodies were thrown into the mine, after a while got dismembered, and then within two days destroyed by fire and sulfuric acid.

As we arrived at the place, we were amazed – how many people came here from different parts of Urals and Russia, despite the inclement weather. We left the car, took a breathe of the fresh crisp forest air and went to the very complex.
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