Blog about Urals

We all know that the history is cyclic and is used to repeat. People should know where some events will lead us to, based on a huge experience of mankind.

One of the most terrible pages of newest history of Russia is the repression period, the time of GULAG. We decided that for better understanding of this period we have to merge into the atmosphere of that time. That’s why we went to the unique GULAG museum, which was founded by people who were convicted in political crime and exonerated after the USSR destruction.

The museum was founded on remains of the prison camp Perm-36 for political prisoners. This prison camp was founded in 1940 during the GULAG period and was closed in 1988, when “perestroika” started in USSR. The camp was designed to hold 1000 prisoners and contained few barracks, auto repair shops, depots and administrative buildings. Prisoners worked on logging and small technical works which didn’t require professional skills.
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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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The second place visited that weekend (see the previous post) was the village Nizhnaya Sinyachiha famous for the outdoor museum of wooden architecture located in Urals.

The museum is a result of hard work of Russian engineer and collector Ivan Samoylov devoted his life to recreation of historical treasures. During his trips over Russia Samoylov often saw old historical buildings which went to waste in economically unviable villages. His idea was to create a culture preserve with all these architectural sights. For the preserve he chose a wonderful russian village fouded in 1680 year.

In this place Samoylov and his team of restorers revived Spaso-Preobrazhenskiy Cathedral – nine-domed, 64 meters high monument in “Tobolsk’ baroque” style. Inside of the cathedral there is a museum of folk art. Right here we started our acquaintance with the preserve.

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