Yekaterinburg

Yekaterinburg is on the Eastern Slope of the Ural Mountains and is most famous in history for being where the last Tsar and his family were murdered.

Tsar Nicholas II and his family

The Tsar and his only son, Alexei.

On this spot, the family was "imprisoned" in a house here from May 1918 until the families murder on July 17th, 1918.  This Church on Spilled Blood was built only in the last decade.  The basement has a Church of Repentance for the murders and the upper church is the Church of Hope.

We hear about Gazprom in the United States.  Yes, it is really a gas company here in Russia!

Just west of town there is a memorial to all the political and social victims during the communist times of the Soviet Union.

A mass grave was found outside of Yekaterinburg and this is the memorial.

The names included in this area are those that were in the records for Stalin's purges of 1937 and 1938.

But it is believed that there were many more than are undocumented.

The Ural Mountains (not very high at all) are the divide between Europe (all rivers flow south to the Black Sea) and Asia (rivers flow north to the Arctic)

Touching a rock brought here from the westernmost cape in Europe in Portugal.

Touching a rock brought here from the easternmost point in Asia up by the Bering Strait.

Yekaterinburg is a modern city and growing because of it is a center for mining and gas extraction.  It like many cities in the Urals and Siberia are mining and gas hubs.

Yekaterinburg was off limits to foreigners until the Soviet Union collapsed.  It's one reason why the United States probably flew spy missions over the area.  In 1960 a U-2 spy plane was shot down by a missile of this type just outside of Yekaterinburg.

The "Black Tulip" memoria.

It is a memorial to the men from Yekaterinburg who lost their lives in the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

I found it incredibly moving.  It's probably one of the few memorials in Russia that do NOT glorify war.  The sight of this weary and tired, if not defeated, soldier was one that I couldn't take my eyes off of.

The last stop on our Yekaterinburg visit was to the Ganina Yama mine about 10km outside of town.  In this grass covered pit was the mine in which the murdered Tsar and his family were dumped and eventually found.  I think it's safe to say the Tsar Nicholas II was simply a victim of timing.  The Russian people and Empire were ripe for change and revolution and he simply was on the throne when change was being demanded by the people.

The Russian Orthodox Church has deemed the area a holy site and has built seven churches here, one for each member of the family that was murdered.

It's a peaceful walk from each church and each is different.

Ganina Yama also has a great display of family photos of the Tsar's family.  It really shows them as humans and that the Tsar was a family man who loved his wife and kids and probably found running the country of Russia something he really was burdened by.