Yekaterinburg - In Pictures
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Yekaterinburg is in the heartlands of the Urals Mountains which divide Russia into two continents, Europe and Asia.

Yekaterinburg was founded in 1723 by Peter the Great to exploit the Urals region's mineral riches. It was named after his third wife, Empress Ekaterina.

To this day, the city is Russia's major producer of tanks, armored cars and military aircraft and it was closed to foreigners until 1990.

Yekaterinburg, the birthplace of Russia's first President, Boris Yeltsin, is a pleasant city with a fascinating variety of architectural monuments and museums.

The streets are wide and planted with rows of trees to reduce the air pollution caused by numerous factories surrounding the city.

Yekaterinburg has a notoriously secret and bloody history.

In 1924 and until 1991, the city was known as Sverdlovsk after the Bolshevik leader Yakov Sverdlov who planned the execution of the Imperial family on July 17, 1918. Note: The name "Sverdlovsk" is still been used in Trans-Siberian trains.

The abdicated last Tsar of Russia, Nicholas II and family were executed in a house that once stood on Liebknecht.

The house was demolished by Boris Yeltsin in 1971. Today there stands a cathedral inside which there is a cellar located in the exact location where the execution took placed.

After the execution, the corpses (Nicholas II, his wife, 4 daughters, 1 son and 4 helpers) were brought to an abandoned open mine not far from the city and tossed into pit 10 meters deep. Hand grenades were thrown in to try to blast the wall in order to bury the corpses. When that failed, they removed the corpses and transferred them to a marshy place close to the mine. They buried them together in a shadow grave. A lorry was used to drive over the grave which was then covered some branches.

The grave was discovered in 1991, but the remains were only exhumed in 1998.

A monument has also been elected at the burial ground.

The open mine where the corpses were unsuccessfully buried has now been a holy ground where many magnificent churches have been built amongst the woods.

The open mine where the corpses were unsuccessfully buried has now been a holy ground where many magnificent churches have been built amongst the woods.
 
nakedeyeview.com.my 2008