In ten days, a new church erected on the site of the famous Ipatiev House, where the family [of Tsar St Nikolai Aleksandrovich] was executed, will open. On the night of 16-17 July 1918, in the basement of the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg, the family of the last of the Russian Romanov autocrats was shot. But this just does not describe the fate of “concluding figure” of the ruling dynasty: a “henpecked” simpleton on the throne, the “bloody” emperor, the self-satisfied “master of the Russian land”, as Tsar Nikolai wrote with his own hand in the survey form for the all-Russian census that was conducted in his time, and, finally, a great martyr.
It would seem with the covering of the last grave marker, the “monarchical subject” in Russia is closed finally and irretrievably. However, there has not been any repentance. A certain silence continues to hover even over the very Vosnesensky Hill in Yekaterinburg where the tragedy played out, over the land on which for almost a half century the two-story house towered, bearing the name of its last owner, Nikolai Ipatiev. The seventy-eight days spent by the Romanovs within the walls of the “House of Special Purpose”, as residents of the Urals called it during the bitter times of the Civil War, over the years drew an unprecedented [number of] pilgrims to the house. At first, the Ipatiev House was proclaimed a monument of history and architecture. It was extolled as a “symbol of justice” over the exploiters and it was visited by delegates to the Sixth Congress of the Comintern, who even were photographed in the bloody premises. But a strange thing occurred. From decade to decade, the “heroic” patina of this tourist sight of Yekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk) gradually began to fade.
This “symbol of justice” was transformed into a “symbol of lawlessness”. In 1975, the chairman of the Committee on State Security of USSR, Yuri Andropov, drew the attention of the Central Committee of KPSS to this “metamorphosis” with a special note. And the CC did not delay its decision. Within days, it adopted the resolution “On removal of the house of Ipatiev in the city of Sverdlovsk”. However, the Sverdlovsk oblast party organisation, which was headed then by Yakov Ryabov, was in no hurry to carry out the decision, as the Ipatiev house was counted among the objects of antiquity preserved by the state.
It was easy to get around this “catch” contradicting the verdict of CC CPSU. At the next correcting of the register of the “historical and architectural” heritage of the oblast centre, the “House of Special Purpose” was simply omitted and it was disgraced a second time. After frequent reminders from Old Square and from the Kremlin, Boris Yeltsin, who by that time had replaced Yakov Ryabov in the position of leader of the local communists, went on holiday in September 1977 and the bulldozers moved on the Ipatiev House.
For three days, the house firmly “put up a defence” [that seemed to be] made by daring hands. However, did it withstand the onslaught of the mighty earthmoving armada? The Ipatiev house was torn down without any remnants. Even the foundations were razed. With frantic efforts the people of the Urals tore out of their own earth the foundation stones of the silent witness of the shooting of the royal family and their retinue. In several days, the “House of Special Purpose” was uprooted. But, it was not eliminated. Soon, on the site of the lacerated garden, an Orthodox cross appeared, and then, a chapel. On 31 December 1997, the governor of Sverdlovsk oblast, Eduard Rossel, issued an order entitled “On erecting in the city of Yekaterinburg a memorial church on the blood dedicated to all saints resplendent in the Russian land”. It was decided to embark on this construction “considering the social importance of a visible symbol of the regeneration of the nation, in order to secure state support for the decision of the Holy Synod of the Moscow Patriarchate and in connection with the appeal of the diocesan council of the Yekaterinburg Diocese”. The church was “prescribed” for the site of the murder of Nikolai Aleksandrovich Romanov and members of his family.
Six and a half years of creative work by historians, architects, contractors, builders, clergy, and designers are behind us. Rossel and Yeltsin were professional builders who knew from experience the cost of high-quality work. Thus the very high standard of responsibility for execution of the intention acquired its own name. From olden days the craftsmanship of the people of the Urals has borne the names of the Cherepanov mechanics, the Ushkov hydrologist, the Bolotov steelworker, the “thousand-percent” Bosy. A name as a personal “sign of quality.”
The name also became the ticket of admission for the work on the Yekaterinburg memorial church. If it was a bell, then get it from the Piatkov Kamenskii-Urals foundry, if a cast iron fence, then surely the Kasli craftsmen, and if the plaster and drywall under the artistic decoration of the vaults, then from the Perm “Uralenergostroi” operation.
A beautiful cultural, historical, and religious complex was erected on the dreary site of the execution of the Romanovs and the ending of autocracy as a form of rule in Rus. It is no accident that the Russo-Byzantine style was chosen for the architecture, which was characteristic for imperial churches of the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries and was so beloved by Nicholas II.
On a site shrouded by legends of the Ipatiev House, a five-domed church has been erected with a total space of 3,000 square meters. The architects [of the church] affirm that it will continue the “historical line” of our native church architecture for centuries. The complex of church structures includes two churches and the patriarchal annex. “The ground floor is the memorial Church-on-the-Blood”, explained Vyacheslav Lebedev, the assistant to the director of the Administration of Capital Construction of Sverdlovsk oblast. “Next to the altar, a place of crucifixion, the ‘Russian Golgotha’, has been created, accessible for observation. Here, there is a museum of the sojourn of the last emperor in Yekaterinburg, the Romanov memorial hall for the royal dynasty (with memorial plaques of the members of the family of Tsar St Nikolai Aleksandrovich and bronze reliefs of all rulers), and a conference hall accommodating 200, which can be used for religious or secular purposes. The iconostas is striking. Its uniqueness consists in its having eight items made by the craftsmen of the Sysertsk porcelain factory. The upper church, dedicated to All Saints, has an area of around 1,000 square meters. In it, there is an iconostas, not of porcelain, but of white marble, 30 meters long by 12 meters high. Its structure includes a canopy over the place of the execution that can be viewed [in its entirety] from a higher level. It is worked out so that the space of the ‘Russian Golgotha’ unites the churches into a single composition, joining the past, present, and future of Russia. Such a technique proposed by the planning group headed by the chief architect of the Sverdlovsk oblast, Grigori Mazaev, has no analogue [elsewhere].
The Yekaterinburg church becomes the third “Church on the Blood” in Russia. The first is in St Petersburg, where the assassination by terrorists of Tsar Aleksandr Nikolaevich occurred, and [the second] in Uglich, the place of the murder of Tsarevich Dmitri.
The whole world raised the memorial church on the boundary between Europe and Asia. Builders from Sverdlovsk, Perm, and Chelyabinsk oblasts worked with inspiration on the construction site. The ‘stone belt of Russia’ generously shared their treasures, castings, granite, marble, and cupolas of valuable wood covered with gold. A sculptural composition by the sculptor Konstantin Gryunberg has been set up on a pedestal poured at ‘Uralmash’, symbolising the “23 stages of the life of the family of Tsar St Nikolai Aleksandrovich, leading downward”.
[Holy New Royal Martyrs of Russia, pray for us sinners!]
Translated by PDS, posted 13 July 2003
Boris Kartin
Rossiiskaia Gazeta
9 July 2003
Stetson University: Russia Religion News
http://www.stetson.edu/~psteeves/relnews/0307f.html
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