Yekaterinburg: a town of two czars

Czar Nicholas II was killed here and has become a saint. Boris Yeltsin rose to political fame here, but sainthood may be some time coming.

By Steve Nettleton
CNN Interactive Correspondent

CNN Interactive Correspondent Steve Nettleton is traveling east across Russia on the Trans-Siberian Railroad. His dispatches from towns and cities along the way will report on what ordinary Russians beyond Moscow and St. Petersburg are thinking and feeling during this uncertain time in their nation's history.

A white cross stands in front of a structure marking where the Ipatyev house once stood. It was in the basement of the Ipatyev house that the Romanovs were executed. The house was demolished by Boris Yeltsin in 1977.

YEKATERINBURG, Russia (CNN) -- Scoop by scoop, the snow clears from the foot of a white Orthodox cross next to the skeleton of an unfinished church.

First clouded in Soviet propaganda and later flattened by Communist bulldozers, the site of the massacre of imperial Russia's last czar and his family has always been hidden from view. Now, last night's heavy snowfall is the problem.

Andrei and Arkady, two men who came to pay their respects to the Romanovs, work to free the cross from its wintry shroud. As the stone base becomes visible, the two men pause to gaze at the monument.

"I feel sorry for the children," Arkady says. "I mean, if the czar was guilty, then fine. But why did they have to kill the poor children?"

His comrade-in-shovels, Andrei, laments the killings for a different reason.

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"I was in the navy for many years and I saw a lot of storms," he says. "So I know how important it is to have a good captain. He brings order and security to the ship. The czar was a good captain."

Andrei is no monarchist. But like many Russians struggling to cope with the country's chaotic economy, he longs for an era of stability. Even the feared KGB provided the people with strong leadership and control, Andrei says.

"The problem with Russia is that it has no concept of nationhood," says sociologist and pollster Natalya Malikova. Russians are looking for someone or some idea to bring them together as one country, she says.

A bronze icon depicting the Romanov family as saints is attached to the white cross on the site of their deaths

Nowhere does the quest for national identity seem more apparent than in Yekaterinburg, a Urals industrial center of 1.35 million people. Founded in 1721 and named for Peter the Great's wife, Catherine I, Yekaterinburg is often called the third capital of Russia, after Moscow and St. Petersburg. It is said to be a barometer of the nation as a whole, a sort of Russian Peoria.

No miracles in July 1918

Perhaps it is fitting then that Yekaterinburg was the scene of two events that helped shape Russia's character, during communism and after. One czar, Nicholas II, was killed here, and a nearby village witnessed the birth of another, "Czar Boris," as some call Russia's first president, Boris Yeltsin.

(It was also outside Yekaterinburg in May 1960 that U.S. pilot Francis Gary Powers was captured after his U2 spy plane was shot down, an incident that led to rising tensions during the Cold War.)

At the memorial to the Romanovs, a handful of pilgrims file past the cross, stooping to kiss a bronze icon depicting the family as saints. Though the Russian Church abroad has already canonized the imperial family, the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow is still debating the issue.

Prayer candles burn in a small chapel dedicated to Elizabeth, Czarina Alexandra's sister, who along with other Romanov family members was thrown down a mine shaft in nearby Alapayevsk and left to die the day after the Czar and his family were murdered in Yekaterinburg

The caretaker of Elizabeth's chapel, a soft-spoken, gentlewoman named Lyubov, points to a book filled with accounts of worshippers who claim that praying to the Romanovs has helped their lives. Thus, the Romanovs are fulfilling at least one important step toward sainthood, Lyubov suggests. They are performing miracles.

On the night of July 16-17, 1918, Czar Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra, their five children and the family's doctor, maid, cook and valet were killed in the basement of a house belonging to a local engineer, Ipatyev, by an execution squad of the Urals Soviet.

Their bodies were then taken some 40 kilometers (25 miles) outside Yekaterinburg, stripped and thrown into a mine shaft. But the next day, fearing the bodies would be discovered by approaching units of the counterrevolutionary White Army loyal to the czar, the Bolsheviks removed the corpses and burned them, doused them with acid and buried them by the side of a road.

In 1924 the city was renamed Sverdlovsk to honor Yakov Sverdlov, the Bolshevik leader who authorized the killings. The city reverted to its original name in 1991.

Communists wanted no shrine

A portrait of the imperial family shows (from left) Nicholas II, Czarevich Alexei, Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana and Maria, Czarina Alexandra and Grand Duchess Anastasia

For 60 years the whereabouts of the Romanov bodies remained a mystery. In 1977 Communist Party Chairman Leonid Brezhnev ordered Yekaterinburg party boss Boris Yeltsin to raze the Ipatyev house to prevent it from becoming a pilgrimage site.

Working in secret, geologist Alexander Avdonin and filmmaker and detective novel writer Geli Ryabov tracked down the remains of the imperial family. Ryabov, a former interior police officer, helped Avdonin gain access to classified documents, including reports detailing previous investigations to locate the bodies.

In 1978 Avdonin unearthed several sets of bones buried near a road outside of Yekaterinburg. He kept the discovery secret for 10 years, however, until the waning days of the Soviet Union. After eight more years of research and scientific tests, a government commission concluded that the bones were indeed those of the Romanovs, though the bodies of Czarevitch Alexei and his sister Maria were missing.

Even then it took several years of wrangling between the government, the Russian Orthodox Church and Romanov family members before the czar's family was finally buried in the cemetery of Peter and Paul fortress in St. Petersburg in 1999.

But Avdonin says his work will not be finished until he locates Alexei and Maria.

A picture by artist V. Pchelin depicts "The Delivery of the Romanovs to the Urals Soviet." The Romanovs arrived in Yekaterinburg from Tyumen on April 30, 1918.

"Alexander Suvorov [a famous 18th century Russian military chief] once said the war is over only when the last soldier is buried," Avdonin said. "The czar's family was the first victims of [Russia's] civil war, a war which separated Russia into two antagonistic parts. And these two parts are still not reconciled."

"The funeral of the czar is part of [the reconciliation process]. It is not only a factor to stop civil war, it is also about bringing back a national hero who was not accepted for decades."

Crying for Yeltsin

Between the Romanovs and Yeltsin, Yeltsin runs a distant second. Even in his hometown the former president's popularity is dismal. In December Yeltsin's approval rating in the region sagged to a mere 2 percent to 3 percent, according to Malikova.

But Yeltsin did win some sympathy following his tearful New Year's Eve resignation address last December.

"He left his post. Nobody from the Communist Party ever resigned before. They were either killed or forced out. It was a strong gesture for him to resign. He apologized," said Elina, a resident of Yekaterinburg. "I started to respect him. When a person understands his mistakes it's good."

Yekaterinburg city hall, complete with Soviet symbols.

A small number of other Yekaterinburg citizens are even beginning to feel sorry for the recently unemployed president. About 6 percent or 7 percent of the local population felt they had judged Yeltsin too harshly during his tenure and that the public had mistreated him, Malikova said.

"This is very much like the Russian character, to feel as though we were made to suffer," Malikova said. "We break free of communism, then we remember it with nostalgia. We kill the czar, then we pray to him. We despise Yeltsin, then we cry for him."