The Mind Creative
Ipatiev House, where the executions were carried out, was
demolished by the Soviets in 1977 as it was becoming a place of
pilgrimage for many Russians. The Communist rulers couldn’t have
imagined that, in less than three decades, at its site would stand
the Church on the Blood, for pilgrims to converge in even greater
numbers.
Our next stop was Perm, situated by the mighty Kama River. The
city was renamed Molotov from 1940 to 1957 after Vyacheslav
Molotov, a close associate and henchman of Joseph Stalin. Molotov
cocktails, the crude petrol bombs popular with angry, violent
demonstrators the world over, carry his name for better or worse.
Our next stop, just under a thousand kilometres from Moscow, is
remarkable for the fact that it retains its Soviet-era name.
Originally called Vyatka, this city of half a million people was
renamed Kirov in 1934 after the assassination of Sergei Kirov, a
prominent leader of the Soviet Communist Party and head of the
Leningrad Party organization.
It is generally believed
that Kirov’s assassination
was carried out at the
behest of Joseph Stalin,
who
resented
his
popularity and saw him
as a potential threat.
Whatever
the
truth,
Stalin
used
the
assassination of Kirov to
launch a series of purges
which decimated the
higher echelons of the
party,
including
the
execution of its most
prominent leaders.
Buddhist prayer flags on a sacred hill
of the Buryat people near the lake
31