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The state commission today completed the reception of the work of construction of the memorial Church-on-the-Blood in honor of All Saints Resplendent in the Russian Land. "Interfax" news agency was told this by the press secretary of the Ministry of Construction and Architecture of Sverdlovsk province, Elena Tolmacheva.
She
noted that the state reception began on 5 July and lasted a week. The state
commission members included the provincial minister of construction and
architecture, Alexander Karlov, chairman, the chief architect of Sverdlovsk
province and designer of the church, Grigory Mazaev, and representatives
of the general contractor and supervisor of construction, the provincial
health department, state building inspectors for Sverdlovsk province, and
the provincial Department for State Firefighting Services.
The memorial Church-on-the-Blood was built in Ekaterinburg on the site
of the Ipatiev house that was torn down in 1977, in which the family of
the last Russian emperor, Nicholas II, was imprisoned and shot on the night
of 16-17 July 1918.
The church is an intricate cultural, historical, and religious complex. It is an enormous, five-domed structure of around 3,000 square meters and a height of 60 meters. Construction work was conducted over the course of three years; Up to 300 persons worked daily on the project. In sum, 328,000,000 rubles were collected for the construction of the memorial church from extrabudgetary sources. The largest contributors were the "Evraz-Holding" public organization, and the "Lukoil-Perm" and "Uralelektromed" joint stock companies. (tr. by PDS, posted 12 July 2003)
FAMILY ICON OF ROMANOV DYNASTY RETURNED
FROM CANADA TO EKATERINBURG
NEWSru.com,
10 July 2003
Today
the icon of the "Three-hand Mother of God" has been returned from Canada
to Ekaterinburg. This image was in the Ipatiev house at the time of imprisonment
of Nicholas II's family there in 1918. As the director of the department
of the Ekaterinburg diocese, Hegumen Dmitry, told a reporter of the ITAR-TASS
news agency, the icon is being delivered by the wife of a nephew of the
emperor, Olga Kulikovskaia-Romanova.
The image will be presented for permanent residence to the Ekaterinburg Church-on-the-Blood on the site of the murder of the family of the last Russian autocrat. Olga Kulikovskaia-Romanova is fulfilling the instructions of her late husband, Tikhon, who was the owner of the family relic over the course of recent decades.
The icon was found after the shooting of the tsarist family in Ipatiev house. At the beginning of the 1920s it was presented in Denmark to Empress Maria Fedorovna through the efforts of officers devoted to the emperor. Until now, the image has not been outside of the Romanov family circle, who passed it down from generation to generation.
As the hegumen explained, the icon is a copy of the "Three-hand Mother of God" that is located in Hilandar monastery on holy Mount Athos. It will be greeted in Ekaterinburg by a procession of the cross and placed in the Holy Trinity cathedral church until the opening of the Church-on-the-Blood. (tr. by PDS, posted 12 July 2003)
ROAD TO THE CHURCH
by Boris Kartin
Rossiiskaia gazeta, 9 July 2003
In ten days the church erected on the site of the famous Ipatiev house, where the tsarist family was executed, will be opened.
On the night of 16-17 July 1918, in the basement of the Ipatiev house in Ekaterinburg 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 Nicholas II 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 Ekaterinburg where the tragedy was 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 austere time of the civil war, over the years drew an unprecedented pilgrimage interest 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: from decade to decade the "heroic" patina of this tourist sight of Ekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk) suddenly began to fade.
The "symbol of justice" was transformed into a "symbol of lawlessness." In 1975 the chairman of the Committee on State Security of USSR, Yury 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: in days it adopted the resolution "On removal of the house of Ipatiev in the city of Sverdlovsk." However, the Sverdlovsk provincial party organization, which was headed then by Yakov Riabov, was in no hurry to carry out the decision: since the Ipatiev house is 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 provincial center, the "house of special purpose" was simply forgotten. 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 Riabov in the position of leader of the local communists, in September 1977 went on vacation and bulldozers moved on the Ipatiev house.
For three days the house firmly "put up a defense" made by daring hands. But really will you be able to withstand the onslaught of the mighty earthmoving armada? The Ipatiev house was torn down without any remnants. Even the foundations were not left. 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. On the site of the lacerated garden, soon an Orthodox cross appeared, and then a chapel. On 31 December 1997 the governor of Sverdlovsk province, Eduard Rossel, issued an order "On erecting in the city of Ekaterinburg 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 Russian Orthodox church and in connection with the appeal of the diocesan council of the Ekaterinburg diocese." The church was "prescribed" for the site of the murder of Nicholas Romanov and members of his family.
Six and a half years of creative investigation 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 names: 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 Ekaterinburg 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.
An intricate 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 the site shrouded by legends of the Ipatiev house a five-domed church structure has been erected with a total space of 3,000 square meters. Its architects affirms 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 funereal Church-on-the-Blood," the assistant to the director of the Administration of Capital Construction of Sverdlovsk province, Viacheslav Lebedev, explains. "Next to the altar a place of crucifixion, the 'Russian Golgotha,' has been created, accessible for observation. Here there is a museum of the stay of the last emperor in Ekaterinburg, the Romanov memorial hall for the royal dynasty (with memorial plaques of the members of Nicholas II's family and bronze reliefs of all rulers), and a conference hall accommodating 200, which can be used for religious or secular purposes. The iconostasis 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 also is an iconostasis, 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 organically viewed 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 province, Grigory Mazaev, has no analogue.
The Ekaterinburg church becomes the third church on blood in Russia. The first two are in St. Petersburg, where the terrorist assassination of Alexander II occurred, and in Uglich, the place of the murder of Tsarevich Dmitry.
The whole world raised the memorial church on the boundary between Europe
and Asia. Builders from Sverdlovsk, Perm, and Cheliabinsk provinces 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 sculptured composition by the artist Konstantin
Griunberg has been set up on a pedestal poured at "Uralmash," symbolizing
the "23 stages of the life of the family of Nicholas II, leading downward."
(tr. by PDS, posted 13 July 2003)
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After a ten-year interruption the public preaching of Vissarion, the founder of the "Church of the Last Testament," a new religious formation, will be conducted in Voronezh, a "Portal-credo.ru" correspondent reports. Although Voronezh was originally one of the points from which Vissarion's teaching spread, the local religious society received the status of legal entity at the provincial administration of the Russian Ministry of Justice only in 2002. A substantial portion of Vissarion's Voronezh followers left for the Siberian taiga to construct the "City of the Sun," at their teacher's behest.
On 11 and 12 July two meetings of Vissarion (Sergei Torop), who calls himself a new incarnation of Christ, are scheduled with his followers and with all who are interested in the teachings and practice of the "Church of the Last Testament" in various palaces of culture in the city, under the title "There are no questions to which there would be no answers."
Originally those scheduling Vissarion's trip planned to conduct an event in the Theatre of Opera and Ballet, which is located on the central square of the city. The management was prepared to conclude a contract for the rental, although at the very last minute they refused.
The Voronezh diocese of RPTsMP plans to speak out widely in regard to the personality and teaching of Vissarion as well as in regard to his visit to Voronezh. A leaflet campaign is listed among the ad hoc methods of opposition.
A previous time, in October 1993, the Voronezh diocese insisted that the management of the provincial television cancel an earlier planned live broadcast with Vissarion's participation. He was supposed to conduct a program with children participating, which was officially advertised as a children's program. Representatives of all confessions active in the city, including the local diocese of RPTsMP, were invited to the show. The management of Voronezh provincial television cancelled the program because representatives of RPTsMP refused to take part in the television broadcast since its producers had put the accent on the necessity of seeking and working out means for a dialogue among representatives of different religions and cultures. (tr. by PDS, posted 12 July 2003)
Russia Religion News Current News Items
Despite condemnation of Armenia by the Council of Europe's Commission against Racism and Intolerance for not registering "Jehovah's Witnesses" and holding Jehovists in prison for refusing to perform military service on the basis of their religious convictions, on 2 July a court in the city of Alaverdi sentenced another Jehovist conscientious objector, Araik Bedjanian, to eighteen months of corrective labor. At the present time 24 Jehovists already are serving terms in Armenian prisons, while another eight persons, two of whom were arrested 3 July, are awaiting trial.
A member of the presidential commission on human rights, Ovanes Asirian, said in an interview with the "Forum 18" news service that he views the future with optimism and that, in accordance with their obligations to the Council of Europe, parliament will adopt a law on alternative military service this fall.
Meanwhile, the attorney for the Jehovah's Witnesses, Rustam Khachatrian, is more skeptical: "The authorities promise a great deal but they never fulfill their promises." (tr. by PDS, posted 11 July 2003)
See detailed Forum 18 report "Armenia: No change forJehovah's Witnesses conscientious objectors"
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