page_title: Ipatiev House
section_title: Demolition
hierarchical_section_title: Ipatiev House / History / Demolition
caption_attribution_description: Русский: Екатеринбург, Храм-на-Крови в честь Всех Святых, в Земле Российской просиявших, 2007 г. English: Yekaterinburg, Cathedral-on-the-Blood.
context_page_description: Ipatiev House was a merchant's house in Yekaterinburg where the former Emperor Nicholas II of Russia, his family, and members of his household were executed in July 1918 following the Bolshevik Revolution. Its name is identical to that of the Ipatiev Monastery in Kostroma, from where the Romanovs came to the throne. As an act for the 60th anniversary of the Russian Revolutions, it was demolished in 1977 by orders of the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to the local communist soviet government, almost 59 years after the Romanov family execution and 14 years before the dissolution of the Soviet Union itself in 1990–1991.
context_section_description: As early as 1923, the photographs of the fenced house were disseminated in the Soviet press under the label of "the last palace of the last Tsar". In 1927, the house was designated a branch of the Ural Revolution Museum. It then became an agricultural school before taking on new life in 1938 as an anti-religious museum. During this period it was customary for party apparatchiks to arrive in large tour groups, posing before the bullet-damaged wall of the cellar in which the former Tsar and his family had been murdered. In 1946, it was taken over by the local Communist Party. In 1974, it was formally listed as a Historical-Revolutionary Monument. However, to the embarrassment of the government, it was steadily becoming a place of pilgrimage for those who wished to honour the memory of the imperial family.
  In 1977, as the sixtieth anniversary of the Russian Revolution approached, the Politburo decided to take action, declaring that the house was not of "sufficient historical significance", and ordering its demolition. The task was passed to Boris Yeltsin, chair of the local party, who had the house demolished in September 1977. He later wrote in his memoirs, published in 1990, that "sooner or later we will be ashamed of this piece of barbarism." However, despite this action, the pilgrims kept coming, often in secret and at night, leaving tokens of remembrance on the vacant site. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union that was complete by 1991, the Church on the Blood, one of the largest in Russia, was built on the part of the site.
caption: Yekaterinburg's Church on the Blood, built on the spot where the Ipatiev House once stood.
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon EOS 350D DIGITAL", "Image XResolution": "240", "Image YResolution": "240", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image DateTime": "2007:08:03 00:54:19", "Image Artist": "unknown", "Image ExifOffset": "184", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/3200", "EXIF FNumber": "5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Aperture Priority", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "100", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2007:08:01 17:14:53", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2007:08:01 17:14:53", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "727741/62500", "EXIF ApertureValue": "290241/62500", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "139/32", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Partial", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "42", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "1728000/437", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "384000/97", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard"}