Alapayevsk (Russian: Алапа́евск) is a town in Sverdlovsk Oblast, Russia, located at the confluence of the Neyva and Alapaikha Rivers. Population: 38,198 (2010 Census preliminary results);[1] 44,263 (2002 Census);[2] 50,060 (1989 Census);[3] 49,000 (1968). The local church is named Saint Catherines.[4]
Alapayevsk is one of the oldest centers of ferrous metallurgy in the Urals with the first factory built in 1704. The town proper was founded in 1781. It is known for its surrounding mines and numerous factories, although the last metallurgical plant operations were almost completely closed in the early 1990s. The orphanage here known as the 'Alapaevsk Family-type Orphanage' proclaims itself as the largest in the Urals.[5]
The composer Tchaikovsky spent a part of his childhood in this city.
On July 18, 1918, the day after the killing at Yekaterinburg of the last Tsar, Nicholas II and and family, members of the extended Russian royal family, the Romanovs, including a Nun, and servants met a brutal death here being thrown down a mineshalf near Alapayevsk by Bolsheviks. All except Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich of Russia survived the fall, hand-grenades were thrown down after them killing Grand Duke Sergei's secretary, Fyodor Remez. Other victims died a slow death including Grand Duchess Elizabeth Fyodorovna, the Prince Ioann Konstantinovich of Russia, Prince Konstantin Konstantinovich of Russia, Prince Igor Konstantinovich of Russia and Prince Vladimir Pavlovich Paley, Grand Duke Sergei's secretary Varvara Yakovleva and Princess Elisabeth of Hesse and the Rhine a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. Princess Elisabeth had departed her family after the death of her husband in 1905, she donated all her wealth to the poor and became a Nun, she was shown no mercy.[6]
The bodies were recovered from the mine by the White army in 1918, who arrived too late to rescue them. The bodies were placed in coffins and were moved around Russia during struggles between the Whites and the opposing Red Army. By 1920, the coffins were interred in a former Russian Mission in Beijing, now beneath a parking area. In 1981, Princess Elisabeth was canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, and in 1992 by the Moscow Patriarchate. In 2006 representative of the Romanov family were making plans to reinter the remains elsewhere.[7] The town is a place of pilgrimage to the memory of Elizabeth Romanov.[4]
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