Delivery of flowers and gifts in Yekaterinburg

Yekaterinburg. The city has been founded in 1723. The Empire needed resources, the empress was in urgent need of money, and Siberia in those days was considered to be fabulously rich in mineral resources. Perhaps, rumors about rich local industrialists haunted the court either, because the power of taking away and dividing properties always rested upon the Gouvernment. Besides, serfdom – the legal slavery – existed in those times, which made it possible to send peasants as workers for the mining industry for 25 years. So, those, who managed to weasel out of the military service didn’t end up well either. Judging by the fact that the new Mint was intensively issuing coins three years later, in 1726 already, the emperor hasn’t been wrong about natural advantages of the Ural’s industrial capital. Slave labor almost free of charge and entrepreneurial spirit of Russian merchants and industrialists helped the city to acquire civilized look and made some of it’s inhabitant quite rich. A famous Russian writer born in the Urals, Dmitry Mamin-Sibiryak described in his novels how the local moneybags bathed horses in champagne and drived troïkas at a high speed. The communists, having come to power in 1918, didn’t forget it. It was Yakov Movshevitch Sverdlov who called the shots here then. He spilled quite a lot of blood and was particularly famous for executing the former Tsar along with his family and servants. Give him that, he didn’t live much after that himself. His efforts have been highly appreciated, however, and the city was named after him – Sverdlovsk. After the civil war the soviet power didn’t take the heat off people: six-day working week, imprisonment as tardiness penalty, inability to retire, forced collectivisation and political repressions made many people to join the ranks of workers. Gulag’s slave labour had it’s results: building areas under barbed wire still existed in Sverdlovsk up to the 1980s. The city’s industry and culture have been boosted during and after the II World War, when about 50 plants, theatres, conservatories and treasures of the Hermitage museum have been evacuated to Sevrdlovsk from western parts of the country. It was then when the famous motto appeared: “Ural’s is the state’s stronghold!” It meant Sverdlovsk in the first place. Here, after the war, an unknown army officer, war veteran Ernst Neizvestny has decided to become sculptor. Altogether cultural life was bustling after the war: opera and drama theatres, theater of musical comedy, conservatory, philharmonic, motion-picture studio were brigntening the city and going on tours. Sverdlovsk possessed it’s own classical University and a large Polytechnic Institute. Ural State Mining University was famous all over the country. The soviet power trained good specialists, and graduates from Sverdlovsk high schools were working in secret back-rooms and restricted access towns, which were numerous around the city. Lyrics from the famous bard’s song: “But we are making rockets, and we are ahead of the entire planet in the sphere of ballet.” are clearly about Sverdlovks too. During the Perestroika Sverdlosk Rock-club became famous all over the country. The Dissolution of the Soviet Union took heavy toll on the city’s development, but allowed to restore it’s historical name – Yekaterinburg. Ten years of anarchy have freezed the building of the TV tower, which was supposed to be a twin of the Ostankino Tower in Moscow. The windfall of petro-dollars in the beginning of 21 century raised the economy from all fours and allowed it to develop somehow. The most compact city with 1 million and more inhabitants has turned into a real City with beautiful skyscrapers and well-lit clean streets. The town governors were giving away right and left permits for infill construction. As a result, Yekaterinburg is leading the country in quantity of retail space per man. The city’s sports are famous for it’s volleyball team with tyrant trainer and for biathlon. During Soviet period Sverdlovsk possessed one of the two training centers of for biathletes (the second one was in Raubichi, Belarus). By the way, every Saturday morning you can see the Mayor along with some city-folk jogging the central riverwalk to save themselves from heart attacks. the authors: igor v, dina v.