Grand Duke and Duchess

Some 15 years ago a teacher of Literature at my school lent me a book to read. In the wake of budding interest in the tragic history of the end of the Romanovs dynasty in Russia, the book was among the best ones, not least because it stayed away from presenting its main subject in the strictly political light.

Martha and Mary Convent, Moscow

It was a biography of the Holy New Martyr Grand Duchess Elizaveta Fyodorovna, a sister-in-law to Nicholas II of Russia. She married the Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich and eventually converted to Orthodox religion. Her husband was killed in a blast in 1905. Following this, the Grand Duchess became a nun and founded a well-known Martha and Mary Convent in Moscow that has survived to this day. However, in 1918 she and several Grand Dukes were taken to Alapaevsk, near Yekaterinburg, from where they were transported to Verkhnyaya Sinyachikha, pushed into a mineshaft, into which hand grenades were hurled.

A memorial cross at the mineshaft

The mineshaft

Hardly a Monarchist, I nevertheless wanted to see places associated with the demise of the Romanovs dynasty. So, when I found out that we’d be passing Alapaevsk and the unfortunate mineshaft on our way to and from the open-air museum of wooden architecture in Nizhnyaya Sinyachikha, I begged to make a stop at the place where the Grand Duchess had her life ended. The mine is now on the territory of a monastery, where there grow amazingly sweet apples, runs a clean spring, and stands a church to St. Elizabeth.

The icon of the Holy New Martyr

The chancel of St. Elizabeth

The monastery entrance

A service at the monastery