media research center report

• August 24, 2024 | MBFC’s Weekly Media Literacy Quiz Covering the Week of Aug 18th – Aug 24th
• August 24, 2024 | MBFC’s Daily Vetted Fact Checks for 08/24/2024 (Weekend Edition)
• August 23, 2024 | (Fact Check) Final Day of Democratic National Convention – Kamala Harris Speech
• August 23, 2024 | MBFC’s Daily Vetted Fact Checks for 08/23/2024
• August 22, 2024 | (Fact Check) Day 3 of the Democratic National Convention

Media Research Center (MRC) – Bias and Credibility

These media sources are moderately to strongly biased toward conservative causes through story selection and/or political affiliation. They may utilize strong loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by appealing to emotion or stereotypes), publish misleading reports, and omit information that may damage conservative causes. Some sources in this category may be untrustworthy. See all Right Bias sources.

• Overall, we rate Media Research Center strongly right-biased based on advocacy for a conservative agenda and Mixed for factual reporting due to the promotion of propaganda, pseudoscience, and a poor fact-check record by their primary sources.

Detailed Report

Bias Rating: RIGHT Factual Reporting:  MIXED Country: USA MBFC’s Country Freedom Rank: MOSTLY FREE Media Type: Organization/Foundation Traffic/Popularity: Minimal Traffic MBFC Credibility Rating: MEDIUM CREDIBILITY

The Media Research Center (MRC) is a politically conservative content analysis organization based in Reston, Virginia, founded in 1987 by activist L. Brent Bozell III. Its mission is to “prove—through sound scientific research—that liberal bias in the media exists and undermines traditional American values.” According to their about page , “MRC’s sole mission is to expose and neutralize the propaganda arm of the Left: the national news media. This makes the MRC’s work unique within the conservative movement.”

Read our profile on the United States government and media.

Funded by / Ownership

The Media Research Center is a 501(c)(3) Nonprofit organization. MRC is funded through donations, with some large donors including the Bradley ,  Scaife ,  Olin ,  Castle Rock ,  Carthage , and JM foundations. It also receives funding from  ExxonMobil  due to its skepticism on Climate Change . MRC also owns the Questionable news source CNS News and the factually Mixed right-biased Newsbusters . T he Heritage Foundation   states that Rebekah Mercer serves on the board of the Media Research Center. Rebekah Mercer is the daughter of right-wing philanthropist Robert Mercer who heavily funded the Trump Campaign.

Analysis / Bias

In review, MRC does not produce original content but links to other websites such as MRCTV, Newsbusters, and CNS News. These sources frequently utilize strong loaded emotional language such as this: The Embarrassing Questions NBC’s Moderators NEVER Asked . Articles are typically properly sourced; however, they use the Questionable CNS News as a primary source. CNS News has failed numerous fact-checks by IFCN fact-checkers.

The primary purpose of MRC is to expose liberal bias in the media. They often claim there is a conspiracy in the media to promote liberalism while suppressing conservatism. Journalist Brian Montopoli of Columbia Journalism Review  in 2005 labeled MRC “just one part of a wider movement by the far right to demonize corporate media” rather than “make the media better.” Essentially, MRC is a propaganda outlet for the Republican Party.

When it comes to science, MRC advocates for human-influenced climate denialism as well as creationism .

Failed Fact Checks

• A factual search reveals that both Newsbusters and CNS News have failed numerous fact checks.
• Says there are fewer than 2,000 confirmed COVID-19 hospitalizations in the U.S . – False
• “We have been cooling down for the past 4000 years”; the Earth has cooled since the ‘medieval warming’, “It’s all about when you start the measurements” – Inaccurate

Overall, we rate Media Research Center strongly right-biased based on advocacy for a conservative agenda and Mixed for factual reporting due to the promotion of propaganda, pseudoscience, and a poor fact-check record by their primary sources. (7/19/2016) Updated (D. Van Zandt 05/17/2024)

Source: https://www.mrc.org/

• Left-Center
• Least Biased
• Right-Center

Last Updated on May 17, 2024 by Media Bias Fact Check

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The Liberal Media Every Poll Shows Journalists Are More Liberal than the American Public — And the Public Knows It

By Rich Noyes Director of Research June 30, 2004 Section 1 of 4

back on February 8, 1995. “Most reporters, when you get to know them, would fall in the general category of kind of common sense moderates.”   , political scientists S. Robert Lichter, Stanley Rothman and Linda S. Lichter reported the results of their survey of 240 journalists at the nation’s top media outlets: ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, the , , , , and . When asked about their voting patterns, journalists admitted their preference for Democrats: : In 1982, scholars at California State University at Los Angeles asked reporters from the fifty largest newspapers for whom they voted in 1980. The breakdown: 51 percent cast a ballot for President Jimmy Carter and another 24 percent chose independent candidate (and liberal Republican Congressman) John Anderson. Only 25 percent picked conservative Ronald Reagan, who won 51 percent of the public’s vote that year. : In 1985, the polled news and editorial staffers at newspapers around the country, weighting the sample so that newspapers with large circulations were more heavily represented. Once again, pollsters discovered a heavy Democratic skew. When asked how they voted in the 1984 election, more than twice as many chose liberal Walter Mondale (58 percent) over the conservative incumbent Ronald Reagan (26 percent), even as the country picked Reagan in a 59 to 41 percent landslide. : In early 1995, Ken Walsh of asked his fellow White House reporters to fill out a survey for a book he was writing; 28 returned his questionnaire. He concluded that “the White House press corps is overwhelmingly Democratic, confirming a stereotype often promoted by Republicans.” Interestingly, he also learned how much reporters dislike being on the receiving end of personal inquiries: “Even though the survey was anonymous, many journalists declined to reveal their party affiliations, whom they voted for in recent presidential elections, and other data they regarded as too personal — even though they regularly pressure Presidents and other officials to make such disclosures,” Walsh related in his 1996 book, . : In 2001, Stanley Rothman and Amy E. Black updated the ’s survey of journalists, and learned that reporters continued to select Democrats. “Three-quarters of elite journalists (76.1 percent)...voted for Michael Dukakis in 1988, and even larger percentages (91.3 percent)...cast ballots for Bill Clinton in 1992,” they reported in the Spring 2001 edition of . Voters were far less exuberant about those liberal candidates, as just 46 percent chose Dukakis and only 43 percent picked Clinton, who nevertheless won a three-way race. : Rothman and Black’s survey closely matched a Freedom Forum poll of Washington bureau chiefs and congressional correspondents, which found 89 percent had voted for Clinton in the 1992 election, compared with seven percent for President Bush and two percent for Ross Perot. “In no state or region, among no race or class, did support for Clinton predominate more lopsidedly than among this sample of 139 journalists who either cover Congress or head a Washington bureau,” summarized Minneapolis media writer Eric Black in an August 18, 1996 article. reporter Elaine Povich, gamely asserted that reporters’ heavy preference for Bill Clinton did not mean that journalists’ were incapable of being objective. “One of the things about being a professional is that you attempt to leave your personal feelings aside as you do your work,” Povich told the on April 18, 1996. on April 21, 1996, media writer Howard Kurtz reacted to the Freedom Forum’s poll: “Clearly anybody looking at those numbers, if they’re even close to accurate, would conclude that there is a diversity problem in the news business, and it’s not just the kind of diversity we usually talk about, which is not getting enough minorities in the news business, but political diversity, as well. Anybody who doesn’t see that is just in denial.”

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Media Research Center

Rating information.

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The mission of the Media Research Center is to document and combat the falsehoods and censorship of the news media, entertainment media and Big Tech in order to defend and preserve America's founding principles and Judeo-Christian values. The MRC is a research and education organization operating under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, and contributions to the MRC are tax-deductible.

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Time Magazine Pays the Price for Lost Credibility

PolitiFact's Convention False Percentages: 89 For Trump, 33 For Harris

ABC Fawns Not 'A Big Progressive' Harris, Oprah In DNC Recap

Comic Propagandists Crush All Pretense of Objectivity

Maher: CNN Is 'The View,' Collins Claims 'We Call Bull****' Equally

PBS Hails DNC's 'Patriotism' Versus RNC's 'Weighted Blanket'

Theater of the Absurd: The Worst Media Outbursts from the DNC

NewsBusters Podcast: Maddow, Tapper, & Colbert Reach Convention Climax

Politico Aids Post-Convention Kamala Push By Floating ‘Movement’ Label

CBS Swoons Kamala’s DNC Speech Was ‘Feat of Political Athleticism’

CNBC Host Shreds Elizabeth Warren’s ‘Fallacious,’ ‘Misleading’ Pitch

Morning Joe: ‘Patriotism Fully Reclaimed’ As DNC ‘Flags Got Bigger’

Anti-Free Speech Google Joins $250M Deal to Radicalize California News

Hyping Harris: Late Night Comedy's DNC Coverage Goes Soft

STUDY: Networks Deliver Massive Media Honeymoon to Kamala Harris

EXCLUSIVE POLL: Most Dem Voters Don’t Know About Harris’s Radicalism

SPECIAL REPORT: How Soros Directs & Controls Prosecutors Across US

Troubling: Expert Details Radical Canadian Law to Kill Online Speech

RFK Jr. Rebukes Gov’t-Tied Censorship in Campaign Suspension Speech

The Jobs Aren’t All Right

FCC’s Carr Praises ‘Democratizing Force’ of Free Speech

Krugman Flashback: Biden Created the 'Best Job Market In a Generation’

PBS’s Capehart on Horror of USA Chants at GOP Rallies: ‘Felt Menacing'

Column: 'Joy' Time Is Over, Time for News on Substance

‘NEEDS CONTEXT’: CNN’s Daniel Dale Weasels Out of Kamala Fact-Check

CBS News SWOONS Over Kamala Harris’s Acceptance Speech

‘All Kinds of Surprises!’ CNN Hosts Enthralled By ‘Best-Produced’ DNC

Tapper: Kamala Delivered the Best Speech By Anyone Ever of All Time

ABC News Exults Over Kamala Harris’s Coronation

Melber Looks Forward to Kamala Calling Out MAGA ‘Phonies,’ ‘Fakes’

Kamala Harris’s Authoritarian ‘Joy’

'Life in Pieces' Hands Viewers Some Uncomfortable Moments

Editors' Picks

Newsbusters picks.

• Tweets from @NewsBusterPicks

Bill Maher says that CNN treats Scott Jennings "like tokenism. It's, kind of, like, the same as The View, it's like, it’s almost better to have nobody there like MSNBC." Kaitlan Collins responds that "we call bullshit on every side." https://t.co/lAGUC4vAXV

MSNBC's Jacob Soboroff, sort of levitating: "'Kamala Harris For the People vs. the only client Donald Trump ever has is himself.' It's pretty amazing!...It couldn't be a more different atmosphere [than the RNC] ....It's an ecstatic environment in here!" https://t.co/QqQPdrkRli

On Newsmax, @Curtishouck mocked Maddow touting Kamala as kinda already the President! He cited @The_MRC poll of Biden voters that found most of them aren't aware of her radical stands on the border, defunding the police, the "Green New Deal," and bailing out BLM rioters. https://t.co/8uBvl3O69E

Jon Stewart reacts to Kamala Harris's speech, "if I was Donald Trump right now, I would just be tweeting nonsensical shit to distract from the fact that she doesn't faintly resemble the caricature that's been painted." (1/2) https://t.co/iOw23H3V8O

MSNBC's Morning Joe: ‘Patriotism fully reclaimed’ as DNC's ‘flags got bigger’ https://t.co/06vRujWLRx

George Stephanopoulos on the DNC: “[T]he Democrats [made] a play to claim patriotism on their side.” Jonathan Karl: “Yeah. I mean, there’s an opening there. Donald Trump has used words like American carnage to talk about America, has portrayed a more isolationist, protectionist… https://t.co/dREu6Aahry https://t.co/mfn4glnfNG

ABC’s Geroge Stephanopoulos and Jonathan Karl proclaim Kamala gave a speech for “middle America” and she embodied “Maggie Thatcher or Ronald Reagan”.... Stephanopoulos: “[A]s I look at who [Kamala Harris’s] speech was aimed at last night, I think of a lot of m-words: moderates,… https://t.co/xwygHAqf26 https://t.co/EJmEFv5sGB

MSNBC hosts Joy Reid & Alex Wagner ooze about being from immigrant parents and coming to make an American Dream. Curious, that you could come to this country and then star on a cable network that casts America as a cesspool of systemic racism....Hmmm... https://t.co/gVUKOPEnyg

Later, Colbert tells AOC, "Joe Biden has gotten a lot of praise this week and I just don't think we can praise him enough with the courageous and patriotic decision he made." She adds, "President Biden did this in order to not just establish, but preserve American democracy" https://t.co/kSvt5LjGI0

After Harris said "Understand [Trump] is not done," Colbert replies "I politely disagree ‘cause after you roasted him this hard, I think he's well done...Kamala Harris's speech was everything we've been waiting for all week" https://t.co/JMElSLCoKy

WOW: Univision rated Kamala Harris's claim that Trump wants to impose a national abortion ban as "deceptive" https://t.co/8p8Hb3gNnr

WATCH: CNN's Daniel Dale weasels out fact-checking Kamala Harris's acceptance speech by saying that her two demonstrably false claims needed context https://t.co/quAKvXJlmY

CNNs' Abby Phillip claims Kamala has "been very misunderstood politically" and that she was forced to "run to the left" in 2020. She insists Kamala has "processive beliefs but is not and ideologue." https://t.co/4LTo7bIOB1

Civil war on the horizon in America? CBS's Robert Costa hints as much, closing out their DNC coverage: "As we watch the balloons fall, we are all also witnessing something dramatic in real time, the beginning of a tug-of-war of the nation's civic fabric. You have a former… https://t.co/PK7IfwltxM https://t.co/Cdl9FwTEuH

CNN's Jake Tapper suggests Kamala's speech was the best speech ever delivered by anyone ever: "A very, very powerful speech. You gotta go back, I think, to Barack Obama in 2008 for a Democratic speech like this, perhaps even a speech like this at all." https://t.co/e2m4JxFwmN

NBC's Savannah Guthrie on Kamala Harris's DNC speech: "Let's not forget, this is someone trying to be the first female president and the aura and the feel that people get from her is important. It seems like she took on that role as prosecutor, whether it is about domestic… https://t.co/DLHezFSZ5j https://t.co/xlDi46evrY

CNN hosts are enthralled with the DNC's Night Four: Tapper: "This one of the best produced events.. that I've ever attended." Phillip: "Too many people want who want to be part of this event" ... more "happiness" than GOP. Bash: "Trying to reclaim" patriotism from GOP. https://t.co/tfQ6XqrcAL

ABC's Jonathan Karl: "What [Kamala Harris & Tim Walz] have done...in an absolutely remarkable way in the convention, David, they have unified a party that has not been unified...I've been covering Democratic conventions since 1992. I have never seen a convention more unified" https://t.co/VMr6bp7yiD

On PBS, David Brooks says he's looking forward to the "Never Trump Republicans" on stage, with Adam Kinzinger near the end of the night. Then they tout their BRAVERY, it put a dent in their social life! Or do they have many new friends?? https://t.co/vNGc0mHMGQ

👖 on 🔥 from NBC's Lester Holt and Savannah Guthrie, claiming "long-time conservative Republican" Adam Kinzinger (lifetime ACU of 55%) "paid a price politically" by losing his House seat for opposing Trump. Fact-check: Illinois Democrats literally killed his seat & he refused… https://t.co/G1OFYTTi1C https://t.co/Z6AElazIbY

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CBS Debate Moderator Comes Unglued, Defends Harris Price Controls

Worst of the Night! ‘You Will Remember Where You Were’

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Yekaterinburg & Sverdlovsk Oblast

History, Politics, and Economics

Yekaterinburg lies at the crossroads between Europe and Asia, east of the slopes of the Ural Mountains in central Russia. The continental divide is 30 kilometers west of the city. Yekaterinburg is Russia’s third or fourth largest city with a population of 1.5 million. It was founded in 1723 and is named for Peter the Great’s wife, Catherine I. Peter recognized the importance of Yekaterinburg and the surrounding region for the rapid industrial development necessary to bolster Russia’s military power.Today, Yekaterinburg is primarily known both as a center of heavy industry and steel-making, the Russian equivalent of Pittsburgh, and as a major freight transportation hub. Its major industries include ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy, chemicals, timber, and pulp and paper. Yekaterinburg has long been an important trading center for goods coming from Siberia, Central Asia and Europe. The city also has a reputation as a center of higher education and research. The Urals Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences is located there with its 18 institutes and numerous research facilities linked to industry. Yekaterinburg is also well known as a center for the performing arts. Its Opera and Ballet Theater dates back to 1912. The Urals Philharmonic Orchestra is the largest symphony orchestra in central Russia.

Yekaterinburg is the capital of Sverdlovsk Oblast (an oblast is the equivalent of a American state). Economically, Sverdlovsk is among 10 of the 89 administrative subdivisions of the Russian Federation that are net contributors to the federal budget. Sverdlovsk has produced many prominent political figures, including Russia’s first President, Boris Yeltsin, and Russia’s first elected Governor, Eduard Rossel. Since the establishment of the Russian Federation, Sverdlovsk Oblast has been one of the nation’s leaders in political and economic reform. In 1996, Sverdlovsk became the first oblast to conclude agreements with the Federal Government granting it greater political autonomy and the right to conduct its own foreign economic relations.

Economic reform has gathered momentum in Sverdlovsk Oblast. The majority of Sverdlovsk’s industries have been privatized. 75% of enterprises are at least partially owned by private interests. About three-quarters of retail sales and industrial output is generated by private enterprise. Services have grown to 40 percent of oblast GDP, up from only 16 percent in 1992. About 25,000 small businesses are registered in the oblast. Small businesses make up about one-third of the construction, trade and food service.

Industry and Natural Resources

Sverdlovvsk Oblast, like most of the Urals region, possesses abundant natural resources. It is one of Russia’s leaders in mineral extraction. Sverdlovsk produces 70% of Russia’s bauxite, 60% of asbestos, 23% of iron, 97% of vanadium, 6% of copper and 2% of nickel. Forests cover 65% of the oblast. It also produces 6% of Russia’s timber and 7% of its plywood. Sverdlovsk has the largest GDP of any oblast in the Urals. The oblast’s major exports include steel (20% of its foreign trade turnover), chemicals (11%), copper (11%), aluminum (8%) and titanium (3%). In terms of industrial output, Sverdlovsk ranks second only to Moscow Oblast and produces 5% of Russia’s total. Ferrous metallurgy and machine-building still constitute a major part of the oblast’s economy. Yekaterinburg is well known for its concentration of industrial manufacturing plants. The city’s largest factories produce oil extraction equipment, tubes and pipes, steel rollers, steam turbines and manufacturing equipment for other factories.

Non-ferrous metallurgy remains a growth sector. The Verkhnaya Salda Titanium Plant (VSMPO) is the largest titanium works in Russia and the second largest in the world. A second growth sector is food production and processing, with many firms purchasing foreign equipment to upgrade production. The financial crisis has increased demand for domestically produced foodstuffs, as consumers can no longer afford more expensive imported products. Many of Yekaterinburg’s leading food processors — including the Konfi Chocolate Factory, Myasomoltorg Ice-Cream Plant, Myasokombinat Meat Packing Plant and Patra Brewery — have remained financially stable and look forward to growth.

Foreign Trade and Investment

Sverdlovsk Oblast offers investors opportunities mainly in raw materials (metals and minerals) and heavy industries (oil extraction and pipeline equipment). There is also interest in importing Western products in the fields of telecommunications, food processing, safety and security systems, and medicine and construction materials. Both Sverdlovsk Oblast and Yekaterinburg city officials have encouraged foreign investment and created a receptive business climate. The oblast has a Foreign Investment Support Department and a website which profiles over 200 local companies. The city government opened its own investment support center in 1998 to assist foreign companies. Despite local efforts, foreign investors face the same problems in Yekaterinburg as they do elsewhere in Russia. Customs and tax issues top the list of problem areas.

Sverdlovsk Oblast leads the Urals in attracting foreign investment The top five foreign investors are the U.S., UK, Germany, China and Cyprus. About 70 foreign firms have opened representative offices in Yekaterinburg, including DHL, Ford, IBM, Proctor and Gamble, and Siemens. Lufthansa airlines has opened a station in Yekaterinburg and offers three flights per week to Frankfurt.

America is Sverdlovsk’s number one investor with $114 million in investment and 79 joint ventures. The three largest U.S. investors are Coca-Cola, Pepsi and USWest. Coca-Cola and Pepsi both opened bottling plants in Yekaterinburg in 1998. USWest has a joint venture, Uralwestcom, which is one of Yekaterinburg’s leading companies in cellular phone sales and service. America is Sverdlovsk Oblast’s number one trading partner. In 1998, Boeing signed a ten-year titanium supply contract valued at approximately $200 million with the VSMPO titanium plant. Besides the U.S., Sverdlovsk’s top trading partners include Holland, Kazakhstan, Germany and the UK.

Yekaterinburg, like most of Russia, has a continental climate. The city is located at the source of the Iset River and is surrounded by lakes and hills. Temperatures tend to be mild in summer and severe in winter. The average temperature in January is -15.5C (4F), but occasionally reaches -40C (-40F). The average temperature in July is 17.5C (64F), but occasionally reaches 40C (104F). Current weather in Yekaterinburg from  http://www.gismeteo.ru/ .

• Sverdlovsk Oblast Map
• Yekaterinburg Map

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• Places - European, Western and Northern Russia

YEKATERINBURG: FACTORIES, URAL SIGHTS, YELTSIN AND THE WHERE NICHOLAS II WAS KILLED

Sverdlovsk oblast.

Sverdlovsk Oblast is the largest region in the Urals; it lies in the foothills of mountains and contains a monument indicating the border between Europe and Asia. The region covers 194,800 square kilometers (75,200 square miles), is home to about 4.3 million people and has a population density of 22 people per square kilometer. About 83 percent of the population live in urban areas. Yekaterinburg is the capital and largest city, with 1.5 million people. For Russians, the Ural Mountains are closely associated with Pavel Bazhov's tales and known for folk crafts such as Kasli iron sculpture, Tagil painting, and copper embossing. Yekaterinburg is the birthplace of Russia’s iron and steel industry, taking advantage of the large iron deposits in the Ural mountains. The popular Silver Ring of the Urals tourist route starts here.

In the summer you can follow in the tracks of Yermak, climb relatively low Ural mountain peaks and look for boulders seemingly with human faces on them. You can head to the Gemstone Belt of the Ural mountains, which used to house emerald, amethyst and topaz mines. In the winter you can go ice fishing, ski and cross-country ski.

Sverdlovsk Oblast and Yekaterinburg are located near the center of Russia, at the crossroads between Europe and Asia and also the southern and northern parts of Russia. Winters are longer and colder than in western section of European Russia. Snowfalls can be heavy. Winter temperatures occasionally drop as low as - 40 degrees C (-40 degrees F) and the first snow usually falls in October. A heavy winter coat, long underwear and good boots are essential. Snow and ice make the sidewalks very slippery, so footwear with a good grip is important. Since the climate is very dry during the winter months, skin moisturizer plus lip balm are recommended. Be alert for mud on street surfaces when snow cover is melting (April-May). Patches of mud create slippery road conditions.

Yekaterinburg

Yekaterinburg (kilometer 1818 on the Trans-Siberian Railway) is the fourth largest city in Russia, with of 1.5 million and growth rate of about 12 percent, high for Russia. Located in the southern Ural mountains, it was founded by Peter the Great and named after his wife Catherine, it was used by the tsars as a summer retreat and is where tsar Nicholas II and his family were executed and President Boris Yeltsin lived most of his life and began his political career. The city is near the border between Europe and Asia.

Yekaterinburg (also spelled Ekaterinburg) is located on the eastern slope of the Ural Mountains in the headwaters of the Iset and Pyshma Rivers. The Iset runs through the city center. Three ponds — Verkh-Isetsky, Gorodskoy and Nizhne-Isetsky — were created on it. Yekaterinburg has traditionally been a city of mining and was once the center of the mining industry of the Urals and Siberia. Yekaterinburg remains a major center of the Russian armaments industry and is sometimes called the "Pittsburgh of Russia.". A few ornate, pastel mansions and wide boulevards are reminders of the tsarist era. The city is large enough that it has its own Metro system but is characterized mostly by blocky Soviet-era apartment buildings. The city has advanced under President Vladimir Putin and is now one of the fastest growing places in Russia, a country otherwise characterized by population declines

Yekaterinburg is technically an Asian city as it lies 32 kilometers east of the continental divide between Europe and Asia. The unofficial capital of the Urals, a key region in the Russian heartland, it is second only to Moscow in terms of industrial production and capital of Sverdlovsk oblast. Among the important industries are ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy, machine building and metalworking, chemical and petrochemicals, construction materials and medical, light and food industries. On top of being home of numerous heavy industries and mining concerns, Yekaterinburg is also a major center for industrial research and development and power engineering as well as home to numerous institutes of higher education, technical training, and scientific research. In addition, Yekaterinburg is the largest railway junction in Russia: the Trans-Siberian Railway passes through it, the southern, northern, western and eastern routes merge in the city.

Accommodation: There are two good and affordable hotels — the 3-star Emerald and Parus hotels — located close to the city's most popular landmarks and main transport interchanges in the center of Yekaterinburg. Room prices start at RUB 1,800 per night.

History of Yekaterinburg

Yekaterinburg was founded in 1723 by Peter the Great and named after his wife Catherine I. It was used by the tsars as a summer retreat but was mainly developed as metalworking and manufacturing center to take advantage of the large deposits of iron and other minerals in the Ural mountains. It is best known to Americans as the place where the last Tsar and his family were murdered by the Bolsheviks in 1918 and near where American U-2 spy plane, piloted by Gary Powers, was shot down in 1960.

Peter the Great recognized the importance of the iron and copper-rich Urals region for Imperial Russia's industrial and military development. In November 1723, he ordered the construction of a fortress factory and an ironworks in the Iset River Valley, which required a dam for its operation. In its early years Yekaterinburg grew rich from gold and other minerals and later coal. The Yekaterinburg gold rush of 1745 created such a huge amount of wealth that one rich baron of that time hosted a wedding party that lasted a year. By the mid-18th century, metallurgical plants had sprung up across the Urals to cast cannons, swords, guns and other weapons to arm Russia’s expansionist ambitions. The Yekaterinburg mint produced most of Russia's coins. Explorations of the Trans-Baikal and Altai regions began here in the 18th century.

Iron, cast iron and copper were the main products. Even though Iron from the region went into the Eiffel Tower, the main plant in Yekaterinburg itself was shut down in 1808. The city still kept going through a mountain factory control system of the Urals. The first railway in the Urals was built here: in 1878, the Yekaterinburg-Perm railway branch connected the province's capital with the factories of the Middle Urals.

In the Soviet era the city was called Sverdlovsk (named after Yakov Sverdlov, the man who organized Nicholas II's execution). During the first five-year plans the city became industrial — old plants were reconstructed, new ones were built. The center of Yekaterinburg was formed to conform to the historical general plan of 1829 but was the layout was adjusted around plants and factories. In the Stalin era the city was a major gulag transhipment center. In World War II, many defense-related industries were moved here. It and the surrounding area were a center of the Soviet Union's military industrial complex. Soviet tanks, missiles and aircraft engines were made in the Urals. During the Cold War era, Yekaterinburg was a center of weapons-grade uranium enrichment and processing, warhead assembly and dismantlement. In 1979, 64 people died when anthrax leaked from a biological weapons facility. Yekaterinburg was a “Closed City” for 40 years during the Cold Soviet era and was not open to foreigners until 1991

In the early post-Soviet era, much like Pittsburgh in the 1970s, Yekaterinburg had a hard struggle d to cope with dramatic economic changes that have made its heavy industries uncompetitive on the world market. Huge defense plants struggled to survive and the city was notorious as an organized crime center in the 1990s, when its hometown boy Boris Yeltsin was President of Russia. By the 2000s, Yekaterinburg’s retail and service was taking off, the defense industry was reviving and it was attracting tech industries and investments related to the Urals’ natural resources. By the 2010s it was vying to host a world exhibition in 2020 (it lost, Dubai won) and it had McDonald’s, Subway, sushi restaurants, and Gucci, Chanel and Armani. There were Bentley and Ferrari dealerships but they closed down

Transportation in Yekaterinburg

Getting There: By Plane: Yekaterinburg is a three-hour flight from Moscow with prices starting at RUB 8,000, or a 3-hour flight from Saint Petersburg starting from RUB 9,422 (direct round-trip flight tickets for one adult passenger). There are also flights from Frankfurt, Istanbul, China and major cities in the former Soviet Union.

By Train: Yekaterinburg is a major stop on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Daily train service is available to Moscow and many other Russian cities.Yekaterinburg is a 32-hour train ride from Moscow (tickets RUB 8,380 and above) or a 36-hour train ride from Saint Petersburg (RUB 10,300 and above). The ticket prices are round trip for a berth in a sleeper compartment for one adult passenger). By Car: a car trip from Moscow to Yekateringburg is 1,787 kilometers long and takes about 18 hours. The road from Saint Petersburg is 2,294 kilometers and takes about 28 hours.

Regional Transport: The region's public transport includes buses and suburban electric trains. Regional trains provide transport to larger cities in the Ural region. Buses depart from Yekaterinburg’s two bus stations: the Southern Bus Station and the Northern Bus Station.

Regional Transport: According the to Association for Safe International Road Travel (ASIRT): “Public transportation is well developed. Overcrowding is common. Fares are low. Service is efficient. Buses are the main form of public transport. Tram network is extensive. Fares are reasonable; service is regular. Trams are heavily used by residents, overcrowding is common. Purchase ticket after boarding. Metro runs from city center to Uralmash, an industrial area south of the city. Metro ends near the main railway station. Fares are inexpensive.

“Traffic is congested in city center. Getting around by car can be difficult. Route taxis (minivans) provide the fastest transport. They generally run on specific routes, but do not have specific stops. Drivers stop where passengers request. Route taxis can be hailed. Travel by bus or trolleybuses may be slow in rush hour. Trams are less affected by traffic jams. Trolley buses (electric buses) cannot run when temperatures drop below freezing.”

Entertainment, Sports and Recreation in Yekaterinburg

The performing arts in Yekaterinburg are first rate. The city has an excellent symphony orchestra, opera and ballet theater, and many other performing arts venues. Tickets are inexpensive. The Yekaterinburg Opera and Ballet Theater is lavishly designed and richly decorated building in the city center of Yekaterinburg. The theater was established in 1912 and building was designed by architect Vladimir Semyonov and inspired by the Vienna Opera House and the Theater of Opera and Ballet in Odessa.

Vaynera Street is a pedestrian only shopping street in city center with restaurants, cafes and some bars. But otherwise Yekaterinburg's nightlife options are limited. There are a handful of expensive Western-style restaurants and bars, none of them that great. Nightclubs serve the city's nouveau riche clientele. Its casinos have closed down. Some of them had links with organized crime. New dance clubs have sprung up that are popular with Yekaterinburg's more affluent youth.

Yekaterinburg's most popular spectator sports are hockey, basketball, and soccer. There are stadiums and arenas that host all three that have fairly cheap tickets. There is an indoor water park and lots of parks and green spaces. The Urals have many lakes, forests and mountains are great for hiking, boating, berry and mushroom hunting, swimming and fishing. Winter sports include cross-country skiing and ice skating. Winter lasts about six months and there’s usually plenty of snow. The nearby Ural Mountains however are not very high and the downhill skiing opportunities are limited..

Sights in Yekaterinburg

Sights in Yekaterinburg include the Museum of City Architecture and Ural Industry, with an old water tower and mineral collection with emeralds. malachite, tourmaline, jasper and other precious stone; Geological Alley, a small park with labeled samples of minerals found in the Urals region; the Ural Geology Museum, which houses an extensive collection of stones, gold and gems from the Urals; a monument marking the border between Europe and Asia; a memorial for gulag victims; and a graveyard with outlandish memorials for slain mafia members.

The Military History Museum houses the remains of the U-2 spy plane shot down in 1960 and locally made tanks and rocket launchers. The fine arts museum contains paintings by some of Russia's 19th-century masters. Also worth a look are the History an Local Studies Museum; the Political History and Youth Museum; and the University and Arboretum. Old wooden houses can be seen around Zatoutstovsya ulitsa and ulitsa Belinskogo. Around the city are wooded parks, lakes and quarries used to harvest a variety of minerals. Weiner Street is the main street of Yekaterinburg. Along it are lovely sculptures and 19th century architecture. Take a walk around the unique Literary Quarter

Plotinka is a local meeting spot, where you will often find street musicians performing. Plotinka can be described as the center of the city's center. This is where Yekaterinburg holds its biggest events: festivals, seasonal fairs, regional holiday celebrations, carnivals and musical fountain shows. There are many museums and open-air exhibitions on Plotinka. Plotinka is named after an actual dam of the city pond located nearby (“plotinka” means “a small dam” in Russian).In November 1723, Peter the Great ordered the construction of an ironworks in the Iset River Valley, which required a dam for its operation. “Iset” can be translated from Finnish as “abundant with fish”. This name was given to the river by the Mansi — the Finno-Ugric people dwelling on the eastern slope of the Northern Urals.

Vysotsky and Iset are skyscrapers that are 188.3 meters and 209 meters high, respectively. Fifty-story-high Iset has been described by locals as the world’s northernmost skyscraper. Before the construction of Iset, Vysotsky was the tallest building of Yekaterinburg and Russia (excluding Moscow). A popular vote has decided to name the skyscraper after the famous Soviet songwriter, singer and actor Vladimir Vysotsky. and the building was opened on November 25, 2011. There is a lookout at the top of the building, and the Vysotsky museum on its second floor. The annual “Vysotsky climb” (1137 steps) is held there, with a prize of RUB 100,000. While Vysotsky serves as an office building, Iset, owned by the Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company, houses 225 premium residential apartments ranging from 80 to 490 square meters in size.

Boris Yeltsin Presidential Center

The Boris Yeltsin Presidential Center (in the city center: ul. Yeltsina, 3) is a non-governmental organization named after the first president of the Russian Federation. The Museum of the First President of Russia as well as his archives are located in the Center. There is also a library, educational and children's centers, and exposition halls. Yeltsin lived most of his life and began his political career in Yekaterinburg. He was born in Butka about 200 kilometers east of Yekaterinburg.

The core of the Center is the Museum. Modern multimedia technologies help animate the documents, photos from the archives, and artifacts. The Yeltsin Museum holds collections of: propaganda posters, leaflets, and photos of the first years of the Soviet regime; portraits and portrait sculptures of members of Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of various years; U.S.S.R. government bonds and other items of the Soviet era; a copy of “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, published in the “Novy Mir” magazine (#11, 1962); perestroika-era editions of books by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Vasily Grossman, and other authors; theater, concert, and cinema posters, programs, and tickets — in short, all of the artifacts of the perestroika era.

The Yeltsin Center opened in 2012. Inside you will also find an art gallery, a bookstore, a gift shop, a food court, concert stages and a theater. There are regular screenings of unique films that you will not find anywhere else. Also operating inside the center, is a scientific exploritorium for children. The center was designed by Boris Bernaskoni. Almost from the its very opening, the Yeltsin Center has been accused by members of different political entities of various ideological crimes. The museum is open Tuesday to Sunday, from 10:00am to 9:00pm.

Where Nicholas II was Executed

On July, 17, 1918, during this reign of terror of the Russian Civil War, former-tsar Nicholas II, his wife, five children (the 13-year-old Alexis, 22-year-old Olga, 19-year-old Maria and 17-year-old Anastasia)the family physician, the cook, maid, and valet were shot to death by a Red Army firing squad in the cellar of the house they were staying at in Yekaterinburg.

Ipatiev House (near Church on the Blood, Ulitsa Libknekhta) was a merchant's house where Nicholas II and his family were executed. The house was demolished in 1977, on the orders of an up and coming communist politician named Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin later said that the destruction of the house was an "act of barbarism" and he had no choice because he had been ordered to do it by the Politburo,

The site is marked with s cross with the photos of the family members and cross bearing their names. A small wooden church was built at the site. It contains paintings of the family. For a while there were seven traditional wooden churches. Mass is given ay noon everyday in an open-air museum. The Church on the Blood — constructed to honor Nicholas II and his family — was built on the part of the site in 1991 and is now a major place of pilgrimage.

Nicholas and his family where killed during the Russian civil war. It is thought the Bolsheviks figured that Nicholas and his family gave the Whites figureheads to rally around and they were better of dead. Even though the death orders were signed Yakov Sverdlov, the assassination was personally ordered by Lenin, who wanted to get them out of sight and out of mind. Trotsky suggested a trial. Lenin nixed the idea, deciding something had to be done about the Romanovs before White troops approached Yekaterinburg. Trotsky later wrote: "The decision was not only expedient but necessary. The severity of he punishment showed everyone that we would continue to fight on mercilessly, stopping at nothing."

Ian Frazier wrote in The New Yorker: “Having read a lot about the end of Tsar Nicholas II and his family and servants, I wanted to see the place in Yekaterinburg where that event occurred. The gloomy quality of this quest depressed Sergei’s spirits, but he drove all over Yekaterinburg searching for the site nonetheless. Whenever he stopped and asked a pedestrian how to get to the house where Nicholas II was murdered, the reaction was a wince. Several people simply walked away. But eventually, after a lot of asking, Sergei found the location. It was on a low ridge near the edge of town, above railroad tracks and the Iset River. The house, known as the Ipatiev House, was no longer standing, and the basement where the actual killings happened had been filled in. I found the blankness of the place sinister and dizzying. It reminded me of an erasure done so determinedly that it had worn a hole through the page. [Source: Ian Frazier, The New Yorker, August 3, 2009, Frazier is author of “Travels in Siberia” (2010)]

“The street next to the site is called Karl Liebknecht Street. A building near where the house used to be had a large green advertisement that said, in English, “LG—Digitally Yours.” On an adjoining lot, a small chapel kept the memory of the Tsar and his family; beneath a pedestal holding an Orthodox cross, peonies and pansies grew. The inscription on the pedestal read, “We go down on our knees, Russia, at the foot of the tsarist cross.”

Books: The Romanovs: The Final Chapter by Robert K. Massie (Random House, 1995); The Fall of the Romanovs by Mark D. Steinberg and Vladimir Khrustalëv (Yale, 1995);

See Separate Article END OF NICHOLAS II factsanddetails.com

Execution of Nicholas II

According to Robert Massie K. Massie, author of Nicholas and Alexandra, Nicholas II and his family were awakened from their bedrooms around midnight and taken to the basement. They were told they were to going to take some photographs of them and were told to stand behind a row of chairs.

Suddenly, a group of 11 Russians and Latvians, each with a revolver, burst into the room with orders to kill a specific person. Yakob Yurovsky, a member of the Soviet executive committee, reportedly shouted "your relatives are continuing to attack the Soviet Union.” After firing, bullets bouncing off gemstones hidden in the corsets of Alexandra and her daughters ricocheted around the room like "a shower of hail," the soldiers said. Those that were still breathing were killed with point black shots to the head.

The three sisters and the maid survived the first round thanks to their gems. They were pressed up against a wall and killed with a second round of bullets. The maid was the only one that survived. She was pursued by the executioners who stabbed her more than 30 times with their bayonets. The still writhing body of Alexis was made still by a kick to the head and two bullets in the ear delivered by Yurovsky himself.

Yurovsky wrote: "When the party entered I told the Romanovs that in view of the fact their relatives continued their offensive against Soviet Russia, the Executive Committee of the Urals Soviet had decided to shoot them. Nicholas turned his back to the detachment and faced his family. Then, as if collecting himself, he turned around, asking, 'What? What?'"

"[I] ordered the detachment to prepare. Its members had been previously instructed whom to shoot and to am directly at the heart to avoid much blood and to end more quickly. Nicholas said no more. he turned again to his family. The others shouted some incoherent exclamations. All this lasted a few seconds. Then commenced the shooting, which went on for two or three minutes. [I] killed Nicholas on the spot."

Nicholas II’s Initial Burial Site in Yekaterinburg

Ganina Yama Monastery (near the village of Koptyaki, 15 kilometers northwest of Yekaterinburg) stands near the three-meter-deep pit where some the remains of Nicholas II and his family were initially buried. The second burial site — where most of the remains were — is in a field known as Porosyonkov (56.9113628°N 60.4954326°E), seven kilometers from Ganina Yama.

On visiting Ganina Yama Monastery, one person posted in Trip Advisor: “We visited this set of churches in a pretty park with Konstantin from Ekaterinburg Guide Centre. He really brought it to life with his extensive knowledge of the history of the events surrounding their terrible end. The story is so moving so unless you speak Russian, it is best to come here with a guide or else you will have no idea of what is what.”

In 1991, the acid-burned remains of Nicholas II and his family were exhumed from a shallow roadside mass grave in a swampy area 12 miles northwest of Yekaterinburg. The remains had been found in 1979 by geologist and amateur archeologist Alexander Avdonin, who kept the location secret out of fear that they would be destroyed by Soviet authorities. The location was disclosed to a magazine by one his fellow discovers.

The original plan was to throw the Romanovs down a mine shaft and disposes of their remains with acid. They were thrown in a mine with some grenades but the mine didn't collapse. They were then carried by horse cart. The vats of acid fell off and broke. When the carriage carrying the bodies broke down it was decided the bury the bodies then and there. The remaining acid was poured on the bones, but most of it was soaked up the ground and the bones largely survived.

After this their pulses were then checked, their faces were crushed to make them unrecognizable and the bodies were wrapped in bed sheets loaded onto a truck. The "whole procedure," Yurovsky said took 20 minutes. One soldiers later bragged than he could "die in peace because he had squeezed the Empress's -------."

The bodies were taken to a forest and stripped, burned with acid and gasoline, and thrown into abandoned mine shafts and buried under railroad ties near a country road near the village of Koptyaki. "The bodies were put in the hole," Yurovsky wrote, "and the faces and all the bodies, generally doused with sulfuric acid, both so they couldn't be recognized and prevent a stink from them rotting...We scattered it with branches and lime, put boards on top and drove over it several times—no traces of the hole remained.

Shortly afterwards, the government in Moscow announced that Nicholas II had been shot because of "a counterrevolutionary conspiracy." There was no immediate word on the other members of the family which gave rise to rumors that other members of the family had escaped. Yekaterinburg was renamed Sverdlov in honor of the man who signed the death orders.

For seven years the remains of Nicholas II, Alexandra, three of their daughters and four servants were stored in polyethylene bags on shelves in the old criminal morgue in Yekaterunburg. On July 17, 1998, Nicholas II and his family and servants who were murdered with him were buried Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg along with the other Romanov tsars, who have been buried there starting with Peter the Great. Nicholas II had a side chapel built for himself at the fortress in 1913 but was buried in a new crypt.

Near Yekaterinburg

Factory-Museum of Iron and Steel Metallurgy (in Niznhy Tagil 80 kilometers north of Yekaterinburg) a museum with old mining equipment made at the site of huge abandoned iron and steel factory. Officially known as the Factory-Museum of the History of the Development of Iron and Steel Metallurgy, it covers an area of 30 hectares and contains a factory founded by the Demidov family in 1725 that specialized mainly in the production of high-quality cast iron and steel. Later, the foundry was renamed after Valerian Kuybyshev, a prominent figure of the Communist Party.

The first Russian factory museum, the unusual museum demonstrates all stages of metallurgy and metal working. There is even a blast furnace and an open-hearth furnace. The display of factory equipment includes bridge crane from 1892) and rolling stock equipment from the 19th-20th centuries. In Niznhy Tagil contains some huge blocks of malachite and

Nizhnyaya Sinyachikha (180 kilometers east-northeast of Yekaterinburg) has an open air architecture museum with log buildings, a stone church and other pre-revolutionary architecture. The village is the creation of Ivan Samoilov, a local activist who loved his village so much he dedicated 40 years of his life to recreating it as the open-air museum of wooden architecture.

The stone Savior Church, a good example of Siberian baroque architecture. The interior and exterior of the church are exhibition spaces of design. The houses are very colorful. In tsarist times, rich villagers hired serfs to paint the walls of their wooden izbas (houses) bright colors. Old neglected buildings from the 17th to 19th centuries have been brought to Nizhnyaya Sinyachikha from all over the Urals. You will see the interior design of the houses and hear stories about traditions and customs of the Ural farmers.

Verkhoturye (330 kilometers road from Yekaterinburg) is the home a 400-year-old monastery that served as 16th century capital of the Urals. Verkhoturye is a small town on the Tura River knows as the Jerusalem of the Urals for its many holy places, churches and monasteries. The town's main landmark is its Kremlin — the smallest in Russia. Pilgrims visit the St. Nicholas Monastery to see the remains of St. Simeon of Verkhoturye, the patron saint of fishermen.

Ural Mountains

Ural Mountains are the traditional dividing line between Europe and Asia and have been a crossroads of Russian history. Stretching from Kazakhstan to the fringes of the Arctic Kara Sea, the Urals lie almost exactly along the 60 degree meridian of longitude and extend for about 2,000 kilometers (1,300 miles) from north to south and varies in width from about 50 kilometers (30 miles) in the north and 160 kilometers (100 miles) the south. At kilometers 1777 on the Trans-Siberian Railway there is white obelisk with "Europe" carved in Russian on one side and "Asia" carved on the other.

The eastern side of the Urals contains a lot of granite and igneous rock. The western side is primarily sandstone and limestones. A number of precious stones can be found in the southern part of the Urals, including emeralds. malachite, tourmaline, jasper and aquamarines. The highest peaks are in the north. Mount Narodnaya is the highest of all but is only 1884 meters (6,184 feet) high. The northern Urals are covered in thick forests and home to relatively few people.

Like the Appalachian Mountains in the eastern United States, the Urals are very old mountains — with rocks and sediments that are hundreds of millions years old — that were one much taller than they are now and have been steadily eroded down over millions of years by weather and other natural processes to their current size. According to Encyclopedia Britannica: “The rock composition helps shape the topography: the high ranges and low, broad-topped ridges consist of quartzites, schists, and gabbro, all weather-resistant. Buttes are frequent, and there are north–south troughs of limestone, nearly all containing river valleys. Karst topography is highly developed on the western slopes of the Urals, with many caves, basins, and underground streams. The eastern slopes, on the other hand, have fewer karst formations; instead, rocky outliers rise above the flattened surfaces. Broad foothills, reduced to peneplain, adjoin the Central and Southern Urals on the east.

“The Urals date from the structural upheavals of the Hercynian orogeny (about 250 million years ago). About 280 million years ago there arose a high mountainous region, which was eroded to a peneplain. Alpine folding resulted in new mountains, the most marked upheaval being that of the Nether-Polar Urals...The western slope of the Urals is composed of middle Paleozoic sedimentary rocks (sandstones and limestones) that are about 350 million years old. In many places it descends in terraces to the Cis-Ural depression (west of the Urals), to which much of the eroded matter was carried during the late Paleozoic (about 300 million years ago). Found there are widespread karst (a starkly eroded limestone region) and gypsum, with large caverns and subterranean streams. On the eastern slope, volcanic layers alternate with sedimentary strata, all dating from middle Paleozoic times.”

Southern Urals

The southern Urals are characterized by grassy slopes and fertile valleys. The middle Urals are a rolling platform that barely rises above 300 meters (1,000 feet). This region is rich in minerals and has been heavily industrialized. This is where you can find Yekaterinburg (formally Sverdlovsk), the largest city in the Urals.

Most of the Southern Urals are is covered with forests, with 50 percent of that pine-woods, 44 percent birch woods, and the rest are deciduous aspen and alder forests. In the north, typical taiga forests are the norm. There are patches of herbal-poaceous steppes, northem sphagnous marshes and bushy steppes, light birch forests and shady riparian forests, tall-grass mountainous meadows, lowland ling marshes and stony placers with lichen stains. In some places there are no large areas of homogeneous forests, rather they are forests with numerous glades and meadows of different size.

In the Ilmensky Mountains Reserve in the Southern Urals, scientists counted 927 vascular plants (50 relicts, 23 endemic species), about 140 moss species, 483 algae species and 566 mushroom species. Among the species included into the Red Book of Russia are feather grass, downy-leaved feather grass, Zalessky feather grass, moccasin flower, ladies'-slipper, neottianthe cucullata, Baltic orchis, fen orchis, helmeted orchis, dark-winged orchis, Gelma sandwart, Krasheninnikov sandwart, Clare astragalus.

The fauna of the vertebrate animals in the Reserve includes 19 fish, 5 amphibian and 5 reptile. Among the 48 mammal species are elks, roe deer, boars, foxes, wolves, lynxes, badgers, common weasels, least weasels, forest ferrets, Siberian striped weasel, common marten, American mink. Squirrels, beavers, muskrats, hares, dibblers, moles, hedgehogs, voles are quite common, as well as chiropterans: pond bat, water bat, Brandt's bat, whiskered bat, northern bat, long-eared bat, parti-coloured bat, Nathusius' pipistrelle. The 174 bird bird species include white-tailed eagles, honey hawks, boreal owls, gnome owls, hawk owls, tawny owls, common scoters, cuckoos, wookcocks, common grouses, wood grouses, hazel grouses, common partridges, shrikes, goldenmountain thrushes, black- throated loons and others.

Activities and Places in the Ural Mountains

The Urals possess beautiful natural scenery that can be accessed from Yekaterinburg with a rent-a-car, hired taxi and tour. Travel agencies arrange rafting, kayaking and hiking trips. Hikes are available in the taiga forest and the Urals. Trips often include walks through the taiga to small lakes and hikes into the mountains and excursions to collect mushrooms and berries and climb in underground caves. Mellow rafting is offered in a relatively calm six kilometer section of the River Serga. In the winter visitor can enjoy cross-mountains skiing, downhill skiing, ice fishing, dog sledding, snow-shoeing and winter hiking through the forest to a cave covered with ice crystals.

Lake Shartash (10 kilometers from Yekaterinburg) is where the first Ural gold was found, setting in motion the Yekaterinburg gold rush of 1745, which created so much wealth one rich baron of that time hosted a wedding party that lasted a year. The area around Shartash Lake is a favorite picnic and barbecue spot of the locals. Getting There: by bus route No. 50, 054 or 54, with a transfer to suburban commuter bus route No. 112, 120 or 121 (the whole trip takes about an hour), or by car (10 kilometers drive from the city center, 40 minutes).

Revun Rapids (90 kilometers road from Yekaterinburg near Beklenishcheva village) is a popular white water rafting places On the nearby cliffs you can see the remains of a mysterious petroglyph from the Paleolithic period. Along the steep banks, you may notice the dark entrance of Smolinskaya Cave. There are legends of a sorceress who lived in there. The rocks at the riverside are suited for competitive rock climbers and beginners. Climbing hooks and rings are hammered into rocks. The most fun rafting is generally in May and June.

Olenii Ruchii National Park (100 kilometers west of Yekaterinburg) is the most popular nature park in Sverdlovsk Oblast and popular weekend getaway for Yekaterinburg residents. Visitors are attracted by the beautiful forests, the crystal clear Serga River and picturesque rocks caves. There are some easy hiking routes: the six-kilometer Lesser Ring and the 15-kilometer Greater Ring. Another route extends for 18 km and passes by the Mitkinsky Mine, which operated in the 18th-19th centuries. It's a kind of an open-air museum — you can still view mining an enrichment equipment here. There is also a genuine beaver dam nearby.

Among the other attractions at Olenii Ruchii are Druzhba (Friendship) Cave, with passages that extend for about 500 meters; Dyrovaty Kamen (Holed Stone), created over time by water of Serga River eroding rock; and Utoplennik (Drowned Man), where you can see “The Angel of Sole Hope”., created by the Swedish artist Lehna Edwall, who has placed seven angels figures in different parts of the world to “embrace the planet, protecting it from fear, despair, and disasters.”

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Federal Agency for Tourism of the Russian Federation (official Russia tourism website russiatourism.ru ), Russian government websites, UNESCO, Wikipedia, Lonely Planet guides, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, National Geographic, The New Yorker, Bloomberg, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Yomiuri Shimbun and various books and other publications.

Updated in September 2020

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Law & Dis Order

The Media Research Center submitted forty-eight public records requests to dozens of different offices. This investigation exposed thousands of pages of never-before-seen communications between Soros groups and elected prosecutors, including the far-left Soros politicians listed below.

Diana Becton has been serving Soros as the district attorney for Contra Costa County since 2017, overseeing an area that includes Brentwood and Hercules. Prior to taking this role, she was a California judge.

Wesley Bell has served Soros as St. Louis County prosecuting attorney since 2019, working alongside fellow Soros prosecutor Kim Gardner. Bell is now a candidate for US Congress.

Buta Biberaj served Soros as Loudoun County Commonwealth’s attorney from 2020 to 2024. Boudin masterminded the vindictive prosecution against Scott Smith,a father who protested the county schoolboard for covering up his daughter’s rape by a transvestite.

The son of two convicted terrorists, Chesa Boudin served Soros as San Francisco district attorney from 2020 until his recall in 2022. He now works in leadership at the Soros-backed University of California Berkeley.

Alvin Bragg has been serving Soros as New York County district attorney since 2022. While disregarding the epidemic of violent crime plaguing his city, Bragg has instead targeted his political opposition, including Subway hero Daniel Penny and former President Donald J. Trump.

Scott Colom has served Soros as the district attorney for MS 16th Judicial District since 2016, overseeing Clay, Lowndes, Noxubee and Oktibbeha Counties. Pres. Biden has nominated Colom for a lifetime appointment to the federal judiciary.

Steve Descano has served as Fairfax County Commonwealth’s attorney since 2020; he is also a member of the Soros-aligned lobbying group VPPJ. Descano is infamous for refusing to prosecute a serial predator until the man committed rape and strangulation.

Keith Ellison currently serves Soros as the attorney general of MN since 2019. Previously, Ellison — who has been accused of both sexual and physical abuse — was a US congressman and the deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee.

Kim Foxx has been serving Soros as Cook County state’s attorney since 2016. Foxx gained national infamy when she tried to shield TV star Jussie Smollet from prosecution after he staged an elaborate hate hoax.

A former Democrat state representative, Kim Gardner served as St. Louis County circuit attorney from 2017 until her resignation in 2023. Gardner used her position to bring bogus charges against then-Governor Eric Greitens and pursued the political prosecution of Mark and Patricia McCloskey.

José Garza has served Soros since 2021 as the district attorney for Travis County, which includes Austin. Garza was a member of the anti-Semitic extremist group Democratic Socialists of America.

George Gascón currently serves Soros as the Los Angeles County district attorney since 2020. He previously was San Francisco district attorney and chief of the San Francisco police department.

Joe Gonzales has served Soros since 2019 as the district attorney for Bexar County, which includes San Antonio. Gonzales previously worked as a Texas municipal judge.

Larry Krasner has served Soros as Philadelphia County district attorney since 2018. Krasner is the subject of the taxpayer-funded hagiography Philly D.A., which aired on PBS and was heavily promoted by Soros groups like Fair & Just Prosecution.

Brian Middleton has served Soros as Fort Bend County district attorney since 2019. In this role, he oversees prosecutions for a large portion of Houston.

Kim Ogg was elected district attorney for Harris County with heavy Soros backing, but angered the Soros machine by refusing to join pledges contradicting state law. Ogg lost to a Soros-backed challenger and will have to leave office at the beginning of 2025.

Raúl Torrez serves Soros as the attorney general for New Mexico since 2023. He previously was the district attorney for Bernalillo County, which includes Albuquerque.