City Where Last Czar Died Votes a Name Change
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MOSCOW — The city where imperial Russia’s last czar and his family were murdered more than 70 years ago voted Wednesday to ditch its Soviet name of Sverdlovsk in favor of its original title of Yekaterinburg.
The official Tass news agency said the city assembly in the Urals industrial center where Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin was once party chief had asked the republic’s Parliament to approve the decision. Approval is likely.
The assembly also proposed the region surrounding the town be given the same historic name.
In July, 1918, soon after the revolution, the Bolsheviks shot Czar Nicholas II, his wife, children and servants in the cellar of a merchant’s house in Yekaterinburg, which was founded in 1721 and named after Empress Catherine I.
Six years after the Romanov family was assassinated, the city was renamed Sverdlovsk to honor one of the men who ordered the shooting.
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