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Mass at the Cathedral of Blood: A worshiper during mass in the Church on Blood (the spot where Tsar Nicholas II and family were killed) in Yekaterinburg, Russia, January 14, 2014.
Mass at the Cathedral of Blood: A worshiper during mass in the Church on Blood (the spot where Tsar Nicholas II and family were killed) in Yekaterinburg, Russia, January 14, 2014.
(John Lehmann/The Globe and Mail)

Putin's Games

How Vladimir Putin helped resurrect the Russian Orthodox Church

MARK MACKINNON

YEKATERINBURG, RUSSIA — The Globe and Mail

Published

Last updated

Part of Putin’s Games, a series that examines what the Sochi Winter Olympics reveal about  Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Tamara Leontieva’s voice fills with pain as she talks about the darkest day faced by her Russian Orthodox Church. “This is the place where the Tsar and his whole family were killed,” the guide whispers dramatically as we approach the dimly lit altar of the Church on the Blood, built where Nicholas II, the last of the Romanov tsars, and his family were murdered in 1918.