Russia's First Ladies of the XXth and XXIst centuries exhibition opened in Ekaterinburg. The opening was attended by Naina Yeltsina, the wife of the former president Boris Yeltsin.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is also expected to attend it as part of her visit to Russia.

At the exhibition you will learn about 11 Russian First Ladies from the last Empress Alexandra Fedorovna, to the current First Lady Svetlana Medvedeva.

The organizers tried to show the country's history through the fate of these women and unite three eras - Tsarist, Soviet and the modern. The exhibition's curator Vladimir Bykodorov says: "We are showing the daily life of these women, the clothes and perfume they wore, the education they got and how they brought up their children. We are also telling how they met their husbands and how this changed their lives."

Personal belongings and letters presented at the exhibition have explanatory texts and video documents.

The visitors will see that the First Ladies were not only the shadows of their husbands even during the Soviet times, Bykodorov says: "We have unique letters by Stalin's wife Nadezhda Alliluyeva to her husband where she criticizes his policy built on people's lives. However, she couldn't change the situation and committed suicide aged 32. Another First Lady, Nina Khruscheva, looks like a simple Russian woman but she could speak three languages and fluently spoke English with foreign diplomats. Our exhibition shows the important role played by the First Ladies in history."

The exhibition runs at the Regional Natural History Museum

Malysheva street, 46 (ул. Малышева 46)
Phone : (343) 376 47 62

How to get there:
Metro: Ploshchad tysyacha devyatsot pyatogo goda station (Square of 1905, "Площадь 1905 года");
Trolleybuses: 3, 7, 17;
Buses: 14, 25, 61;
Stop: Ploshchad Malysheva ("Площадь Малышева").

Photo: Tatyana Andreeva, The Rossiyskaya Newspaper