The city stands on the famous Vladimir Highway, which led out of Moscow to the east. This was the route along which convicted criminals were marched to forced labor camps in Siberia. The road was renamed Gorky Highway in the Soviet era. The failure of the Decembrist Revolt against Tsar Nicholas I led to the execution of its ringleaders and the exile of many nobles to Siberia. Soviet-era schoolchildren were told that the prisoners were marched in chains along this road followed by their wives. In truth, the Decembrist prisoners were sent from St. Petersburg, then the capital of Russia, through Yaroslavl, and not through Moscow and Balashikha, and the story was invented as part of celebrations of the 100th anniversary of the event in 1925.