The shooting of the great princes in the Peter and Paul Fortress

All four of those executed were grandchildren of Emperor Nicholas I , two of them were siblings:

1. Grand Duke Pavel Alexandrovich (1860-1919) - son of Emperor Alexander II ;
2. Grand Duke Dmitry Konstantinovich (1860-1919) - the son of Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich ;
3. Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich (1859-1919) - the son of Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolaevich ;
4. Grand Duke Georgy Mikhailovich (1863-1919) - son of Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolaevich , brother of the previous one.

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  Pavel Alexandrovich

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  Dmitry Konstantinovich

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  Nikolai Mikhailovich

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  George Mikhailovich

Arrest

March 26, 1918 in the "Krasnaya Gazeta" (Petrograd) was published a decree signed by G. Zinoviev and M. Uritsky ^[2] :

The Council of Commissars of the Petrograd Labor Commune decides: Members of the former Romanov dynasty - Nikolai Mikhailovich Romanov, Dmitry Konstantinovich Romanov and Pavel Alexandrovich Romanov to be expelled from Petrograd and its environs until further notice, with the right to freely choose a place of residence within the Vologda, Vyatka and Perm governorates ...

All the aforementioned persons are obliged to come to the Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Speculation (Gorokhovaya, 2) within three days from the date of publication of this resolution to obtain passing certificates at the points of their permanent residence chosen and leave for their destination on time, appointed by the Extraordinary Commission to Combat counterrevolution and speculation ...

Three great princes left Petersburg. But the emperor’s brother Grand Duke Mikhail was killed on June 13, 1918 near Perm. After that, the central and local authorities officially spread misinformation about his “escape” and tightened the conditions of princes ^[2] : “Vologda. July 1, PTA. The great princes were arrested: Nikolai Mikhailovich, George Mikhailovich and Dmitry Konstantinovich. ”

First they were placed in the Vologda Prison, and after three weeks the Petrograd Cheka was transported to the House of Preliminary Detention of Petrograd, then to the Peter and Paul Fortress. The prisoners were also transferred to the position of Grand Duke Pavel Alexandrovich and Prince of Imperial Blood Gabriel Konstantinovich who remained in Petrograd ^[2] .

Prince Gavriil Konstantinovich, who escaped a common fate, was arrested on August 15, 1918 and spent about a month in prison. His newlywed morganatic wife Antonina Nesterovskaya (former ballerina), referring to his tuberculosis and turning to Maxim Gorky , developed a frenzied activity and achieved his release. Soon they received permission to leave and left for Finland, and then to France. His siblings John , Igor , Konstantin , however, were shot near Alapaevsk ( Alapaevsk martyrs ).

Maxim Gorky also asked for pardon from Lenin for Nikolai Mikhailovich, who was deeply respected even on the Bolshevik tops for his valuable historical works and the well-known advanced way of thinking. “The revolution does not need historians,” according to legend, Lenin answered ^[3] . At a meeting of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR, chaired by Lenin on January 16, 1919, the petition of the Russian Academy of Sciences for the release of Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich as a famous historian and scientist was considered. As a result, a decision was taken by the Council of People's Commissars: "Request the Petrograd Cheka and Comrade Eliava and postpone the resolution of this question until an answer is received if Comrade Lunacharsky does not provide exhaustive data until then." The question was no longer discussed, but in the same case there is an answer from the Petrograd Cheka: “(...) The Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Speculation under the Council of Commons of the Northern Region believes that no exception should be made for b. Grand Duke N. M. Romanov ” ^[2] .

Hostages

After the attempt on Lenin and the assassination of Moses Uritsky (August 30, 1918), red terror was declared. Many newspapers reported ^[2] :

Petrograd. 6 September. The "Northern Commune" published the first list of hostages who will be shot if one of the Soviet workers is killed. The list begins with the names of the former Grand Dukes: Dmitry Konstantinovich, Nikolai Mikhailovich, George Mikhailovich, Pavel Alexandrovich ...

As a result, the emperor’s relatives were executed as hostages. Authorities subsequently stated that their execution was a response to the assassination of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in Germany (although the decision to execute was made on January 9, 1919, and Luxembourg and Liebknet were only killed on January 15).

Execution

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  Peters

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  Lacis

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  Xenophon

On January 9, 1919, the Presidium of the Cheka (the meeting was attended by J. Kh. Peters , M. I. Latsis , I. K. Ksenofontov and Secretary O. Y. Murnek) issued a decision ^{[4] [2]} : “A sentence of the Cheka to persons , the former imperial pack - to approve, having reported this to the CEC. "

A certain detachment was commanded by a certain Gordienko, - according to the Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich , two of whose brothers died then ^[3] - a prison guard, who had received valuable gifts from His Majesty’s Cabinet at one time.

The widow of Grand Duke Pavel Alexandrovich , Princess Olga Paley , wrote ^[5] :

One old prison servant who saw the execution said ... On Wednesday, Paul, one, was brought to Gorokhovaya and held until ten in the evening. Then they announced that they were taking away without things. With Gorokhovoy brought to Petropavlovka. Three other great princes were brought from Shpalernaya . All were taken together to the prison of the Trubetskoy bastion . At three nights, soldiers, named Blagovidov and Solovyov, led them naked to the waist and led them to the territory of the Mint , where a common grave was dug at the fortress wall opposite the cathedral, where thirteen corpses already lay. They put the princes on the edge and opened fire on them.

The announcement of the execution of the Grand Dukes was published on January 31, 1919 in Petrograd Pravda ^[5] without indicating the reasons for the execution, the place and date. Subsequently, this massacre was explained as a response to the murder in Berlin of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg ^[6] .

Alexander Mikhailovich writes: “According to the Soviet newspapers, Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich kept his beloved Persian cat on his lap until the last minute. Dmitry Konstantinovich, a deeply religious man, prayed aloud for the salvation of the souls of his executioners ” ^[3] .

Burial place

Researchers specify that the execution site mentioned by Olga Paley is not the zone of the modern complex of buildings of the Mint inside the fortress, but the territory of the buildings located behind its fence at the Kronverksky training ground, near Golovkin’s bastion ^[5] . Gabriel Konstantinovich confirms the burial in the yard ^[7] .

The victims were probably buried at the place of execution in a mass grave. There is evidence of contemporaries that seventeen bodies were buried “against the wall” , including four grand dukes ^[6] .

In any case, the deceased Romanovs were buried in the immediate vicinity of the main Romanov tomb in the Peter and Paul Cathedral .

In March 2009, the Museum of the History of St. Petersburg (Peter and Paul Fortress) made a request to the Office of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation for St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region for information about the execution of the Grand Dukes on January 30, 1919. On April 14, 2009, a response was received about the absence of data on the place of their execution and burial in the archive of the Office ^[8] .

The full version of the memoirs of Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich describes a scene in a Parisian cafe, whose visitors read the news about the execution.

An open protest against the judicial execution could be heard even in Soviet Russia. One of the leaders of the Mensheviks, Yu. Martov, published on February 6, 1919, the article “Shame on you!” In the Petrograd newspaper of the Left Social Revolutionaries, “Always Ahead!”, Dedicated to the execution of the great princes. Martov wrote in it that the execution of the grand dukes was yet another manifestation of the senseless cruelty of the bloody regime of the Bolsheviks and that such reckless executions only harm the cause of the revolution, especially in the international arena. Recalling that they executed the grand dukes under the guise of socialist slogans, Martov wrote that for a true socialist, the life of each of the grand dukes is no less inviolable than the life of any other citizen, and called the execution itself “infamy” ^[9] .

The Grand Dukes George Mikhailovich, Dmitry Konstantinovich and Pavel Alexandrovich were canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad in the host of the New Martyrs of Russia on November 1, 1981. The memory of the Cathedral of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia is celebrated on the last Sunday of January ^[10] . Like other fallen princes, canonized by the ROCOR (except the royal family and Elizabeth Fedorovna), the ROC is not recognized.

In 1998, the senior criminal prosecutor of the Main Investigative Directorate of the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation, the senior adviser of justice V.N. Solovyev, examined the materials of criminal case No. 18 / 123666-93 “On clarifying the circumstances of the death of members of the Russian Imperial House and their entourage in the period 1918 -1919 years ”, instituted on August 19, 1993, clause 10.3 (“ The execution of the Grand Dukes in Petrograd in January 1919 ”), concluded:“ It was not possible to establish details of the execution during the investigation. No accusations of committing unlawful acts were indicated against these persons ” ^[2] .

In 1996, representatives of the St. Petersburg Memorial Society contacted the St. Petersburg prosecutor’s office with a letter: “In accordance with Art. 6 of the Law on Rehabilitation, we ask you to rehabilitate those who were repressed for political reasons (shot in January 1919 in the Peter and Paul Fortress) of the Grand Dukes: Romanov Georgy Mikhailovich, Romanov Nikolai Mikhailovich, Romanov Dmitry Konstantinovich and Romanov Pavel Alexandrovich. "

They were rehabilitated by a resolution of the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation on June 9, 1999 ^{[11] by the} federal law “On the rehabilitation of victims of political repressions” ^[12] - the first of the Romanovs killed, formerly the royal family and Alapaev’s victims. "Conclusion on the materials of the criminal case arch. No. 13-1100-97 ”stated that the Romanovs Nikolai Mikhailovich, Dmitry Konstantinovich, Georgy Mikhailovich and Pavel Aleksandrovich are subject to Article. 1.3, paragraph "b" of the Law of the Russian Federation "On the rehabilitation of victims of political repression." Rehabilitation certificates were issued to G. Yu. Lukyanov, representing by proxy EIV the Grand Duchess Leonid Georgievna Romanov ^[13] .

In 1994, in response to a request from SIC “Memorial”, the deputy head of the FSK Directorate for St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region, V. L. Shultz, responded: “With information about the places of executions and burials of citizens sentenced to the VMN from 1917 to 1937, the Directorate doesn’t have it ” ^[6] .

On December 20, 2009, workers in the excavation for the construction of a parking lot near the Golovkin Bastion discovered human remains. Over the next week, 17 skulls with holes in the occipital part were removed from the ground. Archaeologists at the Institute of the History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences, headed by Vladimir Kildishevsky, a senior researcher at the IIMK, suggested that in this mass grave were not cadets and junior officers, but “older and not quite ordinary people”. Commentary by the director of the Museum of the History of St. Petersburg located in the fortress, Alexander Kolyakin, said that on the territory of the fortress, which served as the place of execution for the Bolsheviks, such remains are regularly found. As of 2010: “The human remains that have been found have not yet been submitted for examination to the Investigative Committee. As explained in the press service of the museum, the finds are just “preparing for the transfer” ” ^[5] .

The investigative department of the UPC at the Russian Prosecutor's Office in St. Petersburg refused to initiate criminal proceedings on the discovery of the remains of allegedly 17 people, among whom may be the remains of the Grand Dukes of the Romanovs, during excavation work on the territory of the Peter and Paul Fortress on the eve of the New Year "due to the absence of a crime event" . The bureau of forensic medical examination agreed to do research - under the guidance of the famous St. Petersburg forensic expert Vyacheslav Popov, who at one time was involved in the examination of the remains of Nicholas II and his family. Bullets, cartridges, gold jewelry, fragments of clothing found by archaeologists in the excavation site were not claimed by the investigators and are still stored in the museum ^[8] .

The writer Daniil Granin turned to Governor Valentin Matvienko with a proposal to erect a memorial sign on the site of the mass grave on Zayachy Island about the tragic events of those years - “a small wooden cross by the outer wall from the Kronverksky duct, away from the main tourist routes”, to which he was refused ^[5] .

In 2004, a memorial plaque was erected in the Grand Duke's Tomb adjacent to the Peter and Paul Cathedral, with the names of four grand dukes who were shot in the Peter and Paul Fortress in January 1919 ^[6] .

• Red Terror in Petrograd / Comp., Foreword. and comment. S.V. Volkova . - Ed. 1st. - M .: Iris Press, 2011 .-- 512 p. - (White Russia). - 3000 copies. - ISBN 978-5-8112-4336-5 .