What happened to the Romanovs after the 1917 Revolution?
The first victim
Four days before the execution of the tsar's family, on the night of July 12–13, 1918, the Bolsheviks kidnapped and murdered Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich, the younger brother of Nicholas II. When the emperor abdicated the throne for himself and his young son, Mikhail Alexandrovich was considered the heir to the throne. The Bolsheviks first exiled the Duke to the Ural city of Perm and, later, eliminated him. The details of his death and the location of his remains are still unknown.
The execution of the tsar's family
Undoubtedly, the most notorious crime of the Bolsheviks was the murder of the tsar and his family. After the end of the revolution, Nicholas II was held under guard in his country residence in Tsarskoye Selo. Then, the family was moved to Tobolsk and, from there, to Yekaterinburg. On the night of July 16–17, 1918, Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra Feodorovna, their five children were shot and killed, as well as their accompanying staff, a doctor, a valet, a maid and a cook.
Their remains were secretly buried in a forest on the outskirts of the city. It was only in 1998, after a long investigation, that they were identified and reburied in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg.
The Alapayevsk martyrs
The day after the execution of the tsar's family, the Bolsheviks went after the close relatives of Nicholas II, who had been exiled to Perm in March 1918. On the night of July 18, six grand dukes and duchesses were thrown into a mine shaft near town Alapayevsk and pelted with grenades. Among the victims was Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna, the empress’ sister.
The disappearance of the dukes was explained to the public as a kidnapping. The details were not revealed for many years.
The execution in the Peter and Paul Fortress
Only four Romanovs were officially executed by sentence of the Soviet authorities. In 1919, four grand dukes – all of them grandsons of Nicholas I and close associates of Nicholas II – were shot in the Peter and Paul Fortress in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg). Soviet authorities explained the execution as a response to the murders of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in Germany.
Evacuation by sea
About 50 members of the dynasty survived and most of them left Russia. After the revolution, a civil war broke out in the country and many dukes from the House of Romanov moved south with the army of the monarchists. From Crimea, they (along with many other nobles and officers) managed to flee abroad and settled in France, Great Britain and the United States.
British King George V, a cousin of Nicholas II, sent the battleship HMS ‘Marlborough’, on which, in April 1919, Dowager Empress and mother of Nicholas II, Maria Feodorovna, his sister Xenia and about a dozen other dukes with their wives and children left Russia. Among them was Nicholas II's niece, Xenia, and her husband, Felix Yusupov.
Meanwhile, Nicholas II's other sister, Olga, initially refused to leave with her mother and lived with her family in a southern Cossack village. It was only in 1920 that they emigrated to Denmark.
The Romanovs abroad
Many grand duchesses and princesses from the House of Romanov were already living abroad at the time of the revolution, having married foreign princes and kings. For example, Olga Konstantinovna married the King of Greece and became the grandmother of Prince Philip, who was husband of British Queen Elizabeth II and father of King Charles.
Furthermore, at the time of the revolution, Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich – one of the organizers of Rasputin's murder – was abroad. In 1916, the tsar had sent him on a military mission to Persia. Taking advantage of the revolution, Dmitry left for Europe (where he had an affair with Coco Chanel and introduced her to the tsar's family perfumer, who created Chanel ‘No. 5’ for her).
The struggle for the ‘throne’
In 1924, while in exile, Nicholas II's cousin Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich became the head of the Imperial House by right of succession. And, eventually, he proclaimed himself Emperor Kirill I of all Russia in exile. However, the majority of the exiled Romanovs disagreed with this and two branches emerged, competing for leadership of the dynasty.
The Soviet Romanovs
Only those relatives who bore different surnames had the opportunity to remain in Russia. These were morganatic wives and their children, as well as illegitimate children. Among them were two direct Romanov heirs in the male line. They were the grandchildren of Grand Duke Nikolai Konstantinovich (a cousin of Alexander III), Natalya and Kirill Iskander. They lived their entire lives in the USSR and even participated in World War II on the Soviet side.