by Susan Flantzer
© Unofficial Royalty 2019

• Russian Titles and Patronymics

The first husband of Princess Maria of Greece who was the daughter of King George I of Greece, Grand Duke George Mikhailovich of Russia was executed by the Bolsheviks along with his brother Nicholas and two other Russian Grand Dukes. George was born on August 23, 1863, in Bielyi-Kliutsch, in the Tiflis Governorate of the Russian Empire, now in the country of Georgia. He was the third of the six sons and the fourth of the seven children of Grand Duke Michael Nikolaevich of Russia and his wife Grand Duchess Olga Feodorovna, born Princess Cecilie of Baden. George’s paternal grandparents were Nicholas I, Emperor of All Russia and his wife Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, born Princess Charlotte of Prussia, daughter of King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia. His maternal grandparents were Grand Duke Leopold of Baden and Princess Sofia of Sweden, daughter of King Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden.

George had five brothers and one sister:

• Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich of Russia (1859 – 1919), unmarried, killed by the Bolsheviks along with his brother George and two other Grand Dukes
• Grand Duchess Anastasia Mikhailovna of Russia, Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (1860 – 1922), married Grand Duke Friedrich Franz III of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, had one son and two daughters including Queen Alexandrine of Denmark
• Grand Duke Michael Mikhailovich of Russia (1861 – 1929), married Sophie of Merenberg, had one son and two daughters
• Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich of Russia (1866 – 1933), married Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna of Russia, daughter of Alexander III, Emperor of All Russia, had one daughter and six sons
• Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich of Russia (1869 – 1918), unmarried, killed by the Bolsheviks along with Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna and four other Romanovs
• Grand Duke Alexei Mikhailovich of Russia (1875 – 1895), unmarried, died of tuberculosis

George grew up in present-day Georgia where his father was the Governor-General of the Russian provinces of Transcaucasia. Educated by private tutors, George had a Spartan upbringing that included sleeping on army cots and taking cold baths.

While George did have a military career and served as a General in the Russian Army, he was a passionate coin collector. His collections of Russian coins and medals included practically every coin ever used in the Russian Empire and he wrote ten books on coins. One of them, Catalogue of Imperial Russian Coins 1725–1891, was reprinted in the United States in 1976 and is still an important reference for coin collectors. In 1895, George was appointed the curator of the Alexander III Museum, today the Russian Museum in St Petersburg. His knowledge of coins was invaluable in increasing the museum’s coin collection. In 1909, George donated his collection to the museum.

On April 30, 1900, in Corfu, Greece, George married Princess Maria of Greece, the daughter of his first cousin Grand Duchess Olga Konstantinovna of Russia and her husband King George I of Greece, born Prince Vilhelm of Denmark. The couple had two daughters. George’s daughter Princess Xenia married millionaire William Leeds and lived in an estate on Long Island in New York State for years. For a few months in 1927, Xenia took in a woman claiming to be Grand Duchess Anastasia, the youngest daughter of Nicholas II, Emperor of All Russia, later found to be Anna Anderson, an impostor.

• Princess Nina Georgievna of Russia (1901 – 1974), married Prince Paul Chavchavadze, had one son
• Princess Xenia Georgievna of Russia (1903 – 1965), married (1) William Bateman Leeds, Jr., no children, divorced (2) Herman Jud, had one daughter

George and Maria’s marriage was never really happy. Maria was not in love with her husband despite his apparent devotion to her. She had never wanted to leave Greece and soon found excuses to leave Russia and her husband. She spent more time in Greece and elsewhere in Europe, often using her daughters’ health as the reason for her travels. Maria and her two daughters were in England when World War I broke out and chose not to return to Russia. They never saw George again.

In March 1918, all the male members of the Romanov family were ordered to register at Cheka (Soviet secret police) headquarters and then were sent into exile in internal areas of Russia. George was sent to Vologda, a town north of Moscow, with his brother Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich, and their first cousin Grand Duke Dmitri Konstantinovich. They could move freely around town and visit each other.

George’s brother Nicholas, known in the family as Bimbo, was the eldest child in the family.  Although he had a career in the Russian army, his passion, even in childhood, was Russian history. In 1905, Nicholas left the military and pursued his interest in history full-time. Nicholas II, Emperor of All Russia granted him unlimited access to the Romanov Family Archives and Library. Grand Duke Nicholas was the author of many historical books about Alexander I, Emperor of All Russia and the Napoleonic Wars. He was chairman of the Russian Historical Society and headed the Russian Geographical Society and the Society for the Protection and Preservation of Art and Antiquities. In 1915, Moscow University awarded Nicholas an honorary doctorate in Russian history.

However, an incident on June 13, 1918, during the execution of Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich, the brother of Nicholas II, Emperor of All Russia, changed the way the remaining Romanovs were treated. It appeared to his executioners that Michael had been trying to escape after the gun that was intended for him misfired. The incident was used to justify the necessity of keeping all exiled Romanovs under a strict regime of imprisonment.

On July 1, 1918, George, his brother Nicholas, and their cousin Dmitri were arrested in Vologda where they had been exiled. They were sent back to St. Petersburg to the Shpalernaia Prison where they would remain for most of their incarceration. On August 13, 1918, Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich, the youngest of the eight children of Alexander II, Emperor of All Russia and the uncle of Nicholas II, Emperor of All Russia, was arrested and joined the three other Grand Dukes at Shpalernaia Prison in St. Petersburg. The four Grand Dukes were all first cousins as their fathers were all sons of Nicholas I, Emperor of All Russia. Each Grand Duke was held in a cell, only seven feet by three feet. Each day, they were all allowed to gather in the courtyard for exercise and the Grand Dukes could exchange a few words.

Grand Duke George somehow managed to smuggle letters to his wife Maria in England. The last letter was dated November 27, 1918. Maria unsuccessfully tried to buy freedom of her husband and the other three Grand Dukes for fifty thousand pounds through the Danish ambassador in St. Petersburg. Queen Alexandrine of Denmark, a niece of Nicholas and George, tried unsuccessfully to obtain the release of the four Grand Dukes, also through the Danish ambassador’s intervention. On December 6, 1918, Grand Duke Paul’s health, which was already bad, declined sharply, and he was transferred to a prison hospital.

The writer Maxim Gorky had been a supporter of Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks but after seeing the terror of the new regime, he changed his mind. Princess Paley, Grand Duke Paul’s wife, asked Gorky to intercede on behalf of the four Grand Dukes. In January 1919, Gorky went to Lenin to plead the case of the four Grand Dukes. Gorky pleaded the merits of each Grand Duke. When Gorky came to Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich, he said, “Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich is a historian.” Lenin replied, “The Revolution does not need historians.” Gorky did not give up and eventually, Lenin promised to release the four Grand Dukes. Gorky, with the release document signed by Lenin, rushed to the station in Moscow to catch the train to St. Petersburg. When he reached St. Petersburg, Gorky saw the headline in the newspaper, “Four Grand Dukes Shot” and he nearly fainted.

Unlike the execution of Nicholas II and his family and the execution of Elizabeth Feodorovna and the five other Romanovs, there are no written eyewitness accounts of the execution of the four Grand Dukes. What is known is based on versions of second-hand information.

On January 27, 1919, Grand Duke Paul was transferred from the prison hospital to another prison. He was kept there until 10 pm when he was driven to the Peter and Paul Fortress, originally built by Peter the Great to protect his new city of St. Petersburg and the site of the Peter and Paul Cathedral, the burial place of the Romanovs. At 11:30 pm on January 27, 1919, Grand Dukes Dmitri, Nicholas, and George were awakened in their cells at Shpalernaya Prison and were driven to the Peter and Paul Fortress. When Dmitri, Nicholas, and George arrived at the Fortress, they were roughly pushed from the truck into the Trubetskoy Bastion where prisoners arrested by the Bolsheviks were held. The Grand Dukes were told to remove their shirts and coats, despite the frigid January temperature.

Grand Duke Dmitri Konstantinovich, Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich, and Grand Duke George Mikhailovich were escorted toward a ditch in the courtyard. As they passed the Peter and Paul Cathedral where their ancestors were buried, they each made the sign of the cross. Guards appeared carrying Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich on a stretcher. The three Grand Dukes were lined up before the ditch, in which there were already bodies. Nicholas Mikhailovich, who was carrying his cat, handed it to a soldier, asking him to look after it. Grand Duke Paul was shot on his stretcher. Grand Dukes Nicholas, George, and Dmitri were all killed by the same blast, causing them to fall into the ditch.  The four Grand Dukes were the last of the eighteen Romanovs killed as a result of the Russian Revolution.

Most likely, the ditch is the burial place of the four Grand Dukes. In 2004, in the Grand Ducal Burial Mausoleum adjoining the Peter and Paul Cathedral, a commemorative plaque was placed with the names of four Grand Dukes shot nearby in the Peter and Paul Fortress. In 2009, during the construction of a road to a parking lot at the Peter and Paul Fortress, nine unmarked mass graves were discovered and a total of 112 remains were unearthed.  Perhaps eventually the remains of the four Grand Dukes will be identified.

In 1981, Grand Duke Paul, Grand Duke Dmitri, and Grand Duke George were canonized as New-Martyrs of Russia by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia. Grand Duke Nicholas was the only Romanov who had been executed by the Bolsheviks not to be canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia.

• Unofficial Royalty: January 28, 1919 – Execution of Four Grand Dukes

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Works Cited

• Angelfire.com. (2018). ROYAL RUSSIA NEWS. THE ROMANOV DYNASTY & THEIR LEGACY, MONARCHY, HISTORY OF IMPERIAL & HOLY RUSSIA. [online] Available at: http://www.angelfire.com/pa/ImperialRussian/blog/index.blog/1450058/excavations-for-grand-dukes-remains-to-resume-at-peter-and-paul-fortress/.
• En.wikipedia.org. (2018). Grand Duke George Mikhailovich of Russia (1863–1919). [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Duke_George_Mikhailovich_of_Russia_(1863%E2%80%931919).
• Flantzer, Susan. (2019). January 28, 1919 – Execution of Four Russian Grand Dukes. [online] Unofficial Royalty. Available at: https://www.unofficialroyalty.com/execution-of-four-grand-dukes/.
• https://www.unofficialroyalty.com/princess-maria-of-greece/
• Perry, J. and Pleshakov, K. (2008). The flight of the Romanovs. New York: Basic Books.
• Ru.wikipedia.org. (2018). Расстрел великих князей в Петропавловской крепости. [online] Available at: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A0%D0%B0%D1%81%D1%81%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BB_%D0%B2%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B8%D1%85_%D0%BA%D0%BD%D1%8F%D0%B7%D0%B5%D0%B9_%D0%B2_%D0%9F%D0%B5%D1%82%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%BF%D0%B0%D0%B2%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B2%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B9_%D0%BA%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BF%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B8.