Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich of Russia - Aftermath

Aftermath

On 28 September 1918, the White Army captured Alapayevsk, hoping to rescue the prisoners from the school building. Some local peasants directed the investigators of the Romanovs disappearance to the abandoned mine. On 8 October, they began to retrieve the bodies from the shaft. The corpse of Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich was rescued two days later.

Identification of the Romanovs was made based on the clothing worn and by papers found in their pockets. The White Army investigators had no medical or dental records, and eleven weeks in the mine had substantially altered the victim's physical appearance. The autopsy revealed that Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich had a bruise on the left side of his head, but his death had been caused by a gunshot wound to the right side of his head.

Sergei’s relatives received the information gathered about his death. This included the photograph of the bloated corpse. Some time later, Grand Duchess Xenia sent Mathilde Kschessinska the items found on Sergei’s body. There was a gold pendant in the shape of a potato on a gold chain, the emblem of the “Potato club which Tsarevich Nicholas, Sergei, some of his brothers and friends had formed in the days of their youth. There was also a small gold medallion with an emerald in the middle, which had been a present to Sergei from Mathilde many years earlier. It contained her portrait; a ten kopek piece minted in 1869, the year of Sergei’s birth, and was engraved with the words: August 21 Mala – September 25. The significance of the dates is not known.

After the autopsies were performed, the bodies of the Romanovs were washed, dressed in white shrouds, and placed in wooden coffins. There was a funeral service for them on 19 October when the coffins were placed in the crypt of the cathedral of the Holy Trinity in Alapayevsk where they remained until July 1919. Then, as Alapayevsk, was about to be retaken by the Red Army, the coffins were moved to Irkutsk. There the coffins rested for less than six months, before the advance of the Red army forced their removal eastward. Early in 1920, the coffins with the remains of Grand Duke Sergei and those killed with him, were taken out of Russia by train through Harbin. By April 1920 the coffins were in Beijing, where they were placed in the crypt of the chapel attached to the Russian Mission. They remained there until 1957 when they were buried at the Russian Orthodox cemetery as the chapel was demolished. The government of the USSR did not have any interest in the preservation of the Russian cemetery in Beijing and in the late 1980s the Chinese authorities whipped it out converting it in a park. It is believed that the coffins are still in place, now buried beneath a parking area. After the Communist regime collapsed the mineshaft, were the Grand Duke was killed with his relatives, became a site of religious pilgrimage, and an orthodox chapel was built there.