Last Years
In January 1905 a wave of strikes broke out in St. Petersburg. On January 4/22 a peaceful procession of workers lead by a priest, Father Georgy Gapon, marched towards the Winter Palace from different points in the city hoping to present request for reforms directly to Emperor Nicholas II. The Tsar, however, was not in the capital. General Fullon, St Petersburg Governor, tried to stop the march. When a large group of workers reached Winter Palace Square, troops acting on direct orders from Guards Commander Prince Vasilchikov opened fire upon the demonstrators. More than 100 marchers were killed and several hundred were wounded. Although Grand Duke Vladimir claimed no direct responsibility about that tragedy, since he was also away from the city, his reputation was tarnished. The massacre, known as Bloody Sunday, was followed by a series of strikes in other cities, peasant uprisings in the country, and mutinies in the armed forces, which seriously threatened the tsarist regime and became known as the Revolution of 1905. A month after Bloody Sunday, Vladimir's brother Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich was killed by a terrorist bomb in Moscow.
In October that same year, Vladimir's eldest son and heir Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich of Russia married his first cousin Victoria Melita of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, daughter of Vladimir's sister Maria. This marriage was disapproved by Nicholas II and Kirill was stripped of his imperial titles and sent to exile. Vladimir protested the treatment given to his son and resigned from all his posts in a strife with the Emperor. Although eventually Nicholas II relented and forgave his cousins for marrying without his consent, he did not allow them to return to Russia. The full pardon came only after several deaths in the family, including Vladimir's own, put Kirill third in the line of succession to the Imperial Throne. Grand Duke Vladimir died suddenly on 4/ 17 February 1909 after suffering a major cerebral hemorrhage.
Vladimir's widow and their four children survived the Russian Revolution of 1917. In 1924 in exile, Kirill proclaimed himself Emperor. Vladimir's line has thus received the headship of the Imperial House. Vladimir was the paternal grandfather and namesake of the future pretender claimant Grand Duke Vladimir of Russia, born 1917. Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich's great granddaughter, Grand Duchess Maria Valdimirovna, is the current claimant.
Read more about this topic: Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich Of Russia
Famous quotes containing the word years:
“Adolescents are travelers, far from home with no native land, neither children nor adults. They are jet-setters who fly from one country to another with amazing speed. Sometimes they are four years old, an hour later they are twenty-five. They don’t really fit anywhere. There’s a yearning for place, a search for solid ground.”
—Mary Pipher (20th century)
“My dear Kafka,
When you’ve had five years of it, not five months,
Five years of an irresistible force meeting an immoveable object right in your belly,
Then you’ll know about depression.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)