Prince Gabriel Constantinovich of Russia - Captivity

Captivity

After the successful Bolshevik coup of November 1917, the Petrograd newspapers published a decree summoning all male Romanovs to report to the Cheka, the secret police. Initially they were just required not to leave the city. In March 1918 the Romanovs who registered were summoned again, now to be sent away into internal Russian exile. In the spring of 1918, when the Bolsheviks had initially tried to arrest him, Gabriel was suffering from tuberculosis; rather than imprison him, the Bolsheviks allowed him to stay with his wife Antonina at her Petrograd apartment. By the summer of 1918, however, he had recovered, and one day in July, a contingent of armed soldiers arrived at the modest apartment and took him into custody. He was put in Spalernaia prison in a cell adjoining those of his uncle Dimitri Constantinovich and Grand Dukes Nicholas Mikhailovich and George Mikhailovich.

Prince Gabriel, younger and more resilient than his relatives, found prison less of an ordeal, but he was shocked at his uncle's appearance when they were first reunited. Until the last, Gabriel recalled, Dimitri was the cheerful favorite uncle of his childhood, telling him jokes, attempting to raise the spirits, and bribing prison Guards to carry hopeful messages to his nephew's cell. Throughout Gabriel's incarceration Antonina was tireless in her efforts to obtain her husband's release. She finally succeeded with the intervention of Maxim Gorky, who lobbied Lenin on Gabriel's behalf. Gorky's wife was among Antonina's friends. Near the end of 1918, Gabriel was moved to a hospital. Shortly after, Gorky took the couple under his own roof; they lived for a while in his apartment in Petrograd. A few weeks later, again with Gorky's assistance, the Petrograd Soviet gave the couple permission to leave Russia for Finland. They hurriedly left Russia and made their roundabout way to France. The Prince's release came just in time. On the early hours of 28 January 1919, his relatives at Spalernaia prison were executed by firing squad at the walls of the Peter and Paul Fortress.