Grand Duke Dimitri Constantinovich of Russia - Internal Exile

Internal Exile

After the successful Bolshevik coup of November 1917, the Petrograd newspapers published a decree summoning all the Romanovs to report to the dreaded Cheka, the secret police. Initially they were just required not to leave the city. In March 1918 the Romanovs registered were summoned again now to be sent away. Dimitri went accompanied by Colonel Alexander Korochenzov, his adjutant and his niece princess Tatiana Bagration-Mukhransky, who insisted in going with him to ensure that he was not alone and subjected to unwanted pressure.

The Bolshevik leaders of Petrograd, Grigory Zinoviev and Moisei Uritsky, decided to send the male members of the Romanov family into internal Russian exile. Fearing the eventual occupation of Petrograd by the Germans, they moved the capital to Moscow. Dimitri was offered a choice for exile: Vologda, Olonets, or Vyatka. He chose Vologda, the closest city to the former Imperial Capital. On 18 April, Dimitri carrying a suitcase and in the company of his niece, princess Tatiana; her two children; the nanny and his Adjutant Colonel Korochentzov, boarded a train and left Petrograd for exile.

In Vologda, Dimitri Constantinovich took two rooms in a house owned by a local merchant, just opposite the river. He lived in one room with Colonel Korochentzov, while Tatiana and the children occupied the other. They were not registered in their movement, and were able to walk about town at will. Shortly after they arrival, they learned that Grand Dukes Nicholas and George Mikhailovich had also been exiled to the town. The prisoners enjoyed relative freedom; a side from having to report to Cheka Headquarters once a week, they could come and go as they wished, and took long walks around the town, visiting and dining with each other frequently. In the middle of May, Colonel Alexander von Leiming, one of Dimitri Cosntantinovich’s Adjutants, arrived in Vologda with news that passage had been prepared to Finland, but the grand duke refused to leave Russia

This quiet and uncertain situation was abruptly interrupted on 14 July, two days before the murder of Nicholas II and his family. That morning a car with four heavily armed men arrived and collected the Grand Dukes from their lodgings; they were transported to a small, walled village, where they could be more easily guarded. Grand Duke George wrote to his wife in England, “We were each given a cell, and later on were joined by Dimitri. I saw him arriving through the iron bars of my window, and was struck by his sad expression. The first twenty-four hours were hard, but after that, they luckily allowed us to have our camp beds and also our clothes. There is no one in the prison but we three”. They were guarded, by soldiers from the Baltic provinces. “They treat us like comrades, and have not locked our cells after the second day, while they allow us to walk in the small garden in the courtyard. Our food is brought from outside”. While imprisoned, they learned that Nicholas II and his family had been killed; this seemed to indicate the worst and princess Tatiana left Vologda with her two young children to return to Petrograd. Then on 21 July, all of the exile Grand Dukes in Vologda where again transferred back to Petrograd. In the former Imperial capital, the men were quickly imprisoned with six other detainees in a cell at Cheka Headquarters.