Revolution and Death
Prince John fought in the First World War, was decorated as a war hero, and was at the front when the Russian Revolution of 1917 started. In April 1918 he was exiled to the Urals by the Bolsheviks, and later murdered in July the same year in a mineshaft near Alapaevsk, along with his brothers Prince Constantine Constantinovich and Prince Igor Constantinovich, his cousin Prince Vladimir Pavlovich Paley, and other relatives and friends.
His body was eventually buried in Beijing, in the cemetery of the Russian Orthodox Mission, which was destroyed years later to build a park. His sister Princess Vera Konstantinovna, mother Grand Duchess Elizaveta Mavrikievna and wife Princess Helen Petrovna left Russia in April 1919 with help from the King of Norway. His daughter Princess Catherine Ivanovna, married Ruggero, Marquis Farace di Villaforesta (a descendant of the Medici family of Florence). Catherine lived in Buenos Aires and later in Montevideo, Uruguay where she died in 2007. His sister Princess Vera Konstantinovna, the youngest daughter of Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich, died in New York in 2001, almost 100 years old.
Read more about this topic: Prince John Constantinovich Of Russia
Famous quotes containing the words revolution and/or death:
“There was never a revolution to equal it, and never a city more glorious than Petrograd, and for all that period of my life I lived another and braved the ice of winter and the summer flies in Vyborg while across my adopted country of the past, winds of the revolution blew their flame, and all of us suffered hunger while we drank at the wine of equality.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“Bruno Antony: Tell me, Judge, after you’ve sentenced a man to the chair, isn’t it difficult to go out and eat your dinner after that?
Judge Dolan: When a murderer is caught he must be tried, when he is convicted he must be sentenced, when he is sentenced to death he must be executed.
Bruno Antony: Quite impersonal, isn’t it?
Judge Dolan: So it is. Besides, it doesn’t happen every day.
Bruno Antony: So, few murderers are caught?”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)