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, revolution and/or death:
“People who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive about love and what is positive in the refusal of constraints, such people have a corpse in their mouth.”
—Raoul Vaneigem (b. 1934)
“We live in an era of revolution—the revolution of rising expectations.”
—Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965)
“‘Tis no great valor to perish sword in hand, and bravado on lip; cased all in panoply complete. For even the alligator dies in his mail, and the swordfish never surrenders. To expire, mild-eyed, in one’s bed, transcends the death of Epaminondas.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)