Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich of Russia

Grand Duke Dimitri Pavlovich
Grand Duke Dimitri Pavlovich of Russia
Born	(1891-09-18)18 September 1891 Ilinskoye Estate, near Moscow, Russian Empire
Died	5 March 1942(1942-03-05) (aged 50) Davos, Graubünden, Switzerland
Burial	Mainau, Lake Constance, Germany
Spouse	Audrey Emery
Issue	Prince Paul Dimitriievich Romanovsky-Ilyinsky
Names Dmitri Pavlovich Romanov
House	Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov
Father	Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich of Russia
Mother	Princess Alexandra of Greece and Denmark
Religion	Russian Orthodox

Grand Duke Dimitri Pavlovich of Russia (Template:Lang-ru; 18 September 1891 – 5 March 1942) was a son of Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich of Russia, a grandson of Tsar Alexander II of Russia and a first cousin of Tsar Nicholas II.

His early life was marked by the death of his mother and his father's banishment from Russia when he remarried a commoner in 1902. Grand Duke Dimitri and his elder sister Maria, to whom he remained very close throughout his life, were raised in Moscow by their paternal uncle Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich and his wife Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna of Russia, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. His uncle was killed in 1905 and as his aunt entered religious life, Dimitri spent a great deal of his youth in the company of Tsar Nicholas II and his immediate family at the Alexander Palace as they viewed him almost like a foster son.

Grand Duke Dimitri followed a military career, graduating from the Nikolaevskoe Cavalry School. He was commissioned as a cornet in the Horse Guards Regiment. An excellent equestrian, he competed in the Olympics games of 1912 in Stockholm. As a grandson of Tsar Alexander II on the male line, he occupied a prominent position as the Russian Imperial court, but he had little interest in his military career leading instead a fast life. Trough his friendship with Felix Yusupov, he took part in the Assassination of the mystic peasant and faith healer Grigori Rasputin, who was seen to have undue influence on the Tsar and his wife.

Banished to the war front in Persia, this allowed him to escape the Russian Revolution and he emigrated to Westen Europe, first to England and later to Paris where he lived during the 1920s and had a brief but notorious affair with the famous French fashion designer Coco Chanel. He also lived briefly in the United States and in 1926 he married Audrey Emery an American heiress, the couple had a son before divorcing in 1937.

As the youngest Grand Duke to have survived the Russian Revolution, he was a prominent figure of the Russian community in exile, but he was not interested in politics, supporting instead the claim of his first cousin Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich of Russia. By the outbreak of World War II his health was already in decline and he died of tuberculosis in Davos, Switzerland age 50.

Early life

Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, his wife with Grand Duchess Maria Pavlova and Grand Duke Paul with his son Dimitri on his lap

Grand Duke Dmitri was born on 18 September [O.S. 6 September] 1891 at Ilyinskoye, the country estate of his uncle Grand Duke Serge Alexandrovich. He was the second child and only son of Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich and his first wife, Grand Duchess Alexandra Georgievna of Russia, born Princess Alexandra of Greece and Denmark. Dimitri's father, Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich, was the youngest child of Tsar Alexander II of Russia and his first wife, Empress Maria Alexandrovna of Russia, née Duchess Maximilienne Wilhelmine of Hesse and by Rhine. Dimitri's mother, Alexandra, was a daughter of George I of Greece and Olga Konstantinovna of Russia.

Alexandra, was seven months pregnant with Dimitri when, while she was out with friends, she jumped into a boat, falling as she got in. The next day, she collapsed in the middle of a ball from violent labor pains brought on by the previous day's activities; Dimitri was born in the hours following the accident. Alexandra slipped into a coma from which she never emerged. She died of eclampsia six days after Dmitri's birth. Although doctors had no hope for Dimitri's survival, he still lived, with the help of his uncle Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich of Russia, who gave the premature Dmitri the baths that were prescribed by the doctors, wrapped him in cotton wool and kept him in a cradle filled with hot water bottles to keep his temperature regulated, the treatment of the time to keep premature babies alive.

Grand Duke Paul was so distraught by the unexpected death of his young wife that he left for abroad, initially neglected his two small children: Dimitri and his older sister Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna. The children were cared for by Paul's elder brother, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, who had no children of his own. Once he recovered emotionally, Grand Duke Paul settled with his children in his palace in St Petersburg. A commander of the Imperial horse Guards, Grand Duke Paul loved his children, but as was customary at the time, he refrained from showing them spontaneous affection. Dimitri and his sister were raised by governesses and tutors, but they adored their father who visited them twice daily. The children spent Christmases and later some summer holidays with Grand Duke Sergei and his wife Grand Duchess Elisabeth Feodorovna. The couple set aside a playroom and bedrooms for the youngsters at their country home, Ilinskoe.

Formative years

In 1895, Grand Duke Paul began an affair with a married woman, Olga Valerianova Pistolkors. He was able to obtain a divorce for her and he eventually married Olga in 1902, while the couple was staying abroad. As they had married defying Nicholas II's opposition, the Tsar forbade them to return to Russia and Grand Duke Paul was not allowed to take the children with him into exile. Left fatherless, eleven-year-old Dmitri and his twelve-year-old sister were sent to live with their uncle, Grand Duke Sergei, and his wife Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna (the Empress's sister), in Moscow.

The loss of their father and the sudden move to Moscow caused the children great distress. In her memoirs, Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna (the Younger) describes Grand Duke Sergei as a stern disciplinarian, and his wife, Grand Duchess Elizabeth as a cold and unwelcoming presence.

Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich as a teenager.

On 4 February 1905, Grand Duke Sergei, who had recently resigned from the post of Governor General of Moscow, was assassinated by Ivan Kalyaev, a member of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. Kalyaev, armed with a homemade bomb, had aborted his first attempt to kill the Grand Duke when he spotted Dmitri and Marie with their uncle in his carriage. His uncle's death was only one of several assassinations that robbed Dmitri of close family members. After Sergei's death, Grand Duchess Elizabeth undertook to raise her niece and nephew on her own, thus making them part of a rare female-headed household. Maria Pavlovna continued to have some feelings of anger toward her aunt, whom she would blame for her overly hasty marriage to Prince William of Sweden in 1908, but Dmitri formed a very strong bond with Elizabeth and came to admire her personal fortitude.

Maria Pavlovna's wedding to Prince William took place at Tsarskoe Selo in 1908, and then, she had departed for Sweden with her husband. Elizabeth Feodorovna stayed on for time at Alexander Palace in Tsarskoe Selo as guests of the Emperor and the Empress. It was during this period that Dmitri began to form a close bond with Nicholas II, looking upon him as a surrogate father. He would join him on his daily walks and seek to spend as much time with him as possible. Nicholas, in turn, treated Dmitri very kindly. He seems to have loved the young man's free spirit and sense of humor, a welcome diversion from the stresses of his daily life. Dmitri wrote several letters to his sister during his stay with Nicholas and Alexandra, describing how much he was enjoying himself there.

The Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace as seen from Anichkov Bridge.

In 1909, Dmitri left his aunt's care to move to St Petersburg with his head tutor and companion, G.M. Laiming. He lived at his father's vacant palace and then at the Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace, which he had inherited from Grand Duke Sergey and would become his principal residence before the Russian Revolution. He prepared to enter the Nikolaevskoe Cavalry School. Upon graduation, he was commissioned as a cornet in the Horse Guards Regiment, which his father had once commanded and in which he had been enrolled at birth. He is reputed to have been a very good equestrian, and he competed in the 1912 Stockholm Olympics, coming seventh. Before World War I, he instigated the idea of a national Russian sports competition, the very beginning of what under Soviet rule became the Spartakiad.

Killing of Rasputin

A few days before the night of 16/17 December 1916 (OS), Rasputin had been invited to the Moika Palace at a late hour, ostensibly at the request of Felix Yusupov's wife, Princess Irina. In fact, she was in Crimea, staying with her parents-in-law. Yusupov, who had visited Rasputin regularly in the past few months for treatment, went with Stanislaus de Lazovert to Rasputin's apartment in Pavlovich's car. A soundproof room in the basement in the east wing had been specially prepared for the killing. Waiting on another floor were the fellow conspirators: Dmitri, politician Vladimir Purishkevich and army officer Sergei Mikhailovich Sukhotin.

The second bullet came from Vladimir Purishkevich.

"Dmitry received Yusupov's suggestion with alacrity, and alliance was welcomed as indicating that the murder would not be a demonstration against the dynasty." They had planned to burn Rasputin's possessions and call from the train station a popular restaurant to ask if Rasputin was in. After the murder, Sukhotin put on Rasputin’s fur coat, his rubber boots and gloves. He left together with Pavlovich and Lazovert into Purishkevich's car, to make it seem as if Rasputin had left the palace alive. Because Purishkevich's wife had been reluctant to burn the fur coat and the boots in her small fireplace in Purishkevich's ambulance train, the conspirators went back to the palace with the aforementioned items. Having wrapped Rasputin's body in a curtain, the conspirators drove toward Krestovsky Island and, at about 5 a.m., threw the corpse from a bridge into the Malaya Nevka River into a hole they'd made in the ice. They forgot to attach weights so that the body would sink deep, dropped his fur coat over the railing with the chains, and drove back, without noticing one of Rasputin's galoshes was stuck between the piles of the bridge.

His own letters and diary entries, at times written under emotional duress as he relived events that would as always disturb him greatly, support the conventional historical account of the assassination. His final break with Yusupov in London in 1920 is documented in letters exchanged between the two men, none of which have ever been published. The originals are all part of the Ilyinsky family collection, along with Pavlovich's diaries. Pavlovich, who, as an adolescent, had envisioned Nicholas II as a 'man of action' and admired him greatly, was disillusioned by the Tsar's attitude and behavior during the war years. Like many other grand dukes, he had unsuccessfully tried to warn Nicholas of what he saw as Russia's imminent peril. The assassination was, in his conception, a patriotic act and one of desperation, but he almost immediately regretted it and would later describe on several occasions in his letters and diaries the disgust and remorse that he felt about his own involvement in the affair. Yusupov was, in 1920, offered a chance to speak about the assassination on a US lecture tour, the profits from which would go to the Red Cross, and it was his interest in pursuing the tour that proved to be the last straw in his relationship with Pavlovich.

Exile

The direct result of his involvement in the December 1916 assassination was to be exiled to Persia, where he served briefly under General Nikolai Baratov in the Persian city of Kazvin. After the February Revolution, Baratov had to ask Pavlovich to leave since there were rumblings from the lower ranks, and his safety could not be guaranteed. Ronald Wingate entertained Pavlovich when he passed through Najaf. In Tehran, he lived briefly with General Meidel, then the head of the Persian Cossack Division, before being taken in by the British Minister to Tehran, Sir Charles Murray Marling, and his wife, Lucia.

Marling became an important father figure to Pavlovich, and the relationship there established between Pavlovich and the entire Marling family would prove to be a close and enduring one. It was Sir Charles who, by persuading the British Foreign Office in 1918 that Pavlovich would become the next Emperor of Russia, gained his admission to England after many previous rejections.

Dmitri in exile in the 1920s.

He was the only Romanov permitted to live in England, but he moved to Paris after two years. Pavlovich's sister, Marie, had, like many aristocratic Russians in exile, found a niche for herself in the rising Paris fashion industry by founding a business called "Kitmir" that specialized in bead and sequin embroidery and did much work for Chanel. Pavlovich himself found work as a Champagne salesman.

Throughout his life, Pavlovich would always enjoy the companionship of strong-willed and highly intelligent women, both as lovers and as platonic friends. He would often have strong but overlapping relationships, as, for instance, with Natalia Brasova and the ballerina Vera Karalli, both of whom he saw in 1915 and 1916. (He would be reunited with both women in exile and would briefly resume his relationship with Karalli.) His diaries chronicle relationships with many of the most noted women of his day, but the affair for which he was most remembered was with the fashion designer Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel, whom he first met in pre-World War I Paris. Their relationship lasted around a year, beginning in spring 1921 with an off-season stay in Monte Carlo where they tried to live as discreetly as possible since neither was as yet sure where the relationship was going and what the future would hold for Dmitri in particular. Rumours that Pavlovich was bisexual have never been substantiated, and they are firmly contradicted by his own letters and diaries.

In 1926 Pavlovich married an American heiress, Audrey Emery morganatically, and she was granted the title Her Serene Highness, Princess Romanovskaya-Ilyinskaya by his cousin, Grand Duke Cyril. Pavlovich and Audrey were divorced in 1937.

Pavlovich was a noted collector of model trains, and was at one point considered to have had one of the largest collections in Europe. During the Nazi annexation of Paris, Pavlovich's collection vanished, and it has since been theorized that they were seized by Hermann Göring, a model train collector himself.

In the late 1920s, Pavlovich became involved with the Union of Young Russians [Союз Младороссов], who, in 1935, became the Young Russia Party. It was a Russian nationalist group influenced by Italian fascism, formed with the express purpose of establishing a "Soviet monarchy" in Russia. He joined this group as a stand-in for Grand Duke Cyril Vladimirovich, who, as pretender to the throne, could not affiliate himself directly with any political organisation or party. In 1935, Pavlovich gave a series of speeches to Young Russia chapters throughout France. Over the course of the next few years, however, he grew very disillusioned with the group, and he ultimately broke with it entirely. He loathed Hitler and National Socialism, and he spoke out publicly against Hitler in January 1939. Young Russia's founder, a White Russian émigré of Georgian heritage, was arrested by authorities in Vichy but was allowed to emigrate to the US, where he was active in Russian Orthodox Church affairs. After World War II, he returned to Russia. Pavlovich reputedly rebuked later advances from Hitler to lead exiled Russian nobles within the German army against the Bolsheviks with the firm statement that nothing would induce him to fight against fellow Russians.

Death

Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich of Russia with his wife Audrey Emery in the 1920s.

Despite the popular conception of Pavlovich as a frail man who had suffered all his life from chronic tuberculosis, he was for most of his life a very active sportsman, excelling at polo, horse racing, tennis, and bobsledding. His doctors in London and Davos estimated that he first contracted tuberculosis around 1929, which ran a chronic course. He entered the Sanatorium "Schatzalp" on 2 September 1939, the day after the German invasion of Poland, and remarked in a letter to his sister that he had never before spent a single night in any kind of hospital or medical institution. His cause of death remains unknown since there is no cause listed on his death certificate, and all of Schatzalp's medical records were destroyed after the conversion of the sanatorium into a hotel in the 1950s. His son believed he had died of tuberculosis, and his cousin Prince Michael Feodorovich of Russia cited uremia, and his New York Times obituary cited uremia as well. Rumours of murder sprang up locally but have never been substantiated, and there was no police investigation.

He was laid to rest in the Waldfriedhof, Davos. In the late 1950s, his remains were transferred to Mainau, in Lake Constance, where they now lie beside his sister's in the Bernadotte family crypt.

Son

The two had a son, Paul Romanovsky-Ilyinsky, who grew up in France, Britain and the United States; he served as a US Marine in the Korean War. In 1989, he was elected Mayor of Palm Beach, Florida, and thus became the only Romanov descendant known to have held elected public office. Following the fall of communist Russia in 1991, a delegation of Russian royalists approached him and asked him to assume the title of Tsar, which he declined.

Ancestors

Ancestors of Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich of Russia

16. Paul I of Russia 8. Nicholas I of Russia 17. Duchess Sophie Dorothea of Württemburg 4. Alexander II of Russia 18. Frederick William III of Prussia 9. Princess Charlotte of Prussia 19. Duchess Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz 2. Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich of Russia 20. Louis I, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine 10. Louis II, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine 21. Princess Louise of Hesse-Darmstadt 5. Princess Marie of Hesse and by Rhine 22. Charles Louis, Hereditary Prince of Baden 11. Princess Wilhelmine of Baden 23. Landgravine Amalie of Hesse-Darmstadt 1. Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich of Russia 24. Frederick William, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg 12. Christian IX of Denmark 25. Princess Louise Caroline of Hesse-Kassel 6. George I of Greece 26. Landgrave William of Hesse-Kassel 13. Princess Louise of Hesse-Kassel 27. Princess Louise Charlotte of Denmark 3. Princess Alexandra of Greece and Denmark 28. Nicholas I of Russia (= 8) 14. Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich of Russia 29. Princess Charlotte of Prussia (= 9) 7. Grand Duchess Olga Constantinovna of Russia 30. Joseph, Duke of Saxe-Altenburg 15. Princess Alexandra of Saxe-Altenburg 31. Duchess Amelia of Württemberg

Sources

• Perry, John Curtis and Pleshakov, Constantine, The Flight of the Romanovs: A Family Saga. New York, 1999.
• Crawford, Rosemary and Donald, Michael and Natasha. London, 1997.
• Radzinsky, Edvard, Rasputin: The Last Word. London, 2000.
• Youssoupoff, Prince Félix, Mémoires. Paris 1990 (reprint).
• Grand Duchess Marie of Russia (ed Russell Lord), Education of a Princess - a Memoir, 1930, ASIN: B000K5SJJ4
• Grand Duchess Marie of Russia, A Princess in Exile, 1932, ASIN: B000TG41CS
• http://www.tkinter.smig.net/PrincessIleana/ILiveAgain/index.htm
• http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6454/
• The Romanovs: The Final Chapter (Random House, 1995) by Robert K. Massie, pgs 210-212, 213, 217, and 218 ISBN 0-394-58048-6 and ISBN 0-679-43572-7