The Last Tsar: Emperor Michael II

weeks, in time for his twenty-first birthday.

Having waved them goodbye, Natasha was playing bezique that afternoon with friends when the telephone rang in the hallway of her rented apartment at 5 rue Copernic, off the Place Victor Hugo. The Chrysler had skidded on the road near Sens, and crashed into a tree. The Dutch boy, who had been at the wheel, was killed; George was in hospital; both thighs were broken and he had severe internal injuries.

Distraught, Natasha took the first train southwards, arriving at the hospital in Sens just before midnight. She sat by his bedside all night, but there was no hope for him. George died without recovering consciousness at 11.30 a.m. on Tuesday, July 21, 1931. His body was brought back to Paris and buried in the fashionable cemetery at Passy, near the Trocadero. Hundreds attended the funeral, with Dimitri heading the procession behind the coffin, followed by a black-veiled Natasha.²³

Natasha had bought two plots lying side by side at Passy, George was laid in one; the other she reserved for herself but not as the princess she had been styled three years earlier. On the cemetery receipt the name she gave was simply Mme De Brassow. So much for her view of Emperor Kirill.

THERE would be little left for Natasha after that. ‘Oh Misha! Oh, Georgie!’ she would weep in private. At 51 she was still beautiful though her hair was snow-white, but her life was over. The end would come 20 years later, but even that in itself spoke volumes about its emptiness. Then penniless and living alone in the tiny attic room of an apartment at 11 rue Monsieur on the Left Bank, her landlady threw her out when it was discovered that Natasha had cancer. Taken to the Laenneck, the nearby charity hospital in the rue de Sevres in the 7th arrondissement she died at 3.50 pm on January 23, 1952.²⁴ The only clue to her identity among her pathetic effects was a faded Russian birth certificate dated 71 years earlier and naming her as plain Nathalie Sheremetevskaya — the name duly typed onto her death certificate.

However, as word spread in the dwindling band of Russian emigres in Paris that Princess Brasova had died, they did what they could to give her burial the dignity denied her death. They took her to Passy to lie beside her beloved son George. Their grave is marked by a Russian cross of stone, above a chest- tomb of green-and-black marble, with the simple, gold-lettered inscription: Fils et Epouse de S.A.I. Grand Duc Michel de Russie.

And in far-away Perm they would not forget either. Although Michael’s grave has never been found, a chapel to his memory and honour now stands in the wood where he was murdered, and there is a plaque to him on the wall of the hotel from which he was abducted. And interest increases: in 2010, the then Senator for St Petersburg, Viktor Yevtukhov — promoted deputy Minister of Justice in February 2011 — said: ‘We should know more about this man and remember him, because this memory can give our society the ethical foundation we need’. Better late than never.

Many years ago, in 1927 when he was building a literary reputation in Riga, Vladimir Gushchik, the sometime Bolshevik commissar in Gatchina who had so admired Michael, wrote an epitaph for him in his book Taina Gatchinskogo dvortsa, and it is one which could well stand today:

And now, remembering this man, I wonder how You, Russia, will wash away his innocent blood? Will you ultimately be able to redeem the death of Michael the Last? ²⁵

Romanovs murdered by the Bolsheviks, 1918-1919

June 12/13, 1918, Perm

Grand Duke Michael Aleksandrovich (Emperor Michael II)

July 16/17, 1918, Ekaterinburg

Grand Duke Nicholas Alexandrovich (ex-Emperor Nicholas II)

Grand Duchess Alexandra Fedorov (ex-Empress Alexandra)

Grand Duke Alexis Nikolaeovich, aged 14 (ex-Tsarevich)

Grand Duchess Olga, aged 23

Grand Duchess Tatiana, aged 21

Grand Duchess Marie, aged 19

Grand Duchess Anastasia, aged 17

July 17/18, 1918, Alapaevsk

Grand Duke Serge Mikhailovich, aged 64

Grand Duchess Elizabeth (Ella), aged 54

Prince Ioann Konstantinovich, aged 32

Prince Konstantin Konstaninovich (brother), aged 27

Prince Igor Konstantinovich (brother), aged 24

Prince Vladimir Paley (son, Grand Duke Paul below), aged 21

January 19, 1919, Fortress of SS Peter & Paul

Grand Duke Paul Aleksandrovich, aged 58

Grand Duke Dimitri Konstantinovich, aged 58

Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich (Bimbo), aged 60

Grand Duke George Mikhailovich, aged 55

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

AT the 90th anniversary of Michael’s death in Perm, in June 2008, I went there to join in the ceremonies to mark that day, little knowing what to expect. I was both astonished and delighted at the scale of the events, and by the thousands who turned out to honour his memory. Forgotten? Clearly not in Perm, where he was murdered in 1918 but is still revered by many. It was those three days of marches, of church services, of concerts, and of an academic conference to discuss his life, which seemed its own proof that Michael was dead but not gone. And that the more Russia knows about him, the greater the hope that it can bridge that gap between the Soviet version of history, and the reality. Hence this book.

However, this would not have been possible without the long research that had gone into a prior book, of which I was co-author with my wife Rosemary, Michael & Natasha. And as then, the many people and institutions we thanked deserve thanks again.

In Russia, I remain enormously grateful to all those at the State Archive of the Russian Federation in Moscow who gave us such enormous help over many months — the director, Sergei Mironenko, the deputy director Alya Barkovets, and the historian Vladimir Khrustalev, in particular. As ever, I also remain in the debt of Dr Aschen Mikoyan, of Moscow University, whose grandfather was chairman of the Supreme Soviet, and who spent many months editing some 3,000 pages of letters and documents about Michael. I shall always remember her blurting out — ‘how could we have done this to him!’ — and I know that many other Russians now feel the same. I must also pay tribute to the unfailing ‘detective work’ of Dr Aleksandr Ushakov, who found documents that added considerably to an understanding of Michael and his times, as did Dr Sergei Romanyuk in researching documents in other Moscow archives. The staff at the Russian State Historical Archive in St Petersburg were equally helpful as were those at Gatchina Palace, as well as in the Perm archives.

In England, Richard Davies, archivist at the Leeds Russian Archives at the University of Leeds, is someone to whom I shall ever remain grateful, for his archive possesses a wealth of personal documentation on Michael, generously given to it by Natasha’s grand-daughter by her first marriage, Pauline Gray.