PHOTO: a number of those who survived the Ekaterinburg massacre are depicted in this photo taken at Tsarskoye Selo in 1916, including Terentiy Chemodurov (2nd from left, back row); Pierre Gilliard (2nd from right, back row: Charles Sydney Gibbes (far right, back row); and Alexandra Tegleva (3rd from left, front row and seated next to Tsesarevich Alexei Nikolaevich)

Following the transfer of the Imperial Family to Ekaterinburg in the Spring of 1918, the remaining servants and retainers living in the Kornilov House in Tobolsk were free to leave. A number of them, however, wanted to make the journey to Ekaterinburg with the hope of reuniting with the Tsar and his family. Their captives warned them that any one who went with the former Tsar and his family to Ekaterinburg would remain at liberty, at worse, they would not even be permitted to live in the same house with the Imperial Family but tossed in the local jail.

Despite the warning, a number of faithful retainers made the journey to the Ural capital, and, sure enough were imprisoned and later murdered by the Bolsheviks. Among them were Prince Vasily Dolgorukov, Ilya Tatishchev, Ekaterina Schneider, Anastasia Hendrikova, Klimenty Nagorny and Ivan Sednev. 

In addition, let us not forget the four faithful retainers, who remained with the Imperial family who followed the Imperial Family to their deaths in the Ipatiev House, on 17th July 1918: Dr. Eugene Botkin (1865-1918), the maid Anna Demidova (1878-1918), the cook Ivan Kharitonov (1872-1918), and the valet Aloysius Trupp (1856-1918).

As foreign nationals, the Swiss tutor Pierre Gilliard, along with his Russian born wife and nursemaid to the Tsar’s children Alexandra Tegleva and the English language tutor Sydney Gibbes were set free. So were a number of others with no explanation and amid rumours that they had abandoned the Imperial Family, sold a few secrets and begged for their lives.

The Empress’s Lady-in-Waiting Baroness Sophie Buxhoeveden attributed her unexpected release by the Bolsheviks to her “foreign” surname – it was Danish by origin – however, the even more foreign name of “Catherine Schneider” did not prevent the poor woman from being shot.

It was nothing short of a miracle that Nicholas II’s valet Terentiy Ivanovich Chemodurov; Assistant cook Leonid Ivanovich Sednev – not to be confused with his uncle with his uncle Ivan Dmitrievich Sednev – and the valet Alexei Andreyevich Volkov managed to escape from being shot by the Bolsheviks.

These men and women must never be forgotten for remaining faithful to Emperor Nicholas II and his family. Below, is a brief summary of each of them, and their respective fates following the regicide in Ekaterinburg:

Pierre Gilliard (1879-1962)

Pierre Gilliard was a Swiss academic who initially came to Russia in 1904 as a French tutor to the family of Duke George of Leuchtenberg, a cousin of the Romanov family. From 1905 to 1918 he served as the French language tutor to the children of Emperor Nicholas II.

He grew fond of the Tsar and family and followed them into exile to Tobolsk, Siberia, following the October 1917 Revolution. The Bolsheviks prevented Gilliard from joining his pupils when they were moved to the Ipatiev House in Ekaterinburg in May 1918.

Gilliard remained in Siberia after the murders of the family, for a time assisting White Movement investigator Nicholas Sokolov. In 1919, he married Alexandra Alexandrovna Tegleva, who had served as a nursemaid to the Tsar’s children.

Gilliard and Tegleva fled Bolshevik Russia in early November 1919, arriving in Vladivostok in early April 1920. They then travelled on an American ship to San Francisco, and from there travelled by ship along the Pacific coast, through the Panama Canal, across the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea to Trieste. From here, they travelled through Italy to Switzerland, and in August 1920 they reached his parents’ home in Fiez, which Gilliard had left 16 years before.

He became a French professor at the University of Lausanne and was awarded the French Legion of Honour. In 1921, he published a book entitled Thirteen Years at the Russian Court, which described the last days of the Tsar and his family, and the subsequent investigation into their deaths.

In 1958, Gilliard was severely injured in a car accident in Lausanne. He never fully recovered and died four years later on 30 May 1962.

Alexandra Alexandrovna Tegleva (1884-1955)

Alexandra Alexandrovna Tegleva was a Russian noblewoman who was educated at the Smolny Institute of Noble Maidens in St Petersburg. Tegleva served as a nursemaid and governess to Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia Nikolaevna, and Tsesarevich Alexei Nikolaevich. While many of the attendants in the service of the Empress spoke English, Tegleva was instructed to speak Russian with the children.

Following the Imperial Family’s house arrest in 1917, she lived with the family in the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoye Selo. In August of that year, she followed them into exile in Tobolsk, but was ultimately prevented from staying with them during their house arrest in Ekaterinburg. Tegleva was detained with Pierre Gilliard, Charles Sydney Gibbes, and Baroness Sophie Buxhoeveden in a separate residence from the imperial family in Yekaterinburg. She was almost killed by the Bolsheviks in Tyumen but was freed by the White Army.

In exile in Switzerland, Tegleva worked with her husband to investigate and debunk the claims made by Anna Anderson, a Romanov impostor who pretended to be Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna. Following two personal meetings with Anderson, Tegleva and her husband believed Anderson to be a fraud.

Alexandra Alexandrovna Tegleva died in Switzerland on 21 March 1955.

Charles Sydney Gibbes (1876-1963)

In 1901 Charles Sydney Gibbes travelled from England to St Petersburg, as tutor to the Shidlovsky family and then the Soukanoff family. By 1907 he was qualified as vice-president and committee member of the St Petersburg Guild of English Teachers. He came to the attention of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna and in 1908 was invited as a tutor to improve the English accents of the Grand Duchesses Olga and Tatiana; and subsequently Maria and Anastasia. In 1913 he became tutor to Tsesarevich Alexei.

Gibbes voluntarily followed the Imperial Family into exle, arriving in Tobolsk in October 1917, shortly before the Provisional Government fell to the Bolsheviks. In May 1918 the Imperial family was moved to the Ipatiev House in Ekaterinburg, and neither Gibbes, nor most other servants were allowed to enter. A number of servants stayed in the railway carriage which had brought them to the city.

After the fall of Ekaterinburg to the White Army on 25th July. Gibbes and Gilliard were early visitors to the scene of the regicide at the Ipatiev House and were both involved in the subsequent enquiries carried out by Ivan Alexandrovich Sergeiev and later by Nicholas Alexievich Sokolov.

In January 1919, he retreated eastwards as Siberia was captured by the Red Army. In Harbin, China on 25th April 1934 he was received into the Orthodox church by Archbishop Nestor (Anisimov) of Kamchatka and Petropavlovsk who was there in exile. Gibbes took the baptismal name of Alexei in honour of the former Tsesarevich. He was tonsured a monk on 15th December, ordained deacon on 19th December and priest on 23rd December, taking the name Nicholas in honour of the former Tsar. In March 1935 he became an Abbot. He again returned to England in 1937 and was established in a parish in London.

At the time of the Blitz he moved to Oxford where in 1941 he established an Orthodox chapel in Bartlemas. In 1949 he bought a house at 4 Marston Street, subsequently known as the Saint Nicholas House.

Gibbes died at St Pancras Hospital, London, on 24 March 1963. His open coffin was displayed in the cellar (or crypt) of Saint Nicholas House before his funeral. He is buried in Headington cemetery, Oxford, Oxfordshire, England.

Terenty Ivanovich Chemodurov (1849-1919)

From 1891 to 1908, Terenty Ivanovich Chemodurov served in the Guards Crew. On 14th (O.S. 1st) December 1908, he was appointed personal valet to Emperor Nicholas II. He resided in the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoye Selo, where he received an annual salary of 360 rubles, as well as room and board.

In August 1917 he voluntarily followed the Imperial Family into exile, first to Tobolsk and then to Ekaterinburg. He lived in the Ipatiev House until 24th May (O.S. 11th) 1918, from where he was removed due to illness and transferred to a prison hospital in Ekaterinburg. He was replaced by the footman Alexei Troupe. Nicholas II wrote in his diary that day: “I decided to let my old man Chemadurov go for a rest and take on Troupe during his absence.”

Despite the fact that the Tsar released Chemodurov from service, the local Soviet authorities arrested him. As it turned out, the person in the next cell turned out to be another servant – Alexei Andreevich Volkov – the valet of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna.

It is believed while that in prison he was forgotten by the Chekists and on 25th July 1918, he was released by the Czechoslovaks who occupied Ekaterinburg. In 1919, he was involved as a witness in the case of the murder of the Imperial Family.

Chemodurov himself explained his salvation from execution by a miracle – according to him, a list of persons to be shot was sent to the prison. The list was large and did not fit on one page, which is why Chemodurov’s surname was written on the back of the sheet. Due to the negligence of the prison authorities, who failed to check the additional inscriptions on the back of the page, Chemodurov was not summoned from his cell to be shot. He was subsequently rescued from prison by the Czechs, who liberated Ekaterinburg from the Red Army.

In exile, Chemodurov spoke of the Emperor in the following way: “During my almost 10-year service under the Sovereign, I had opportunity to study his habits and inclinations in his private life, and in good conscience I can say that the Tsar was an excellent family man.” With regard to the last days of the Imperial Family, Chemodurov said: “He [the Tsar] seemed to be petrified but did not betray his fears, the Empress, however, suffered and prayed fervently”.

Leonid Ivanovich Sednev (1903-1941)

Leonid Ivanovich Sednev was a chef’s assistant who, together with his uncle Ivan Dmitriyevich Sednev, served Emperor Nicholas II and his family during their exile in Tobolsk and Ekaterinburg from 1917 to 1918.

Six hours before the Imperial family and their four retainers were murdered in the cellar of the Ipatiev House on the night of 16/17 July 1918, Sednev was taken to a neighboring house, where he was held until 20th July. Officials from the Ural Regional Soviet then shipped him off to live with relatives in Kaluga.

In her final diary entry on 16th July 1918, Empress Alexandra Fedorovna noted: “… Suddenly Lenka [Leonid’s nackname] Sednev was fetched to go and see his uncle and flew off – wonder whether it’s true and we shall see the boy back again! …”

There are conflicting accounts of his ultimate fate; according to one report, he was shot in 1929 in Yaroslavl on charges of participating in a counter-revolutionary conspiracy, while other evidence suggests that he was killed during the Battle of Moscow in 1941; however, according to the obd-memorial.ru (CAMO) web site, he was executed on the verdict of the tribunal of the Bryansk Front for an unspecified crime on 17 July 1942, exactly 24 years to the day the Tsar and his family were murdered.

In 2004, author Robert Alexander wrote The Kitchen Boy, an historical novel which recreates the final days of the Tsar and his family as seen through the eyes of Leonid Sednev.

Alexei Andreyevich Volkov (1859-1929)

As a young man, Alexei Andreyevich Volkov entered the Russian Imperial Army and rose through the ranks. He was on guard and witnessed the assassination of Emperor Alexander II in 1881. Later he served as a military instructor to the future emperor Nicholas II. From 1886, he was in service to Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich. In 1910 he was appointed valet at the court of Nicholas II. In addition, he was Empress Alexandra Feodorovna’s personal servant and often pushed her wheelchair.

In August 1917, Volkov followed the Tsar and his family into exile to Tobolsk, but was later separated from them at Ekaterinburg and imprisoned at Perm. There, he heard that the Emperor had been murdered by the Bolsheviks, though he was unaware that the Empress and their children had also been shot.

On 4th September 1918, he was taken from his prison cell in the middle of the night and led to the prison office, where he saw lady-in-waiting Anastasia Hendrikova and the elderly tutor Catherine Schneider. They were joined by eight other prisoners, and an escort of twenty-two guards.

Volkov asked a guard where they were being taken and was told they were being taken “to the house of arrest.” Hendrikova, who had been in the washroom, asked a guard the same question when she came out. She was told they were being taken “to the central prison.” Hendrikova asked him, “and from there?” The guard replied, “Well! to Moscow.” Hendrikova repeated this conversation to her fellow prisoners and made the sign of the cross with her fingers. Volkov took her gesture to mean “they will not shoot us.”

The prisoners were lined up in the street in rows of two, the men in front and the women in back. The group walked all the way to the edge of town and onto the Simbirsk road. Volkov asked another prisoner where the central prison was and was told they had long passed it. Volkov realized they were being taken into the woods to be shot. He broke from the group and ran for his life at the first opportunity. A bullet whizzed past his ear. Behind him he heard gunshots as the other prisoners in the group were shot and killed.

Volkov eventually joined other refugees at the White Army headquarters in Omsk and made his escape from Russia through Vladivostok and the Far East. In 1922, he settled in Estonia. He later lived in Denmark, where he was highly respected in the émigré community because of his lifelong loyalty to the Tsar and his family.

During his years in exile, he wrote his memoirs about his time at the Court of Nicholas II and his escape. These include his experience of events such as the Khodynka Tragedy.

Alexei Andreevich Volkov died on 27th February 1929, in Yuryev (Tartu), Estonia.

Baroness Sophie Buxhoeveden (1883-1956)

Sophie Freiin von Buxhoeveden, also known as Baroness Sophie Buxdoeveden, was the daughter of Baron Karlos Matthias Konstantin Ludwig Otto von Buxhoeveden (1856-1935), the Russian minister in Copenhagen, Denmark during World War I.

In her youth, Sophie was a part of the social life of St. Petersburg. In 1904, she was chosen as an honorary Lady in Waiting to Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, and became an official Lady in Waiting in 1913. She often accompanied the Empress and her four daughters to official duties.

She followed the Imperial Family into exile to Tobolsk. After being refused permission to join the Imperial family in the Ipatiev house, Sophie, along with the foreign tutors, tried to find a way to help the family.

Sophie spent many months on the run across Siberia, with other members of the Imperial household. She was only allowed safe passage out of Russia when she made it to Omsk, with the help of the British military, namely General Alfred Knox, who got her safe passage on a military train.

In exile, Buxhoeveden lived first in Copenhagen with her father, then at Hemmelmark in northern Germany, before finally settling in England, where she faithfully served as lady-in-waiting to Empress Alexandra Feodorovna’s older sister Victoria, Marchioness of Milford Haven.

During her years in exile, the Baroness wrote three books that are considered to give one of the best accounts of the Romanov family’s life and final days. They were Life and Tragedy of Alexandra Feodorovna (1928); Left Behind: Fourteen Months in Siberia During the Revolution (1929); and Before the Storm (1938).

Baroness Sophie Buxhoeveden died in England on 26 November 1956, in grace and favor rooms granted to her by th the Queen.

Joy – Tsesarevich Alexei’s spaniel

The faithful canine companion to Tsesarevich Alexei Nikolaevich was the only member of the Imperial Family who survived the massacre which took place in the Ipatiev House on the night of 16/17 July 1918.

“The Czechs [Czechoslovak Corps in the Russian Army], seizing Ekaterinburg, found a poor little animal, half-starved, running around the yard of the Ipatiev House. The dog seemed to be looking for his master all the time and his absence made him so sad and depressed that he barely touched his food, even when he was affectionately cared for,” wrote Baroness Sophie Buxhoeveden in her memoirs.

Alexei’s beloved King Charles spaniel Joy was taken by General Mikhail Dieterikhs, head of the White Army investigation into the death of the Tsar and his family. Joy was eventually homed with Colonel Pavel (Paul) Rodzianko, who was serving with the British Expeditionary Force in Siberia.

The British were expelled from Russia by the Bolsheviks and Rodzianko had grown so fond of Joy that he took him back to England.

Joy died at Windsor, however not at the royal court, but at Colonel Rodzianko’s small estate of Sefton Lawn, whose park adjoined the royal park.

“Every time I walk past my garden at Windsor, I think of the little dog’s grave in the bushes with the ironic inscription ‘Here rests Joy’. For me, this little stone marks the end of the empire and way of life,” Pavel Rodzianko wrote in Tattered Banners.

Sadly, both the garden and Joy’s modest grave is now believed to have been concreted over as a car park. 

© Paul Gilbert. 14 June 2023