Vasily Alexandrovich Dolgorukov

Vasily Alexandrovich Dolgorukov was born in 1868 to Prince and Princess Alexander Vasilievich and Mary Sergeyevna Dolgorukov.

Prince Vasily Dolgorukov (right) with Countess Anastasia Hendrikova, Pierre Gilliard, Count Ilya Tatishchev & Catherine Schneider

In 1907 Dolgorukov became an adjutant, in 1910 a General, and in 1914 a commander of the Imperial Guard cavalry regiment, the Life-Guard Horse Artillery unit. During World War I, he was appointed Marshal of the Imperial Court. In this position, he assisted his stepfather, Count Pavel Benckendorff, in giving military advice to the Tsar. Deeply devoted to the Tsar, on August 14, 1917 he voluntarily accompanied the Imperial family to imprisonment in Tobolsk. He was separated from them when they were transferred to Ekaterinburg.

Dolgorukov was initially allowed to stay in the city when he arrived at the end of April, but was arrested by the Cheka secret police, along with Count Ilya Tatishchev, as "enemies of the socialist revolution", after maps of the region showing river routes were allegedly found in his lodgings.[1] During imprisonment, Dolgorukov constantly pressured the British Consulate in Ekaterinburg to help the Imperial family, using pencil-written notes smuggled from his prison cell.[2] Accused of plotting to rescue the Imperial family, Dolgorukov and Tatishchev were taken by Bolshevik revolutionary Grigory Nikulin and Cheka agents beyond the city's Ivanovskoe Cemetery on July 10, shot in the head and thrown into a pit.[1] Nikulin went on to murder the Romanov family a week later.[1] The bodies of Dolgorukov and Tatishchev were never found.[3]

On October 31/November 1, 1981 the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia canonized the Prince as The Holy Martyr Warrior, Vasily.

• Helen Rappaport, Ekaterinburg: The Last Days of the Romanovs, 2008, ISBN 978-0-099-52009-2.
• Rappaport, Helen. Four Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Romanov Grand Duchesses. Pan Macmillan, 2014. ISBN 978-1-4472-5935-0