u/YuriySamorodov

Truth be told, this community gathers, night after night, around beauty already finished. A face lit just so, a gown falling exactly right, a gaze that seems to reach across a hundred years and land on us. Rarely do we pause to ask who stood on the other side of that gaze, adjusting a tripod, waiting for a child to stop fidgeting, watching the light change on a windowsill in Tsarskoye Selo. That person mattered as much as anyone in the frame. Tonight the frame gets turned around.

Alexander Karlovich Yagelsky was born in Warsaw around 1861, one of two brothers drawn into the young trade of photography. He began his career modestly, working with his brother Ignatius in the studio in Moscow around 1880. Within a year the partnership collapsed under a cloud that still reads strangely today. Police discovered what were described only as "photographs of a rebellion" on the premises, and Alexander was pulled into an inquiry of "a political nature". The matter was judged minor enough in the end, yet both brothers found themselves barred from living in Moscow. With a certain dry persistence, they simply moved to the one city the ruling had forgotten to mention, St. Petersburg.

It proved the making of him. Ignatius opened a new studio on Solyanoy Lane, while Alexander went further still, taking a post at Tsarskoye Selo itself, the residence of the Russian sovereigns. There, since 1887, had operated the studio of "K. E. von Hahn and Co.", run by Kazimira Evgenievna Yakobson, born von Hahn, wife of an assistant chief mechanical engineer. Through the Chancery of the Imperial Academy of Arts she had secured the exclusive right to photograph the image of Nicholas II himself, a privilege of enormous value. By 1891 Yagelsky had become a co-owner of the firm, and from 1897, when the widow Vanda Zaselskaya took over the proprietorship from Kazimira Yakobson, it was Yagelsky and Zaselskaya together who held that exclusive certificate.

From that point on, nearly every photograph bearing this studio mark was, in truth, his work alone. Yet history barely learned his name. The court and its circle referred to the studio simply as "Hahn" as a convenient shorthand that swallowed the actual photographer whole, much as modern "personal" news photographers vanish behind the footage they produce for television broadcasts seen the world over. Twenty years of faultless service earned him, in 1911, the formal title of Photographer to the Court of His Majesty. It was, in a sense, official recognition of a man the public had never quite seen.

In 1900 Yagelsky did something that deserves far wider notice than it has ever received. He acquired the most advanced film equipment available anywhere, a camera, a developing machine with drying drums, and a basic printer, effectively opening what might be called Russia's first true film studio, seven years before Alexander Drankov's more famous venture. His earliest films ran only twenty to thirty meters, limited by the capacity of his camera's cassette. By the spring of 1903 he had added more cameras, his brother Ignatius joined him as an assistant, and individual films stretched to a hundred meters, long enough to require actual editing, splicing separate shots together on a simple rewind bench so that meaning began to emerge from the sequence itself. Watching his surviving footage, one sees a real instinct at work, wide shots giving way to medium and close views, sequences built with a beginning and an end rather than left to chance. In 1910, filming the Riga celebrations marking two centuries since Livonia joined the empire, he shot from a moving open car and kept the camera steady through a sharp turn, a small feat of nerve for its time. He managed sweeping pans as well, wrestling a heavy mechanical tripod screw into something like smoothness.

As early as 1902 Yagelsky petitioned the Ministry of the Imperial Court to establish a proper historical and cinematographic department with an archive of its own. He raised the idea again in 1908 and once more in 1911. Nothing came of it. The vast holdings of the Tsarskoye Selo studio, some twenty thousand meters of film and thousands upon thousands of photographs, remained the private property of "K. E. von Hahn and Co." until the revolution swept it all into state hands.

His camera reached beyond the palace walls too. He filmed the tercentenary celebrations of the House of Romanov in 1913, and when war came the following year he followed Nicholas II on nearly every journey to the front, camera in hand.

Death came suddenly, in the autumn of 1916. He was buried in the Tsarskoye Selo cemetery, spared by only months from watching the world he had spent his life recording come apart entirely. After the Bolsheviks seized power, the studio's entire archive was requisitioned. His widow tried, according to documents from 1918, to contest the seizure, and failed, though she managed to carry a handful of the family's private albums with her into exile in Poland. Those albums still surface now and then at auction, fetching prices that would likely have astonished the quiet man who filled them.

So the next time a portrait crosses this subreddit and draws a chorus of admiration for its subject, spare a thought for the man once dismissed simply as "Hahn's photographer" Alexander Karlovich Yagelsky spent his life in service to beauty that was never his own to claim, and in doing so left us a great deal of what we now call history.

For many decades, the life and work of the Hungarian artist Mihaly Zichy (1827, Zala, Austo-Hungarian Empire - 1906, St. Petersburg, Russia ) remained inextricably bound to the destiny of Russia. Across three successive reigns, an event without precedent in the annals of the Russian court, Zichy served as the official court artist. In a vast array of drawings and watercolours, he captured not only the formal pageantry of the imperial household under Alexander II, Alexander III and Nicholas II, but also the intimate domestic moments of his crowned patrons.

The relentless tempo of court existence, coupled with the sheer volume of events demanding his artistic attention, compelled Zichy to remain perpetually armed with pencil and sketchbook. Dozens of his working notebooks have survived to the present day. Within their pages, hundreds of rapid sketches chronicle the imperial family, the dignitaries and foreign visitors who passed through the palace halls, the sweeping views and ornate interiors, and the meticulous details of costume and furniture. To all these drawings he appended brief explanatory notes, jotted down as an aide-mémoire, so that later, in the quiet of his studio, he could transform these fleeting impressions into finished works.

Art installations in the form of Romanov toys have appeared in Alexandria near Peterhof, including a toy soldier belonging to the sons of Alexander III and a little donkey Van'ka (Vanya, Ivan) belonging to Tsesarevich Alexei Nikolaevich.

The de Jong Brothers Photo Studio, 1893

Collection of the State Historical Museum, Moscow, Russia

1. Grand Duke Tsesarevich Nikolai Alexandrovich (May 6 1868 - July 17 1918). At the time of this photo he was a commander of the Preobrazhensky Regiment's 1st Battalion since 1893.
2. Pyotr Alexandrovich, Prince of Oldenburg (November 9 1868 - March 11 1924). A son of Prince Alexander Petrovich Oldenburgsky (1844–1932) and Princess Eugenia Maximilianovna of Leuchtenberg (1845–1925). His mother was a granddaughter of Tsar Nicholas I of Russia through Nicholas's daughter, Grand Duchess Maria Nikolayevna, and his father was a great-grandson of Tsar Paul I of Russia through his paternal grandmother Grand Duchess Catherine Pavlovna. Educated privately under his parents' supervision, entering the Preobrazhensky Regiment as an officer in 1889 and rising steadily to captain by 1900 and colonel by 1905, becoming a Suite major general in 1913. He served at the front in the First World War and was awarded a Golden Sword. He is best remembered as the estranged first husband of Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna, Nicholas II's younger sister, from 1901 to their divorce in 1916. He was dabbling in literature under a pen name during his final years before he died in exile on the French Riviera.
3. Pyotr Vladimirovich Verevkin (January 5 1862 - February 18 1946). Educated at the Corps des Pages before entering the Preobrazhensky Regiment in 1882, reaching captain by 1897 before leaving the Guards for provincial administration. He rose through the court rank of Master of the Hunt (Jagermeister) and actual state councillor while governing the Kovno, Vilna, and Estland provinces in succession. A 1939 emigre roll of former Preobrazhensky officers lists him still serving in his court title while living in Lithuania, one of many former Guardsmen who never returned to Russia after 1917.
4. Vladimir Dmitrievich Bakulin (July 27 1857 - March 27 1913). Educated at the Penza gymnasium and the 3rd Alexander Military School, he had a long, steady rise within the Preobrazhensky Regiment from private to captain, then colonel in 1897, and finally major general in the Emperor's own Suite by 1906. He went on to command the 94th Yenisei Infantry Regiment, then the Life Guards Rifle Regiment, then a brigade of the 2nd Guards Infantry Division, earning the Orders of St. Stanislaus, St. Anna, and St. Vladimir along the way. He died on March 27 1913 and was laid to rest on March 30th of the same year in the cemetery of the Novodevichy Convent in St. Petersburg.
5. Georgiy Nikolaevich, Duke of Leuchtenberg (November 28 1872 - August 9 1929). Born in Rome to Duke Nikolai Maximilianovich Leuchtenberg and Countess Nadezhda Beauharnais, he was largely raised and educated in France and Bavaria before moving to Russia when he was eighteen . He actually served as a squadron commander in the Life Guards Horse Regiment rather than the Preobrazhensky, so his presence in this photo likely owed to family ties, since his brother Nikolai genuinely served in the Preobrazhensky Regiment. He later wrote memoirs of his unusual cosmopolitan upbringing before dying in Bavaria in 1929.
6. Ivan Alekseevich Ambrazantsev-Nechaev (January 25 1866 - December 3 1914). A career Preobrazhensky officer who rose from lieutenant through staff captain, captain, and eventually colonel of the regiment. He was commanding the 175th Baturin Infantry Regiment as of 24 November 1914 and was killed in action on December 3rd, 1914, becoming one of the first among many Guards officers of his generation lost in the Great War.
7. Leonty Ivanovich Mikhailov (1867 - October 25 1937). A Corps des Pages graduate who joined the Preobrazhensky Regiment in 1887 and became lieutenant by 1892, commanding a company. Following unrest in the 1st Battalion in 1906 he was transferred out of the Guards, and by 1908 had moved into civilian service at the Peasants' Bank and later the state land management authority, holding the court rank of Kammerjunker. His fortunes collapsed under Soviet rule. He was first arrested in 1919. Reduced to work as a school doorman by 1934, exiled to Orenburg the following year as dangerous to society and stripped of his pension. He was arrested for the final time and shot during the Great Terror in 1937, leaving behind a wife and young son. It was not until 1989 that his case was reopened, and he was at last fully rehabilitated.
8. Count Tariel Mikhailovich Loris-Melikov (March 25 1863 - February 20 1941). Son of the celebrated statesman Count Mikhail Tarielovich Loris-Melikov, hero of the Russo Turkish War and Russia's reformist Minister of Internal Affairs in 1880-1881 under Alexander II, author of a Constitution project later cancelled by Alexander III in 1881. He married Princess Varvara Nikolaevna Dolgorukova, a maid of honor at the Imperial court. Educated as a court page, he rose through the Preobrazhensky Regiment, eventually promoted from poruchik to colonel by December 1904, and belonged to the exclusive Imperial Yacht Club. From 1914, he served in Petrograd with the military censorship authorities. He retired from active service in 1916. In the autumn of 1918, he was arrested at his apartment on Sergievskaya Street (No. 24, apt. 7) and incarcerated in the Peter and Paul Fortress. Though released on February 16 1919, he was arrested once again on June 16 1919. Was transferred to Moscow and placed in the Novopeskovsky camp on July 10, 1919; from there, he was moved to the Ivanovsky camp in Moscow on March 11 1920. He was eventually released thanks to a petition lodged by E. P. Peshkova (a wife of Maxim Gorkiy). Following his release, he emigrated to France with his family. He passed away on February 20 1941 and was laid to rest at the Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois cemetery in France.
9. Mikhail Oskarovich Paton (August 5 1865 - spring 1919). Born in Nice, where his father Oskar Paton served as Russian consul, and brother of the world renowned welding scientist Evgeny Paton (1870 - 1953), a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union (1946 - 1953) Hero of Socialist Labour (1943) and Stalin Prize 1st Rank winner (1941). Mikhail Oskarovich served in the Preobrazhensky Regiment from ensign to colonel, retiring in 1902 to build a substantial civilian career in Podolia as district marshal of the nobility and head of the local zemstvo, funding hospitals, schools, and public welfare programs on his family's Khrebtiiv estate. In the chaos of the Russian Civil War, armed robbers broke into his home in Novaya Ushitsa, murdered his wife, and shot him as well, and he died of his wounds several days later.

The event took place while Colonel Grand Duke Tsesarevich Nikolai Alexandrovich was commander of the 1st Battalion of the Preobrazhensky Regiment. Here is how Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich (also known as K.R.), who at that time commanded the Preobrazhensky Regiment, recalls it in his memoirs:

>On Wednesday, 28 July, there was a Dniovka (1), since on Sunday it had not been possible to go from St. Zarechye to church, the Tsesarevich ordered that the Divine Liturgy be held at B. Vruda. The inhabitants, learning of this, decorated the church fence with garlands of greenery and strewed the road to the church with flowers. The Preobrazhensky men came to the service, together with the Semyonovsky men and the artillerymen who were encamped nearby. One could not fail to notice how exemplarily the Tsesarevich stood in church: throughout the service he always stood motionless, as if on parade, spoke to no one, held himself erect, and never turned to look about him.
After breakfast the Tsesarevich sat down at a little table by His tent and occupied Himself with reading; it was in this pose that poruchik (2) Shipov depicted Him in watercolour. In the background of the watercolour may be seen the Tsesarevich's attendants, the uryadnik (3) of His Majesty's Own Convoy who accompanied Him on the maneuvers, and the non-commissioned officer of the Sovereign's Company (4), Dronitsyn, who was among the lower ranks (5) of the regiment appointed to guard the Heir's hut in camp and His tent during the maneuvers. Then post was brought; the Tsesarevich read aloud to the officers from the Novoye Vremya (6) and the Peterburgskaya Gazeta (7). His Highness went walking with the officers and played dominoes with them.

Notes

1. Dniovka - a halt or rest day in the course of a march during military maneuvers, when the unit remained in place rather than advancing.
2. Uryadnik - a junior non-commissioned rank used in Cossack cavalry units and in the Emperor's Own Convoy (Sobstvennyi Ego Velichestva Konvoi), the elite mounted bodyguard drawn largely from Cossacks. Roughly equivalent to a sergeant or corporal, depending on seniority.
3. Poruchik - a junior officer rank in the Imperial Russian Army, corresponding roughly to lieutenant in British or American usage. It sat within the standard hierarchy of company-grade officers, below shtabs-kapitan (staff captain) and kapitan (captain), and above podporuchik (second lieutenant or sub-lieutenant)
4. Gosudareva Rota ("Sovereign's Company") - a ceremonial and security company within a Guards regiment (frequently the Preobrazhensky Regiment), composed of soldiers specially selected to guard the Tsar or Tsesarevich in person, including rotating guard duty over the imperial quarters, as described here.
5. In the Imperial Russian Army, "lower ranks" was the official term for all military personnel below commissioned officer status. This category included ordinary soldiers such as privates, as well as non-commissioned officers such as unter-officers, sergeant-majors, and the various grades of uryadnik found in Cossack and Convoy units. "Lower ranks" was thus a broad administrative and legal category rather than a single rank itself. It corresponds roughly to what English-language military terminology today calls enlisted personnel or other ranks, the latter still used in the British Army to describe non-commissioned soldiers as distinct from officers. The distinction between officers and lower ranks was a fundamental social and legal division in Imperial Russia. Officers were drawn overwhelmingly from the nobility and held a distinct legal status, while lower ranks, mostly conscripted peasants, were subject to different disciplinary codes, terms of service, and social treatment.
6. Novoye Vremya ("New Times") - a major conservative daily newspaper published in St. Petersburg from 1868 to 1917.
7. Peterburgskaya Gazeta ("Petersburg Gazette") - a St. Petersburg daily newspaper, known for its broad, popular readership, published from 1867 to 1917.

Collection of the State Historical Museum, Moscow, Russia

Story

Karpaty was the lead ship of Project 530 (NATO reporting name Nepa class), designed by the Almaz bureau in Leningrad. She was laid down on 11 September 1963 at the Nikolaev Shipyard, launched on 24 December 1964, and commissioned on 30 September 1967. She belonged to a line of specialized Soviet rescue and salvage ships with no real Western counterpart, built on the experience of the Almaz bureau's earlier Project 527/527M rescue vessels and preceding the Project 537 Elbrus class, which later added deep submergence rescue vehicles. Her own task was more direct and demanding: to locate, secure, and physically raise disabled or sunken submarines, even ones completely flooded, from depths of up to 300 meters, with a lifting capacity of up to 800 tonnes. After more than 40 years of service, she was formally withdrawn from the Russian Navy on 31 January 2011, ending the career of one of the fleet's most capable and quietly remarkable auxiliary vessels.Updated the file to match.

Specs

Characteristic	Value
Project / Class	Project 530 "Karpaty" (NATO Nepa class)
Designer	Almaz Central Marine Design Bureau, Leningrad
Builder	Nikolayev Shipyard, "61 Communards"
Laid down	11 September 1963
Launched	24 December 1964
Commissioned	30 September 1967
Full displacement	approx. 7,000 tonnes
Length	129.5 m
Beam	18.9 m
Draft, max	6.4 m
Propulsion	Diesel electric, up to 8,000 hp
Maximum speed	16.5 knots
Range	8,000 nmi at 14 knots
Endurance	45 days
Crew	270
Max lifting capacity	800 tonnes
Max working depth	300 m

Operation

Karpaty's best known operation was the recovery of the submarine S-80, a Project 644 "Whiskey Twin Cylinder" missile submarine that had sunk in the Barents Sea on 27 January 1961 with the loss of all 68 crew, after flooding through a snorkel or hatch. The wreck was found years later, and in 1969 the Northern Fleet launched a special operation, codenamed "Depth" to raise it. The submarine was first torn from the seabed and suspended in slings beneath Karpaty on 9 June 1969, then towed to shallower water at Zavalishin Harbor, before finally being brought fully to the surface on 24 July 1969. It remains one of the most technically demanding submarine salvage operations in Soviet naval history. Tragically, when the boat was opened, it became clear that some of the crew had survived the initial sinking only to die later of carbon dioxide poisoning after their emergency oxygen ran out.

Over her career, Karpaty was also credited with raising the missile boat R 82, the torpedo recovery vessel TL 993, and a Ka 25 helicopter lost at sea.

Every colorized version of this famous 1913 family photograph shows a different shirt. Blue in one pass, olive green in the next, whatever a given colorist happened to decide. It appears that true shade sat between pink and purple, the color Russians call malinovy, a bright orchid-toned magenta with nothing in common with navy or forest green.

The uniform belongs to the Life Guards 4th Rifle Regiment of the Imperial Family, the unit raised from northern peasants during the Crimean War scare and later garrisoned at Tsarskoye Selo, practically next door to the Alexander Palace. Its dress uniform kept the traditional kosovorotka instead of a standard tunic, a nod to its peasant origins. This pink purple version had gone out of everyday use until the regiment's fiftieth anniversary dinner in 1905, when Nicholas II, who held an honorary colonelcy there, announced its revival himself. He clearly liked the result. Photographs from the Alexander Palace show him in the same shirt during ordinary, unguarded moments, not just in state portraits, well past that anniversary.

The mistake is not really mysterious. Both automated and manual colorists lean on comparisons with more familiar Guards uniforms, and nothing else in that visual vocabulary is as saturated or unusual as this color. To make matters worse, the same regiment also wore an ordinary greyish green field uniform, giving any colorist a plausible, entirely wrong shade to reach for.

Photo Index

• 1 - Romanov Family official photo 1913, manually colorized by Olga Shirnina (aka klimbim), Official Photo Painter of the State Historical Museum
• 2 - 4 - Tunic owned by Nicholas II
• 5 - Universal Russian Calendar 1918
• 6 - Introduction to His Imperial Majesty on September 20, 1914, in the town of Tsarskoye Selo, of the standard of the Imperial 2nd Tyrolean Jager (Ranger) Regiment, captured by Private Yefim Cherny-Kovalchuk of the 41st Selenginsky Infantry Regiment in the battle near the village of Zaborzhi (near Rava-Russkaya) on August 25, 1914
• 7 - Boris Kustodiev "Portrait of His Imperial Majesty the Sovereign Emperor Nicholas Alexandrovich, Autocrat of All Russia" (1915). This is the last portrait of Nicholas II
• 8 - Heinrich Manizer "Portrait of Emperor Nicholas II in the uniform of the Life Guards 4th Rifle Battalion of the Imperial Family, wearing the badge of the Order of St. Vladimir, 4th Class" (1905)
• 9 - Emperor Nicholas II with Officers of Life Guards 4th Rifle Regiment of the Imperial Family.
• 10 - Tsesarevich Grand Duke Alexey Nikolaevich in Life Guards 4th Rifle Regiment of the Imperial Family uniform
• 11 - 14 - Life Guards 4th Rifle Regiment of the Imperial Family uniform owned by Tsesarevich Grand Duke Alexey Nikolaevich
• 15 - Hat sewing pattern
• 16 - 17 - Belt (used and new)
• 18-19 - Members of Association in Memory of the Life Guards 4th Rifle Regiment of the Imperial Family, Pushkin (ex. Tsarskoye Selo), Saint Petersburg, Russia, 2024

Eldest Son of Alexander II, brother of Alexander III

Died at 21 from cerebrospinal meningitis

They were confused with each other even in postcards

Late November, 1917. Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich, uncle to the last Tsar, was sitting at Ay Todor, his family's estate on the southern coast, waiting the way condemned men wait, when a dust covered automobile rolled up and a sailor built like a lighthouse climbed out. Six feet four in his stocking feet, by the Grand Duke's own later reckoning. He walked in without being announced, which was, in its own way, the whole revolution in a single gesture.

"I have been given orders by the Soviet Government to take charge of this place," he said, not unkindly, more the way a foreman announces a shift change than the way an executioner clears his throat.

Then came the detail that historians still argue about. The sailor claimed he had served under the Grand Duke at the aviation school near Sevastopol in 1916. Alexander Mikhailovich had trained two thousand men there and could not place the face. It did not matter. Something had been established between them that the paperwork of revolution could not fully erase.

His name, as the family would learn to spell it with equal parts gratitude and disbelief, was Phillip Zadorozhny. And when the Yalta agitators later tried to shame him for going soft on class enemies, he did not deny his politics, he doubled down on them. "I am an old Bolshevik," he told them flatly. "I belonged to the party while you were still serving time for theft." He was not play acting as a revolutionary to win the family's trust. He was the genuine article, a convinced man of the new order, who simply refused to let that conviction curdle into cruelty.

What followed reads less like a hostage situation and more like an extended, deeply strange act of cohabitation. Zadorozhny moved the entire Romanov clan, the dowager empress Maria Feodorovna, her daughters Xenia and Olga, three grand dukes and their households, into a single fortified villa called Dulber, built decades earlier in a mock Moorish style with absurdly thick walls that its owner's relatives had once mocked him for. Nobody was mocking those walls anymore.

He turned the estate into something between a prison and a citadel. He asked Alexander Mikhailovich, a trained military man, to help him plot machine gun emplacements along the parapets. He asked him to help calibrate the searchlights. And in one of the more astonishing arrangements of the entire Russian Civil War, he asked the Grand Duke to help him write the official reports he owed the Sevastopol Soviet on the conduct of his own prisoners. The jailer was outsourcing his paperwork to the jailed, and trusting them not to lie to save his neck.

There is a smaller, gentler detail that tells you just as much. When Xenia's granddaughter, a toddler named Irina, was brought to visit, it was Zadorozhny, the same man who barked at armed mobs at the front gate, who took her by the hand and walked her in and out past the guards himself, playing nursemaid to a child whose family the state technically wanted watched like criminals.

In front of his own men he played the part expected of him. Rough talk, no mercy, the correct revolutionary posture. Alone with the family, something else came through, and it came through often enough that they stopped being surprised by it. Alexander Mikhailovich later wrote that his relatives could not make sense of the quiet peace that had settled over their captivity, and concluded it was a blessing to have fallen under this particular guard.

The dowager empress agreed. She would eventually commission a plaster bust of the man from a visiting sculptor, an odd honor for a Bolshevik commissar to receive from an empress, and one that says everything about how the relationship had actually developed. When Zadorozhny finally saw the finished bust, by the sculptor's own account, he laughed like a boy and said something to the effect of, my God, what an ugly mug, though my mother loves me anyway. It is hard to stay afraid of a man capable of that particular joke, and by then, none of them were.

Not everyone in Crimea was inclined toward mercy. The Yalta Soviet, a rowdier and more anarchic body than its Sevastopol counterpart, wanted the Romanovs shot and said so, repeatedly, loudly, at the gates of Dulber. Trucks loaded with armed men would rumble up the drive and demand the prisoners be handed over.

What happened next belongs less in a history book than in a movie. Zadorozhny would walk out to meet them and simply refuse, in language that has survived almost word for word because the family, listening through open windows, memorized it out of sheer nervous fascination. "Go tell the Yalta Soviet to go to hell," he told one delegation. When they accused him of taking money from the aristocrats, he answered that he had enough to pay for their funerals.

The trucks would leave. The machine gunners on the walls, invisible to the men below, would occasionally drop a pebble or a cigarette butt on the head of whichever agitator was working himself into a lather about the historical necessity of executing counter revolutionaries. Nobody was shot that season, though it was not for lack of trying on Yalta's part, and it was not because Sevastopol was softer on class enemies than Yalta. It was because one particular Bolshevik in charge of the gate had decided, on his own, that this was a line he would not cross.

By April of 1918, with German troops advancing into Crimea and the Bolshevik position collapsing across the peninsula, the danger sharpened into something close to certain doom. Zadorozhny made a decision that no manual of revolutionary discipline would have sanctioned. He handed weapons back to the men he was supposed to be guarding. He told them plainly that he could no longer promise their safety with the men available to him, and that if it came to a fight, he wanted them able to defend themselves rather than wait passively for a verdict from a Yalta mob. The Romanov men took up night watches in shifts, staring down the coastal road from a bathroom window that happened to command the best view of it, waiting for headlights that, mercifully, never quite arrived in force. One truck of would be attackers, by family account, went off a cliff road in the dark before it ever reached the gate. Providence, or bad brakes. The family was inclined to credit the former.

When German forces finally reached Yalta, the arrangement flipped entirely. A German officer arrived at Dulber prepared to have the Bolshevik guards, Zadorozhny included, put against a wall. It was the Romanovs who intervened. Alexander Mikhailovich, backed by his entire family, asked that the sailors be spared and left as their guard. The German officer, by every surviving account, found the request nearly impossible to process. Was it not the aristocracy's due to see their captors punished? He accepted anyway, muttering, one imagines, something appropriately Prussian and disbelieving under his breath.

Zadorozhny had one final act of decency in him before he vanished from the historical record. He returned, in full, the jewels and gold that had been confiscated from the family during the searches he himself had once been ordered to conduct. When the Romanovs tried to press a parting gift on him, a cigarette case, cufflinks, anything of value, he chose, almost bashfully, the smallest brooch on offer.

In October of 1918 he turned up once more, unannounced as always, to say goodbye properly. Maria Feodorovna wrote in her diary that evening that she had once thought him a monster and told him so to his face, and that he had laughed and explained that the mask had been necessary, that a softer man would simply have been replaced by someone worse. She wrote that she was glad, finally, to thank him properly.

After that, nothing. No death certificate, no grave, no further paper trail despite the determined efforts of a modern Russian historian who spent years combing naval archives for him. Family legend placed him on a doomed ship in 1918, but the timeline does not hold up. Another rumor, unverified, has him dying decades later defending Crimea again, this time against the Germans of a different war, alongside two sons of his own. Nobody knows for certain. A convinced Bolshevik walked out of the chaos of 1917, spent five months standing between an empress and a firing squad, asked for nothing when it was over, and walked back into the chaos he came from, never to be found again.

Members of the Family Who Escaped from Crimea

• Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna (1847-1928)
• Grand Duke Peter Nikolaevich (1864-1931)
  • Grand Duchess Militsa Nikolaevna (1866-1951), his wife
  • Princess Marina Petrovna (1892-1981), their daughter
  • Prince Roman Petrovich (1896-1978), their son
  • Princess Nadejda Petrovna (1898-1988), their daughter
• Grand Duke Nicholai Nikolaevich (1856-1929), Peter's elder brother
  • Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna (1868-1935), his wife
• Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich (1866-1933), her husband
  • Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna (1875–1960)
  • Princess Irina Alexandrovna (1895-1970), their daughter
  • Prince Andrei Alexandrovich (1897-1981), their son
  • Prince Feodor Alexandrovich (1898-1968), their son
  • Prince Nikita Alexandrovich (1900-1974), their son
  • Prince Dmitri Alexandrovich (1901-1980), their son
  • Prince Rostislav Alexandrovich (1902-1978), their son
  • Prince Vasili Alexandrovich (1907-1989), their son
• Prince Felix Felixovich Yusupov (1887-1967), husband of Princess Irina Alexandrovna
  • Princess Irina Alexandrovna (1895-1970), daughter of Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich and Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna
  • Princess Irina Felixovna Yusupova (1915-1983), their daughter

Photo Index

• 1 - Phillip Zadorozhny (Zadorojny)
• 2 - 5 Dulber Palace, the Mansion of Grand Duke Peter Nikolaevich (completed in 1897)
• 6 - Revolutionary sailors conduct a search at Dyulber, 1918
• 7 - Phillip Zadorozhny, Gleb W. Derujinsky (1888-1975) while working on plaster bust
• 8 - Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna (1847-1928)
• 9 - Grand Duke Nicholai Nikolaevich and his wife Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna
• 10 - Grand Duke Peter Nikolaevich and his family
• 11 - Princess Marina Petrovna and Prince Roman Petrovich
• 12 - Princess Nadejda Petrovna with her husband Prince Nicholai Orlov on their wedding day, Dulber, 1919
• 13 - Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich, his sons and his wife Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna in Dulber, 1918
• 14 - Prince Felix Felixovich Yusupov and his family
• 15 - Members of the Romanov Family in Dulber
• 16 - Rear Admiral Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich with a gun in Dulber, 1903
• 17 - Members of the Romanov Family aboard HMS Admiral Nelson on their way to Malta, 1919
• 18 - 19 Members of the Romanov Family aboard HMS Marlborough
• 20 - HMS Marlborough photo signed by Members of the Romanov Family

The Bolsheviks never pretended to be loyal to the tsar. Quite opposite, they wanted him gone and said so openly. Lenin himself said in January 1917 that he doubted he would live to see the revolution, and February caught the Bolsheviks by surprise.

The Duma and the bourgeoisie, by contrast, claimed loyalty to Russia and its institutions right up until the moment they abandoned Nicholas II, and it was their betrayal, not Bolshevik agitation, that actually brought him down.

So here comes the question. Is betrayal by someone who lies about their loyalty worse than open opposition from someone who never hid it and even didn't even see it coming?

SS Meteor was designed by Scottish captain Alexander McDougall to haul maximum cargo on minimum draft. Built 1896 in Superior, Wisconsin; sailed, with modifications, clear through to 1969; now sits as a museum in the very town where she was born. In her working years she hauled grain and iron ore across the Great Lakes of the U.S. and Canada.

The hull was a continuous curve from vertical sides to horizontal deck, with no sharp break between them. Loaded down, all the one would see above the waterline was that smooth rounded back, hence the nickname "whaleback".

Spec	Detail
Original name	Frank Rockefeller (1896 - 1927)
Later names	South Park (1927 - 1942); Meteor ( since 1942)
Builder	American Steel Barge Co., Superior, WI
Launched	26 April 1896
Designer	Capt. Alexander McDougall
Length	380 ft (116 m)
Beam	45 ft (14 m)
Depth	26 ft (7.9 m)
Gross tonnage	2750 tons
Cargo holds	12, rounded
In service	1896 - 1969
Now	Museum ship, Superior, WI

The Patek Philippe Museum in Geneva turns 25 in 2026. Among its treasures the sits a box without gears. The piece is a hefty Moscow-made bratina, a ceremonial punch bowl. It drips in silver-gilt and enamel with twelve matching cups in tow. It was a gift from Nicholas II in 1896. A thank-you for one of the most complex watches back in a day. According to the official Patek Philippe Archive it was a gold pocket chronograph with minute repeater, perpetual calendar, moon phases and Russian Imperial "Н" (N in latin) monogram in red and blue enamel on the lid. Archived as 90521, that watch has never been set on display and its whereabouts today remain unknown.

Proof that Russian Emperor knew how to tip well.

The German Navy operates two seriously weird-looking auxiliary vessels built specifically to clean up oil spills:

• Bottsand Y1643 (1984)
• Eversand Y1644 (1987)

The Bottsand class (Type 738) has a twin-hull design with a bow that opens 65 degrees, letting it literally swallow oil-slicked seawater. That creates a collection area over 40 sqrt.m., and the contaminated water gets pumped into a 790 m3 onboard tank where it's separated and cleaned. At full tilt, one ship can process up to 140 m³ of ocean surface per hour, covered in a 2mm-thick oil slick.

Both ships entered service in 1984 and 1987, and despite being German Navy assets, they're crewed by civilians, not naval personnel.

Tech Specs

Spec	Detail
Class/Type	Bottsand-class (Type 738) oil recovery vessel
Ships	Bottsand (Y1643), Eversand (Y1644)
Builders	C. Lühring Schiffswerft (Brake) & Hegemann (Bremen)
Entered service	1984 & 1987
Displacement	650 tonnes
Length	46.3 m (152 ft)
Beam	12 m (39 ft)
Draught	3.1 m (10 ft)
Propulsion	759 kW (1,018 hp)
Speed	10 knots
Complement	6 (civilian)
Collection tank	790 m^(3)
Bow opening angle	65
Collection area	40+ m^(2)
Recovery rate	Up to 140 m^(3/hr) (2mm slick)
Homeport	Kiel

Sometimes nicknamed the split-hull oil recovery vessel (SHORV) or the Pac-Man ship because of how it opens up to gobble oil-covered water.

Swedish war galley Ertrus (1749) lost during the Battle of Vyborg Bay on June 22, 1790. Blindly following a larger warship through the fighting, Ertrus struck a rocky shoal and sank with her crew.

The wreck was first spotted by sonar in 2003 and thoroughly surveyed the following season. Divers recovered timber sections, an anchor, and a half of a galley-type gun carriage.

Recovered artifacts are now on display at Vyborg Castle Museum in Russia.

Spec	Detail
Length	126 ft (38.6 m)
Beam	20.7 ft (6.3 m)
Draft	6.9 ft (2.1 m)
Displacement	190 tons
Oars	20 pairs
Armament	1× 24-pdr, 2× 6-pdr, 19× 3-pdr guns
Built	1749, Stockholm
Designer	J. Acrell
Crew	300
Sunk	June 22, 1790, Battle of Vyborg Bay
Depth found	15 m, Paaslуoto shoal