Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich

Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich was born on 25 September (7 October) 1869 at Borjomi, in the Caucasus, and was killed in the night of 17 to 18 July 1918 near Alapayevsk, in the Urals. The Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia canonized him in 1981 among the New Martyrs of Russia; the Moscow Patriarchate has not canonized him.

He was the son of Grand Duke Michael Nikolaevich, viceroy of the Caucasus, and a first cousin of Emperor Alexander III. The family moved to Saint Petersburg in 1881. He attended the Mikhailovsky Artillery School and chose a military career, like his father, and from 1905 he was Inspector General of Artillery. In 1916 he became Field Inspector General of Artillery, and he left service at the fall of the monarchy. He never married.

In the spring of 1918 he was sent into exile, together with his secretary Feodor Remez, three sons of Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich and Prince Vladimir Paley. They were taken to Vyatka, then to Yekaterinburg and, in May, to Alapayevsk, where they were held in a school on the edge of the town.

In the night of 17 to 18 July 1918 (new style; 4 to 5 July in the old style) the prisoners were taken out of the school and led to an abandoned mine. Grand Duke Sergei resisted, was shot and thrown into the shaft; the others were struck and thrown into the mine still alive. The bodies were brought out in October 1918, after the White army occupied the town, and at the autopsy a gunshot wound to the head was found on him. The remains were taken in 1920 to Beijing, to the crypt of the church of Saint Seraphim of Sarov. The list of New Martyrs canonized by the Russian Church Outside Russia at the beginning of November 1981 includes all those killed at Alapayevsk except Feodor Remez. In 2009 the Prosecutor General's Office of Russia rehabilitated him.