Igor Konstantinovich

The Holy New Martyr Igor Konstantinovich (Prince Igor Konstantinovich Romanov) was a prince of the imperial blood, son of Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich, killed by the Bolsheviks near Alapayevsk, in the Urals, in the night of 18 July 1918. He was glorified by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia among the New Martyrs of Russia on 1 November 1981.

Family and youth

He was born on 10 June 1894 at Strelna, the sixth child of Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich and Grand Duchess Elisaveta Mavrikievna, born Princess of Saxe-⁠Altenburg, a great-⁠grandson of the emperor Nicholas I. He studied at the Corps of Pages, the imperial military school in Saint Petersburg, and enjoyed the theatre. He graduated from the Corps of Pages on 12 July 1914 and was promoted cornet in the Hussar Guards Regiment.

The war

At the beginning of the First World War he went to the front with the regiment. At the end of August 1914, with the fourth squadron of the regiment, he broke out of encirclement in East Prussia. On 22 October 1914 he received the Order of Saint Vladimir 4th class with swords and bow and the Saint George Sword. His health was very fragile: in October 1915 he was sent to Petrograd for treatment of an inflammation of the lungs (pleurisy); even though he returned to the trenches, he could not walk quickly and often coughed and spat blood. Unable, because of illness, to continue service at the front, he was struck off the line; in 1916 he was named aide-⁠de-⁠camp and was promoted lieutenant and then captain of cavalry. On 17 May 1917 he was released from military service at his own request, with uniform.

Exile and martyrdom

After the revolution, by Bolshevik decree, he was arrested and expelled from Petrograd, first to Vyatka, then to the Urals. For a time he was held at Yekaterinburg, where a well-⁠wisher offered him his passport so that he could escape. It is said that Igor Konstantinovich replied that he had done nothing wrong to his Fatherland and therefore did not consider it right to resort to such measures. On 4 April 1918 he was exiled to the Urals, and he was held at Alapayevsk.

In the night toward 18 July 1918 he was brutally killed, together with other members of the Romanov family, among them his brothers John and Konstantin, his cousin Vladimir Pavlovich Paley, Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna, her husband's secretary, Feodor Remez, and the nun Varvara Yakovleva of her convent. They were thrown into an abandoned mineshaft, into which grenades were then thrown (see Martyrs of the Alapayevsk mine). All of them were later proclaimed martyrs.

His remains and veneration

In 1919 the prince's remains were buried in the cathedral of Alapayevsk. Then the White guards took them to Beijing, to a crypt beside the church of Saint Seraphim of Sarov (after 1945 a garage was built on the burial place); in another account, his body was placed in the cemetery of the Russian Orthodox church in Beijing, destroyed in 1986 and turned into a parking lot. He was not married and left no descendants. On 8 June 2009 the Prosecutor General of Russia rehabilitated him posthumously.