13 Facts About Ivan Ratiev

Ivan Ratiev spent several years in the Gulag but had his sentence commuted, at which point he retired to Tbilisi, Georgia where he remained until his death.

Ivan Ratiev was born in Oryol of a branch of the Georgian princely house of Ratishvili, which had emigrated to the Russian Empire in 1724.

Ivan Ratiev's father was an officer in the Russian army.

Ivan Ratiev graduated from the Oryol Cadet Corps and then from the Nicholas Cavalry College.

Ivan Ratiev retired from army service due to a trauma sustained in a horse race at Tbilisi in 1907.

Ivan Ratiev then studied at Academie des Beaux-Arts in Paris and, after his return to Russia, worked for the Ministry of the Imperial Court.

Ivan Ratiev was assigned to an army cavalry unit of the Winter Palace with the rank of rittmeister.

Ivan Ratiev dispatched his 16-year son Dimitri and two most trusted grenadiers to guard the secret depository, which, among other precious objects, housed the tsar's scepter incorporating the Orlov diamond.

Ivan Ratiev then negotiated with the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Antonov-Ovseyenko, who oversaw the storm of the Palace, thereby saving the treasures of the Palace from being looted and destroyed.

In March 1919, Ivan Ratiev escorted the "golden echelon", a train carrying Russia's gold reserve, upon the transfer of the Russian government from Petrograd to Moscow.

The road to Moscow was uneasy, Ivan Ratiev being pressured into surrendering the train and even being fired upon at Tver.

Ivan Ratiev retired from the state service shortly thereafter and worked as a translator for various organizations of Moscow for several years.

In 1931, Ivan Ratiev moved to the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, where he lived as a "state pensioner" and died at the age of 90.