Those who remained loyal and faithful to the Romanov family.
BRIAN JOHNSON.
Years ago I read that after the Bolsheviks shot Brian, Grand Duke Michael extended his arms out towards him to embrace his dear and faithful friend and to bid him a final farewell. Those words and the image it elicits is beyond heartbreaking.
Brian Johnson is the epitome of heroism, loyalty, devotion and true friendship.
I believe there is now an active search to locate the remains of Grand Duke Michael and Brian Johnson.
I took the liberty of copying only (with edits) the following article on Brian Johnson, the British friend and assistant to Grand Duke Michael.
“In his homeland he was not even a footnote in history. In his adopted country he was officially an enemy of the people. Now he has been elevated to something almost approaching martyrdom.
Brian Johnson, valet and private secretary to Grand Duke Mikhail Romanov, younger brother of Tsar Nicholas II, died alongside his master in a hail of bullets on the outskirts of Perm in Russia on June 12, 1918. The Tsar and his famil were murdered a month later at Ekaterinberg.
Now the Russian government has declared that along with the Russian Imperial family Johnson was a victim of the Bolshevik revolution and that like them he was unlawfully killed by the Cheka, the forerunners of the KGB.
According to Russian state prosecutors: “The analysis of old archive material leads to the conclusion that these persons were subject to persecution in the form of arrest, exile and surveillance by the Cheka without being charged with any specific crime, on account of their class and status.” Henceforth all existing records on Brian Johnson in Russia will be amended to remove the stain of guilt from his name. But this gesture of atonement, magnanimous as it is, prompts more questions than answers, not the least of which is: who was Brian Johnson? So little is known of the British servant of the Russian empire that even experts on that period in history have never heard of him. “I’m afraid the name means nothing to me,” admitted Robert Service, Professor of Russian history at Oxford University and the author of a biography of Lenin. “I’ve never heard of this fellow.” What is certain is Johnson, a British commoner, died a horrendously violent death alongside his noble employer and that he played a ¬significant role in the last days of the Romanovs. His father Nicholas was British and his mother was a Russian teacher of music at the Imperial Court. How Nicholas came to be in Russia is not known but his presence there as a Briton was far from unusual. “Relations between Russia and Britain were extremely warm and friendly at that time,” says Professor Service. "We were allies and there was a great deal of trade between the countries. Russia supplied wheat, oil and timber and Britain as an indust¬rialised nation sold them our manufactured goods and machinery. There were lots of Britons living in Russia. “The liberal class was very Anglophile, as was the Imperial family, who all spoke several languages including English. The British and Russian royal families were closely related through Queen Victoria and there was genuine affection between them. "It remained on George V’s conscience for the rest of his life that he had not done more to help his cousin, the Tsar, get out of Russia. But there was strong anti-tsarist feeling in Britain at the time and the King was advised that it would compromise the country’s relations with Russia if the Tsar and his family were allowed to seek refuge here.” Brian Johnson began working as private secretary to Grand Duke Mikhail in 1912 but the two men were already friends thanks to a shared love of music. Johnson was also a talented pianist, an aptitude ¬inherited from his mother and spoke three -languages. He is described as being “round-faced and not very tall”. Grand Duke Mikhail was tall and lean.