Tsarskoe Selo with his family. The Bolshevik Government confiscated all property held by the banks on 27 December. Grand Duke Paul, who had deposited all the jewelry he had inherited from his parents in the banks, under his wife's name, lost all his fortune. By early January 1918, Grand Duke Paul and his family could no longer afford to heat their large Tsarskoe Selo palace and they were forced to move to a nearby English dacha that belonged to his nephew, Grand Duke Boris Vladimirovich. Shortly after they moved out, their home was expropriated and turned into a museum, while Lenin himself rode in their car. In March 1918, all male members of the Romanov family, including Paul's son, Vladimir, were ordered to register at Cheka headquarters and shortly after they were sent away into internal Russian exile. They never saw Vladimir again. He was murdered by the Bolsheviks, along with several other Romanov relatives, on 18 July 1918 in a mine shaft near Alapayevsk, one day after the murder of Tsar Nicholas II and his immediate family at Yekaterinburg. Grand Duke Paul, who was too ill to travel, initially escaped the fate of his son. Although under constant harassment, Grand Duke Paul continued living a simple life with his wife and their two daughters at Grand Duke Boris's dacha. It was difficult to find provisions, but as the Grand Duke suffered from a stomach ulcer, he was kept on a strict diet. On , Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna came to say farewell to her father. She and her husband, Prince Sergei Putiatin, fled Russia through Ukraine. A week later, Grand Duke Paul was offered, through the Danish Ambassador, Harald Scavenius, to be smuggled out of the country and taken to Vienna wearing an Austrian uniform with a convoy of returning prisoners of war. The Grand Duke flatly refused, preferring to die rather than put on an enemy uniform. Execution Determined to round up the last Grand Dukes remaining on Russian soil, the Bolsheviks arrested Grand Duke Paul at 3 a.m. on . He was taken to the local Soviet, housed in Grand Duke Vladimir's Tsarkoe Selo villa. The next morning, he was sent to Spalernaia prison, where he would remain for most of his incarceration. His cousins, Grand Dukes Dimitri Konstantinovich, Nicholas Mikhailovich and George Mikhailovich, were already imprisoned there. The four Grand Dukes, all men in their fifties,