was easy to escape abroad by boat. However, Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna was determined to remain in Russia hoping that the White movement would prevail and Andrei's brother, Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich, would be installed as Tsar. It was suggested that Grand Duke Andrei should join the White army of General Anton Denikin, but the grand duchess opposed the idea, stating that members of the Romanov family should not take part in Russia's civil war. Against his mother's wishes, Grand Duke Boris left with his future wife, Zinaida Rashevskaya, in March 1919. On 29 March, Admiral Edward Hobart Seymour, commander of the British fleet in the Black Sea, offered to take Grand Duke Andrei and his mother to Constantinople, but Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna again flatly refused. After spending seven months in Anapa, they moved back to Kislovodsk on 7 June, as the city had been liberated by the White Army. They remained there until December 1919. By Christmas, the Red army was to retake Kislovodsk and Grand Duke Andrei, with his mother and their entourage, decided to go to Novorossiysk, on the eastern coast of the Black Sea, where General Peter Wrangel had kept the Reds away. From there it was easier to go abroad. One day before their departure from Kislovodsk, Von Kube, Andrei's faithful adjutant, died of typhus. The group of refugees arrived in Novorossiysk on 17 January. They lived in their railway car, which was parked in the station. By February, it became obvious that the Whites had lost the civil war. General Wrangel warned them that the situation was beyond hope and they decided to leave. They departed on the Italian liner Semiramisa bound for Venice on 3 March 1920. Grand Duke Andrei and his mother were the last Romanovs to leave Russia for exile. Exile Once in Venice, Grand Duke Andrei accompanied his mother via train to Cannes, on the French Riviera. Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna died a few months later in September 1920. During her illness in Contrexéville, Grand Duke Andrei was reunited for the first time in exile with his three siblings. At his mother's death the last obstacle for Grand Duke Andrei to marry Mathilde Kchessinska was lifted. Andrei asked permission to marry Kchessinska from his brother Grand Duke Kirill and from Empress Maria Feodorovna, widow of Tsar Alexander III, the senior members of the Romanov family; both gave their consent.