During the storm of the Winter Palace by the Bolshevik revolutionaries on October 25, 1917, Ratiev did not flee, but ordered his guardsmen to evacuate the former imperial treasures to safer areas of the Palace. He 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. He 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. The Soviet leadership publicly expressed their gratitude to Prince Ratiev on the pages of "Izvestia" (November 5, 1917) for "self-sacrificing efforts to protect and preserve the people's treasures" and appointed him the chief commandant of the Winter Palace and of all state museums and palaces of the Petrograd district.