Serving as a high-ranking official at the Winter Palace during the Russian Revolution of 1917, Ratiev is best known for saving the imperial treasures from being looted during the revolutionary turmoil.

There he married, in 1896, Ekaterina Irakliyevna, the Serene Princess Gruzinskaya (February 13, 1872 – 1917), a great-granddaughter of King Heraclius II of Georgia and a lady-in-waiting of the empress consort Alexandra Feodorovna.

Promoted to the rank of colonel in 1916, Prince Ratiev was appointed as a deputy commandant of the Winter Palace in April 1917, two months after the February Revolution overthrew the tsar Nicholas II.

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.

[1][2][3] In March 1919, Ratiev escorted the "golden echelon", a train carrying Russia's gold reserve, upon the transfer of the Russian government from Petrograd to Moscow.