VIEW CATALOGUE – 29 pages. 79 lots.

On 15th May 2025, the Coutau-Bégarie Auction House (Paris) will hold one of the most interesting Romanov auctions in recent memory: the Tatiana Botkin Collection (1898-1986). The auction will feature valuable historical memories of the Russian Imperial Family during their captivity in Tobolsk, preserved by the daughter of the Tsar’s private physician, Dr. Eugene Sergeyevich Botkin (1865-1918).

The auction offers 79 lots, including photographs of the Botkin family and the family of Emperor Nicholas II; correspondence of Tatiana Botkina; transcripts from Tatiana’s book of reminiscences of the Tsar’s family and their life before and after the Revolution; personal items of the Botkin family, including beautiful objets d’art; icons; Gleb Botkin’s watercolours and more!

The catalogue is published in French only, the Tatiana Botkin Collection consists of 29 pages. It can be viewed – as a PDF document only – by clicking on the link above.

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Tatiana Evgenievna Botkina (1898-1986)

Tatiana Evgenievna Botkina was born in Vladivostock on 28th August 1898, she was the fourth child and only daughter of Dr. Eugene Sergeyevich Botkin and his wife Olga Vladimirovna Botkina (1872-1945). She had four brothers Sergei (1892-1893), Dmitri (1894-1914), Yuri (1895-1941), and Gleb (1900-1969). Her parents divorced in 1910 under the strain of her father’s devotion to the Imperial Family and the long hours he spent at court and her mother’s affair with a German tutor. Eugene Botkin retained custody of the children following the divorce. Tatiana’s older brother Dmitri was killed in action during World War I.

Tatiana and her brothers spent their early childhood in St. Petersburg. After their father’s appointment as a court physician, they moved to Tsarskoye Selo, first to the Catherine Palace and then to Sadovaya Street, very close to the Alexander Palace Park. She received a good education and spoke four languages fluently: English, French, German and Russian.

The Botkin children were sometimes received at the Alexander Palace, where they became playmates of the imperial children, of whom they were the same age.  They first met the imperial children in 1911 and, thereafter, sometimes played with them when they were on vacation in the Crimea. 

Following the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, Tatiana’s father supervised the hospitals that the Empress had opened at Tsarskoye Selo to treat the seriously wounded. In addition, he transformed his house into a hospital for convalescents, where Tatiana served as a nurse. 

In August 1917, Dr. Botkin followed the Imperial Family into exile to Tobolsk in Siberia. Tatiana and her brother Gleb later joined their father, moving into the Kornilov House, situated opposite the Governor’s House where the Imperial Family where being held under house arrest. They were not allowed to visit the Imperial Family, so instead Tatiana wrote notes, which her father smuggled to the grand duchesses in his overcoat.

When the Imperial Family was transferred from Tobolsk to Ekaterinburg in April 1918, the Botkin children were not permitted to accompany their father. As a result, the Botkin children decided to remain behind in Tobolsk. Tatiana regretted this decision all her life.

On 17th July 1918, the Tsar and his family, along with Dr. Botkin and three other faithful retainers were murdered by members of the Ural Soviet in the basement of the Ipatiev House in Ekaterinburg. Several years later, when Tatiana heard the conclusion of the Sokolov Report, that the Tsar, his family and their servants had been killed, her sole consolation was the fact that her father had died trying to shield the Tsar.

The murder of her father and the Imperial Family caused her inconsolable pain. In 1941, her brother Yuri was imprisoned by the Nazis and then executed. Her mother died of malnutrition in Berlin in 1945.

In the fall of 1918, Tatiana married Konstantin Semenovitch Melnik (1893 – 1977), an officer of the 5th Siberian Rifle Regiment, who was wounded in battle and was treated in the Tsarskoye Selo infirmary, where he met the Botkins. The couple had three children: Elena (1921-2005), Konstantin (1927-2014) and Evgeny (year of birth and death unknown).

In 1919, during the retreat of the Eastern Front, Melnik took Tatyana and her brother Gleb to Vladivostok. From here, they escaped Russia, settling first in Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia. In 1920, they moved to France, where they settled in Rives, a town near Grenoble. Tatiana divorced her husband and moved to Nice, where she raised her children alone.

In later years, Tatiana, along with her brother Gleb, were staunch supporters of Anna Anderson’s claim that she was the surviving Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna, the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II.

PHOTO: Tatiana Botkina’s grave in the Russian Orthodox cemetery, in Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois

Tatiana eventually settled near Paris, where she lived the rest of her life. A few years before her death, with the help of her granddaughter Catherine Melnick-Duhamel, she wrote her memoirs entitled Au temps des Tsars (1980), followed by a second: Anastasie retrouvée (1985).

She died on 1st April 1986, at the age of 88. She was buried at the Russian Orthodox cemetery, in Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois, situated in the southern suburbs of Paris, France.

© Paul Gilbert. 14 May 2025

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