Saint Eugene Botkin. Botkin Evgeniy Sergeevich

Ecology of life. People: Deep inner piety, most importantly - sacrificial service to one's neighbor, unwavering devotion to the Royal Family and loyalty to God...

Evgeny Botkin was born on May 27, 1865 in Tsarskoye Selo, in the family of the outstanding Russian scientist and doctor, founder of the experimental direction in medicine, Sergei Petrovich Botkin. His father was a court physician to Emperors Alexander II and Alexander III.

As a child, he received an excellent education and was immediately admitted to the fifth grade of the St. Petersburg Classical Gymnasium. After graduating from high school, he entered the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of St. Petersburg University, but after the first year he decided to become a doctor and entered the preparatory course at the Military Medical Academy.

Evgeny Botkin's medical career began in January 1890 as a medical assistant at the Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor. A year later, he went abroad for scientific purposes, studied with leading European scientists, and became acquainted with the structure of Berlin hospitals.

In May 1892, Evgeniy Sergeevich became a doctor at the Court Chapel, and in January 1894 he returned to the Mariinsky Hospital. At the same time, he continued his scientific activities: he studied immunology, studied the essence of the process of leukocytosis and the protective properties of blood cells.

In 1893 he brilliantly defended his dissertation. The official opponent in the defense was the physiologist and first Nobel laureate Ivan Pavlov.

With the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War (1904), Evgeny Botkin volunteered for the active army and became the head of the medical unit of the Russian Red Cross Society in the Manchurian Army. According to eyewitnesses, despite his administrative position, he spent a lot of time on the front line. For excellence in his work he was awarded many orders, including military officer orders.

In the fall of 1905, Evgeniy Sergeevich returned to St. Petersburg and began teaching at the academy. In 1907, he was appointed chief physician of the St. George community in the capital.

In 1907, after the death of Gustav Hirsch, the royal family was left without a physician. The candidacy for the new life physician was nominated by the empress herself, who, when asked who she would like to see in this position, answered: “Botkina.” When she was told that two Botkins are now equally famous in St. Petersburg, she said: “The one who was in the war!”

Botkin was three years older than his august patient, Nicholas II. The duty of the life physician was to treat all members of the royal family, which he carried out carefully and scrupulously. It was necessary to examine and treat the emperor, who was in good health, and the grand duchesses who were suffering from various childhood infections. But the main object of Evgeniy Sergeevich’s efforts was Tsarevich Alexei, who suffered from hemophilia.

After the February coup of 1917, the imperial family was imprisoned in the Alexander Palace of Tsarskoe Selo. All servants and assistants were asked to leave the prisoners if they wished. But Dr. Botkin stayed with the patients.

He did not want to leave them even when it was decided to send the royal family to Tobolsk. There he opened a free medical practice for local residents.

In April 1918, together with the royal couple and their daughter Maria, Doctor Botkin was transported from Tobolsk to Yekaterinburg. At that moment there was still an opportunity to leave the royal family, but the doctor did not leave them.

Johann Meyer, an Austrian soldier who was captured by Russians during the First World War and defected to the Bolsheviks in Yekaterinburg, wrote his memoirs “How the Royal Family Died.” In the book, he reports on the proposal made by the Bolsheviks to Dr. Botkin to leave the royal family and choose a place of work, for example, somewhere in a Moscow clinic. Thus, one of all the prisoners in the special purpose house knew for sure about the imminent execution. He knew and, having the opportunity to choose, chose loyalty to the oath once given to the king over salvation.

This is how Meyer describes it: “You see, I gave the king my word of honor to remain with him as long as he lives. For a person in my position it is impossible not to keep such a word. I also cannot leave an heir alone. How can I reconcile this with my conscience? You all need to understand this."

Doctor Botkin was killed along with the entire imperial family in Yekaterinburg in the Ipatiev House on the night of July 16-17, 1918.

In 1981, along with others executed in the Ipatiev House, he was canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad.

LIFE

PASSION-BEARER EUGENE DOCTOR (BOTKIN)

Evgeniy Sergeevich Botkin came from the Botkin merchant dynasty, whose representatives were distinguished by their deep Orthodox faith and charity, helping the Orthodox Church not only with their means, but also with their labors. Thanks to a reasonably organized system of upbringing in the family and the wise care of his parents, many virtues were implanted in Evgeniy’s heart from childhood, including generosity, modesty and rejection of violence.

His brother Pyotr Sergeevich recalled: “He was infinitely kind. One could say that he came into the world for the sake of people and in order to sacrifice himself.”

Evgeniy received a thorough education at home, which allowed him to enter the fifth grade of the 2nd St. Petersburg Classical Gymnasium in 1878. In 1882, Evgeniy graduated from high school and became a student at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of St. Petersburg University. However, the very next year, having passed the exams for the first year of the university, he entered the junior department of the newly opened preparatory course at the Imperial Military Medical Academy. His choice of the medical profession from the very beginning was deliberate and purposeful. Peter Botkin wrote about Evgeny: “He chose medicine as his profession. This corresponded to his calling: to help, to support in difficult times, to ease pain, to heal endlessly.” In 1889, Evgeniy successfully graduated from the academy, receiving the title of doctor with honors, and in January 1890 he began his career at the Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor.

At the age of 25, Evgeny Sergeevich Botkin married the daughter of a hereditary nobleman, Olga Vladimirovna Manuilova. Four children grew up in the Botkin family: Dmitry (1894–1914), Georgy (1895–1941), Tatyana (1898–1986), Gleb (1900–1969).

Simultaneously with his work at the hospital, E. S. Botkin was engaged in science, he was interested in questions of immunology, the essence of the process of leukocytosis. In 1893, E. S. Botkin brilliantly defended his dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Medicine. After 2 years, Evgeniy Sergeevich was sent abroad, where he practiced in medical institutions in Heidelberg and Berlin.

In 1897, E. S. Botkin was awarded the title of private assistant professor in internal medicine with a clinic. At his first lecture, he told students about the most important thing in a doctor’s activity: “Let us all go with love for a sick person, so that we can learn together how to be useful to him.”

Evgeniy Sergeevich considered the service of a physician to be a truly Christian activity; he had a religious view of illness and saw their connection with a person’s mental state. In one of his letters to his son George, he expressed his attitude towards the medical profession as a means of learning God’s wisdom: “The main delight that you experience in our work ... is that for this we must penetrate deeper and deeper into the details and the mysteries of God’s creations, and it is impossible not to enjoy their purposefulness and harmony and His highest wisdom.”

Since 1897, E. S. Botkin began his medical work in the communities of nurses of the Russian Red Cross Society. On November 19, 1897, he became a doctor at the Holy Trinity Community of Sisters of Mercy, and on January 1, 1899, he also became the chief physician of the St. Petersburg Community of Sisters of Mercy in honor of St. George. The main patients of the community of St. George were people from the poorest strata of society, but doctors and staff were selected with special care. Some upper-class women worked there as simple nurses on a general basis and considered this occupation honorable for themselves. There was such enthusiasm among the employees, such a desire to help suffering people, that the St. George’s residents were sometimes compared to the early Christian community. The fact that Evgeniy Sergeevich was accepted to work in this “exemplary institution” testified not only to his increased authority as a doctor, but also to his Christian virtues and respectable life. The position of chief physician of the community could only be entrusted to a highly moral and religious person.

In 1904, the Russian-Japanese War began, and Evgeniy Sergeevich, leaving his wife and four small children (the eldest was ten years old at that time, the youngest four years old), volunteered to go to the Far East. On February 2, 1904, by decree of the Main Directorate of the Russian Red Cross Society, he was appointed assistant to the Commissioner-in-Chief of the active armies for medical affairs. Occupying this rather high administrative position, Dr. Botkin was often in the forefront.

During the war, Evgeniy Sergeevich not only showed himself to be an excellent doctor, but also showed personal bravery and courage. He wrote many letters from the front, from which a whole book was compiled - “The Light and Shadows of the Russian-Japanese War of 1904–1905.” This book was soon published, and many, after reading it, discovered new sides of the St. Petersburg doctor: his Christian, loving, infinitely compassionate heart and unshakable faith in God.

Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, having read Botkin’s book, wished for Evgeniy Sergeevich to become the personal doctor of the Royal Family. On Easter Sunday, April 13, 1908, Emperor Nicholas II signed a decree appointing Dr. Botkin as personal physician of the Imperial Court.

Now, after the new appointment, Evgeniy Sergeevich had to constantly be with the emperor and members of his family; his service at the royal court took place without days off or vacations. A high position and closeness to the Royal Family did not change the character of E. S. Botkin. He remained as kind and attentive to his neighbors as he had been before.

When the First World War began, Evgeniy Sergeevich asked the sovereign to send him to the front to reorganize the sanitary service. However, the emperor instructed him to remain with the empress and children in Tsarskoye Selo, where, through their efforts, infirmaries began to open. At his home in Tsarskoe Selo, Evgeniy Sergeevich also set up an infirmary for the lightly wounded, which the Empress and her daughters visited.

In February 1917, a revolution occurred in Russia. On March 2, the sovereign signed the Manifesto abdicating the throne. The royal family was arrested and detained in the Alexander Palace. Evgeniy Sergeevich did not leave his royal patients: he voluntarily decided to be with them, despite the fact that his position was abolished and his salary was no longer paid. At this time, Botkin became more than a friend to the royal prisoners: he took upon himself the responsibility of being a mediator between the imperial family and the commissars, interceding for all their needs.

When it was decided to move the Royal Family to Tobolsk, Dr. Botkin was among the few close associates who voluntarily followed the sovereign into exile. Doctor Botkin's letters from Tobolsk amaze with their truly Christian mood: not a word of grumbling, condemnation, discontent or resentment, but complacency and even joy. The source of this complacency was a firm faith in the all-good Providence of God: “Only prayer and ardent boundless hope in the mercy of God, invariably poured out on us by our Heavenly Father, support us.”

At this time, he continued to fulfill his duties: he treated not only members of the Royal Family, but also ordinary townspeople. A scientist who for many years communicated with the scientific, medical, and administrative elite of Russia, he humbly served, as a zemstvo or city doctor, to ordinary peasants, soldiers, and workers.

In April 1918, Dr. Botkin volunteered to accompany the royal couple to Yekaterinburg, leaving his own children, whom he loved dearly and dearly, in Tobolsk. In Yekaterinburg, the Bolsheviks again invited the servants to leave the arrested, but everyone refused. Chekist I. Rodzinsky reported: “In general, at one time after the transfer to Yekaterinburg, there was an idea to separate everyone from them, in particular, even the daughters were offered to leave. But everyone refused. Botkin was offered. He stated that he wanted to share the fate of the family. And he refused."

On the night of July 16-17, 1918, the Royal Family and their associates, including Dr. Botkin, were shot in the basement of Ipatiev’s house.

A few years before his death, Evgeniy Sergeevich received the title of hereditary nobleman. For his coat of arms, he chose the motto: “By faith, fidelity, labor.” These words seemed to concentrate all the life ideals and aspirations of Dr. Botkin.Deep inner piety, the most important thing - sacrificial service to one's neighbor, unwavering devotion to the Royal Family and loyalty to God and His commandments in all circumstances, loyalty to death.

The Lord accepts such fidelity as a pure sacrifice and gives the highest, heavenly reward for it: Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life (Rev. 2:10).

, Yekaterinburg) - Russian doctor, life physician of the family of Nicholas II, nobleman, saint of the Russian Orthodox Church, passion-bearer, righteous. Son of the famous doctor Sergei Petrovich Botkin. Shot by the Bolsheviks along with the royal family.

Biography

Childhood and studies

He was the fourth child in the family of the famous Russian doctor Sergei Petrovich Botkin (physician to Alexander II and Alexander III) and Anastasia Alexandrovna Krylova.

In 1878, based on the education he received at home, he was immediately admitted to the 5th grade of the 2nd St. Petersburg Classical Gymnasium. After graduating from high school in 1882, he entered the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of St. Petersburg University, however, having passed the exams for the first year of the university, he went to the junior department of the opened preparatory course at the Military Medical Academy.

In 1889 he graduated from the academy third in the class, receiving the title of doctor with honors.

Work and career

From January 1890 he worked as a medical assistant at the Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor. In December 1890, he was sent abroad at his own expense for scientific purposes. He studied with leading European scientists and became familiar with the structure of Berlin hospitals.

At the end of his business trip in May 1892, Evgeniy Sergeevich became a doctor at the court chapel, and in January 1894 he returned to the Mariinsky Hospital as a supernumerary resident.

On May 8, 1893, he defended his dissertation at the Academy for the degree of Doctor of Medicine, “On the question of the influence of albumin and peptones on some functions of the animal body,” dedicated to his father. The official opponent for the defense was I.P. Pavlov.

In the spring of 1895, he was sent abroad and spent two years in medical institutions in Heidelberg and Berlin, where he listened to lectures and practiced with leading German doctors - professors G. Munch, B. Frenkel, P. Ernst and others. In May 1897 he was elected privat-docent of the Military Medical Academy.

In the fall of 1905, Evgeny Botkin returned to St. Petersburg and began teaching at the academy. Since 1905 - honorary life physician. In 1907 he was appointed chief physician of the community of St. George. At the request of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, he was invited as a doctor to the royal family and in April 1908 was appointed personal physician to Nicholas II. He remained in this position until his death.

He was also an advisory member of the Military Sanitary Scientific Committee at the Imperial Headquarters, and a member of the Main Directorate of the Russian Red Cross Society. Since 1910 - active state councilor.

Exile and death

He was killed along with the entire imperial family in Yekaterinburg in the Ipatiev House on the night of July 16-17, 1918. According to the memoirs of the organizer of the murder of the royal family, Ya. M. Yurovsky, Botkin did not die immediately - he had to be “shot.”

“I am making one last attempt to write a real letter - at least from here... My voluntary imprisonment here is as unlimited by time as my earthly existence is limited. In essence, I died, I died for my children, for my friends, for my cause... I died, but not yet buried, or buried alive - it doesn’t matter, the consequences are almost the same...

I do not indulge myself in hope, I am not lulled by illusions and I look the unvarnished reality straight in the eye... I am supported by the conviction that “he who endures to the end will be saved” and the consciousness that I remain faithful to the principles of the 1889 edition. If faith without works is dead, then works without faith can exist, and if one of us adds faith to works, then this is only due to God’s special mercy towards him...

This justifies my last decision, when I did not hesitate to leave my children as orphans in order to fulfill my medical duty to the end, just as Abraham did not hesitate at God’s request to sacrifice his only son to him.”

Canonization and rehabilitation

On February 3, 2016, the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church made a decision on church-wide glorification righteous passion-bearer Eugene the doctor. However, other servants of the royal family were not canonized. Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeev) of Volokolamsk, commenting on this canonization, said:

The Council of Bishops made a decision to glorify Dr. Evgeniy Botkin. I think this is a long-desired decision, because this is one of the saints who is venerated not only in the Russian Church Abroad, but also in many dioceses of the Russian Orthodox Church, including in the medical community.

On March 25, 2016, on the territory of the Moscow City Clinical Hospital No. 57, Bishop Panteleimon of Orekhovo-Zuevsky consecrated the first church in Russia in honor of the righteous Evgeniy Botkin.

Family

Evgeny Botkin · Alexey Volkov · Anastasia Gendrikova · Anna Demidova · Vasily Dolgorukov · Klimenty Nagorny · Ivan Sednev · Ilya Tatishchev · Alexey Trupp · Ivan Kharitonov · Ekaterina Shneider · Yakov Yurovsky · Peter Ermakov

An excerpt characterizing Botkin, Evgeniy Sergeevich

Quickly in the semi-darkness they dismantled the horses, tightened the girths and sorted out the teams. Denisov stood at the guardhouse, giving the last orders. The party's infantry, slapping a hundred feet, marched forward along the road and quickly disappeared between the trees in the predawn fog. Esaul ordered something to the Cossacks. Petya held his horse on the reins, impatiently awaiting the order to mount. Washed with cold water, his face, especially his eyes, burned with fire, a chill ran down his back, and something in his whole body trembled quickly and evenly.
- Well, is everything ready for you? - Denisov said. - Give us the horses.
The horses were brought in. Denisov became angry with the Cossack because the girths were weak, and, scolding him, sat down. Petya took hold of the stirrup. The horse, out of habit, wanted to bite his leg, but Petya, not feeling his weight, quickly jumped into the saddle and, looking back at the hussars who were moving behind in the darkness, rode up to Denisov.
- Vasily Fedorovich, will you entrust me with something? Please... for God's sake... - he said. Denisov seemed to have forgotten about Petya’s existence. He looked back at him.
“I ask you about one thing,” he said sternly, “to obey me and not to interfere anywhere.”
During the entire journey, Denisov did not speak a word to Petya and rode in silence. When we arrived at the edge of the forest, the field was noticeably getting lighter. Denisov spoke in a whisper with the esaul, and the Cossacks began to drive past Petya and Denisov. When they had all passed, Denisov started his horse and rode downhill. Sitting on their hindquarters and sliding, the horses descended with their riders into the ravine. Petya rode next to Denisov. The trembling throughout his body intensified. It became lighter and lighter, only the fog hid distant objects. Moving down and looking back, Denisov nodded his head to the Cossack standing next to him.
- Signal! - he said.
The Cossack raised his hand and a shot rang out. And at the same instant, the tramp of galloping horses was heard in front, screams from different sides and more shots.
At the same instant as the first sounds of stomping and screaming were heard, Petya, hitting his horse and releasing the reins, not listening to Denisov, who was shouting at him, galloped forward. It seemed to Petya that it suddenly dawned as brightly as the middle of the day at that moment when the shot was heard. He galloped towards the bridge. Cossacks galloped along the road ahead. On the bridge he encountered a lagging Cossack and rode on. Some people ahead - they must have been French - were running from the right side of the road to the left. One fell into the mud under the feet of Petya's horse.
Cossacks crowded around one hut, doing something. A terrible scream was heard from the middle of the crowd. Petya galloped up to this crowd, and the first thing he saw was the pale face of a Frenchman with a shaking lower jaw, holding onto the shaft of a lance pointed at him.
“Hurray!.. Guys... ours...” Petya shouted and, giving the reins to the overheated horse, galloped forward down the street.
Shots were heard ahead. Cossacks, hussars and ragged Russian prisoners, running from both sides of the road, were all shouting something loudly and awkwardly. A handsome Frenchman, without a hat, with a red, frowning face, in a blue overcoat, fought off the hussars with a bayonet. When Petya galloped up, the Frenchman had already fallen. I was late again, Petya flashed in his head, and he galloped to where frequent shots were heard. Shots rang out in the courtyard of the manor house where he was with Dolokhov last night. The French sat down there behind a fence in a dense garden overgrown with bushes and fired at the Cossacks crowded at the gate. Approaching the gate, Petya, in the powder smoke, saw Dolokhov with a pale, greenish face, shouting something to the people. “Take a detour! Wait for the infantry!” - he shouted, while Petya drove up to him.
“Wait?.. Hurray!..” Petya shouted and, without hesitating a single minute, galloped to the place from where the shots were heard and where the powder smoke was thicker. A volley was heard, empty bullets squealed and hit something. The Cossacks and Dolokhov galloped after Petya through the gates of the house. The French, in the swaying thick smoke, some threw down their weapons and ran out of the bushes to meet the Cossacks, others ran downhill to the pond. Petya galloped on his horse along the manor's yard and, instead of holding the reins, strangely and quickly waved both arms and fell further and further out of the saddle to one side. The horse, running into the fire smoldering in the morning light, rested, and Petya fell heavily onto the wet ground. The Cossacks saw how quickly his arms and legs twitched, despite the fact that his head did not move. The bullet pierced his head.
After talking with the senior French officer, who came out to him from behind the house with a scarf on his sword and announced that they were surrendering, Dolokhov got off his horse and approached Petya, who was lying motionless, with his arms outstretched.
“Ready,” he said, frowning, and went through the gate to meet Denisov, who was coming towards him.
- Killed?! - Denisov cried out, seeing from afar the familiar, undoubtedly lifeless position in which Petya’s body lay.
“Ready,” Dolokhov repeated, as if pronouncing this word gave him pleasure, and quickly went to the prisoners, who were surrounded by dismounted Cossacks. - We won’t take it! – he shouted to Denisov.
Denisov did not answer; he rode up to Petya, got off his horse and with trembling hands turned Petya’s already pale face, stained with blood and dirt, towards him.
“I’m used to something sweet. Excellent raisins, take them all,” he remembered. And the Cossacks looked back in surprise at the sounds similar to the barking of a dog, with which Denisov quickly turned away, walked up to the fence and grabbed it.
Among the Russian prisoners recaptured by Denisov and Dolokhov was Pierre Bezukhov.

There was no new order from the French authorities about the party of prisoners in which Pierre was, during his entire movement from Moscow. This party on October 22 was no longer with the same troops and convoys with which it left Moscow. Half of the convoy with breadcrumbs, which followed them during the first marches, was repulsed by the Cossacks, the other half went ahead; there were no more foot cavalrymen who walked in front; they all disappeared. The artillery, which had been visible ahead during the first marches, was now replaced by a huge convoy of Marshal Junot, escorted by the Westphalians. Behind the prisoners was a convoy of cavalry equipment.
From Vyazma, the French troops, previously marching in three columns, now marched in one heap. Those signs of disorder that Pierre noticed at the first stop from Moscow have now reached the last degree.
The road along which they walked was littered with dead horses on both sides; ragged people lagging behind different teams, constantly changing, then joined, then again lagged behind the marching column.
Several times during the campaign there were false alarms, and the soldiers of the convoy raised their guns, shot and ran headlong, crushing each other, but then they gathered again and scolded each other for their vain fear.
These three gatherings, marching together - the cavalry depot, the prisoner depot and Junot's train - still formed something separate and integral, although both of them, and the third, were quickly melting away.
The depot, which had initially contained one hundred and twenty carts, now had no more than sixty left; the rest were repulsed or abandoned. Several carts from Junot's convoy were also abandoned and recaptured. Three carts were plundered by the backward soldiers from Davout's corps who came running. From conversations of the Germans, Pierre heard that this convoy was put on guard more than the prisoners, and that one of their comrades, a German soldier, was shot on the orders of the marshal himself because a silver spoon that belonged to the marshal was found on the soldier.
Of these three gatherings, the prisoner depot melted the most. Of the three hundred and thirty people who left Moscow, there were now less than a hundred left. The prisoners were even more of a burden to the escorting soldiers than the saddles of the cavalry depot and Junot's baggage train. Junot’s saddles and spoons, they understood that they could be useful for something, but why did the hungry and cold soldiers of the convoy stand guard and guard the same cold and hungry Russians who were dying and lagged behind on the road, whom they were ordered to shoot? not only incomprehensible, but also disgusting. And the guards, as if afraid in the sad situation in which they themselves were, not to give in to their feeling of pity for the prisoners and thereby worsen their situation, treated them especially gloomily and strictly.
In Dorogobuzh, while the convoy soldiers, having locked the prisoners in a stable, went off to rob their own stores, several captured soldiers dug under the wall and ran away, but were captured by the French and shot.
The previous order, introduced upon leaving Moscow, for captured officers to march separately from the soldiers, had long been destroyed; all those who could walk walked together, and Pierre, from the third transition, had already united again with Karataev and the lilac bow-legged dog, which had chosen Karataev as its owner.
Karataev, on the third day of leaving Moscow, developed the same fever from which he was lying in the Moscow hospital, and as Karataev weakened, Pierre moved away from him. Pierre didn’t know why, but since Karataev began to weaken, Pierre had to make an effort on himself to approach him. And approaching him and listening to those quiet moans with which Karataev usually lay down at rest, and feeling the now intensified smell that Karataev emitted from himself, Pierre moved away from him and did not think about him.

“There is nothing brighter than a soul that has been deemed worthy to endure for Christ something that seems terrible and unbearable to us. Just as those who are baptized with water, so those who undergo martyrdom are washed in their own blood. And here the spirit hovers with great abundance.” (St. John Chrysostom)

Eugene – translated from Greek as “noble”. The royal family of Nicholas II: his wife, Alexandra Fedorovna, daughters Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia and son Alexei, as well as their servants S. Botkin, A. Demidova, A. Trunn, I. Kharitonov are equated to passion-bearers. Who are the passion-bearers? These are Christian martyrs who endured suffering in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. The saints who suffered martyrdom from their loved ones, fellow believers, - the power of their malice, greed, and deceit. The character of the feat is goodness, non-resistance to enemies. The feat of passion-bearing is suffering for the fulfillment of the commandments of Christ.

The Botkin family is undoubtedly one of the most remarkable Russian families, which has given the country, and the world, many outstanding people in a wide variety of fields. Some of its representatives remained industrialists and traders before the revolution, others went entirely into science, art, diplomacy and achieved not only all-Russian, but also European fame. The Botkin family is very accurately characterized by the biographer of one of its most prominent representatives, the famous clinician and physician Sergei Petrovich: “S.P. Botkin came from a pure-blooded Great Russian family, without the slightest admixture of foreign blood, and thus serves as brilliant proof that if extensive and solid knowledge is added to the talent of the Slavic tribe, together with a love of persistent work, then this tribe is capable of producing the most advanced figures in the field of pan-European science and thoughts." For doctors, the surname Botkin primarily evokes associations with Botkin’s disease (acute viral parenchymal hepatitis), named after Sergei Petrovich Botkin, who studied jaundice and was the first to suggest its infectious nature. Someone may remember the Botkin-Gumprecht cells (corpuscles, shadows) - the remains of destroyed cells of the lymphoid series (lymphocytes, etc.), detected by microscopy of blood smears, their number reflects the intensity of the process of destruction of lymphocytes. Back in 1892, Sergei Petrovich Botkin drew attention to leukolysis as a factor “playing a primary role in the body’s self-defense,” even greater than phagocytosis. Leukocytosis in Botkin's experiments with both the injection of tuberculin and the immunization of horses against tetanus toxin was later replaced by leukolysis, and this moment coincided with a critical decline. The same was noted by Botkin with fibrinous pneumonia. Later, the son of Sergei Petrovich, Evgeniy Sergeevich Botkin, became interested in this phenomenon, to whom the term “leukolysis” itself belongs.

But as well as the doctor Botkin Sr. is remembered, the doctor Botkin Jr. is so undeservedly forgotten... Evgeny Botkin was born on May 27, 1865 in Tsarskoe Selo, in the family of an outstanding Russian scientist and doctor, founder of the experimental direction in medicine, Sergei Petrovich Botkin, physician Alexander II and Alexander III. He was the 4th child of Sergei Petrovich from his 1st marriage to Anastasia Alexandrovna Krylova. The atmosphere in the family and home education played a big role in the formation of Evgeniy Sergeevich’s personality. The financial well-being of the Botkin family was founded on the entrepreneurial activities of Evgeniy Sergeevich’s grandfather, Pyotr Kononovich, a famous tea supplier. The percentage of the trade turnover allocated to each of the heirs allowed them to choose a business to their liking, engage in self-education and lead a life not very burdened with financial worries.

There were many creative personalities in the Botkin family (artists, writers, etc.). The Botkins were related to Afanasy Fet and Pavel Tretyakov. Sergei Petrovich was a fan of music, calling music lessons a “refreshing bath”; he played the cello to the accompaniment of his wife and under the guidance of Professor I.I. Seifert. His son Evgeniy received a thorough musical education and acquired a refined musical taste. The capital's elite gathered for the famous Botkin Saturdays: professors from the Military Medical Academy, writers and musicians, collectors and artists came. Among them is I.M. Sechenov, M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, A.P. Borodin, V.V. Stasov, N.M. Yakubovich, M.A. Balakirev. Nikolai Andreevich Belogolovy, friend and biographer of S.P. Botkina, a public figure and doctor, noted: “Surrounded by his 12 children ranging in age from 30 years to a one-year-old child... he seemed like a true biblical patriarch; the children adored him, despite the fact that he knew how to maintain great discipline and blind obedience to himself in the family.” About Evgeniy Sergeevich’s mother, Anastasia Alexandrovna: “What made her better than any beauty was the subtle grace and amazing tactfulness that flowed throughout her entire being and was the result of that solid school of noble upbringing through which she went through. And she was brought up remarkably versatile and thoroughly... On top of this, she was very smart, witty, sensitive to everything good and kind... And she was the most exemplary mother in the sense that, passionately loving her children, she knew how to preserve the necessary pedagogical self-control, carefully and intelligently monitored their upbringing, and promptly eradicated the emerging shortcomings in them.”

Already in his childhood, Evgeniy Sergeevich’s character showed such qualities as modesty, kind attitude towards others and rejection of violence. In Pyotr Sergeevich Botkin’s book “My Brother” there are the following lines: “From a very tender age, his beautiful and noble nature was full of perfection... Always sensitive, out of delicacy, internally kind, with an extraordinary soul, he felt horror from any fight or fight ... As usual, he did not participate in our fights, but when a fist fight became dangerous, he, at the risk of injury, stopped the fighters. He was very diligent and smart in his studies." Primary home education allowed Evgeniy Sergeevich to immediately enter the 5th grade of the 2nd St. Petersburg Classical Gymnasium in 1878, where the young man’s brilliant abilities in the natural sciences were revealed. After graduating from high school in 1882, he entered the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of St. Petersburg University. However, the example of his father, a doctor, and the worship of medicine turned out to be stronger, and in 1883, having passed the exams for the first year of the university, he entered the junior department of the newly opened preparatory course of the Military Medical Academy (MMA). In the year of his father’s death (1889), Evgeniy Sergeevich successfully graduated from the academy third in the graduating class, was awarded the title of doctor with honors and the personalized Paltsev Prize, which was awarded to “the third highest scorer in his course...”.

Medical path E.S. Botkin began in January 1890 as a medical assistant at the Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor. In December 1890, at his own expense, he was sent abroad for scientific purposes. He studied with leading European scientists and became familiar with the structure of Berlin hospitals. At the end of his foreign business trip in May 1892, Evgeniy Sergeevich began working as a doctor in the court chapel, and in January 1894 he returned to perform medical duties at the Mariinsky Hospital as a supernumerary resident. Simultaneously with clinical practice E.S. Botkin was engaged in scientific research, the main directions of which were questions of immunology, the essence of the process of leukocytosis, and the protective properties of blood cells. He brilliantly defended his dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Medicine “On the question of the influence of albumoses and peptones on some functions of the animal body,” dedicated to his father, at the Military Medical Academy on May 8, 1893. The official opponent for the defense was I.P. Pavlov.

In the spring of 1895 E.S. Botkin is sent abroad and spends two years in medical institutions in Heidelberg and Berlin, where he listens to lectures and practices with leading German doctors - professors G. Munch, B. Frenkel, P. Ernst and others. Scientific works and reports of foreign business trips were published in the Botkin Hospital Newspaper and in the Proceedings of the Society of Russian Doctors. In May 1897 E.S. Botkin was elected privat-docent of the Military Medical Academy. Here are a few words from the introductory lecture given to the students of the Military Medical Academy on October 18, 1897: “Once the trust you have acquired in patients turns into sincere affection for you, when they are convinced of your invariably cordial attitude towards them. When you enter the room, you are greeted by a joyful and welcoming mood - a precious and powerful medicine, which will often help you much more than with mixtures and powders... Only a heart is needed for this, only sincere heartfelt sympathy for the sick person. So don’t be stingy, learn to give it with a wide hand to those who need it. So, let’s go with love to a sick person, so that we can learn together how to be useful to him.”

In 1898, Evgeniy Sergeevich’s work “Patients in the Hospital” was published, and in 1903 - “What does it mean to “pamper” the sick?” With the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War (1904), Evgeniy Sergeevich volunteered for the active army and was appointed head of the medical unit of the Russian Red Cross Society (ROSC) in the Manchurian Army. Occupying a fairly high administrative position, he nevertheless preferred to spend most of his time in advanced positions. Eyewitnesses said that one day a wounded company paramedic was brought in for dressing. Having done everything that was required, Botkin took the paramedic’s bag and went to the front line. The sorrowful thoughts that this shameful war evoked in the ardent patriot testified to his deep religiosity: “I am more and more depressed by the course of our war, and therefore it hurts... that the whole mass of our troubles is only the result of people’s lack of spirituality, a sense of duty, that petty calculations become higher than the concepts of the Fatherland, higher than God.” Evgeniy Sergeevich showed his attitude to this war and his purpose in it in the book “Light and Shadows of the Russian-Japanese War of 1904-1905: From Letters to his Wife,” published in 1908. Here are some of his observations and thoughts. “I was not afraid for myself: never before have I felt the strength of my faith to such an extent. I was absolutely convinced that, no matter how great the risk I was running, I would not be killed unless God so wished it. I didn’t tease fate, I didn’t stand at the guns so as not to disturb the shooters, but I realized that I was needed, and this consciousness made my position pleasant.” “I just read all the latest telegrams about the fall of Mukden and our terrible retreat to Telpin. I can’t convey to you my feelings... Despair and hopelessness cover my soul. Will we have something in Russia? Poor, poor homeland" (Chita, March 1, 1905). “For the distinction rendered in cases against the Japanese,” Evgeniy Sergeevich was awarded the Order of St. Vladimir, III and II degrees with swords.

Outwardly very calm and strong-willed, Doctor E.S. Botkin was a sentimental man with a fine spiritual organization. Let us turn again to the book by P.S. Botkin “My Brother”: “... I came to my father’s grave and suddenly heard sobs in a deserted cemetery. Coming closer, I saw my brother (Evgeniy) lying in the snow. “Oh, it’s you, Petya, you came to talk to dad,” and more sobs. And an hour later, during the reception of patients, it could not have occurred to anyone that this calm, self-confident and powerful man could cry like a child.” Dr. Botkin on May 6, 1905 was appointed honorary physician of the imperial family. In the fall of 1905, Evgeniy Sergeevich returned to St. Petersburg and began teaching at the academy. In 1907, he was appointed chief physician of the St. George community in the capital. In 1907, after the death of Gustav Hirsch, the royal family was left without a physician. The candidacy for the new life physician was nominated by the empress herself, who, when asked who she would like to see as her life physician, answered: “Botkina.” When she was told that two Botkins are now equally famous in St. Petersburg, she said: “The one who was in the war!” (Although his brother Sergei Sergeevich was also a participant in the Russo-Japanese War.) Thus, on April 13, 1908, Evgeniy Sergeevich Botkin became the personal physician of the family of the last Russian emperor, repeating the career path of his father, who was the personal physician of two Russian tsars (Alexander II and Alexander III).

E.S. Botkin was three years older than his august patient, Emperor Nicholas II. The tsar's family was served by a large staff of doctors (among whom there were a variety of specialists: surgeons, ophthalmologists, obstetricians, dentists), doctors more titled than the modest private assistant professor of the Military Medical Academy. But Dr. Botkin was distinguished by a rare talent for clinical thinking and an even more rare feeling of sincere love for his patients. The duty of the life physician was to treat all members of the royal family, which he carried out carefully and scrupulously. It was necessary to examine and treat the emperor, who had amazingly good health, and the grand duchesses, who had, it seemed, suffered from all known childhood infections. Nicholas II treated his doctor with great sympathy and trust. He patiently endured all the diagnostic and treatment procedures prescribed by Dr. Botkin. But the most difficult patients were Empress Alexandra Feodorovna and the heir to the throne, Tsarevich Alexei. As a little girl, the future empress suffered from diphtheria, complications of which included attacks of pain in the joints, swelling of the legs, palpitations, and arrhythmia. Edema forced Alexandra Feodorovna to wear special shoes and give up long walks, and palpitations and headaches prevented her from getting out of bed for weeks. However, the main object of Evgeniy Sergeevich's efforts was Tsarevich Alexei, who was born with a dangerous and fatal disease - hemophilia. It was with the Tsarevich that E.S. spent most of his time. Botkin, sometimes in life-threatening conditions, did not leave the sick Alexey’s bedside for days and nights, surrounding him with human care and sympathy, giving him all the warmth of his generous heart. This attitude found a mutual response on the part of the little patient, who would write to his doctor: “I love you with all my little heart.” Evgeniy Sergeevich himself also sincerely became attached to the members of the royal family, more than once telling his household: “With their kindness, they made me their slave until the end of my days.”

True, relations with the royal family were not always smooth and cloudless, which is mainly explained by the integrity of the doctor himself, who, with all his devotion, was not a blind performer and never compromised on issues of personal understanding of the moral foundations of human relations. So, I received a refusal from him to my request to examine G.E. at home. Rasputina is the empress herself. In response to the request, Dr. Botkin stated: “It is my duty to provide medical assistance to anyone. But I won’t accept such a person at home.” This aroused the hostility of Alexandra Feodorovna, who, after one of the terrible crises of her son’s illness in the fall of 1912, when E.S. Botkin, professor S.P. Fedorov and honorary life surgeon V.N. Derevenko admitted their powerlessness over the disease, considering Alexei’s condition hopeless, and unconditionally trusted Rasputin.

As a doctor and as a moral person, Evgeniy Sergeevich never touched upon the health of his highest-ranking patients in private conversations. Head of the Chancellery of the Ministry of the Imperial Household, General A.A. Mosolov noted: “Botkin was known for his restraint. None of the retinue managed to find out from him what the empress was sick with and what treatment the queen and heir followed. He was, of course, a devoted servant to Their Majesties.” Despite all the vicissitudes in relations with royalty, Dr. Botkin was an influential person in the royal circle. The maid of honor, friend and confidant of the Empress Anna Vyrubova (Taneeva) stated: “The faithful Botkin, appointed by the Empress herself, was very influential.” Evgeniy Sergeevich himself was far from politics, however, as a caring person, as a patriot of his country, he could not help but see the destructiveness of public sentiment in it, which he considered the main reason for Russia’s defeat in the war of 1904-1905. He understood very well that hatred of the Tsar, of the imperial family, incited by radical revolutionary circles, was beneficial only to the enemies of Russia, the Russia that his ancestors served, for which he himself fought on the fields of the Russo-Japanese War, Russia, which was entering into the cruelest and bloody world battle. He despised people who used dirty methods to achieve their goals, who composed courtly nonsense about the royal family and its morals. He spoke about such people as follows: “If Rasputin had not existed, then the opponents of the royal family and the preparers of the revolution would have created him with their conversations from Vyrubova, if there had been no Vyrubova, from me, from whomever you want.” And again: “I don’t understand how people who consider themselves monarchists and talk about the adoration of His Majesty can so easily believe all the gossip being spread, can spread it themselves, erecting all sorts of fables about the Empress, and don’t understand that by insulting her, they thereby insulting her august husband, whom they supposedly adore.”

The family life of Evgeniy Sergeevich was not smooth either. Carried away by revolutionary ideas and a young (20 years younger) student at the Riga Polytechnic College, his wife Olga Vladimirovna left him in 1910. Three younger children remain in the care of Dr. Botkin: Dmitry, Tatyana and Gleb (the eldest, Yuri, already lived separately). But what saved him from despair were the children who selflessly loved and adored their father, who always looked forward to his coming, and who became anxious during his long absence. Evgeniy Sergeevich answered them in the same way, but never once took advantage of his special position to create any special conditions for him. His inner convictions did not allow him to put in a word for his son Dmitry, the cornet of the Life Guards Cossack regiment, who with the outbreak of the 1914 war went to the front and died heroically on December 3, 1914, covering the retreat of the Cossack reconnaissance patrol. The death of his son, who was posthumously awarded the St. George Cross of the IV degree for heroism, became an unhealing spiritual wound for his father until the end of his days.

And soon an event occurred in Russia, on a scale more fatal and destructive than a personal drama... After the February coup, the empress and her children were imprisoned by the new authorities in the Alexander Palace of Tsarskoye Selo, a little later they were joined by the former autocrat. Everyone from the entourage of the former rulers by the commissioners of the Provisional Government was offered the choice of either staying with the prisoners or leaving them. And many, who only yesterday swore eternal loyalty to the emperor and his family, left them at this difficult time. Many, but not as many as physician Botkin. For the shortest possible time, he would leave the Romanovs in order to provide assistance to the typhus-stricken widow of his son Dmitry, who lived here in Tsarskoye Selo, opposite the Grand Catherine Palace, in the doctor’s own apartment at 6 Sadovaya Street. When her condition ceased to inspire fear, he returned to the hermits of the Alexander Palace without requests or coercion. The Tsar and Tsarina were accused of high treason, and an investigation was underway into this case. The accusation of the former tsar and his wife was not confirmed, but the Provisional Government felt fear of them and did not agree to release them. At the suggestion of Archimandrite Hermogenes, four key ministers of the Provisional Government (G.E. Lvov, M.I. Tereshchenko, N.V. Nekrasov, A.F. Kerensky) decided to send the royal family to Tobolsk. On the night of July 31 to August 1, 1917, the family went by train to Tyumen. And this time the retinue was asked to leave the family of the former emperor, and again there were those who did this. But few considered it their duty to share the fate of the former reigning persons. Among them is Evgeny Sergeevich Botkin. When the Tsar asked how he would leave the children (Tatyana and Gleb), the doctor replied that there was nothing higher for him than caring for Their Majesties.

On August 3, the exiles arrived in Tyumen, from there on August 4 they departed by steamship for Tobolsk. In Tobolsk they had to live on the steamship "Rus" for about two weeks, then on August 13 the royal family was accommodated in the former governor's house, and the retinue, including doctors E.S. Botkin and V.N. Derevenko, in the house of the fishmonger Kornilov nearby. In Tobolsk, it was prescribed to observe the Tsarskoye Selo regime, that is, no one was allowed outside the designated premises, except for Doctor Botkin and Doctor Derevenko, who were allowed to provide medical care to the population. In Tobolsk, Botkin had two rooms in which he could receive patients. Evgeniy Sergeevich will write about the provision of medical care to the residents of Tobolsk and the guard soldiers in his last letter in his life: “Their trust especially touched me, and I was pleased by their confidence, which never deceived them, that I would receive them with the same attention and affection as every other patient and not only as an equal, but also as a patient who has all the rights to all my cares and services.”

On September 14, 1917, daughter Tatyana and son Gleb arrived in Tobolsk. Tatyana left memories of how they lived in this city. She was brought up at court and was friends with one of the king's daughters, Anastasia. Following her, Dr. Botkin’s former patient, Lieutenant Melnik, arrived in the city. Konstantin Melnik was wounded in Galicia, and Dr. Botkin treated him at the Tsarskoye Selo hospital. Later, the lieutenant lived at his house: the young officer, the son of a peasant, was secretly in love with Tatyana Botkina. He came to Siberia to protect his savior and his daughter. To Botkin, he subtly reminded him of his deceased beloved son Dmitry. The miller recalled that in Tobolsk Botkin treated both townspeople and peasants from the surrounding villages, but did not take money, and they handed it to the cab drivers who brought the doctor. This was very helpful - Dr. Botkin could not always pay them. Lieutenant Konstantin Melnik and Tatyana Botkina got married in Tobolsk, shortly before the city was occupied by the Whites. They lived there for about a year, then through Vladivostok they reached Europe and eventually settled in France. The descendants of Evgeniy Sergeevich Botkin still live in this country.

In April 1918, a close friend of Ya.M. Sverdlov, Commissar V. Yakovlev, arrived in Tobolsk, who immediately declared the doctors also arrested. However, due to confusion, only Dr. Botkin was limited in freedom of movement. On the night of April 25-26, 1918, the former Tsar with his wife and daughter Maria, Prince Dolgorukov, Anna Demidova and Doctor Botkin, under the escort of a special detachment of a new composition under the leadership of Yakovlev, were sent to Yekaterinburg. A typical example: suffering from cold and kidney colic, the doctor gave his fur coat to Princess Maria, who had no warm clothes. After certain ordeals, the prisoners reached Yekaterinburg. On May 20, the remaining members of the royal family and some of the retinue arrived here. The children of Evgeniy Sergeevich remained in Tobolsk. Botkin’s daughter recalled her father’s departure from Tobolsk: “There were no orders about doctors, but at the very beginning, hearing that Their Majesties were coming, my father announced that he would go with them. “What about your children?” - Her Majesty asked, knowing our relationship and the terrible worries that my father always experienced when separated from us. To this my father replied that the interests of Their Majesties came first for him. Her Majesty was moved to tears and especially thanked her.”

We will never know whether the doctor warned anyone about the impending massacre, but even the killers noted this in their memoirs that all those killed in Ipatiev’s house were ready for death and met it with dignity. At half past one on the night of July 17, 1918, the inhabitants of the house were awakened by Commandant Yurovsky and, under the pretext of transferring them to a safe place, he ordered everyone to go down to the basement. Here he announced the decision of the Ural Council to execute the royal family. The tallest of all, standing behind Nikolai and next to Alexei, who was sitting on a chair, Doctor Botkin, more mechanically than in surprise, said: “That means they won’t take us anywhere.” And after that shots rang out. Forgetting the distribution of roles, the assassins opened fire only on the emperor. With two bullets flying past the Tsar, Doctor Botkin was wounded in the stomach (one bullet reached the lumbar spine, the other got stuck in the soft tissues of the pelvic region). The third bullet damaged both knee joints of the doctor, who stepped towards the Tsar and Tsarevich. He fell. After the first volleys, the killers finished off their victims. According to Yurovsky, Dr. Botkin was still alive and lay calmly on his side, as if he had fallen asleep. “I finished him off with a shot to the head,” Yurovsky later wrote. Kolchak intelligence investigator N. Sokolov, who conducted the investigation into the murder case in Ipatiev’s house, among other material evidence, found a pince-nez that belonged to Dr. Botkin in a hole in the vicinity of the village of Koptyaki not far from Yekaterinburg.

The last physician of the last Russian emperor, Evgeny Sergeevich Botkin, was canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1981, along with others executed in the Ipatiev House.

Sources and literature used:

1. Internet version of the Bulletin of the Moscow City Scientific Society of Therapists “Moscow Doctor”: http://www.mgnot.ru/index.php?mod1=art&gde=ID&f=10704&m=1&PHPSESSID=18ma6jfimg5sgg11cr9iic37n5

2. “The Tsar’s life physician. The life and feat of Evgeny Botkin." Publisher: Tsarskoye Delo, 2010

“I finished him off with a shot to the head,” Yurovsky later wrote. He posed openly and bragged about the murder. When they tried to find the remains of Dr. Botkin in August 1918, they found only pince-nez with broken glass. Their fragments mixed with others - from medallions and icons, vials and bottles that belonged to the family of the last Russian Tsar.

On February 3, 2016, Evgeniy Sergeevich Botkin was canonized by the Russian Church. Orthodox doctors, of course, advocated for his glorification. Many appreciated the feat of the doctor who remained faithful to his patients. But not only that. His faith was conscious, hard-won, despite the temptations of time. Evgeniy Sergeevich went from unbelief to holiness, like a good doctor goes to a patient, depriving himself of the right to choose whether to go or not. It was forbidden to talk about him for many decades. At that time he was lying in an unmarked grave - as an enemy of the people, executed without trial. At the same time, one of the most famous clinics in the country was named after his father, Sergei Petrovich Botkin - he was glorified as a great doctor.

The first doctor of the empire

And this glory was completely deserved. After the death of Dr. Pirogov, Sergei Botkin became the most respected doctor in the Russian Empire.

But until the age of nine he was considered mentally retarded. His father, a wealthy St. Petersburg tea merchant Pyotr Botkin, even promised to give Seryozha a soldier, when it suddenly turned out that the boy could not distinguish letters due to severe astigmatism. Having corrected Sergei’s vision, we discovered that he had a great interest in mathematics. He was going to follow this path, but suddenly Emperor Nicholas I forbade the admission of persons of non-noble origin to any faculties except medicine. The sovereign’s idea was far from reality and did not last long, but it had the happiest impact on the fate of Sergei Botkin.

The beginning of his fame was laid in the Crimean War, which Sergei Petrovich spent in Sevastopol in the medical detachment of Nikolai Ivanovich Pirogov. At the age of 29 he became a professor. Before reaching forty, he founded the Epidemiological Society. He was the personal physician of Emperor Alexander the Liberator, and then treated his son, Alexander the Peacemaker, combining this with work in free outpatient clinics and “infectious barracks.” Sometimes up to fifty patients were crowded into his living room, from whom the doctor did not charge a penny for an appointment.

Sergei Petrovich Botkin

In 1878, Sergei Petrovich was elected chairman of the Society of Russian Doctors, which he led until his death. He died in 1889. They say that in his entire life, Sergei Petrovich made only one incorrect diagnosis - to himself. He was sure that he suffered from liver colic, but died from heart disease. “Death took away its most implacable enemy from this world,” the newspapers wrote.

“If faith is added to the doctor’s deeds...”

Evgeniy was the fourth child in the family. Survived the death of his mother when he was ten years old. She was a rare woman worthy of a husband: she played many instruments and had a keen understanding of music and literature, and was fluent in several languages. The couple organized the famous Botkin Saturdays together. Relatives gathered, including the poet Afanasy Fet, philanthropist Pavel Tretyakov, and friends, including the founder of Russian physiology Ivan Sechenov, writer Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, composers Alexander Borodin and Mily Balakirev. All together at the large oval table they formed a highly peculiar gathering.

Evgeniy spent his early childhood in this wonderful atmosphere. Brother Peter said: “Inwardly kind, with an extraordinary soul, he was terrified of any fight or fight. We other boys used to fight furiously. He, as usual, did not participate in our fights, but when a fist fight became dangerous, he, at the risk of injury, stopped the fighters...”

Here one can see the image of a future military doctor. Evgeniy Sergeevich had the opportunity to bandage the wounded on the front line, when shells exploded so close that he was covered with earth. At his mother’s request, Evgeniy was educated at home, and after her death he immediately entered the fifth grade of the gymnasium. Like his father, he initially chose mathematics and even studied for a year at the university, but then he still preferred medicine. He graduated from the Military Medical Academy with honors. His father managed to be happy for him, but that same year Sergei Petrovich passed away. Pyotr Botkin recalled how hard Evgeny experienced this loss: “I came to my father’s grave and suddenly heard sobs in a deserted cemetery. Coming closer, I saw my brother lying in the snow. “Oh, it’s you, Petya, you came to talk to dad,” and again the sobs. And an hour later, during the reception of patients, it could not have occurred to anyone that this calm, self-confident and powerful man could cry like a child.”

Having lost the support of his parent, Evgeniy achieved everything on his own. Became a doctor at the Court Chapel. He trained in the best German clinics, studying childhood diseases, epidemiology, practical obstetrics, surgery, nervous diseases and blood diseases, on which he defended his dissertation. At that time, there were still too few doctors to afford a narrow specialization.

Evgeniy Petrovich married 18-year-old noblewoman Olga Vladimirovna Manuilova at the age of twenty-five. The marriage was amazing at first. Olga was orphaned early, and her husband became everything to her. Only her husband’s extreme busyness upset Olga Vladimirovna - he worked in three or more places, following the example of his father and many other doctors of that era. From the Court Chapel he hurried to the Mariinsky Hospital, and from there to the Military Medical Academy, where he taught. And this doesn't include business trips.

Olga was religious, and Evgeniy Sergeevich was skeptical about faith at first, but later completely changed. “There were few believers among us,” he wrote about the academy graduates shortly before his execution, in the summer of 1918, “but the principles professed by everyone were close to Christian. If faith is added to the actions of a doctor, then this is due to the special mercy of God towards him. I turned out to be one of these lucky ones - through a difficult ordeal, the loss of my first-born, six-month-old son Seryozha.

"Light and Shadows of the Russo-Japanese War"

This is what he called his memories of the front, where he headed the St. George Hospital of the Red Cross. The Russo-Japanese War was the first in Botkin's life. The result of this protracted business trip was two military orders, experience in helping the wounded and enormous fatigue. However, his book “Light and Shadows of the Russo-Japanese War” began with the words: “We are traveling cheerfully and comfortably.” But that was on the road. The following entries are completely different: “They came, these unfortunate ones, but they did not bring any groans, no complaints, or horrors with them. They came, largely on foot, even wounded in the legs (so as not to have to travel in a gig along these terrible roads), patient Russian people, now ready to go into battle again.”

Once, during a night round of the Georgievsky hospital, Evgeniy Sergeevich saw a soldier named Sampsonov, wounded in the chest, hugging a delirious orderly. When Botkin felt his pulse and stroked it, the wounded man pulled both his hands to his lips and began to kiss them, imagining that it was his mother who had come. Then he began to call his aunts and kissed his hand again. It was amazing that none of the sufferers “complain, no one asks: “Why, why am I suffering?” - how people in our circle grumble when God sends them trials,” wrote Botkin.

He himself did not complain about the difficulties. On the contrary, he said that before it was much more difficult for doctors. I remembered one hero-doctor from the time of the Russian-Turkish war. He once came to the hospital in an overcoat on his naked body and in torn soldier's footwear, despite the severe frost. It turned out that he met a wounded man, but there was nothing to bandage him with, and the doctor tore his linen into bandages and a bandage, and dressed the soldier in the rest.

Most likely, Botkin would have done the same. His first feat, described rather sparingly, dates back to mid-June. While traveling to the front line, Evgeniy Sergeevich came under artillery fire. The first shrapnel exploded in the distance, but then the shells began to land closer and closer, so that the stones they knocked out flew into people and horses. Botkin was about to leave the dangerous place when a soldier wounded in the leg approached. “It was the finger of God that decided my day,” Botkin recalled. “Go calmly,” he said to the wounded man, “I will stay for you.” I took a medical bag and went to the artillerymen. The guns fired continuously, and the ground, covered with flowers, shook underfoot, and where Japanese shells fell, it literally groaned. At first it seemed to Evgeniy Sergeevich that a wounded man was groaning, but then he became convinced that it was the ground. It was scary. However, Botkin was not afraid for himself: “Never before have I felt the strength of my faith to such an extent. I was completely convinced that, no matter how great the risk to which I was exposed, I would not be killed if God did not wish it; and if He wishes, that is His holy will.”

When the call came from above: “Stretcher!” - He ran there with the orderlies to see if there were anyone bleeding. Having provided assistance, he sat down to rest for a while.

“One of the battery orderlies, a handsome guy named Kimerov, looked at me, looked, and finally crawled out and sat down next to me. Whether he felt sorry to see me alone, whether he was ashamed that they left me, or whether my place seemed enchanted to him - I don’t know. He, like the rest of the battery, however, was in battle for the first time, and we started talking about the will of God... Above us and around us it was vomiting - it seemed that the Japanese had chosen your slope as their target, but while working you don’t notice the fire .

- Excuse me! – Kimerov suddenly screamed and fell backwards. I unbuttoned it and saw that his lower abdomen was pierced, the front bone was broken off and all the intestines came out. He quickly began to die. I sat over him, helplessly holding his intestines with gauze, and when he died, I closed his head, folded his hands and laid him more comfortably ... "

What captivates us in Evgeniy Sergeevich’s notes is the absence of cynicism, on the one hand, and pathos, on the other. He walked surprisingly smoothly all his life between extremes: lively, joyful and at the same time deeply worried about people. Greedy for everything new and alien to revolution. Not only his book, his life is the story, first of all, of a Russian Christian, creating, suffering, open to God and all the best that is in the world.

“There is still no fight, and I continue to write. We should follow the example of the soldiers. I ask one wounded man whom I found writing a letter:

- What, friend, are you writing home?

“Home,” he says.

- Well, are you describing how you were wounded and how well you fought?

- No, I’m writing that I’m alive and well, otherwise the old people would start taking out insurance.

This is the greatness and delicacy of the simple Russian soul!”

August 1, 1904. Retreat. Everything that could be dispensed with was sent to Liaoyang, including the iconostasis and the tent in which the church was built. But the service continued anyway. Along the ditch that surrounded the field church, they stuck pine trees, made the Royal Doors out of them, placed one pine tree behind the altar, the other in front of the lectern prepared for the prayer service. They hung the image on the last two pine trees. And the result was a church that seemed even closer than all others to God because it stood directly under His heavenly cover. Before the prayer service, the priest, who in battle under heavy fire gave communion to the dying, said a few simple and heartfelt words on the topic that prayer is for God, and the service is not lost for the Tsar. His loud voice echoed clearly over the nearby mountain in the direction of Liaoyang. And it seemed that these sounds from our eerie distance would continue to jump from mountain to mountain to relatives and friends standing in prayer, to their poor, dear homeland.

“- Stop, people! - God's anger seemed to say: - Wake up! Is this what I teach you, unfortunate ones! How dare you, unworthy ones, destroy what you cannot create?! Stop, you crazy people!

Botkin recalled how he met an officer who, as the father of a young boy, was trying to be placed away from the front line. But he was eager to join the regiment and finally achieved his goal. What happened next? After the first battle, this unfortunate man, who until recently longed for war and glory, presented to the regiment commander the rest of his company, about twenty-five people. “Where is the company?” - they asked him. The young officer’s throat was constricted, and he could barely say that she was all there!

“Yes, I’m tired,” Botkin admitted, “I’m inexpressibly tired, but I’m tired only in my soul. She seems to have gotten all sick with me. Drop by drop, my heart was bleeding out, and soon I will not have it: I will indifferently pass by my crippled, wounded, hungry, frozen brothers, as if I were passing by an eyesore on a kaoliang; I will consider as habitual and correct what just yesterday turned my whole soul upside down. I feel how she is gradually dying inside me..."

“We were drinking afternoon tea in a large dining tent, in the pleasant silence of a happy home environment, when K. rode up to our tent on horseback and, without getting off his horse, shouted to us in a voice in which we could hear that everything was lost and there was no salvation:

- Peace, peace!

Completely killed, entering the tent, he threw his cap on the ground.

- World! - he repeated, sitting down on the bench..."

The wife and children have been waiting for Evgeniy Sergeevich for a long time. And there was also someone waiting for him, about whom he had not thought during the war, who was still lying in the cradle. Tsarevich Alexei, an unfortunate child born with a severe hereditary disease - hemophilia. Blood diseases were the subject of Evgeniy Sergeevich’s doctoral dissertation. This predetermined the choice of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna who would become the new physician of the Royal Family.

Life physician of the emperor

After the death of the Royal Family's personal physician, Dr. Hirsch, the Empress was asked who should take his place. She answered:

- Botkin.

- Which of them? - they asked her.

The fact is that Evgeniy Sergeevich’s brother, Sergei, was also well known as a doctor.

“The one who was in the war,” explained the Queen.

They did not tell her that both Botkins took part in the hostilities. Evgeniy Sergeevich was known throughout Russia as a military doctor.

Alas, Tsarevich Alexei was seriously ill, and the Empress’s health left much to be desired. Due to swelling, the Empress wore special shoes and could not walk for a long time. Attacks of palpitations and headaches confined her to bed for a long time. A lot of other responsibilities also piled up, which Botkin attracted like a magnet. For example, he continued to be involved in the affairs of the Red Cross.

Tatyana Botkina with her brother Yuri

The relationship with his wife, although they had previously loved each other, began to rapidly deteriorate. “Life at court was not very fun, and nothing brought variety to its monotony,” recalled daughter Tatyana. “Mom missed me terribly.” She felt abandoned, almost betrayed. For Christmas 1909, the doctor gave his wife an amazing pendant ordered from Faberge. When Olga Vladimirovna opened the box, the children gasped: the opal, trimmed with diamonds, was so beautiful. But their mother only said displeasedly: “You know that I can’t stand disgrace! They bring misfortune! I was about to return the gift back, but Evgeniy Sergeevich patiently said: “If you don’t like it, you can always exchange it.” She exchanged the pendant for another one, with an aquamarine, but there was no increase in happiness.

Already middle-aged, but still a beautiful woman, Olga Vladimirovna was languishing, it began to seem to her that life was passing by. She fell in love with her sons' teacher, the Baltic German Friedrich Lichinger, who was almost half her age, and soon began to live openly with him, demanding a divorce from her husband. Not only the sons, but also the younger children - Tatyana and mother's favorite Gleb - decided to stay with their father. “If you had left her,” Gleb told his father, “I would have stayed with her. But when she leaves you, I stay with you! During Lent, Olga Vladimirovna decided to take communion, but on the way to church she injured her leg and decided that even God had turned away from her. But my husband doesn’t. The spouses were one step away from reconciliation, but... all the courtiers in Tsarskoe Selo, all former acquaintances looked through her, as if she were an empty place. This hurt Evgeny Sergeevich no less than his wife. He was angry, but even the children saw her as a stranger. And Olga Vladimirovna suddenly realized that it wouldn’t be the same as before. Then there was Easter, the most joyless of their lives.

“A few days later, we were relieved to learn,” Tatyana wrote, “that she was leaving again “for treatment.” The farewell was difficult, but short. The reconciliation proposed by the father did not take place. This time we felt that the separation would be long, but we already understood that it could not be otherwise. We never mentioned our mother's name again."

At this time, Doctor Botkin became very close to the Tsarevich, who was suffering terribly. Evgeniy Sergeevich spent whole nights at his bedside, and the boy once confessed to him: “I love you with all my little heart.” Evgeny Sergeevich smiled. Rarely did he have to smile when talking about this royal child.

“The pain became unbearable. The boy’s screams and cries were heard in the palace, recalled the head of the palace guard, Alexander Spiridovich. – The temperature rose quickly. Botkin never left the child’s side for a minute.” “I am deeply surprised by their energy and dedication,” wrote the teacher of Alexei and the Grand Duchesses, Pierre Gilliard, about doctors Vladimir Derevenko and Evgeniy Botkin. “I remember how, after long night shifts, they were glad that their little patient was safe again. But the improvement of the heir was attributed not to them, but to... Rasputin.”

Evgeniy Sergeevich did not like Rasputin, believing that he was playing at being an old man, without actually being one. He even refused to accept this man into his home as a patient. However, being a doctor, he could not refuse help at all and personally went to the patient. Fortunately, they saw each other only a few times in their lives, which did not prevent the emergence of rumors that Evgeniy Sergeevich was a fan of Rasputin. This was, of course, slander, but it had its own background. Infinitely more than Gregory, Botkin despised those who organized the persecution of this man. He was convinced that Rasputin was just an excuse. “If there had been no Rasputin,” he once said, “then the opponents of the Royal Family and the preparers of the revolution would have created him with their conversations from Vyrubova; if there had been no Vyrubova, from me, from whomever you want.”

"Dear Old Well"

Doctor Botkin gives the crown princesses Maria and Anastasia a ride

For the attitude of Yevgeny Vasilyevich Botkin to the Royal Family, you can choose only one word - love. And the more he got to know these people, the stronger this feeling became. The family lived more modestly than many aristocrats or merchants. The Red Army soldiers in the Ipatiev House were later surprised that the Emperor wore mended clothes and worn-out boots. The valet told them that before the revolution his master wore the same thing and the same shoes. The Tsarevich wore the old nightgowns of the Grand Duchesses. The girls did not have separate rooms in the palace; they lived in twos.

Sleepless nights and hard work undermined Evgeniy Vasilyevich’s health. He was so tired that he fell asleep in the bath, and only when the water cooled down did he struggle to get to bed. My leg hurt more and more, I had to use a crutch. At times he felt very bad. And then he changed roles with Anastasia, becoming her “patient”. The princess became so attached to Botkin that she was eager to serve him soap in the bathroom, kept watch at his feet, perched on the sofa, never missing a chance to make him laugh. For example, when a cannon was supposed to fire at sunset, the girl always pretended to be terribly afraid and hid in the farthest corner, covering her ears and peeking out with big, feignedly frightened eyes.

Botkin was very friendly with Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna. She had a kind heart. When, at the age of twenty, she began to receive small pocket money, the first thing she did was volunteer to pay for the treatment of a crippled boy, whom she often saw while walking, hobbling on crutches.

“When I listen to you,” she once told Dr. Botkin, “it seems to me that I see clean water in the depths of the old well.” The younger crown princesses laughed and from then on sometimes in a friendly manner called Dr. Botkin “dear old well.”

In 1913, the Royal Family almost lost him. It all started with the fact that Grand Duchess Tatiana, during celebrations in honor of the 300th anniversary of the House of Romanov, drank water from the first tap she came across and fell ill with typhus. Evgeniy Sergeevich left his patient, while becoming infected himself. His situation turned out to be much worse, since duty at the princess’s bedside brought Botkin to complete exhaustion and severe heart failure. He was treated by his brother Alexander Botkin, a tireless traveler and inventor who built a submarine during the Russo-Japanese War. He was not only a doctor of science in medicine, but also a captain of the second rank.

Another brother, Pyotr Sergeevich, a diplomat, having learned from a telegram that Evgeny was completely unwell, rushed to Russia from Lisbon, changing from express to express. Meanwhile, Evgeniy Sergeevich felt better. “When he saw me,” wrote Peter, “he smiled with a smile that was so familiar to his loved ones, almost tender, very Russian.” “He scared us,” said the Emperor to Peter Sergeevich. – When you were notified by telegram, I was in great alarm... He was so weak, so overworked... Well, now that’s behind me, God took him under his protection once again. Your brother is more than a friend to me... He takes everything that happens to us to heart. He even shares our illness.”

Great War

Shortly before the war, Evgeniy Sergeevich wrote to children from Crimea: “Support and take care of each other, my dear ones, and remember that every three of you must replace me on the fourth. The Lord is with you, my beloved ones.” Soon they met, happy - they were one soul.

When the war began, there was hope that it would not last long, that joyful days would return, but these dreams melted away every day.

“My brother visited me in St. Petersburg with his two sons,” recalled Pyotr Botkin. “They are both going to the front today,” Evgeniy simply told me, as if he had said: “They are going to the opera.” I couldn’t look him in the face because I was afraid to read in his eyes what he hid so carefully: the pain of my heart at the sight of these two young lives leaving him for the first time, and maybe forever ... "

“I was appointed to intelligence,” said son Dmitry when parting.

“But you haven’t been appointed yet!” Evgeniy Sergeevich corrected him.

- Oh, it will be soon, it doesn’t matter.

He was actually assigned to intelligence. Then there was a telegram:

“Your son Dmitry was ambushed during the offensive. Considered missing. We hope to find him alive."

Not found. The reconnaissance patrol came under fire from German infantry. Dmitry ordered his men to retreat and remained last, covering the retreat. He was the son and grandson of doctors; fighting for other people's lives was something completely natural for him. His horse returned with a shot through the saddle, and the captured Germans reported that Dmitry had died, giving them his last battle. He was twenty years old.

On that terrible evening, when it became known that there was no more hope, Evgeniy Sergeevich did not show any emotions. When talking to a friend, his face remained motionless, his voice was completely calm. Only when he was left alone with Tatyana and Gleb did he quietly say: “It’s all over. He’s dead,” and cried bitterly. Evgeniy Sergeevich never recovered from this blow.

Only work saved him, and not just him. The Empress and Grand Duchesses spent a lot of time in hospitals. The poet Sergei Yesenin saw the princesses there and wrote:

...Where are pale shadows and sorrowful torments,
They are for the one who went to suffer for us,
Regal hands stretch out,
Blessing them for the hereafter hour.
On a white bed, in a bright glare of light,
The one whose life they want to return is crying...
And the walls of the infirmary tremble
From pity that their chest tightens.

Pulls them closer and closer with an irresistible hand
Where grief puts sadness on the forehead.
Oh, pray, Saint Magdalene,
For their fate.

In Tsarskoe Selo alone, Botkin opened 30 infirmaries. As always, I worked to the limit of human strength. One nurse recalled that he was not just a doctor, but a great doctor. One day, Evgeniy Sergeevich approached the bed of a soldier who came from a peasant background. Due to his severe wound, he did not recover, he only lost weight and was in a depressed state of mind. Things could have ended very badly.

“Darling, what would you like to eat?” – Botkin unexpectedly asked the soldier. “I, your honor, would eat fried pork ears,” he replied. One of the sisters was immediately sent to the market. After the patient ate what he ordered, he began to recover. “Just imagine that your patient is alone,” taught Evgeniy Sergeevich. – Or maybe he is deprived of air, light, nutrition necessary for health? Pamper him."

The secret of a real doctor is humanity. This is what Dr. Botkin once said to his students:

“Once the trust you have acquired in patients turns into sincere affection for you, when they are convinced of your unfailingly cordial attitude towards them. When you enter the room, you are greeted by a joyful and welcoming mood - a precious and powerful medicine, which will often help you much more than with mixtures and powders... Only a heart is needed for this, only sincere heartfelt sympathy for the sick person. So don’t be stingy, learn to give it with a broad hand to those who need it.”

“You need to treat not the disease, but the patient,” his father Sergei Petrovich liked to repeat. It meant that people are different, they cannot be treated the same. For Evgeniy Sergeevich, this idea received another dimension: you need to remember the patient’s soul, this means a lot for healing.

We could tell a lot more about that war, but we won’t linger. Time to talk about the latest feat of Dr. Evgeniy Sergeevich Botkin.

The day before

The breath of revolution, increasingly foul, drove many crazy. People did not become more responsible; on the contrary, willingly talking about saving Russia, they energetically pushed it towards destruction. One of these enthusiasts was Lieutenant Sergei Sukhotin, his man in high society circles. Shortly after Christmas '16, he dropped in to see the Botkins. On the same day, Evgeniy Sergeevich invited a front-line soldier, whom he was treating for wounds, to visit - an officer of the Siberian riflemen, Konstantin Melnik. Those who knew him said: “Give him ten men, and he will do the work of hundreds with minimal losses. He appears in the most dangerous places without bowing to bullets. His people say he's under a spell, and they're right."

Sukhotin, with gloating, began to retell yet another gossip about Rasputin - an orgy with young ladies from society, about the officer husbands of these women who brazenly burst into Grigory with sabers, but the police prevented them from finishing him off. The lieutenant did not limit himself to this bullshit, declaring that Rasputin and the Empress’s maid of honor Anna Vyrubova were German spies.

“Forgive me,” the Miller suddenly said, “what you are asserting here is a very serious accusation.” If Vyrubova is a spy, you must prove it.

Sukhotin was stunned, then contemptuously and stupidly began to talk about some intrigues.

– What intrigues? – Konstantin tried to clarify. – If you have evidence, give it to the police. And spreading rumors is pointless and dangerous, especially if it harms Their Majesties.

“I am of the same opinion as Melnik,” Evgeniy Sergeevich intervened, wanting to put an end to this conversation. – Such things cannot be stated without evidence. In any case, we must trust our Sovereign under all circumstances.

Less than a year later, Sukhotin will take part in the murder of Grigory Rasputin. Then he would settle well under the Bolsheviks, marry Leo Tolstoy’s granddaughter Sophia, but he would not live to see forty, crippled by paralysis.

Less than three years after the conversation, Tatyana Botkina will become the wife of Konstantin Melnik. Botkin will have already been shot by this time. “Trust our Sovereign under any circumstances.” This was an extremely accurate and intelligent recommendation given by a doctor to a seriously ill country. But the time was such that people believed liars most of all.

“Basically, I’m already dead.”

On March 2, 1917, Botkin went to visit the children who lived nearby under the supervision of their landlady Ustinya Alexandrovna Tevyashova. She was a 75-year-old stately old lady - the widow of the Governor General. A few minutes after Evgeniy Sergeevich entered the house, a crowd of soldiers with rifles burst in.

“You have General Botkin,” an ensign in a hat and a red bow approached Ustinya Alexandrovna.

- Not a general, but a doctor, who came to treat a patient.

It was true, Evgeniy Sergeevich really treated the owner’s brother.

– It’s all the same, we were ordered to arrest all the generals.

“I also don’t care who you should arrest, but I think that when talking to me, the widow of the adjutant general, you, firstly, should take off your hats, and secondly, you can get out of here.”

The taken aback soldiers, led by their leader, took off their hats and left.

Unfortunately, there are not too many people like Ustinya Alexandrovna left in the empire.

The sovereign with his family and that part of his entourage that did not betray them found themselves under arrest. It was only possible to go out into the garden, where an insolent crowd eagerly watched the Tsar through the bars. Sometimes she showered Nikolai Alexandrovich with ridicule. Only a few looked at him with pain in their eyes.

At this time, revolutionary Petrograd, according to the memoirs of Tatyana Botkina, was preparing for a holiday - the funeral of the victims of the revolution. Since they decided not to call priests, the relatives of the victims stole most of the already few bodies. We had to recruit from the dead some Chinese who died of typhus and unknown dead. They were buried very solemnly in red coffins on the Champ de Mars. A similar event was held in Tsarskoye Selo. There were very few victims of the revolution there - six soldiers who died drunk in the basement of a store. They were joined by a cook who died in the hospital and a rifleman who died while quelling a riot in Petrograd. They decided to bury them under the windows of the Tsar’s office in order to insult him. The weather was beautiful, the buds on the trees were green, but as soon as the red coffins were carried into the park fence to the sounds of “you fell a victim in the fatal struggle,” the sun became clouded and wet snow began to fall in thick flakes, obscuring the insane spectacle from the eyes of the Royal Family.

At the end of May, Evgeniy Sergeevich was temporarily released from custody. The daughter-in-law, the wife of the deceased Dmitry, fell ill. The doctor was told that she was dying, but the young widow managed to get out. Returning back to arrest turned out to be much more difficult; I had to personally meet with Kerensky. He, apparently, tried to dissuade Yevgeny Sergeevich, explaining that soon the Royal Family would have to go into exile, but Botkin was adamant. The place of exile was Tobolsk, where the atmosphere was sharply different from the capital. The Tsar continued to be revered here and was seen as a passion-bearer. They sent sweets, sugar, cakes, smoked fish, not to mention money. Botkin tried to repay this handsomely - a world-famous doctor, he treated for free everyone who asked for help, and took on the completely hopeless. Tatyana and Gleb lived with their father.

Evgeniy Sergeevich’s children remained in Tobolsk - he guessed that going with him to Yekaterinburg was too dangerous. Personally, I was not at all afraid for myself.

As one of the guards recalled, “this Botkin was a giant. On his face, framed by a beard, piercing eyes sparkled from behind thick glasses. He always wore the uniform that the sovereign granted him. But at the time when the Tsar allowed himself to remove his shoulder straps, Botkin opposed this. It seemed that he did not want to admit that he was a prisoner.”

This was seen as stubbornness, but the reasons for Evgeniy Sergeevich’s perseverance lay elsewhere. You understand them by reading his last letter, which was never sent to his brother Alexander.

“In essence, I died, I died for my children, for my friends, for my cause,” he writes. And then he tells how he found faith, which is natural for a doctor - there is too much Christian in his work. He says how important it has become for him to also take care of the Lord. The story is common for an Orthodox person, but suddenly you realize the full value of his words:

“I am supported by the conviction that “he who endures to the end will be saved.” This justifies my last decision, when I did not hesitate to leave my children as orphans in order to fulfill my medical duty to the end. How Abraham did not hesitate at God’s demand to sacrifice his only son to Him. And I firmly believe that just as God saved Isaac then, He will now save my children, and He Himself will be their father.”

He, of course, did not reveal all this to the children in his messages from Ipatiev’s house. He wrote something completely different:

“Sleep peacefully, my beloved, precious ones, may God protect and bless you, and I kiss and caress you endlessly, as I love you. Your dad...” “He was infinitely kind,” Pyotr Sergeevich Botkin recalled about his brother. “One could say that he came into the world for the sake of people and in order to sacrifice himself.”

The first to die

They were killed gradually. First, the sailors who were looking after the royal children, Klimenty Nagorny and Ivan Sednev, were taken out of the Ipatiev mansion. The Red Guards hated and feared them. They hated them because they allegedly dishonored the honor of sailors. They were afraid because Nagorny - powerful, decisive, the son of a peasant - openly promised to beat them in the face for theft and abuse of royal prisoners. Sednev was silent for the most part, but he was silent so that goosebumps began to run down the backs of the guards. The friends were executed a few days later in the forest along with other “enemies of the people.” On the way, Nagorny encouraged the suicide bombers, but Sednev remained silent. When the Reds were driven out of Yekaterinburg, the sailors were found in the forest, pecked by birds, and reburied. Many people remember their grave strewn with white flowers.

After their removal from Ipatiev’s mansion, the Red Army soldiers were no longer ashamed of anything. They sang obscene songs, wrote obscene words on the walls, and painted vile images. Not all guards liked this. One later spoke with bitterness about the Grand Duchesses: “They humiliated and offended the girls, they spied on the slightest movement. I often felt sorry for them. When they played dance music on the piano, they smiled, but tears flowed from their eyes onto the keys.”

Then, on May 25, General Ilya Tatishchev was executed. Before going into exile, the Emperor offered to accompany him to Count Benckendorff. He refused, citing his wife’s illness. Then the Tsar turned to his childhood friend Nyryshkin. He asked for 24 hours to think about it, to which the Emperor said that he no longer needed Naryshkin’s services. Tatishchev immediately agreed. A very witty and kind person, he greatly brightened up the life of the Royal Family in Tobolsk. But one day he quietly admitted in a conversation with the teacher of the royal children, Pierre Gilliard: “I know that I will not come out of this alive. But I pray for only one thing: that they not separate me from the Emperor and let me die with him.”

They were separated after all - here on earth...

The complete opposite of Tatishchev was General Vasily Dolgorukov - boring, always grumbling. But at the decisive hour he did not turn away, did not chicken out. He was shot on July 10.

There were 52 of them - those who voluntarily went into exile with the Royal Family to share their fate. We named only a few names.

Execution

“I don’t indulge myself in hope, I don’t lull myself into illusions and I look the unvarnished reality straight in the eye,” wrote Evgeniy Sergeevich shortly before his death. Hardly any of them, prepared for death, thought otherwise. The task was simple - to remain ourselves, to remain people in the eyes of God. All prisoners, except the Royal Family, could have bought life and even freedom at any moment, but they did not want to do this.

Here is what the regicide Yurovsky wrote about Yevgeny Sergeevich: “Doctor Botkin was a faithful friend of the family. In all cases, for one or another family need, he acted as an intercessor. He was devoted body and soul to his family and, together with the Romanov family, experienced the severity of their life.”

And Yurovsky’s assistant, executioner Nikulin, once grimaced, undertook to retell the contents of one of Yevgeny Sergeevich’s letters. He remembered the following words there: “...And I must tell you that when the Tsar-Sovereign was in glory, I was with him. And now that he is in misfortune, I also consider it my duty to be with him.”

But these non-humans understood that they were dealing with a saint!

He continued to treat, helping everyone, although he himself was seriously ill. Suffering from cold and kidney colic, while still in Tobolsk he gave his fur-lined overcoat to Grand Duchess Maria and the Tsarina. They then wrapped themselves in it together. However, all the doomed supported each other as best they could. The Empress and her daughters looked after their doctor and injected him with medicine. “Suffers very much...” – the Empress wrote in her diary. Another time she told how the Tsar read the 12th chapter of the Gospel, and then he and Dr. Botkin discussed it. We are obviously talking about the chapter where the Pharisees demand a sign from Christ and hear in response that there will be no other sign than the sign of the prophet Jonah: “For as Jonah was in the belly of the whale for three days and three nights, so will the Son of Man be in the heart earth for three days and three nights." This is about His death and Resurrection.

For people preparing for death, these words mean a lot.

At half past two on the night of July 17, 1918, the arrested were awakened by Commandant Yurovsky, who ordered them to go down to the basement. He warned everyone through Botkin that there was no need to take things, but the women collected some small change, pillows, handbags and, it seems, a small dog, as if they could keep them in this world.

They began to arrange the doomed in the basement as if they were going to be photographed. “There aren’t even chairs here,” said the Empress. The chairs were brought. Everyone - both the executioners and the victims - pretended not to understand what was happening. But the Emperor, who at first held Alyosha in his arms, suddenly put him behind his back, covering him with himself. “That means we won’t be taken anywhere,” Botkin said after the verdict was read out. It was not a question; the doctor's voice was devoid of any emotion.

Nobody wanted to kill people who, even from the point of view of “proletarian legality,” were innocent. As if by agreement, but in fact, on the contrary, without coordinating their actions, the killers began to shoot at one person - the Tsar. It was only by chance that two bullets hit Evgeniy Sergeevich, then the third hit both knees. He stepped towards the Emperor and Alyosha, fell to the floor and froze in some strange position, as if he was lying down to rest. Yurovsky finished him off with a shot to the head. Realizing their mistake, the executioners opened fire on the other condemned prisoners, but for some reason they always missed, especially on the Grand Duchesses. Then the Bolshevik Ermakov used a bayonet and then began shooting the girls in the heads.

Suddenly, from the right corner of the room, where the pillow was moving, a woman’s joyful cry was heard: “Thank God! God saved me!” Staggering, the maid Anna Demidova - Nyuta - rose from the floor. Two Latvians, who had run out of ammunition, rushed to her and bayoneted her. Alyosha woke up from Anna’s scream, moving in agony and covering his chest with his hands. His mouth was full of blood, but he still tried to say: “Mom.” Yakov Yurovsky started shooting again.

Having said goodbye to the Royal Family and her father in Tobolsk, Tatyana Botkina could not sleep for a long time. “Every time, closing my eyelids,” she recalled, “I saw before my eyes pictures of that terrible night: my father’s face and his last blessing; the tired smile of the Emperor, politely listening to the speeches of the security officer; the Empress’s gaze clouded with sadness, directed, it seemed, into God knows what silent eternity. Plucking up the courage to get up, I opened the window and sat on the windowsill to be warmed by the sun. This April, spring really radiated warmth, and the air was unusually clean...”

She wrote these lines sixty years later, perhaps trying to say something very important about those she loved. About the fact that after night comes morning - and as soon as you open the window, Heaven comes into its own.

“My dear friend Sasha! I am making my last attempt at writing a real letter - at least from here - although this reservation, in my opinion, is completely unnecessary: ​​I don’t think that I was ever destined to write anywhere from anywhere. My voluntary confinement here is as unlimited by time as my earthly existence is limited.
Show in full.. In essence, I died - I died for my children, for the cause... I died, but not yet buried or buried alive - as you wish: the consequences are almost identical<...>

My children may have the hope that we will meet again someday in this life, but I personally do not indulge myself with this hope and look the unvarnished reality straight in the eye. For now, however, I am healthy and fat as before, so sometimes I even hate to see myself in the mirror<...>

If “faith without works is dead,” then works without faith can exist. And if one of us has added faith to his deeds, it is only because of God’s special mercy towards him. I turned out to be one of these lucky ones, through a difficult ordeal, the loss of my first-born, six-month-old son Seryozha. Since then, my code has been significantly expanded and defined, and in every matter I have taken care of “the Lord’s.” This justifies my last decision, when I did not hesitate to leave my children as orphans in order to fulfill my medical duty to the end, just as Abraham did not hesitate at God’s demand to sacrifice his only son to him. And I firmly believe that just as God saved Isaac then, He will now save my children and will Himself be their father. But because I don’t know what he will rely on for their salvation and I can only find out about it from the other world, then my selfish suffering, which I described to you, because of this, of course, due to my human weakness, does not lose its painful poignancy. But Job endured more<...>. No, apparently, I can withstand everything that the Lord God will be pleased to send down to me.”

Doctor Evgeniy Sergeevich Botkin - brother Alexander Sergeevich Botkin, June 26/July 9, 1918, Yekaterinburg.

“There are events that leave an imprint on the entire subsequent development of the nation. The murder of the royal family in Yekaterinburg is one of them. Of his own free will, the family physician Evgeniy Sergeevich Botkin, a representative of the family who played a huge role in the history and culture of our country... Dr. Botkin’s grandson, who lives in Paris, talks to Itogi about the family, its traditions and his own destiny Konstantin Konstantinovich Melnik, now a famous French writer, and in the past a prominent figure in the intelligence services of General de Gaulle.

- Where did the Botkins come from, Konstantin Konstantinovich?

— There are two versions. According to the first of them, the Botkins come from the townspeople of the city of Toropets, Tver province. In the Middle Ages, little Toropets flourished. It was on the way from Novgorod to Moscow; merchants with caravans had traveled along this route since the times from the Varangians to the Greeks to Kyiv and further to Constantinople. But with the advent of St. Petersburg, the economic vectors of Russia changed, and Toropets withered away... However, the Botkins are a very strange-sounding surname in Russian. When I worked in America, I met a lot of namesakes there, albeit with the letter “d”. So it is possible that the Botkins are descendants of immigrants from the British Isles who came to Russia after the revolution in England and the civil war in the kingdom. Such as, say, the Lermontovs... All that is known for sure is that Konon Botkin and his sons Dmitry and Peter appeared in Moscow at the very end of the eighteenth century. They had their own textile production, but it was not the fabrics that brought them their fortune. And the tea! In 1801, Botkin founded a company specializing in wholesale tea trade. The business is developing very quickly, and soon my ancestor creates not only an office in Kyakhta for the purchase of Chinese tea, but also begins to import Indian and Ceylon tea from London. It was called Botkin, it was a kind of sign of quality.

— I remember the writer Ivan Shmelev cites a Moscow joke with which Botkin’s tea was sold: “For those - here are those, and for you - Mr. Botkin! For some it’s steamed, but for you it’s master’s!”

“It was tea that was the basis of the Botkins’ huge fortune. Pyotr Kononovich, who continued the family business, had twenty-five children from two wives. Some of them became famous characters in Russian history and culture. Vasily Petrovich, the eldest son, was a famous Russian publicist, a friend of Belinsky and Herzen, and an interlocutor of Karl Marx. Nikolai Petrovich was friends with Gogol, whose life he once even saved. Maria Petrovna married the poet Afanasy Shenshin, better known as Fet. Another sister, Ekaterina Petrovna, is the wife of manufacturer Ivan Shchukin, whose sons became famous collectors. And Pyotr Petrovich Botkin, who actually became the head of the family business, after the consecration of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow, was elected its elder...

Coat of arms of the Botkins Photo: from the archive of T. O. Kovalevskaya

Sergei Petrovich was the eleventh child of Pyotr Kononovich. From childhood, his father called him “a fool” and even threatened to make him a soldier. And in fact: at nine years old the boy could hardly distinguish letters. The situation was saved by Vasily, the eldest of the sons. They hired a good home teacher, and it soon became clear that Sergei was very gifted mathematically. He planned to enter the mathematics department of Moscow University, but Nicholas I issued a decree prohibiting persons of the non-noble class from entering all faculties except medicine. Sergei Petrovich had no choice but to study to become a doctor. First in Russia, and then in Germany, on which almost all the money he inherited was spent. Then he worked at the Military Medical Academy in St. Petersburg. And his mentor was the great Russian surgeon Nikolai Pirogov, with whom Sergei visited the fields of the Crimean War.

Sergei Botkin's medical talent manifested itself very quickly. He preached a medical philosophy previously unknown in Russia: it is not the disease that should be treated, but the patient who must be loved. The main thing is the person. “Cholera poison will not escape even the magnificent chambers of a rich man,” Dr. Botkin inspired. He creates a hospital for the poor, which has since been named after him, and opens a free outpatient clinic. A rare diagnostician, he enjoys such fame that he is invited by the life physician to the court. Becomes the first Russian imperial doctor; previously these were only foreigners, usually Germans. Botkin cures the empress of a serious illness and goes with Emperor Alexander II to the Russian-Turkish war.

Dr. Botkin made the only incorrect diagnosis only to himself. He died in December 1889, having outlived his close friend the writer Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, whose children he was the guardian of, by only six months. At first, they were going to erect a monument to Sergei Petrovich at St. Isaac's Cathedral in St. Petersburg, but then the authorities made a more practical decision. Empress Maria Feodorovna established a personalized bed in the hospital: the annual fee for the maintenance of such a bed included the cost of treating patients “registered” in Botkin’s bed.

— Considering that your grandfather also became a physician, we can say that being a doctor is Botkin’s hereditary profession...

- Yes. After all, Sergei, the eldest son of Dr. Sergei Petrovich Botkin, my great-uncle, was also a doctor. The entire aristocracy of St. Petersburg was treated by him. This Botkin was a real socialite: he led a noisy life full of passionate novels. Eventually he married Alexandra, the daughter of Pavel Tretyakov, one of the richest men in Russia, a fanatical collector.

Botkins - Evgeny Sergeevich with his wife Olga Vladimirovna and children (from left to right) Dmitry, Gleb, Yuri and Tatyana Photo: from the archive of T. O. Kovalevskaya.

- And your grandfather?..

- Evgeny Sergeevich Botkin was a different person, non-secular. Before studying in Germany, he also received his education at the Military Medical Academy in St. Petersburg. Unlike his older brother, he did not open an expensive private practice, but went to work at the Mariinsky Hospital for the poor. It was founded by Empress Maria Feodorovna. He worked a lot with the Russian Red Cross and the St. George's Community of Sisters of Mercy. These structures existed only thanks to the highest patronage of the arts. In the Soviet era, for obvious reasons, they always tried to hush up the great philanthropic activities of the royal family... When the Russian-Japanese War began, Evgeniy Sergeevich went to the front, where he led a field hospital and helped the wounded under fire.

Returning from the Far East, my grandfather published the book “Light and Shadows of the Russo-Japanese War,” compiled from his letters to his wife from the front. On the one hand, he glorifies the heroism of Russian soldiers and officers, on the other hand, he is indignant at the mediocrity of the command and the thieves' machinations of the commissariat. Amazingly, the book was not subject to any censorship! Moreover, it fell into the hands of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. After reading it, the queen declared that she wanted to see the author as her family’s personal physician. This is how my grandfather became Nicholas II’s physician.

— And what kind of relationship does Dr. Botkin have with royalty?

- With the king - truly comradely. Sincere sympathy arises between Botkin and Alexandra Fedorovna. Contrary to popular belief, she was not at all an obedient toy in the hands of Rasputin. Proof of this is the fact that my grandfather was the complete opposite of Rasputin, whom he considered a charlatan and did not hide his opinion. He knew about this and repeatedly complained to the queen about Doctor Botkin, from whom he promised to “skin him alive.” But at the same time, Evgeniy Sergeevich did not deny the phenomenon that Rasputin inexplicably had a beneficial effect on the crown prince. I think there is an explanation for this today. Ordering to stop giving the heir medicine, Rasputin did this, of course, due to his fanaticism, but he did the right thing. Then the main medicine was aspirin, which was given for any reason. Aspirin thins the blood, and for the prince, suffering from hemophilia, it was like poison...

Doctor Botkin with the Grand Duchesses in England Photo: from the archive of T. O. Kovalevskaya

Evgeniy Sergeevich Botkin practically did not see his own family. From early morning he went to the Winter Palace and spent the whole day there.

“But your mother also developed friendly relations with the four daughters of the emperor.” So, in any case, Tatyana Botkina writes in her famous book of memoirs...

“This friendship was largely invented by my mother. She wanted it so much... Contacts between them could have arisen, perhaps, only in Tsarskoe Selo, where, after the internment of the imperial family, my mother went after my father. Then she, of her own free will, goes after the royal family and to Tobolsk. She was barely nineteen at that time. A passionate, even religiously fanatical nature, she, before sending the royal family to Yekaterinburg, came to the commissar and demanded that she be sent along with her father. To which the Bolshevik said: “There’s no place for a young lady your age.” Either the “faithful Leninist,” who knew where the Tsar’s exile was heading, was captivated by the beauty of my mother, or even the Bolsheviks were sometimes not alien to humanism.

- Was your mother really considered a beauty?

“She was as pretty as she was, how can I put it, stupid... The Botkins settled in Tobolsk in a small house, which was located opposite the house where the royal family was locked up. When the Bolsheviks took control of Siberia, they made Dr. Botkin (he also taught the heir Russian literature) a kind of mediator between them and the royal family. It was Evgeniy Sergeevich who was asked to wake up the royal family on that fateful night of execution in the Ipatiev House. Dr. Botkin apparently did not go to bed then, as if he felt something. I was sitting writing a letter to my brother. It turned out to be unfinished, interrupted mid-sentence...

All the personal belongings left from my grandfather in Yekaterinburg were taken by the Bolsheviks to Moscow, where they were hidden somewhere. So, imagine! After the fall of communism, one of the heads of the Russian state archives came to me in Paris and brought me that very letter. Incredibly powerful document! My grandfather writes that he will die soon, but prefers to leave his children orphans rather than abandon his patients without help and betray the Hippocratic oath...

— How did your parents meet?

— My father Konstantin Semenovich Melnik was from Ukraine - from Volyn, from wealthy peasants. In 1414, when the great war began, he was barely twenty. At the front, he was wounded many times and each time was treated in hospitals maintained by the Grand Duchesses Olga and Tatiana. A letter from my father to one of the tsar’s daughters has been preserved, where he wrote: “I am going to the front, but I hope that soon I will be wounded again and end up in your hospital...” Once, after recovery, he was sent to St. Petersburg, to a sanatorium for Sadovaya Street, which my grandfather organized in his own house. And the officer fell head over heels in love with the doctor's seventeen-year-old daughter...

When the February Revolution broke out, he deserted and, disguised as a peasant, went to Tsarskoe Selo to see his future bride again. But he didn’t find anyone there and hurried to Siberia! He came up with a crazy plan: what if he gathered a group of military officers like him and organized the emperor’s escape from Tobolsk?! But the tsar and his family were taken to Yekaterinburg. And then Lieutenant Melnik stole my mother.

Then he became an officer in Kolchak’s army. He served there in counterintelligence. He took my mother across all of Siberia to Vladivostok. They traveled in a cattle car, and at every station there were executed Red partisans hanging from the lampposts... My parents left Vladivostok on the last ship. He was Serbian and was on his way to Dubrovnik. It was naturally impossible to get to him, but my mother went to the Serbs and said that she was Botkina, the granddaughter of the “white king”’s doctor. They agreed to help... Naturally, my father could not take anything with him. I just grabbed these same shoulder straps (shows) of an officer of the Russian army...

- And here is France!

— In France, my parents quickly separated. They lived together in exile for only three years. Yes, this is understandable... My mother is all in the past. Her father fought for survival, and she only grieved for the dead emperor and his family. Back in Yugoslavia, when my parents were in a camp for emigrants, they received an offer to go to Grenoble. There, in the town of Rive-sur-Fur, a French industrialist was creating a factory and decided to engage Russians to work in it. The emigrants were settled in an abandoned castle. They went to work in formation, and at first they stood at the machines in military uniform - there was simply nothing else... A Russian colony was formed, where I was born and where very soon my father, a strong, healthy peasant, became the head. And the mother kept praying and suffering...

This obvious spiritual misalliance could not last long. The father went to the widowed Cossack Maria Petrovna, a former machine gunner on a cart, and the mother took the children - Tanya, Zhenya and me, who was two years old - and went to Nice. There, our numerous emigrant aristocrats gathered around the large Russian church. And she felt like she was in her native environment.

—What did your mother do?

— Mom never worked anywhere. The only thing left to count on was philanthropy: many did not refuse to help the daughter of Doctor Botkin, who was killed along with the Emperor. We existed in complete, utter poverty. Until the age of twenty-two, I never knew the feeling of being full... I started learning French at the age of seven, when I went to a communal school. He joined the Knights organization, which raised children in military discipline: every day we prepared to go fight the Bolshevik invaders. The ordinary life of one-suitcase travelers...

And then my mother made a terrible, unforgivable mistake! She recognized the false Anastasia, who allegedly survived the execution in Yekaterinburg and appeared out of nowhere in the late twenties, and because of this she quarreled not only with all the Romanovs, but also with almost the entire emigration.

Already at the age of seven I understood that this was a scam. But my mother grabbed hold of this woman as if she were the only ray of light in our hopeless existence.

In fact, the producer of the false Anastasia was my uncle Gleb. He promoted this Polish peasant woman, who came to America from Germany, as a Hollywood star. Gleb Botkin was generally a discreet and talented person - he drew comics, wrote books - plus a born adventurer: if for Tatyana Botkina the imperial past was a form of neurosis, for Gleb it was just a calculated game. And the Polish Frantiska Schanckowska, who became the revived “Anastasia Romanova” in the image of the American Anna Anderson, was a pawn in this risky game. Mom sincerely believed in all this scam of her brother - she even wrote the book “Anastasia Found.”

— How did you get to Paris?

— Having obtained a bachelor's degree, as the best student at the school, I received a scholarship from the French government to study at Sciences Po, the Paris Institute of Political Sciences. I earned money for a trip to Paris by getting a job as a translator in the American army, which was stationed on the Cote d'Azur after the war. He sold coal taken from a military base in hotels in Nice. However, I was young and spent my savings very quickly in the capital. The Jesuit Fathers saved me.

In the Parisian suburb of Meudon, where many Russians lived, they founded the St. George Center - an incredible institution where everything was Russian. I registered as a lodger in this community. The cream of emigrant society gathered among the Jesuits. The Vatican ambassador in Paris, the future Pope John XXIII, arrived and a discussion began on a variety of, not necessarily religious, issues. A most interesting figure was Prince Sergei Obolensky, who was raised in Yasnaya Polyana until the age of sixteen - his mother was the niece of Leo Tolstoy. When the Vatican established the Russicum organization for the study of the Soviet Union, Jesuit Father Sergei Obolensky, whom we called Father behind our backs, became an important figure in this structure. And after I received my Science Po diploma, the Jesuits invited me to work with them to study the Soviet Union.

— Then you made an amazing move - from the Jesuits to the CIA, and then to the apparatus of Charles de Gaulle. How did this happen?

— At the Institute of Political Sciences, I was the best in the course and, as number one, I got the right to choose a workplace. I became secretary of the Radical Socialist Party group in the Senate. It was headed by Charles Brun. Thanks to him, I met Michel Debray, Raymond Aron, Francois Mitterrand... My day was structured like this: in the morning I wrote analytical notes on Soviet topics for the Jesuit fathers, and after twelve I ran to the Luxembourg Palace, where I did, so to speak, pure politics.

Brun soon received the portfolio of Minister of the Interior, and I followed him. For two years I was “studying communism”: the intelligence services provided me with so much interesting information about the activities of the communists and their connections with Moscow! And then I was drafted into the army. At the French General Staff, knowledge of Sovietology again came in handy. It was an accident that brought me fame. Stalin dies, Marshal Jouin calls me: “Who will be the successor to the father of nations?” What can I say? I did a simple thing: I took a file of the last months of the Pravda newspaper and began to count how many times each of the Soviet leaders was mentioned. Beria, Malenkov, Molotov, Bulganin... A strange thing happens: Nikita Khrushchev, unknown to anyone in the West, appears most often. I go to the marshal: “This is Khrushchev. No options! Jouin reported my forecast to both the Elysee Palace and colleagues from leading Western services. When everything happened according to my scenario, I turned into a hero. This especially impressed the Americans, and they invited me to work at the RAND Corporation. As an analyst on the USSR. It is primitive to say that RAND at that time was only an intellectual branch of the US CIA. RAND brought together America's sharpest minds. After the victory over Nazism, the West knew very little about the Soviet Union and did not understand how to talk with Soviet leaders. We gave birth to a huge volume, which we called: “The Operational Code of the Politburo.” A 150-page extract was later made from this book, which remained like a bible for American diplomats until the sixties. President Dwight Eisenhower asked RAND to write him a one-page memo based on our research. And we told him: “One page is too much. To understand the Soviet nomenklatura, two words are enough: “Who - whom?”

At the end of the fifties, the Americans offered me their citizenship - it would seem that my career was finally delineated. But events happened in France that I could not stay away from. Charles de Gaulle came to power. A few months later, Michel Debreu called me and said: “The general has invited me to head the government. Return to Paris, we need your help!”

- In general, there are offers that you cannot refuse...

- That’s what happened. I started working at the Matignon Palace, where I took up the geostrategic problems of the France-USA-USSR triangle. Believe it or not, I discovered such a farce in the secret department that I felt sorry for the Fifth Republic being born before my eyes. And it was possible to improve matters only by combining the efforts of all French intelligence services. This was assigned to me, and so I became the security and intelligence adviser to the prime minister.

My relationship with de Gaulle himself was strange. We saw each other rarely, but at the same time he showed me complete trust, I could do whatever I considered necessary... Now, at a distance of half a century that separates us from that time, I see that de Gaulle listened only to himself. I felt like a living God and believed in my magical Word - in dialogue with the French. The opinions of others did not interest him. He stubbornly called the Soviet Union Russia, believing that it would “drink communism like ink.” He treated Americans with disdain. Therefore, he entrusted contact with the CIA to me: every month I met with its chief Allen Dulles, who flew to Paris especially for this purpose. Our relationship was the most trusting, and I naively believed that France was able to establish equally effective contacts with the KGB. I wrote a memo to the general on this subject. He listened to her and decided to use this idea when meeting face to face with Nikita Khrushchev during his visit to Paris in the sixties.

De Gaulle began to convince Khrushchev to carry out the “thaw” more actively, to begin something like perestroika. The general organized Nikita Sergeevich a tour of enterprises and told him: “Your party economy will not last long. We need a mixed economy, like in France.” Khrushchev only replied: “But we will do better in the USSR anyway.” The small fat man's complacency irritated the huge de Gaulle. The general realized that Khrushchev was vulgarly using him, that he had come to Paris only in order to raise his own prestige and rub the nose of his comrades from the Politburo...

My relationship with the KGB was even worse. A funny detail: on the eve of the visit, we were sent from Moscow a box of Melnik red wine with a note: “Try this, your Melnik is worse.” We tried it: no, French wine is better, and “Melnik” in comparison is outright swill. The psychological pressure on us continued. We received from the USSR Embassy a list of “undesirable elements” that needed to be deported from Paris during Khrushchev’s visit. But that's not all. Jean Verdier, head of the Surete National intelligence service, called me: “You won’t believe it, they demand your expulsion too!” I answered Verdier: “Tell the KGB that Melnik has a lot of power in France, but I cannot arrest myself.” Honestly, I didn't understand why they hated me so much. Unlike many other representatives of the Russian emigration, I did not hate the communists and everything Soviet. I treated “homo sovieticus,” as Sergei Obolensky taught it, as a scientist... Only later did I realize what it was all about. The culprit is Georges Puck, a Russian secret super agent. This man, because of whom, as it turned out, Khrushchev decided to build the Berlin Wall, came to me in Matignon for conversations on geostrategic topics every week and was well aware of my meetings with Allen Dulles and his people. When Anatoly Golitsyn, a KGB officer, defected to the Americans, he told the CIA that he had seen a secret NATO document on psychological warfare at the Lubyanka. He could only get to Moscow through five people who had access to this paper at the French mission to NATO. Our intelligence services began to take an interest in each of them. Marcel Saly, who was directly involved in the investigation, invited me and said: “Among the five suspects, there is only one absolutely blameless. This is Georges Puck. He leads a measured life, is rich, an exemplary family man, and is raising a little daughter.” And I answered: “Especially keep an eye on him, the impeccable one... In detective stories, these are the ones who turn out to be criminals.” We laughed then. But it was Pak who turned out to be a Soviet agent.

- Why did you leave this job? After all, as the Parisian Le Monde wrote, you were one of the most influential people of the Fifth Republic.

— Michel Debreu left the Matignon Palace, and I was not interested in working with another prime minister. Moreover, de Gaulle was not satisfied with my independence. At all times, my goal was to serve society, and not the state or, especially, an individual politician. Wanting the overthrow of communism, I served Russia. And after leaving Matignon, I continued to be interested in the Soviet Union and everything connected with it. At the turn of the sixties and seventies, I began active communication with Master Violet, a lawyer for the Vatican. It was one of the most powerful agents of influence in Western Europe. His efforts and support of the Pope accelerated Franco-German reconciliation; this lawyer was at the heart of the Helsinki Declaration on Security and Cooperation in Europe. Together with Master Violet, I participated in the development of some provisions of this global document. Brezhnev then sought recognition of the status quo of the post-war continental borders, and the West growled: “This will never happen!” But Violet, who knew Soviet realities and the Kremlin nomenklatura well, reassured Western politicians: “Nonsense! We must recognize the current European borders. But Moscow must stipulate this on one condition: free movement of people and ideas.” In 1972, three years before the conference in Helsinki, we proposed a draft of this document to Western leaders. History has confirmed that we were right: it was compliance with the Third Basket that turned out to be unacceptable for the communists. Many Soviet politicians - Gorbachev, in particular - later admit that the collapse of the Soviet Union began precisely with a humanitarian conflict - with a contradiction between words and deeds in the Kremlin and its satellites...

After leaving politics, I became a writer and independent publisher. As soon as he left Matignon, he published a book under the pseudonym Ernest Mignon entitled “The Words of a General,” which became a bestseller. It consisted of three hundred funny stories from the life of Charles de Gaulle. The most real, not invented... Aphorisms of the general...

- For example? Let's say, from what is connected with the USSR?

- Please. During a meeting with de Gaulle, Khrushchev says, referring to Gromyko: “I have such a foreign minister that I can put him on a piece of ice and he will sit on it until everything melts.” The general answered without hesitation: “I have Couve de Murville in this post. I can also put him on a piece of ice, but even the ice doesn’t melt under him.” Believe me, this is the absolute truth. This story was told to me by Michel Debray, who heard everything with his own ears.

—Have you met with Yeltsin?

- Once. In St. Petersburg during the burial of the ashes of my grandfather in the Peter and Paul Fortress. When Boris Yeltsin came to France for the first time as President of Russia in 1992 and received representatives of Russian expatriates at the embassy, ​​I was not invited there. And, I must say, they have never called me yet. Why dont know. I would be pleased to have a Russian passport, I am a Russian person, even my French wife Danielle, by the way, the former personal secretary of Michel Debreu, converted to Orthodoxy. But I will never ask anyone about this... Botkin’s spirit probably doesn’t allow...