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40-420: In later years, Botkina, along with her brother Gleb Botkin , was a major supporter of Anna Anderson's claim that she was the surviving Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia . Botkina was the third child and only daughter of Botkin and his wife Olga. Her parents divorced in 1910 under the strain of Dr. Botkin's devotion to the royal family and the long hours he spent at court and her mother's affair with

80-414: A German tutor. Eugene Botkin retained custody of the children following the divorce. Botkina's older brother Dmitri was killed in action during World War I . The Botkin children "were not intimate friends" of the imperial children, Botkina later recalled, but they did know them fairly well. They first met the imperial children in 1911 and, thereafter, sometimes played with them when they were on vacation in

120-599: A blood sample, to help scientists isolate the DNA Schweitzer shared in common with her grandfather. This enabled scientists to create a "Botkin DNA profile" and use it to positively identify Dr. Botkin. Scientists in the early 1990s were unable to identify Dr. Botkin using mitochondrial DNA , or DNA that is passed down from mother to child, as they used it to identify the Romanovs. Schweitzer was descended from Dr. Botkin in

160-766: A daughter, Kira Mikhailovna Mandrazhi (1915–2009). Nadezhda's father, nobleman Alexei Vladimirovich Konshin , was the president of the Russian Bank of State from 1910 to 1914 and the president of the Russian Industry and Commerce Bank from 1914 to 1917. Ultimately the Botkins had a daughter and three sons, as well. The Botkins immigrated to the United States via Japan, arriving in San Francisco from Yokohama on 8 October 1922. Botkin worked as

200-485: A handsome girl as you are want to rot all her life in prison, or even to be shot?" Botkina insisted that the imperial family would not rot in prison. Rodionov told her they would probably be shot instead. He told her he would allow them to accompany the group as far as the Ekaterinburg station, but they would be arrested and sent back to Tobolsk because he would not grant them an entry permit to live in Ekaterinburg. In

240-672: A heart attack in December 1969, but some of his followers went on to join neopagan movements with beliefs superficially similar to those of the Church of Aphrodite. Rev. Gleb Botkin passed away at home from a heart attack in December 1969. He was buried alongside his wife Nadine in Monticello Memorial Park, Albemarle County, Virginia, on the outskirts of Charlottesville. Botkin and his wife had four children, daughter Marina and sons Nikita, Peter, and Yevgeny. He also had

280-677: A photo engraver and attended art classes at the Pratt Institute in New York City . Later, he earned his living as a novelist and illustrator. Botkin first visited Anna Anderson in May 1927 at Seeon Abbey , where Anderson was a guest. Anderson had asked Botkin to bring along "his funny animals". Botkin wrote later that he immediately recognized Anderson as Anastasia because she shared memories of their childhood play. Historian Peter Kurth wrote that Botkin tended to overlook some of

320-422: A statue of Aphrodite , the ancient Greek goddess of love, and presided over them dressed in the regalia of an archbishop . The female symbol , a cross surmounted by a circle representing Aphrodite , was embroidered on his headdress. He later published a book, at his own expense, arguing that Aphrodite was the supreme deity and creation had been much like a woman giving birth to the universe. This symbol also

360-474: A stepdaughter, Kira, from Nadine's previous marriage. His daughter Marina Botkina Schweitzer's DNA was later used to help identify the remains of her grandfather, Yevgeny Botkin, after they were exhumed along with those of some of the Romanovs in 1991 from a mass grave discovered in Ganina Yama near Yekaterinburg . Schweitzer's DNA was compared against the DNA of her maternal half-sister Kira, who also gave

400-433: A town near Grenoble , where they raised their children. Botkina divorced her husband some years later and settled near Paris , where she lived the rest of her life. Botkina was first persuaded to visit Anna Anderson in 1926, after hearing about her story from her relative, Sergei Botkin. Botkina was persuaded that the woman was truly Grand Duchess Anastasia after hearing her describe an event that Botkina said only she and

440-469: Is only the feminine organism which is capable of bearing fruit.” Since Botkin considered love an eternal flow, he based the hopes for the immortality of human beings with the fact that they were consciously capable of love towards each other and the Deity. "The Beyond" or "Paradise" is a place where evil – the antithesis of Love and its concomitants Beauty and Harmony – is absent. The relationship between

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480-468: The Bolsheviks with Tsar Nicholas II and his family on 17 July 1918. In later years, Botkin became a lifelong advocate of Anna Anderson , who claimed to be the surviving Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia . DNA results later proved that she was an impostor called Franziska Schanzkowska. In 1938 he founded his own goddess-worshipping, monotheistic church, The Church of Aphrodite . Gleb

520-880: The Crimea . Botkina also chatted on occasion with the younger grand duchesses during World War I , when Botkina served as a Red Cross nurse at a hospital in the Catherine Palace. Botkina and her brother accompanied their father into exile with the Romanov family following the Russian Revolution of 1917 . When the family was transferred from Tobolsk to Ekaterinburg , the Botkin children were not permitted to accompany their father. When Botkina asked Ural Soviet commander Nikolai Rodionov for permission to join her father at Ekaterinburg, he replied, "Why should such

560-687: The Goddess movement . Monotheistic in structure, the Church believes in a singular female goddess, who is named after the ancient Greek goddess of love, Aphrodite . Having grown up in the Russian Imperial court, Botkin fought in the Russian Civil War on the side of the counter-revolutionary forces after his father, a physician to the royal Romanov monarchy, was executed by the Bolshevik government . Fleeing to Long Island in

600-587: The United States , he began writing novels and non-fiction books, mostly set in his Russian homeland, before coming to believe in a female divinity and founding the Church of Aphrodite. He won the right to register it as a religious charter in the New York State Supreme Court . The only known printed source concerning the doctrine of the Church of Aphrodite is the treatise In Search of Reality written and published by Gleb Botkin in

640-518: The 1960s . The treatise opens with the opinion that "prevalent religious beliefs and standards of morality . . . are based chiefly on . . . fantasies . . . of primitive people of an ancient past”, and he wished “to develop morally and intellectually, as well as enable us to lead happier lives.” The central concept in Botkin's metaphysics is Love , which he defines not as an emotion but as "energy", which engenders all being . The only “inexhaustible Generator of Love—its Prime Source and Ultimate Object—is

680-706: The Goddess Aphrodite and the visible world may be illustrated by that between a mother and her child. Having given birth to a child organically, a mother proceeds to take care of it with both her body and her mind. So the Goddess in Her relation with our world is both the Universal Cause and the Universal Mind. As it espouses a monotheistic , syncretic faith , its beliefs were not consistent with

720-605: The Romanoffs, Gleb and his sister hid in a basement after the royal family was executed along with the Botkins' father. After the then-secret execution of their father alongside the royal family, the young Botkins escaped and made their way to Japan. He took with him the illustrations and stories that he created in exile for the young Romanovs. The manuscript was donated to the Library of Congress in 1995, and published by Random House Value Publishing in 1996 as 'Lost Tales: Stories for

760-848: The Romanovs, including The Woman Who Rose Again, The Real Romanovs, and Lost Tales: Stories for the Tsar's Children, and arranged for Anderson's financial support throughout his life. He was Anderson's friend even when other supporters abandoned her. Botkin, following his father's murder, had considered becoming a priest, but he eventually turned away from the Russian Orthodox Church . Botkin eventually turned his interest in religion towards his own nature-based religion, which he started first in West Hempstead, New York and later in Charlottesville, Virginia . His church

800-709: The Russian aristocracy: Her Wanton Majesty (1934) was a fictionalised biography of Catherine I , the wife of Tsar Peter the Great , which portrayed her as a particularly lustful figure, whilst Immortal Woman (1933) dealt with the story of fictional Russian composer Nikolai Dirin, who after being persecuted by the Bolsheviks flees to the United States where he settles in Long Island , the very place that Botkin himself had settled into. Immortal Woman shows that Botkin

840-601: The Supreme Deity and Creator .” According to Botkin, the Deity is Creator by the very reason it radiates love, which creates the cosmos. The process of this emanation is “an organic one,” and therefore “the cosmos must be regarded as a fruit of the Divine Organism—not an arbitrarily created artifact.” This is why the Supreme Deity should be visualized “not as a Father God, but the Mother Goddess,” since “it

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880-467: The Tsar's Children". Botkin was described by one historian as "articulate, sensitive, with pallid skin and soulful green eyes" and as "a talented artist, a wicked satirist, and a born crusader". His obituary in the New York Times called him "a tenacious champion [of Anna Anderson's] fight for recognition as Anastasia" and a "devoted monarchist". Following the Russian Revolution of 1917 and

920-548: The Whites, but following their defeat, fled via Japan to the United States. Subsequently gaining employment as a commercial illustrator, Botkin began writing a series of books, both fiction and non-fiction, including an account of his memories of the Romanovs entitled The Real Romanovs, as Revealed by the Late Czar's Physician and His Son (1931). Many of his fictional stories also drew from his experience and involvement with

960-487: The children following the divorce. His older brother Dmitry was killed in action during World War I. According to Botkin's memoirs, he and his sister Tatiana Botkina (Tatiana Evgenievna Botkina Melnik) played with the children of Nicholas II during holidays. He used to amuse the grand duchesses on holidays and when they were all in exile at Tobolsk with his stories and caricatures of pigs dressed in human clothing acting like stuffy dignitaries at court. Exiled along with

1000-606: The church as a protest against liturgical reforms introduced by Patriarch Nikon . Anderson never joined his church but did not object when Botkin finished his letters to her with this prayer: "May the Goddess bestow Her tender caress on Your Imperial Highness's head." Botkin had argued his case before the New York State Supreme Court in 1938 and won the right to an official charter for the religion. The judge told him, "I guess it's better than worshipping Mary Baker Eddy ." His wife, whom he doted on, converted to his church in later life. Botkin held regular church services in front of

1040-790: The end, the Botkin children decided to remain behind in Tobolsk. When Botkina heard the conclusion of the Sokolov Report, that the Tsar, his family and their servants had been killed, her sole consolation was the fact that her father had died trying to shield the Tsar. In the fall of 1918, Botkina married Konstantin Melnik, an officer of the Ukrainian Rifles whom she had known at Tsarskoye Selo . They escaped from Russia through Vladivostok and eventually settled in Rives , France , in

1080-488: The modern reconstructionist Hellenic religion of Hellenism but closer to those of [Dianic] Wicca . As Neopagan scholar Chas S. Clifton noted, "Botkin's own writings anticipated by a generation the sort of Goddess religion found later in the pages of Green Egg and elsewhere," and which were propagated by Neopagan groups such as Dianic Wicca in the 1960s onward during the Second Wave feminist movement . Gleb Botkin

1120-579: The more unattractive aspects of Anderson's personality, such as her stubbornness and rapid changes in mood, or to view them as manifestations of her royal heritage. "She was, to Gleb's way of thinking, an almost magically noble tragic princess, and he saw it as his mission to restore her to her rightful position by any means necessary", wrote Kurth in Anastasia: The Riddle of Anna Anderson . Botkin penned letters in support of Anderson to various Romanov family members, wrote books about her and

1160-802: The murder of his father, Botkin fled Tobolsk as a teenager. He later spent a summer at a Russian Orthodox monastery in Siberia and briefly considered becoming a priest, but decided against the religious life. He married Nadezhda Mandrazhi-Konshina, widow of Ensign of the Dragoons regiment, nobleman Mikhail Nikolaevich Mandrazhi, who was the chevalier of the Order of Saint George and was killed in battle in June 1915 at Grodno in Belarus . Two months after his death, Nadezhda (sometimes anglicised Nadine) gave birth to

1200-512: The paternal line and didn't share mitochondrial DNA with her father and grandfather. Schweitzer later expressed scepticism about the DNA results proving that Anna Anderson could not have been the Grand Duchess Anastasia. Church of Aphrodite The Church of Aphrodite was a religious group founded in 1938 by Gleb Botkin , a Russian émigré to the United States. The organisation considered one of early precursor to

1240-475: The rage that was expected by society: "A woman falls in love with another man. All that is necessary is to let her have her fling. After that she is often a better wife and mother. It is like a person who loves to play Bach and suddenly wants to play Beethoven." One historian commented that Botkin's church "was a curious faith, to be sure", but "the Church of Aphrodite was not nearly so wanton as it sounds". The church did not continue long after Botkin's death from

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1280-583: The revolutionary government, the "Reds", and those that opposed them, the "Whites." The Bolsheviks subsequently ordered the execution of the Romanovs, fearing that the Whites would reinstate them, and so, in July 1918, the family, along with several of their closest aides, including Evgeny Botkin, were shot dead in the basement of the Ipatiev house in Ekaterinburg . His son, Gleb Botkin, retreated eastwards with

1320-590: The youngest grand duchess could have known anything about. Anderson appeared to remember that Botkina's father, Dr. Eugene Botkin, had personally undressed Anastasia and performed a nurse's duties for her when the grand duchess was ill with measles in the spring of 1917. "Only once then, it happened that my father tended the Grand Duchesses alone and performed nurses' duties for them," Botkina recalled in 1929. "This fact has never been published anywhere, and apart from my father I alone knew anything about it." She

1360-525: Was a supporter of Anderson for the next sixty years and, like her brother Gleb, wrote her own memoirs about her friendship with the imperial family and her time in Russia. Gleb Botkin Gleb Yevgenyevich Botkin ( Russian : Глеб Евгеньевич Боткин ; 29 July 1900 – 27 December 1969) was the son of Dr. Yevgeny Botkin , the Russian court physician who was murdered at Yekaterinburg by

1400-417: Was based on "truth and reality. Anything true will survive. Life itself is the blossoming of love, and love is the basis of goodness and happiness". He thought his church would expand in coming years. The student newspaper reporter commented on Botkin's "unorthodox" beliefs regarding sexual relations between men and women. Botkin believed that it was inappropriate for a man to react to his wife's affair with

1440-600: Was beginning to have ideas about a monotheistic goddess, for instance containing a quote in which the Russian Orthodox priest Father Aristarch states that "the Supreme Deity must be a woman" whilst at another point Dirin enters a church and began "to pray fervently to Aphrodite – his beautiful and kind Goddess whom the Christian Church decried as the White She-Devil, whose worshipers the heads of

1480-592: Was born in 1900, the son of Eugene Botkin , who was the physician to the Romanovs , the Russian royal family of the time, and as such Gleb grew up in a wealthy background within the imperial household. Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, when the Bolshevik Party , a group of Marxists who wished to implement socialist reforms, took power, the monarchy was entirely abolished. The subsequent Russian Civil War broke out between those forces that supported

1520-517: Was called the Church of Aphrodite . Botkin was of the opinion that patriarchal society had caused many of the problems plaguing humankind. "Men!" he once said. "Just look at the mess we've made!" His church drew from ancient pagan rituals and from some of the tenets of the Old Believers , a rebel branch of the Russian Orthodox Church who had separated after 1666 -1667 from the hierarchy of

1560-495: Was engraved on his gravestone at his death. Botkin told a reporter for The Cavalier Daily , the student newspaper at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville , that his religion pre-dated Christianity. With Christianity, he said, "you have the dilemma of either following the straight and narrow path and going to Heaven or having fun on earth and going to Hell ". On the other hand, he said that his "Aphrodisian religion"

1600-494: Was the youngest son of Russian physician Yevgeny Botkin and his wife, Olga Manuilova Botkina. Gleb was born 30 July 1900 in Ollila, Hyrynsalmi Municipality, Kainuu, Finland (at the time a ducal province of Russia). His parents divorced in 1910, when Botkin was 10, due to his father's demanding position at court and his mother's affair with his German tutor, Friedrich Lichinger, whom she later married. Yevgeny Botkin retained custody of

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