"Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life”

Dr. Botkin's icon

This quote from the Book of Revelation (Rev. 2:10) applies perfectly to the faithful servants who stayed with the Royal Passion-Bearers Tsar Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra Fyodorovna, their children Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and Grand Prince Alexei until their martyrdom in the basement of the Ipatiev House in Ekaterinburg during the night of July 16-17, 1918. Those servants chose to accompany their masters into imprisonment – and together with the Romanovs they were either shot, bayoneted or clubbed to death by commissars. Their bodies then were stripped, mutilated, burned and allegedly disposed of in a field called Porosenkov Log in the Koptyaki forest near Ekaterinburg. Those faithful servants were the court physician Dr. Yevgeny Botkin (depicted in the icon), the cook Ivan Kharitonov, Tsarina’s maid Anna Demidova, lady in waiting Anastasia Hendrikova. The Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia canonized them as new martyrs. Some of the servants were not Russian Orthodox (although Christian), like the Roman Catholic footman Alexei Trupp and Lutheran tutor of Russian Catherine Schneider, yet they were canonized as new martyrs too. All these people were literally faithful to the Tsar and his family unto death, and each of them duly received their crown of life in the Heavens.

It is hard to give a full account of their lives in one short article; however it is possible to tell the story of one of them – as it is a story of how faith led these people through their lives determining their life choices, and brought them to serve the Romanov family with whom they received their saintly crowns. The life story of the royal family physician Yevgeny (Eugene) Botkin illustrates just that.

Yevgeny Botkin was born in 1865 to the family of Sergey Botkin who had been a court physician under Russian Tsars Alexander II (1818-1881) and Alexander III (1845-1894). Yevgeny studied medicine at Universities of St. Petersburg, Berlin and Heidelberg. His PhD thesis (1893) was devoted to the immunology of blood. It received glowing endorsement from his academic opponent, the famous Russian physician and Nobel Prize winner Dr. Ivan Pavlov.

Being a brilliant physician himself Botkin could easily choose to become a highly paid practitioner for the rich in the best and safest cities of the world and to live a life of luxury and comfort. Yet he chose to work in a hospital for the poor in St. Petersburg and then to join the Russian army in Manchuria (now China). “Medicine was his true calling” – wrote his brother Peter, - “he was born to help those in dire straits, to succor, to soothe, to heal without end – even at the expense of his own well-being”.

To understand those choices it must be mentioned that from his early childhood Yevgeny Botkin was deeply religious Orthodox Christian. It was not earthly comforts but the integrity of his eternal soul that interested him, and the soul of any human being wants to be closer to God, whether we realize it or not. Botkin knew it quite well. As a physician he was seeing the human body as God’s unique creation and deep mystery. This sight inspired him with religious awe and humility. He wrote: “Let us approach the sick people with Christian love, let us see how we can be helpful both for their body and soul… The medical profession gives us a unique perspective and understanding of the workings of the human body. And the more we find out about how our bodies work, the more admiration one cannot help but feel for the wisdom of God who created us. It is striking how everything within us is purposeful and harmonious”. One does not have to work for the rich to understand this. Helping the poor in St. Petersburg and the wounded in Manchuria gave him lots of opportunities to become an experienced Christian physician. God took care of the rest leading Botkin safely on his path from St. Petersburg to front lines in China and then – to the Russian Royal Court!

As the Russian-Japanese war broke out in 1904 Dr. Botkin joined the army to head the Medical branch of the Russian Red Cross in Manchuria. His friends wrote that Dr. Botkin was very busy as an administrator, yet he managed to secure a lot of time at the front line. He received many distinctions for his military service including military orders for heroic deeds. There, by the front line, he wrote one of the best accounts of that war. His book was published under the title “Light and shadows of the Russian-Japanese war of 1904-1905”. Tsarina Alexandra Fyodorovna read it. When the position of the court physician became vacant in 1908 she requested that Dr. Yevgeny Botkin be offered it. As they say, the rest is history.

Since that moment the lives of Dr. Botkin and the Romanov family became intertwined. He was accompanying the royal family wherever they went, especially demanded was his superb knowledge of blood diseases as he was often tending to the young Prince Alexei who had the blood condition of hemophilia. Botkin was so dedicated to the Romanovs that he did not leave them when his own eldest son was killed in action during the First World War, or when the Romanovs were exiled to Ekaterinburg. There in exile the commissars offered to him, as well as to other servants, the choice to leave Ekaterinburg and to go home as they were not related to the Romanovs. In other words this offer meant an imminent death verdict to the royal family while providing a safe escape for the rest. Dr. Botkin together with others chose to stay with the Romanovs, although he did have a family of his own.

Dr. Botkin’s letters from the exile are filled with truly Christian spirit: no complaints or resentment but quiet confidence in the path chosen and even joy. He wrote to his family: “What we have here is prayer and trust in God’s mercy, and that’s enough for us as only they do help”. He also set up a clinic to treat Ekaterinburg locals making no distinction between supporters or enemies of the royal family.

His brother Peter recalled later: "He was never like other children. Always sensitive, of a delicate, inner sweetness of extraordinary soul, he had a horror of any kind of struggle or fight. We, other boys, would fight with a fury. He would not take part in our combats, but when our pugilism took on a dangerous character he would stop the combatants at risk of injuring himself”. The boy’s peacefulness grew into a power that cannot be overcome. Botkin’s and other faithful servants’ lives reveal to us once again that in this world only good can conquer evil, and that death can trample death.

Pray to God for us, righteous Passion-Bearer Yevgeny the Physician!