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Gleb Botkin

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Gleb Botkin
Occupation(s)Author, illustrator, Church of Aphrodite Archbishop
SpouseNadine Konshin
Parent(s)Eugene Botkin, father; Olga Botkina, mother.

Gleb Evgenievich Botkin, (1900 - December 1969), was the son of Dr. Eugene Botkin, the court physician who was murdered at Ekaterinburg by the Bolsheviks with Tsar Nicholas II and his family on July 17, 1918.

In later years, Botkin became a lifelong advocate of Anna Anderson, whom he believed to be the surviving Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia.

In 1938 he founded his own neopagan church, The Church of Aphrodite, which was one of the earliest churches in the neopagan movement in the United States.

Early life

He was the youngest son of Eugene Botkin and his wife, Olga. His parents divorced in 1910, when Botkin was a child of 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. Eugene Botkin retained custody of the children following the divorce.[1] His two older brothers, Yuri and Dmitri, were both killed in action during World War I.[2] As a child, he and his sister Tatiana 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 caricatures of pigs dressed in human clothing acting like stuffy dignitaries at court.[3]

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."[4]

Exile

Following the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the murder of his father, Botkin fled Tobolsk. He later spent a summer at a Russian Orthodox monastery and briefly considered becoming a priest, but decided against the religious life. He married Nadine Konshin, the daughter of the former President of the Russian Bank of State under Tsar Nicholas. They lived in Japan for a brief period before emigrating to the United States.[5] Botkin worked as 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.[6][7]

Association with Anna Anderson

Botkin first visited Anna Anderson in May 1927 at Castle Seeon, 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 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.[8]

Botkin penned letters in support of Anderson to various Romanov family members, wrote books about her and 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.[9]

Religious views

Botkin, who following his father's murder had considered becoming a priest, eventually turned away from the Russian Orthodox Church. According to one man who said he knew Botkin in the 1960s, Botkin once commented somewhat scornfully that a Russian Orthodox Church priest had refused to give up a seat on a cramped boat that was taking Botkin and other refugees to Finland because the priest had to survive to carry on God's work.[10] Botkin eventually turned his interest in religion towards his own nature-based religion, which he started first in Long Island, New York and later in Charlottesville, Virginia. His church was called The Church of Aphrodite.[11] 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!"[12]

Gleb Botkin used this symbol of Aphrodite on the vestments for his Church of Aphrodite.

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 the church as a protest against liturgical reforms introduced by Patriarch Nikon.[13] Anderson never joined his church, but didn't object when Botkin finished his letters to her with the prayer, "May the Goddess bestow Her tender caress on Your Imperial Highness's head."[14]

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 worshiping Mary Baker Eddy." His wife, whom he doted on, converted to his church in later life.[10][15]

File:Aphrodite by Boticelli.jpg
The Birth of Venus, (detail) by Sandro Botticelli, 1485. Gleb Botkin created a modern-day church to worship the ancient goddess of love.

Botkin held regular church services in front of 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 inside of a circle representing Aphrodite, was embroidered on his headdress.[10] 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.[10]

While he devoted much of his time and energy to his church in his final years, Botkin reportedly never pressured friends to follow his beliefs or asked for money from any who attended a service. He enjoyed chatting with people from the University of Virginia and other friends about world religions, a subject he knew a great deal about.[10]

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, his "Aphrodisian religion" 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."[16] 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 didn't believe it was appropriate for a man to react to his wife's affair with 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," he said.[16] 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."[17]

The church did not continue long after Botkin's death from a heart attack in December 1969, but some of his followers went on to join neopagan movements with beliefs that drew from the Church of Aphrodite.[15]

Botkin's church is mentioned in the recent book Her Hidden Children: The Rise of Wicca and Paganism in America, by Chas S. Clifton.

KGB visit

To the end of his life, Botkin detested the Communist government then in place in the Soviet Union.

In 1967, agents of the KGB allegedly visited Botkin in Charlottesville and invited him to return to Russia. Botkin is said to have replied, "No thanks, not after you murdered my father," and to have appeared shaken when he told others about the incident.[10]

DNA used to identify father's remains

Botkin and his wife had four children, daughter Marina and sons Nikita, Peter, and one other son. He also had a stepdaughter, Kyra.[18][19] His daughter Marina Botkina Schweitzer's DNA was later used to help identify the remains of her grandfather, Eugene Botkin, after they were exhumed in 1991 from a mass grave discovered in the woods near Ekaterinburg. Schweitzer's DNA was compared against the DNA of her maternal half-sister Kyra, who also gave 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 the paternal line and didn't share mitochondrial DNA with her father and grandfather.[20]

Schweitzer later expressed skepticism about the DNA results proving that Anna Anderson could not have been the Grand Duchess Anastasia.[21]

Notes

  1. ^ Zeepvat, Charlotte, Romanov Autumn, Sutton Publishing, 2000, ISBN-10 0750923377
  2. ^ King, Greg, and Wilson, Penny, The Fate of the Romanovs, John Wiley and Sons Inc., 2003, p. 66
  3. ^ Peter Kurth, Anastasia: The Riddle of Anna Anderson, Back Bay Books, 1983, p. 200
  4. ^ Kurth, p. 200
  5. ^ Lovell, James Blair, Anastasia: The Lost Princess, Regnery Gateway, 1991, ISBN 0-89526-536-2, pp. 125-126
  6. ^ Kurth, p. 199
  7. ^ Lovell, p. 126
  8. ^ Kurth, p. 201
  9. ^ Kurth, p. 199
  10. ^ a b c d e f ""Gleb Botkin in Charlottesville, Virginia," a thread at Alexanderpalace.org". alexanderpalace.org. Retrieved February 25. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  11. ^ Kurth, p. 287
  12. ^ Kurth, p. 287
  13. ^ Kurth, p. 287
  14. ^ Kurth, p. 287
  15. ^ a b ""Donald D. Harrison," an obituary at Witchvox". witchvox.com. Retrieved February 25. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  16. ^ a b ""Botkin to Give Speech On Tsar"". The Cavalier Daily (University of Virginia at Charlottesville student newspaper). November 1968. Retrieved March 3. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |work= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  17. ^ Kurth, p. 287
  18. ^ gazette.net (2001). "Obituary for Nikita Botkin". rootsweb.com. Retrieved February 27. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  19. ^ Klier, John, and Mingay, Helen, The Quest for Anastasia: Solving the Mystery of the Last Romanovs, Birch Lane Press, 1995, ISBN 1-55972-442-0, p. 203.
  20. ^ Klier and Mingay, p. 203
  21. ^ Massie, Robert K., The Romanovs: The Final Chapter, 1995, p. 198



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