Tatiana Botkina

Tatiana Evgenievna Botkina-Melnik
Tatiana Botkina at Tobolsk in 1918
Born	1898
Died	1986 Paris, France
Spouse(s)	Konstantin Melnik (divorced)
Parent(s)	Eugene Botkin Olga Botkina

Tatiana Evgenievna Botkina-Melnik, (1898–1986), was the daughter of court physician Eugene Botkin, who was killed along with Tsar Nicholas II and his family by the Bolsheviks on July 17, 1918.

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 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 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 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 the end, the Botkin children decided to remain behind in Tobolsk.