Biographie

Botkina's son, Konstantin Melnik, and a great-granddaughter attended the funeral held on July 17, 1998 at Peter and Paul Cathedral in Moscow for the Romanovs, her father, Dr. Eugene Botkin, and for other victims who were assassinated eighty years earlier on July 17, 1918.

Mother of Elena Constantinovna Smallwood (born Melnik) (b.1921), Constantin Melnik (1927-2014) and Tatiana Constantinovna Makarenko (born Melnik).

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.

Botkina divorced her husband some years later and settled near Paris, where she lived the rest of her life.

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 a town near Grenoble, where they raised their children.