Ivan Kharitonov

Who was Ivan Kharitonov?

Ivan Mikhailovich Kharitonov Russian: Иван Михайлович Харитонов; 1872 - July 17, 1918, was a cook at the court of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. He followed the Romanov family into internal exile following the Russian Revolution of 1917 and was executed with them by the Bolsheviks on July 17, 1918 at Ekaterinburg.

Like the Romanovs, Kharitonov was canonized as a passion-bearer of alleged Soviet oppression by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia in 1981.

Kharitonov's wife and daughter followed him into exile at Tobolsk but did not join him when the Bolsheviks moved the prisoners to Ekaterinburg in the spring of 1918.

Kharitonov's grandson attended the funeral held on July 17, 1998 in Peter and Paul Cathedral in Saint Petersburg for his grandfather, the Romanovs, their servants (Anna Demidova and Alexei Trupp), and the other victims who were murdered eighty years before.