Russian Orthodox Church Saint. He was head cook of the court of Nicholas II of Russia. He followed the Romanov family into exile after the Russian Revolution of 1917 and was executed by the Bolsheviks on July 17, 1918 in Yekaterinburg. Like the Romanovs, Charitonov was canonized as a saint of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1991 as a bearer of the Soviets' passion for suffering. Son of Mikhail Charitonovič Charitonov, he was orphaned at a young age. His father, who had been an official of the Russian Imperial Court and who had obtained personal nobility from the Tsar for his services, had initiated him into the study of the culinary arts from 1882. Charitonov then perfected his art in Paris. In 1888 he was assigned first as an apprentice and then as a vicecook at the court. From 1891 to 1895 he served in the Russian navy, after which he returned to court and became chief cook of the imperial kitchen. Like other loyal servants of the tsar, he chose to follow him into exile. Charitonov's wife, Yevgeny Andreevna Tur, and his daughter followed him into the exile of the imperial family in Tobolsk, but were separated from him by the Bolsheviks when they decided to move the prisoners to Yekaterinburg in the spring of 1918. Сharitonov's grandson , the Russian philologist Valentin Miсhajlovič Mul'tatuli, attended the funeral held on July 17, 1998 in the Cathedral of Peter and Paul in St. Petersburg in memory of his grandfather, the Romanovs, the members of their entourage (Anna Demidova and Alexej Trupp), and other victims killed eighty years earlier. His great grandson is the writer Pëtr Valentinovič Mul'tatuli, author of works on Nicholas II and the end of the Romanovs, he is also the author of a biographical essay on his great-grandfather.