Kolya Derevenko

Nikolai "Kolya" Vladimirovich Derevenko (1905 or 1906–1999) was the son of the court physician of Emperor Nicholas II of Russia, and the best friend of Nicholas's son, the Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich.

Biography
Nikolai Vladimirovich Derevenko was born in the Russian Empire in 1905 or 1906. His father, Vladimir Nikolaevich Derevenko was a surgeon who served at the court of Emperor Nicholas II. After Nicholas abdicated the throne in March 1917, Kolya and his father voluntarily accompanied the Emperor and his family into exile in the Siberian village of Tobolsk that August. In May 1918 the Derevenkos accompanied the Imperial Family when they were moved to the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg, although they stayed in a house across the street.

The Imperial family and four retainers were shot to death by order of the Bolshevik government on the night of 16/17 July 1918, one week after which Yekaterinburg was captured by the anti-Bolshevik White Army, as part of the ongoing Russian Civil War. By the end of the year, the Bolshevik Red Army recaptured the city and the Derevenkos relocated to the White Army stronghold of Perm, which in 1919 also fell to the Reds. The family then moved to Tomsk, and lived there quietly until the early 1930s, when Kolya's father was arrested and subsequently executed by the NKVD. After the death of his father, Kolya fled to Prague, Austria and thereafter to Canada, where he built a career as an engineer.

He is known to have spoken publicly of his time with the Imperial family only once—in an interview with Edvard Radzinsky during the 1990s.

He died in 1999, at the age of 93 or 94.