How the author of Ethiopia’s first Constitution was raised in Russia

In 1896, a 12-year-old seminary graduate named Tekle Hawariyat Tekle Mariam (1884-1977) was sent by his noble Ethiopian mentors to study in Russia. At that time, Ethiopia was fighting for its independence from Italy and the state needed well-trained young leaders. Tekle Hawariyat was set to become one of them – he was son to a high-ranked Ethiopian statesman and military leader.

In Russia, Sergei Molchanov, colonel of the Lifeguard Hussar Regiment, became his guardian and adoptive father. His mother was Princess Elena Kochubey, daughter of Decembrist Prince Sergei Grigorievich Volkonsky. It was she who, in many ways, brought up the young Tekle Hawariyat, who called her ‘Grandma Nellie’ until the end of her life.

In the family of Elena Sergeyevna, Petya the Abyssinian received a real Russian nobleman’s education. In addition to the sciences and the study of Russian, he was engaged in hunting, horseback riding, mastered agriculture, blacksmithing and carpentry. Petya graduated from the 1st Cadet Corps in St. Petersburg and then from the elite Mikhailovsky Artillery School.

“He was small in stature, curly-haired, chocolate-colored, with regular features and thick lips,” Colonel Erast Shlyakhtin, one of his teachers, wrote about him in his memoirs. “He was modest, shy, kind and a bit slow-witted. We all loved him very much. He was brought from Abyssinia by some humanitarian mission and belonged to aristocratic circles close to the King of Kings himself. The rich Kochubey estate family took a great part in his upbringing.”

In 1905, a single and childless Colonel Sergei Molchanov died, leaving his adopted son a large fortune. And Tekle Hawariyat, after traveling through Europe in 1908, then returned to his homeland, where he became a major statesman, an associate of the next Emperor Haile Selassie I.

In 1930, he wrote the first Constitution of the new independent Ethiopia and was its representative to the League of Nations. He passed away on his own farm, where he applied the knowledge and skills he had learned back at his grandmother’s estate in Russia.

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