BLACK SOCIAL HISTORY Abandoned in Moscow, enrolled in the Red Army and finally crowned as a king
With his degree in tractor driving, childhood on a collective farm and proud record as a Communist youth leader, Sergei Kotov appears to be the archetypal child of Soviet Russia. In the land where all were equal, however, he had one thing that always made him stand out - a black skin.
Abandoned as a child, the young Afro-Russian grew up in an orphanage near Moscow, where he long wondered about the parents who had left him behind.
Now, almost four decades later, a reunion with his long-lost father has turned him from one-time pauper to prince. Following an appeal broadcast on a Russian television programme, Mr Kotov discovered that he was the son of a Harley Street doctor descended from Ghanaian royalty, making him the future monarch of a tribal kingdom in the West African state.
His remarkable story began after his Russian mother, Nina Kotova, fell in love with Phanuel Dartey, a medical student who had been invited to study in Kalinin (Tver) in the 1960s as the Soviet Union wooed Ghana's newly-independent government. Despite the Communist regime's supposed egalitarianism, mixed-race relationships were deeply frowned upon, and Ms Kotova broke off the romance after two years.
Her lover left the country unaware that she was pregnant, and soon after she succumbed to pressure from relatives, and the local party, to put the baby in care. "Whatever people used to say back then about friendship and equality between nations, there was a massive gap between the rhetoric and the reality. It was considered a disgrace to be seen with an African", said Mr Kotov.
"I was one of the first Afro-Russian children. There were constant insults from adults and other children."
Studying at a local tractor institute and serving two years in the Red Army, Sergei became a local leader of the Communist Party's youth wing, the Komsomol. "I had read all 55 volumes of Lenin's works by the time I was 15," he said.
Throughout the years he took no interest in finding his parents, concentrating on overcoming race discrimination to become a professor in his home town. The secret remained buried for 32 years until an old acquaintance of his mother's revealed the family history.
After that, his wife, Zlata, took up the gauntlet without his knowledge - turning to the popular television show Zhdi Menya ("Wait for Me"), to track down his father.
Her appeal elicited a telephone call from his father who was introduced to his son during emotional scenes on television. Mrs Kotova's search also turned up the fact that her husband's mother committed suicide in the 1970s following a failed marriage.
Motoring through Tver in his chauffeur-driven Lada, Mr Kotov, 39, recalled how he read fairy tales as a child to escape the lonely life of the orphanage, never dreaming he would one day live out one of his very own.
"I used to ask, 'Why don't things like that happen to me?' And then it turns out you just have to hope."
After meeting his father, Mr Kotov visited his ancestral kingdom in Ghana, where his father had abdicated the throne in order to pursue his medical career in Britain.
He was then formally crowned as Dartey III, reigning over a region squeezed between Lake Volta and Ghana's border with Togo.
Despite his family's elevated status in Ghana - his uncle was until recently commander-in-chief of the country's navy - royal life did not appeal at first, and he returned to his modest two-room flat in Tver, two hour's drive from Moscow.
The problem was not so much his background as a Communist, but the unfamiliar African diet. "I like Ghana but I missed our Russian food when I was there. They have no borscht, no pickled gherkins, no potatoes", he said.
Now, though, after keeping in touch with his new subjects via e-mail, he is considering a request from them to run for state office in Ghana's presidential elections in 2012.
He is already working on the conditions they put on the proposal - learning English, developing ties between Russia and Ghana, and studying Ghanaian culture.
"They looked at what I have achieved in my career and asked me to run for president," he said. "My people in Ghana need a leader who has achieved success in life without help from others - it motivates them to achieve things in their own lives."
Mr Kotov added he hoped that his story would be made into a film but declined to elaborate. Meanwhile, should he one day decide to accept the throne after all, he will have no problem pursuing his socialist principles. "I don't get a kopek, just applause. In fact, I get duties - to open schools, organise concerts and exhibitions, and to help poor families," he said.
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