Is it true that Alexander I, after the announcement of his death, settled in Siberia as the elder Fedor Kuzmich?

The belief is widespread that the Russian emperor who died in 1825 in fact staged his death and began to live a hermit away from the capital. We checked the validity of this theory.

The version that Alexander I, contrary to official messages, did not die in Taganrog on November 19 (according to the modern Gregorian calendar - December 1), 1825, and for many years secretly lived in Siberia under the name of Fedor Kuzmich, began to spread already in the middle of the 19th century. Initially, her main adherent was the Tomsk merchant Semyon Khromov, whose "Notes»Remain the main source of information about the personality of the mysterious old man. Since the 1880s, despite Attempts Counting from the tsarist government, articles and books devoted to this theory began to be published. The most detailed arguments in favor of becoming an increasingly common version were set out in the book of Prince Vladimir Baryatinsky "Royal mystic"(1913). Interested in The personality of Fedor Kuzmich and Leo Tolstoy.

In the 20th century, among supporters of the version that the elder is Alexander I, a journalist and art critic Lev Lyubimov, historian Nathan Eidelman, many authors of Russian emigration, was a journalist and art critic. Already in the current century in favor of this theory expressed Director of the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the author of the popular school textbooks in Russia Andrei Sakharov. Publications on the connection between the Siberian elder and the Russian emperor are easy to find in Media and in Blogs, and references - in mass culture (for example, in the series "Karamora").

Rumors about the posthumous fate of Alexander I appeared almost immediately after the announcement of his death and long before the first reliable certificate of Fedor Kuzmich. The extraordinary circumstances of what happened contributed to this: the emperor died In the provincial Taganrog after a sudden illness, although before that not the old (47 years), the monarch did not complain about health. The general confusion of the minds was facilitated by the confusion that arose about which of the brothers Alexander - Konstantin or Nikolai - would inherit the throne, as well as the failed uprising of the Decembrists. According to One stories, Alexander I was killed (poisoned, stabbed, etc.), according to others - “sold in foreign jolly” or “left on a light boat in the sea”.

However, none of the many doctors and courtiers who were next to the emperor under his death never spoke out against the official version. The argument that during the funeral, the coffin was not just closed, is refuted by the understandable decision of the organizers of the ceremony - Balmage of the body for sending to St. Petersburg passed Unsuccessfully, and the facial features of the corpse began to deform. As for the statements that the tomb of Alexander I in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in 1921 was opened and turned out to be empty, it was convincing refuted The main researcher at the Museum of the History of St. Petersburg Marina Logunova. Of course, only the exhumation of his remains can challenge the official version of the death of Alexander I, but it was not carried out and it is unclear whether it would be carried out ever in the future.

Against the fact that Alexander I staged his death, testifies And the crisis of the throne of the throne, mentioned above. Back in 1823, the emperor signed The secret manifesto on the transfer of the throne is not the eldest of his brothers - Konstantin, but the middle is Nikolai. But even Elizaveta Alekseevna, the widow of Alexander I, and his closest advisers (for example, Field Marshal Ivan Dibich and Prince Pyotr Volkonsky) were considered the heir to Konstantin. It is strange to assume that, preparing his imaginary death, the monarch did not devote the environment to the plans for the throne.

As for the mysterious elder Fedor Kuzmich, his existence is not in doubt. In preserved documents, he for the first time Mentioned In the fall of 1836, when he was detained in the Krasnoufim district of the Perm province. During the interrogation, the elder said that he did not remember his “birth-proceeding from infancy, named Fedor Kozmin, the son of Kozmin, 70 years old, is illiterate, the confession of the Greek-Russian, single.” Like a tramp, he was sentenced to 20 lashes and a link to Siberia. Initially, Fyodor Kuzmich was assigned to the village of Bogotolsky volost of the Tomsk province, where he arrived on March 26 next year. In 1849, he settled near the village of Rologecsky on the Chulyma River, and at that time his figure began to attract the attention of local residents, although he was not accepted for the renouncing king at that time. After wandering in various places in 1858, Fyodor Kuzmich, at the invitation of the merchant, Khromov, moved to Tomska belonging to Tomsk (now the village of Khromovka within the city), where he lived until the death of January 20 (February 1), 1864.

In official documents, the elder is not mentioned after 1837, and in the memoirs of him that Khromov and other people who knew him left, it is not easy to separate the truth from fiction. Nevertheless, all evidence indicatethat Fedor Kuzmich belonged to the highest strata of society, he knew the court life and was almost certainly a military who participated in the Patriotic War of 1812, as well as foreign campaigns of 1813-1814. It is also very likely that at one time he participated in the Masonic movement, widespread among the Russian nobility in the first half of the 19th century. This is also indicated by the so -called secret of Fyodor Kuzmich: two notes on narrow paper tapes stored in a bag, to which the elder allegedly indicated Khromov before his death. The text on both was most likely recorded by the cipher. There is no single option for its decoding, and the situation is aggravated by the fact that the original notes are lost, they are now known only from imperfect photographs. Nevertheless there is grounds See them parallels with ciphers used by Masons. Other probable samples of the handwriting of Fyodor Kuzmich are also known: the envelope and a copy of the bible extracts made by him. In 2015, graphologist Svetlana Semenova She saidthat her analysis showed: the handwriting of Alexander I and Fedor Kuzmich belong to one person. However, this study was not published in scientific reviewed magazines, and there are reasonable doubts about its scientific viability.

The lifetime images of Fedor Kuzmich were not preserved. Posthumous portrait, made by order of Khromov and gained wide fame in reproductions, has an obvious similarity with Alexander I. However, there is another, very different drawingThe author of which captured the old man on his deathbed. This image, according to some evidence of contemporaries, more precisely conveys its appearance. The verbal descriptions of Fedor Kuzmich also have some contradictions with the appearance of the emperor. In particular, the old man had an eagle, slightly predatory nose, and on the head (at least until 1862), curly light blond-browned hair was preserved. At the same time, it is known that the nose of Alexander I was straight and that by the end of his life the emperor almost bald.

Around the grave of Fyodor Kuzmich in the Tomsk Alekseevsky monastery, a kind of cult quickly arose - in 1904 the chapel was consecrated and allegedly found the remains of the old man who remained incorrupt. After the revolution in 1936, the chapel was destroyed, a cesspool was arranged in its place. However, the old man’s folk reverence was preserved, and in 1984 the Russian Orthodox Church canonized him as the righteous Theodore Tomsk. In 1995, at the site of the cesspool, were produced excavations, in which they found a coffin without a lid with bone remains without a skull. They were declared the relics of the saint and placed in the cathedral of the monastery. The genetic study of these remains was not carried out. However, there is no unconditional evidence that they belong to Fedor Kuzmich.

The versions about the origin of the mysterious old man are not limited to Alexander I, who decided to staging his death. For example, expressed The assumption that, under the name of Fedor Kuzmich, was hiding a nobleman Fedor Uvarov, who was missing in St. Petersburg in 1827. Others candidate There was an alleged illegitimate son of Emperor Paul I, who served in the Russian fleet under the name Simeon Afanasevich the Great and, as claimed, died in a shipwreck in 1794. However, none of these hypotheses have any reliable evidence.

There is also a less famous legend that Elizaveta Alekseevna also did not die, as announced, in May 1826, and from 1841 to 1861 lived in the Syrokovsky monastery in the Novgorod region under the name of the faith of the silence. In this case there are direct Certificatesthat it was not a dowager empress, but the youngest daughter of Major General Alexander Butkevich.

The very legends of the monarch, who are considered dead, but in fact continues to live, are known about the whole number of medieval rulers: the Anglo -Saxon king Garolde Godwinon, German emperor Friedrich II Staufen, Portuguese king Sebastian and others. Numerous cases of impostors who passed themselves down as a late monarch, which were especially common in Russia in the XVII - XVIII centuries, have a similar nature.

So, there is not a single explicit argument in favor of the fact that the elder Fedor Kuzmich is Emperor Alexander I. Only the autopsy of Alexander I in the Peter and Paul Cathedral could finally confirm or refute this version and the study of the alleged relics of Theodore Tomsk, but both of these events in the foreseeable future are unlikely. 

Photo on the cover: S. Schukin. Portrait of Alexander I (left). Unknown author. Portrait of the elder Fedor Kuzmich (right). Via Wikimedia Commons

Not true

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on the topic:

1. Arzamas. Lecture course "Post poster and cm"
2. S. Korolev. The immortality of the ruler. Lenin as a fairy -tale character
3. B. Gloger. Emperor, God and the Devil: Friedrich II Hohenstaufen in history and legends
4. Is it true that Duma-father is Pushkin staging his death?
5. Did the Decembrists really convince the rebellious soldiers that the constitution is the name of the wife of Konstantin Pavlovich?