The zigzags of Russian history of the 18th century with its constant palace coups, the very spirit of the adventurous gallant century, multiplied by the talent of writers and painters, created the legend of "Princess Tarakanova". The real name and origin of this lady remained a secret, which, in fact, is not surprising, since this beauty did nothing. That's just the name by which she was remembered in history - she never used herself. And contrary to the well-known picture, the "princess" did not die during the flood in the casemate of the Peter and Paul Fortress …
The first mention of the mysterious princess (without mentioning her name) is found in the pages of the book by French diplomat and writer Jean-Henri de Caster "The Life of Catherine II, Empress of Russia" (Vie de Catherine II, impératrice de Russie), which was published in 1797.
Naturally, according to the old Russian habit, the book was banned in our country, although all educated Russian contemporaries read it. In the absence of his own history books and because the forbidden fruit is sweet, the book of de Caster, who himself had never been to Russia and only retelling what he received from second or even third hands, was popular. How could a layman be able to find out about the secret marriage and illegitimate children of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna?
Translations of the work of the French writer, read to the bone, were circulating in Russian cities and villages. From the then "samizdat" readers learned that the military leader Alexander Suvorov personally chopped off the heads of Turkish janissaries in order to empty them out of the sack at the feet of his commander, Prince Grigory Potemkin. It was from such an essay, where truth bizarrely mixed with untruths, half-truths and lies, that one could learn about the fruit of love of Empress Elizabeth and her favorite Alexei Razumovsky.
First, the princess became a toy in the political games of the Polish tycoon Radziwill, and then in Italy she was deceived by Alexei Orlov, from whom she gave birth to a child, and she herself died in the casemate of the Peter and Paul Fortress during a flood. The author had in mind a severe flood on September 10, 1777, during which part of the wall of the Peter and Paul Fortress collapsed, and rumors circulated in the capital that prisoners had drowned.
Former secretary of the Saxon embassy at the court of Catherine II, Georg Adolph von Helbig, in his sensational book Russian Chosen from the Time of Peter I (1680) to Paul I (1800), declared the mysterious person the daughter of Empress Elizabeth and her other favorite, Ivan Shuvalov. Perhaps he was the first to add the surname Tarakanova to the title of princess, which she never bore.
The meek princess lived quietly in Italy and did not dream of the throne at all, but only suffered from a lack of funds. The insidious Russian officers paid her debts to lure the girl into a trap. The barbarians sent the princess to Russia, where the poor woman died in the Shlisselburg prison. The unhappy father did not dare to open up to his daughter.
In 1859, the Moscow magazine "Russian conversation" published excerpts from the letters of the Italian abbot Roccatani (compiled in the 1820s) about the stay in Rome at the beginning of 1775 of the "unknown princess Elizabeth", who called herself the daughter of the Russian Empress Elizabeth Petrovna and sought support from the Polish ambassador and the papal curia. At the end of his message, the abbot, personally acquainted with this lady, reported that she had left for Livorno, where the Russian navy was at anchor.
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The magazine published copies of the reports of the commander of the Russian fleet in the Mediterranean, Count Alexei Orlov, about establishing contacts with the impostor and a report dated February 14 (25), 1775, about her arrest. The compilers did not know about the fate of the "princess" and assumed that she died in custody.
In the same year, the historian of Russian literature Mikhail Longinov wrote about “the life of Elizaveta Alekseevna Tarakanova,” about which he knew little. The author quoted one "legend" that she died during a flood in a prison, and in another way, she was buried in the Novodevichy Convent. There were other publications, but the picture of the young painter Konstantin Flavitsky "Princess Tarakanova in the Peter and Paul Fortress during a flood", exhibited in 1863, brought real fame to this name. It was the artist who gave the beauty, who called herself a dozen names and titles, the surname Tarakanov.
Noting the skill with which the painting was painted and the “beautiful plot” of the canvas, Mikhail Longinov was the first to refute the “false event”. It was based on the story by that time of the already deceased dignitary - the chairman of the State Council and concurrently president of the Academy of Sciences, Count Dmitry Nikolaevich Bludov. In the first half of the 19th century, he prepared for Nicholas I an overview of many secret political affairs of the Catherine era. He named the exact date of the death of the captive from consumption - December 4, 1775, long before the flood of 1777.
By that time, the writer no longer doubted the imposture of an unknown Prague innkeeper who did not know Russian and never bore the name of Tarakanov. In connection with this story, information appeared about the existence of even more mysterious "brother and sister of the Tarakanovs", who allegedly had a direct relationship to the Razumovsky family and were desperately staying in the monastery.
Despite the fact that in 1867 a large corpus of previously secret documents was published, shedding light on the identity of the impostor and information about her, the image of the beautiful adventurer continued to attract fiction writers.
The victim of autocracy in the novel by Grigory Danilevsky "Princess Tarakanova" (1883). A twenty-minute film made in 1910 based on the drama of I. V. Shpazhinsky "The Pretender (Princess Tarakanova)", illustrating the painting by Flavitsky. In 1990, the film "The Tsar's Hunt" was released based on the play of the same name by L. G. Zorin and numerous productions of the Mossovet and Vakhtangov Theaters, where the favorite of the Empress Orlov, taking advantage of the love of the beautiful Tarakanova for him, carries out the order of Catherine II to capture the criminal.
In a word, the image of a victim of a vile autocratic regime is ready for use, albeit not for political purposes. Although why not one more (or another ?!) time to discredit Russia and its state institutions. The best way to do this is through the life of an irresistibly beautiful young woman. For writers, there is also a field on which no one else has lain, including Zorin and Radzinsky: the intrigues of the powerful, love, a deceived beauty, a statesman, a scoundrel man, etc.
Who wants to look into long-published archival documents or read all versions in order to separate the truth from fiction and myth. Such a thankless job was done by the writer and historian Igor Kurukin, who gave an interesting overview of all kinds of hypotheses and a real cut of events.
In his opinion, the woman who called herself Mrs. Frank, Schelle, Tremuil, Ali Emete, Princess Eleanor de Waldomir, Princess of Azov, Countess Pinneberg and simply Elizabeth, but never "Princess Tarakanova", was an ordinary adventurer, and not a child from a morganatic marriage daughter of Peter the Great with one of the favorites.
The exact date of birth of "Princess Elizabeth", who did not know either Russian or Polish, but spoke German well and preferred to write in French, is unknown. She herself, during the investigation in 1775, claimed that she was 23 years old. It turns out she was born in 1752. “However, this date has not been confirmed by anything, and it seems that by indicating the age, the prisoner of the Peter and Paul Fortress was cunning,” notes Kurukin. - In a letter from 1773 to the minister of the Elector-Archbishop of Trier, she announced that she was born in 1745; therefore, then she was 28 years old, and by the time the investigation began, she was all thirty. So now we can only say that she was between 20 and 30 years old."
Major General Aleksey Ivanovich Tarakanov really existed, but could he take the Empress's child to raise and give him his name? He was sent to Kizlyar, where he stayed until November 1742, after that he served in Moscow, then received a leave of absence for two years, and in the 1750s he was not in active service.
The vagabond, or “adventurer,” as Catherine herself attested in her letters to investigator Golitsyn, had nothing to do with the real “princess Elizabeth.” The author of the biography of “princess Tarakanova” concludes:
