The sudden death of Alexander I, who had almost never been ill before, had excellent health, was not yet old (he was not even 48 years old), gave rise to many rumors and legends. Incredible stories about the Taganrog events appeared at the beginning of 1826 in foreign newspapers. Subsequently, among numerous rumors, the legend of the mysterious elder Fyodor Kuzmich, under whose name the Emperor Alexander I was allegedly hiding for many years, became more widespread.
This is explained, as you can see, by the fact that at that time the bodies of the deceased rulers were always exhibited for farewell to the people in an open coffin. For some reason, the body of the late Emperor Alexander I was not shown to the people. However, all these rumors and rumors after a couple of years subsided and gradually began to be forgotten.
1836, autumn - in the Klenovskaya volost of the Krasnoufimsky district, an unknown person was detained while riding a horse with a cart. During interrogation, he said that he did not remember his kind and origin, but his name was Fyodor Kuzmich. As a vagrant who did not remember kinship, the court sentenced him to exile in Siberia for settlement. On October 12, Fyodor Kuzmich was punished with 20 lashes and the next day he was sent to the stage. On December 7, he arrived in Tyumen, from where he was sent to settle in the Tomsk province, where he lived in obscurity until 1849, until he settled near the village of Krasnorechensky.
From that moment, Fyodor Kuzmich got into the center of attention of the surrounding villages: for some reason, the popular rumor considered him either exiled or voluntarily resigned from his post as a metropolitan. Fyodor Kuzmich was a prominent figure and tall - broad-shouldered, with a broad chest, gray eyes on a clean white face with a round chin. It was strange, however, that the elder did not go to confession and did not take communion, which aroused suspicion of sectarianism.
Nevertheless, the influence of Fyodor Kuzmich grew, because, moving from village to village, the elder gave the impression of a well-educated and even quite intelligent person. He helped the sick, taught peasant children to read and write. He talked with adults on religious topics, told about events from Russian history, especially about military campaigns and battles. In stories about the Patriotic War of 1812, Fyodor Kuzmich, imperceptibly for himself, sometimes went into such details that he caused general bewilderment.
The elder carried on extensive correspondence with various people through pilgrims and constantly received news, although he carefully hid ink and paper from prying eyes. There were many stories about the blessings and services of Fyodor Kuzmich, rendered to Siberians. From time to time, the monk was also visited by rather high-ranking dignitaries, with whom he surprisingly often spoke French to everyone. In addition, eyewitnesses emphasized the elder's knowledge of the highest Petersburg society and the backstage court life.
There are several stories that claim that Elder Fyodor Kuzmich and Alexander are one and the same person. They all boil down to the fact that any of the people who served at one time in St. Petersburg, seeing Fyodor Kuzmich, asked: "Who is this?", And then with a cry: "This is our tsar, Father Alexander Pavlovich!" - rushed to the elder. The same one asked them to be silent or denied everything.
During his stay in Siberia, the elder never revealed the secrets of his origin. There is, however, the story of a certain merchant Khromov, with whom Fyodor Kuzmich lived out his last years. As if the merchant on the eve of the elder's death directly asked him: "Rumor is running that you, grandfather, are none other than Alexander the Blessed, is this true?" And the elder answered: "Wonderful are your deeds, Lord, there is no secret that would not be revealed." It is also known that after the death of Fyodor Kuzmich, Khromov, sorting through his things, allegedly discovered a marriage certificate for Alexander Pavlovich and Elizaveta Alekseevna. Handwriting analysis confirmed the likelihood of the identity of the notes of Fyodor Kuzmich and Alexander.
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Taking into account these data, including many legends about the elder, a preliminary conclusion can be drawn: erect posture, manner of holding and speaking, thorough knowledge of military life, education, awareness of state affairs and other signs make it possible to speak of the elder as a person who once had an attitude to secular life and the sovereign's court.
Interesting in this regard is the almost criminal story with the replacement of the body of the courier Maskov, strikingly similar to the emperor and who died in front of Alexander shortly before his death. 1902 - enthusiasts managed to find a descendant of Maskov Apollo Kurbatov, a professor of chemistry. He said that a legend was preserved in their family that Maskov was buried in the Cathedral of the Peter and Paul Fortress instead of Alexander I.
And at the end of the 19th century, a man appeared in Singapore who called himself the son of Emperor Alexander I, who was settled by him in Siberia. No information has been preserved about the future fate of the impostor, but it is known that "everywhere he was accepted as a high person."
If all this is so, then it is only worthy of admiration that Alexander did not retire to some blissful and calm European corner, “in order to serenely enjoy the goodness established in the Fatherland,” as he dreamed in his youth, but to distant, cold, uncomfortable Siberia, in order to atone for his voluntary and involuntary sins by a long and difficult deed of voluntary hermitage. It is no coincidence that he said after the invasion of Russia by Napoleon's army: "I will grow myself a beard and would rather agree to eat bread in the bowels of Siberia than sign the shame of my Fatherland and my good subjects."
Supplement to the versions about the possibility of the appearance of Elder Fyodor Kuzmich was presented in the article "One of the last legends" published in the Saratov newspaper "Volga" on July 25, 1907, by an anonymous author who signed the initials D. D. chronicler, - I am deeply convinced that without the recognition of the legend it is impossible to draw a spiritual image of the late Emperor Alexander I. It is she who explains and exhausts the duality of personality that is recognized by many historians and which caught the eye of all contemporaries. It was interpreted at random by everyone who was struck by this unimaginable mixture of secrecy and sincerity, greatness and humiliation, pride and modesty, noise and silence, outbursts of character and compliance, regal greatness and a consciousness of insignificance …"
There is also a version based on the diary entry of the sovereign: "My biography can fit in three nights, which I will never forget …"
The first of them, as historians have established, is the murder of his father, in which he himself became an involuntary cause and accomplice.
The second night, which influenced the fate of Alexander, refers to the first intimate after the wedding. “God! How beautiful she is! - Alexander writes down two days after the wedding. “I will never be able to forget this night, which I didn’t manage, I couldn’t touch her snow-white satin body, too beautiful to stir up the fire that Russian women gave birth to in me by their very appearance”.
But in the last night, according to researchers, lies the main secret of Alexander's death. In his diary, the entry about her is the last. And, apparently, the sovereign knew about everything in advance even before the subsequent events. How else is it possible to assess the situation that had developed by September 1825, when the autocrat, secretly from the environment, prepared all the documents necessary for abdicating the throne? The envelope with the necessary papers was presented to Archbishop Filaret of Moscow personally by Alexander Pavlovich with the words: “Keep until my personal demand. If I disappear, open it …"
When the death of the sovereign was announced, the empress testified to this fact. The body, placed in the coffin, was immediately closed with a lid, which was never opened afterwards. No traces of the sick monk who arrived in Taganrog with Alexander were found in the house of the crowned spouses. At least the gardener Fyodor, having confessed before his death (he died 5 years after Alexander's "departure") and having told the secret of this "departure" known only to him, remained fully confident that the Emperor Alexander Pavlovich for his glorious and holy deeds was taken to heaven alive …
This version may seem implausible, but even without it, many Russian people were convinced that the emperor did not die, but went to wander the country, calling himself the elder Fyodor Kuzmich. He was allegedly met in Siberia, the Urals, on the Volga. One "Alexander", even in shackles, was taken to St. Petersburg.
And what is curious, they did not execute, they did not confine them to the fortress, but quietly and imperceptibly took them out, providing, among other things, a large sum of money and winter clothes.
For the first time that the emperor and the elder Fyodor Kuzmich, who settled in Siberia near Tomsk, are probably the same person, was told in his work "Posthumous notes of the elder Fyodor Kuzmich" Lev Tolstoy. But it does not provide documentary data confirming this fact.
Therefore, historians for a long time regarded this plot as an artistic fiction of the great writer. But at the end of the 1890s. the historian from Tomsk Viktor Fyodorov established that Leo Tolstoy in his youth visited the elder Fyodor Kuzmich and spent the whole day with him without witnesses. A few years later, Tolstoy wrote an amazing story with an interesting plot - "Father Sergius" … And at the end of his life he will try to repeat the feat of the elder, limiting himself in everything, and then leaving home altogether …
Historian Schilder; a connoisseur of the era of the reign of Alexander I, argued that Fyodor Kuzmich in growth, build and appearance was so similar to the emperor that those exiled to Siberia, who had seen the tsar earlier, were simply amazed. The old man, posing as a vagabond who did not remember kinship, knew foreign languages. In his cell hung a portrait of Alexander, besides, the elder had the habit of putting his left hand to his chest. It is known that the world is small - a Cossack by the name of Berezin, who once served at the court, turned out to be in the Siberian outback. He bluntly stated that only the tsar-father could press his left hand to his chest.
According to the documents, the Tsarevich, the future Tsar Nicholas II, in 1891 visited the places where the elder had lived in recent years. But as soon as he became emperor, he ordered the destruction of the handwriting samples of his great-uncle. And yet Fedorov found in the archives photocopies of documents signed by Alexander I. Employees of the forensic research laboratory in Moscow and Japanese specialists in Tokyo, after an examination, came to the conclusion that the handwriting of the elder and the sovereign belonged to the same person.
“Alexander spent 47 years in luxury, temptations and sins,” writes Leo Tolstoy. Of these, 24 years old, since 1801 - on the throne. He became king after the murder of his father Paul 1 by the conspirators and executed himself all his life for agreeing to this. At the same time, he was perhaps the most liberal tsar. He returned A. Radishchev from exile. Moreover, he instructed him to develop a decree on the emancipation of the peasants. He forbade erecting monuments to himself, despite his immense popularity, after the victory over Napoleon. Under him, political investigation was abolished, many progressive reforms were introduced. The sovereign was constantly tormented by remorse for participating, albeit involuntarily, in the murder of his father, for the deaths of hundreds of people in the wars he waged. Mental anguish led to the idea of atonement for sins.
In the last years of his reign, he often spoke and wrote that he was tired, that he would like to abdicate and live differently. “A soldier has served 25 years and is free,” he often said. - I, too, have already served my term, it's time to retire. Imperial duties weighed on him, an idle life oppressed him, and his marriage did not bring joy …
The emperor also had official doubles - the aforementioned courier Maskov and non-commissioned officer Strumensky, who loved to play the role of a crowned person and was demoted to soldiers for this. The death of these people by a strange coincidence almost coincided with the date of the death of the sovereign himself. Maskov unexpectedly and surprisingly crashed on the pavement on November 3, 1825, and Strumensky on November 11 was driven through the ranks in Taganrog at the direction of Arakcheev, allegedly for an escape. By the way, Leo Tolstoy believed that it was Strumenskaya who was put in the coffin instead of the emperor.
And yet it should be noted that all versions of the "reincarnation" of the sovereign into an elder are based solely on rumors recorded by memoirists. At the same time, such documentary materials as the most detailed bulletins on the course of the emperor's illness, acts of the autopsy of his body, official reports from Taganrog of persons who were with the dying emperor, generals of the royal retinue of Volkonsky and Dibich are ignored or without any reason called into question. In the end, there are letters from Empress Elizaveta Alekseevna, who was with her husband until his death, as well as letters from courtiers - Princess Z. Volkonskaya and chamber-maid of honor E. Valueva.
A significant part of these materials were published at one time by the historians N. Schilder and the Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich Romanov. But over the years the legend not only did not die, but also acquired additional outlines inherent in any myth and was wrapped in a mystical veil …
In full accordance with the will of the late elder Fyodor Kuzmich, they were buried in a men's monastery. Later, in 1904, a stone monument-chapel was erected on his grave with private donations. In Soviet times, the chapel was demolished, and the grave was abandoned. Only in the summer of 1995 was the exhumation of the saint's grave carried out by the seminarians of the Tomsk Theological Seminary. But his secret remained unsolved …
Y. Pernatiev