Russian history provides answers to many questions, but there are even more mysteries in it. Particularly interesting are the riddles that the autocrats left behind. They knew how to keep secrets.
Was there Rurik?
This main Russian question, along with "Who is to blame?" and "What to do?" A question to which we are unlikely to ever get an answer.
The personality of Rurik (died in 879) to this day causes a lot of controversy, up to the denial of his existence. For many, the famous Varangian is nothing more than a semi-mythical figure. This is understandable. In the historiography of the 19th - 20th centuries, the Norman theory was criticized, since the idea of the inability of the Slavs to create their own state was intolerable to domestic science.
Modern historians are more loyal to Norman theory. Thus, Academician Boris Rybakov hypothesizes that in one of the raids on the Slavic lands, Rurik's squad captured Novgorod, although another historian, Igor Froyanov, supports the peaceful version of the “vocation of the Vikings” to reign.
The problem is that the image of Rurik lacks specificity. According to some sources, it could be the Danish Viking Rörik of Jutland, according to others, the Swede Eirik Emundarson, who raided the lands of the Balts.
There is also a Slavic version of the origin of Rurik. His name is associated with the word "Rerek" (or "Rarog"), which in the Slavic tribe of the Obodrit meant a falcon. And, indeed, during the excavations of the early settlements of the Rurik dynasty, many images of this bird were found.
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Secret seal of Ivan III
The two-headed eagle in Russia first appeared on the state seal of the Grand Duke Ivan III in 1497. Historians almost categorically assert that the eagle in Russia appeared with the light hand of Sophia Palaeologus, the niece of the last Byzantine emperor and the wife of Ivan III.
But why the Grand Duke decided to use the eagle only two decades later, no one explains. It is interesting that it was at the same time in Western Europe that the two-headed eagle became fashionable among alchemists. The authors of alchemical works put the eagle on their books as a quality mark.
The double-headed eagle meant that the author received the Philosopher's Stone, capable of turning metals into gold. The fact that Ivan III gathered around him foreign architects, engineers, doctors, who probably practiced fashionable alchemy at that time, indirectly proves that the tsar had an idea of the essence of the "feathered" symbol.
The death of the son of Ivan the Terrible
Moscow is the capital of Russia, the Volga flows into the Caspian Sea, and Ivan the Terrible killed his son. The main evidence is Repin's painting … Seriously, the murder of his heir by Ivan Vasilyevich is a very controversial fact. So, in 1963, the tombs of Ivan the Terrible and his son were opened in the Archangel Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin. Research has led to the assertion that Tsarevich John was poisoned. The content of poison in his remains is many times higher than the permissible rate. It is interesting that the same poison was found in the bones of Ivan Vasilievich. Scientists concluded that the royal family had been a victim of poisoners for several decades.
Ivan the Terrible did not kill his son. This is the version that Konstantin Pobedonostsev, Chief Procurator of the Holy Synod, adhered to, for example. Seeing the famous painting by Repin at the exhibition, he was outraged and wrote to Emperor Alexander III: "You cannot call the picture historical, since this moment … is purely fantastic." The version of the murder was based on the stories of the papal legate Antonio Possevino, who can hardly be called an uninterested person.
Dmitry with the prefix "false"
We have already accepted that False Dmitry I is a fugitive monk Grishka Otrepiev. The idea that “it was easier to save than to forge Dimitri” was expressed by the famous Russian historian Nikolai Kostomarov. Indeed, it looks very surreal that at the beginning Dmitry (with the prefix "false") was recognized by his own mother, princes, boyars in front of all honest people, and after a while everyone suddenly saw the light.
The pathological situation is added by the fact that the prince himself was completely convinced of his naturalness, as his contemporaries wrote about. Either it is schizophrenia, or he had reasons. Checking the "originality" of Tsar Dmitry Ivanovich, at least today, is not possible. Therefore, we are waiting for the invention of the time machine and, just in case, we keep a fig in our pocket - about the Pretender.
And the king is not real
Many Russian boyars were in this conviction after the return of Peter I from a 15-month tour of Europe. And the point here was not only in the new tsarist "outfit". Particularly attentive persons found inconsistencies of a physiological nature: firstly, the king grew significantly, and, secondly, his facial features changed, and, thirdly, his legs became much smaller.
Rumors spread throughout Muscovy about the substitution of the sovereign. According to one version, Peter was "thrown into the wall", and instead of him they sent to Russia a similar-faced impostor. According to the other - "the tsar in the Germans was laid in a barrel and launched into the sea." Fuel to the fire was added by the fact that Peter, who returned from Europe, began a large-scale destruction of "ancient Russian antiquity." It is interesting that there were versions that the tsar had been replaced in infancy: “The sovereign is not of a Russian breed, and not the son of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich; taken in infancy from a German settlement, from a foreigner by exchange. The queen gave birth to a princess, and instead of the princess they took ev, the sovereign, and gave the princess instead of ev.
Pavel I Saltykov
Emperor Paul I unwittingly continued the tradition of generating rumors around the Romanovs' house. Immediately after the birth of the heir in the court, and then throughout Russia, rumors spread that the real father of Paul I was not Peter III, but the first favorite of the Grand Duchess Ekaterina Alekseevna, Count Sergei Vasilyevich Saltykov. Indirectly, this was confirmed by Catherine II, who in her memoirs recalled how Empress Elizabeth Petrovna, so that the dynasty did not die out, ordered the wife of her heir to give birth to a child, regardless of who would be his genetic father. There is also a popular legend of the birth of Paul I: according to it, Catherine gave birth to a dead child from Peter, and he was replaced by a certain "Chukhonsky" boy.
His Majesty Fyodor Kuzmich
The “tabloid” theme of Paul I was continued by his son, Alexander I. First, he became a direct participant in the murder of his father. Well, secondly, and this is the main legend, Alexander left the royal throne, falsifying his own death, and went to wander around Russia under the name of Fyodor Kuzmich.
There are several indirect confirmations of this legend. So, the witnesses concluded that on his deathbed Alexander was totally different from himself. In addition, for unclear reasons, Empress Elizaveta Alekseevna, the king's wife, did not participate in the funeral ceremony. The famous Russian lawyer Anatoly Koni conducted a thorough comparative study of the handwritings of the emperor and Fyodor Kuzmich and came to the conclusion that "the emperor's letters and the wanderer's notes were written by the hand of the same person."