In this episode, we look at the story of the oddly refined peasant wanderer Fedor Kuzmich, who was claimed by many to be the dead tsar Alexander I. The myth and its staying power are rooted in several sources, not least the peculiar circumstances of the emperor's death and popular conceptions of monarchy.
Source
M. P. Rey, Alexander I: The Tsar Who Defeated Napoleon (trans. S. Emanuel. DeKalb: NIU Press, 2016)
The 1804/1818 song collection of Kirsha Danilov introduced the Russian reading public, in many ways for the first time, to the people's immensely rich...
Between 1770 and 1772, Moscow saw a virulent outbreak of the Black Death, one of the most feared diseases in European history: Dr Afanasii...
In 1796, the merchant Ivan Tolchenov was secreted in his magnificent mansion in Dmitrov, hiding from his creditors. This episode seeks to understand how...
