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)
On 1 December 1911, the priest's wife Zinaida Troitskaia was found murdered in the backwoods village of Alajõe in eastern Estland province. This episode...
The colour photographs of Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii fascinated the imperial public of the early 20th century, persuading Emperor Nicholas II to sponsor expeditions across the...
Tales from Imperial Russia is a fortnightly podcast narrating ordinary and extraordinary lives from the Russian Empire. In short episodes, we will avoid the...
