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)
Between 1905 and 1912, the monk Iliodor (Trufanov) set Russia ablaze with his inflammatory right-wing rhetoric, causing scandal after scandal. In this episode, we...
From the 1890s, the Russian Empire saw an outburst of interest in vegetarianism, especially since it was being propounded by famous figures like the...
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...