1 February 1864 year
Died in Tomsk Fyodor Kuzmich — an old man who lived in Siberia in the 19th century. According to one legend, he was an emperor Alexander I, He allegedly faked his own death in 1825 and went into exile. The question of the elder's identity with the emperor remains unresolved by historians.
If I had not told the truth about myself in confession, heaven would have been surprised; if I had told who I am, the earth would have been surprised (words attributed to Fyodor Kuzmich)
The first mention of the elder dates back to September 4, 1836. He was riding through the Klenovskaya volost on a horse harnessed to a cart. Perm province, stopped at the forge to shoe his horse and aroused suspicion with his behavior, which was not typical for a commoner.
The blacksmith reported the strange client to the authorities. The old man had no documents. He was detained as a vagrant on September 10th, when he claimed to be 60 years old. Fyodor Kozmich Kozmin. It was the first and only time he used his last name. He didn't say where he was from or where he was going.
Since he was too young to be conscripted into the army, Fyodor was given 20 lashes and sentenced to Siberia. He didn't object to the sentence. But he asked a townsman to sign for him. Shpyneva — citing illiteracy.
A month later he was sent to Tomsk province — as part of the 43rd batch of exiles. He was the only one not shackled; along the way, he won over both guards and prisoners.
Height 2 arshins and 6 3/4 vershoks, grey eyes, light brown hair with greying on his head and beard, roundish chin, marks of whip beatings on his back (description of appearance from the materials of the Tomsk expedition about exiles)
He lived at the Krasnorechensk distillery for five years. He wasn't sent to forced labor because of his age.
Having received the opportunity to move freely, he wandered around Mariinsky district. He taught children literacy and history. He took no money—only food. He gained fame as a righteous man and miracle worker. It was then that the legend of his royal origins was born.
Thus, the late emperor was allegedly recognized in the old man by people who had lived in the city for a long time. Petersburg. He had aristocratic manners and spoke French. According to locals, he mentioned meeting Suvorov и Kutuzov, kept a sheet of paper with a monogram in the form of the letter A and a crown and corresponded with the baron Osten-Sacken and - encrypted - with the emperor Nicholas I
In the 1850s, the elder's cell the village of Krasnorechenskoye I visited Lev Tolstoy. They talked all day. In 1905, the writer began the story "Posthumous Notes of the Elder Fyodor Kuzmich"—it would remain unfinished and would be published in 1912.
Even though the impossibility of connecting the personalities of Alexander and Kuzmich has been historically proven, the legend remains in all its beauty and truth (Tolstoy)
In 1858, the elder, at the invitation of a merchant, Semyon Khromov moved to Tomsk. He lived a simple life—he wore a linen shirt and trousers and slept on a canvas-covered board. He was religious. In confession shortly before his death, he allegedly refused to reveal the name of his patron saint—"God knows"—or the names of his parents.
According to birth records, he died at the age of 80. He was buried within the grounds of the Bogoroditse-Alekseevsky Monastery. Khromov announced that he had found encrypted notes among the elder's belongings—"the secret of Fyodor Kuzmich." Those who deciphered them discovered various meanings—and guilt for the murder. Paul I, and resentment towards Nicholas I. Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich, the grandson of Nicholas I, believed:
The note is a figment of the imagination of someone who saw and knew the elder.
Despite the fact that the sudden death of Alexander I Taganrog There was ample documentary evidence to support this legend, and belief in it still persists, including among some historians. In 2015, graphologists declared that the handwriting of the elder and the emperor was virtually identical.
However, the object of the graphological examination was only photocopies of the notes—the originals disappeared in 1909. And they did not dare to conduct a genetic examination.
In 1936, the chapel over the elder's grave was destroyed—a cesspool was built in its place. Excavations were conducted in 1995, revealing a lidless coffin and human remains without a skull. The chapel over the elder's grave was restored. The relics were placed in a reliquary in the monastery church.