Latest / The Romanov Dynasty: Rise, Power, and Bloody End — Fexingo History / Alexander I: The Mysterious Tsar Who Defeated Napoleon
Transcript
- Lucas: So last time we left the Romanovs with Paul I, murdered in his own bedroom in the Mikhailovsky Castle, and his son Alexander takes the throne. This is 1801, and Alexander is 23 years old. He's been raised by his grandmother Catherine the Great, who actually wanted to bypass Paul and make Alexander her heir. But the law of succession Paul had put in place prevented that. Luna: So Alexander grew up caught between Catherine and Paul, two very different worlds. Lucas: Exactly. Catherine personally oversaw his education. She hired a Swiss tutor named Frédéric-César de La Harpe, who was a republican and an Enlightenment idealist. So young Alexander grew up believing in liberty, equality, the rule of law. He corresponded with his grandmother about Plato and the social contract. But at the same time, he lived in fear of his father, who was paranoid, erratic, and drilled his sons like soldiers at Gatchina. Lucas: And then comes the night of March 23, 1801. A group of disgruntled officers, led by Count Pahlen, storm the Mikhailovsky Castle and strangle Paul with a scarf. Alexander was in the palace. He knew it was coming. The conspirators had told him it was necessary to save Russia. But when they came to him and said, 'Your father is dead,' he broke down sobbing. He never fully got over the guilt. Luna: He must have felt like he was complicit in patricide. Lucas: That guilt haunted him his entire reign. And it shaped his politics. On one hand, he came in as a reformer. He surrounded himself with young liberal friends — the so-called Secret Committee: men like Adam Czartoryski, a Polish prince; Viktor Kochubey; Pavel Stroganov; and Nikolay Novosiltsev. They dreamed of a constitution, of freeing the serfs, of turning Russia into a constitutional monarchy. Lucas: He even appointed Mikhail Speransky, a brilliant reformer, to draft a constitution. Speransky's plan called for a separation of powers, an elected parliament, and civil rights. But Alexander never implemented it. Why? Because he was also afraid of the nobility. He knew that if he pushed too hard, he'd end up like his father. So he talked liberal but ruled autocratic. Luna: He was a classic Hamlet on the throne, wasn't he? Lucas: Exactly. Napoleon once called him 'the cunning Byzantine.' He could charm you in one conversation, then sign a decree that crushed your freedoms. And then comes 1812. Napoleon invades Russia. Alexander famously declares, 'I will not negotiate. I will grow a beard and eat potatoes with my peasants rather than sign a shameful peace.' He appoints Kutuzov, loses Moscow, but wins the war of attrition. Lucas: After Napoleon's defeat, Alexander becomes the most powerful man in Europe. He marches into Paris in 1814. At the Congress of Vienna, he dominates the negotiations. He creates the Holy Alliance with Prussia and Austria — a pact that sounds noble, all about Christian brotherhood, but actually becomes a tool for suppressing revolutions across Europe. The liberal reformer becomes the gendarme of Europe. Luna: So the man who wanted a constitution ends up crushing Polish and Italian uprisings. Lucas: That's the paradox. Poland was his great failure. He had promised a constitution to the Poles, gave them a parliament in 1815. But then he allowed his brother Constantine, who was a brute, to govern Poland with an iron fist. The Poles revolted in 1830, after Alexander's death, but the seeds of that rebellion were planted in his reign. And domestically, he entrusted the military colonies to his brutal minister Arakcheyev. Lucas: The military colonies were Alexander's idea. He wanted soldiers to farm their own land, support themselves, and be ready for war. But in practice, Arakcheyev turned them into a nightmare. Peasants were conscripted into colonies, their families torn apart, their lives regimented by the military. Any dissent was crushed with beatings. It was serfdom with a uniform. And Alexander knew about it and allowed it. Luna: How does a man who wept over his father's murder become the patron of the Arakcheyev system? Lucas: That's the mystery. And it's part of why the legend of Fyodor Kuzmich took hold. In 1825, Alexander died suddenly in Taganrog, a small town on the Sea of Azov. He was only 47. Officially, he died of typhus. But there were rumors almost immediately. His wife Elizabeth was with him, and she was the only witness. His body was put in a coffin and transported to St. Petersburg, but the coffin was kept closed. Some said it was empty. Lucas: And then, ten years later, a mysterious old man appears in Siberia, calling himself Fyodor Kuzmich. He's tall, well-educated, speaks several languages, and has a military bearing. He refuses to reveal his past. He becomes a holy hermit, known for his wisdom. He's visited by nobles, even by members of the royal family. And when he died in 1864, people whispered that he was Alexander I, who had faked his death to atone for his sins. Luna: There's something almost Dostoyevskian about that story — a tsar seeking redemption as a wandering peasant. Lucas: Absolutely. Dostoyevsky himself was fascinated by the legend. And there's tantalizing evidence. When Fyodor Kuzmich died, they found a note in his belongings with the initials 'A.I.' — Alexander I. And when the Bolsheviks exhumed the imperial tombs in the 1920s, they opened Alexander's coffin in the Peter and Paul Cathedral — and it was empty. The tomb contained only some bones, but not a complete skeleton. Luna: Wait, really? So the myth has actual physical evidence behind it? Lucas: That's what makes it so persistent. The official line is that the bones were lost or mixed up during the Revolution. But the legend won't die. Some historians point out that Alexander was deeply religious, increasingly mystical in his later years. He had spoken about wanting to abdicate and live a simple life. And the timing works: Alexander 'died' in November 1825. Fyodor Kuzmich appeared in 1836, ten years later. That's a plausible window. Lucas: But there are also arguments against it. The real Alexander had a bad leg, a scar on his shoulder, and a deformed ear — Fyodor Kuzmich's body showed none of those. And Alexander's wife Elizabeth died just six months after him, and she was buried in the same tomb. If Alexander had faked his death, he left her to die of a broken heart. That doesn't fit the saintly image. Luna: So it remains one of those historical cold cases. Lucas: Exactly. And it's a fitting end for Alexander, a man who was a puzzle to everyone around him. He could be charming and liberal one day, then cold and autocratic the next. He defeated Napoleon but then built a system that crushed the very freedoms he had once championed. He was haunted by his father's murder and may have spent his last decades trying to escape his own identity. Luna: It's no wonder that, for listeners who've been following the Romanovs episode by episode, Alexander feels like the most complex tsar yet. And if you've gotten something out of these conversations about Eastern Europe, you might not realize how much it takes to keep this show ad-free. A couple of dollars a month is genuinely what keeps these going — buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo, if you've gotten something out of them. Lucas: Yeah, that really does make a difference. It means we can keep digging into these stories without sponsors or ads. And speaking of stories, after Alexander, we have his brother Nicholas I, who will take the throne in the middle of the Decembrist Revolt — a direct consequence of Alexander's contradictions. The liberal officers who admired Alexander's early ideals try to seize power, and Nicholas crushes them. Luna: So Alexander's failure to reform leads directly to the first major uprising against autocracy. Lucas: Exactly. The Decembrists were young aristocrats who had fought in the Napoleonic Wars, seen Paris, and come home thinking Russia needed a constitution. They expected Alexander to follow through on his promises. When he didn't, they organized. And on December 14, 1825, they marched into Senate Square in St. Petersburg. But Alexander had just died, and Nicholas I was not about to negotiate. He ordered artillery to fire on them. Lucas: Five of the leaders were hanged, hundreds were exiled to Siberia. And that set the tone for Nicholas's reign: repression, censorship, and the 'Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality' doctrine. But that's another episode. For now, Alexander I remains the great enigma — the tsar who could have been Russia's liberator but became its jailer, and who may have vanished into the Siberian wilderness to repent. Luna: A fittingly mysterious end for a mysterious emperor.