Investigating the Disappearance of a Tsar

Tsar Alexander I was one of Russia's greatest rulers, revered above all for leading the country to victory over Napoleon in 1812. But little more than a decade after his greatest triumph, Alexander's life was unraveling before his eyes. In November 1824, a catastrophic flood swept through St. Petersburg, killing more than 600 people. The following year, the tsar's favorite daughter, Sophia, died of tuberculosis and the health of his wife, Elizaveta, deteriorated alarmingly.

In the fall of 1825, Alexander decided to remove himself, his wife and a small entourage from the whirl of court life in St. Petersburg to the small Azov Sea town of Taganrog, ostensibly to help his wife recover from her illness. A few weeks after his arrival there, Alexander suddenly fell ill and died on Nov. 19.

Or did he? Before long rumors began to circulate that the tsar, a physically robust man of 48, had staged his own death to rid himself of a crown that had grown too heavy to bear. In "Imperial Legend: The Mysterious Disappearance of Tsar Alexander I," Alexis S. Troubetzkoy examines the suspicious circumstances surrounding Alexander's last days in Taganrog and the widely held belief that the tsar fled the country, only to return 11 years later in the person of a mystic, Feodor Kuzmich, who appeared out of nowhere near Perm in 1836 and wandered around Siberia performing good deeds until his death in 1864.

On the face of it, the idea of Alexander being reincarnated as a Siberian holy man seems something of a fairytale, but "the Legend," as Troubetzkoy refers to it in his book, has proved astonishingly persistent and has exercised the minds of several respected historians and even the great novelist Leo Tolstoy, who spent 15 years on and off researching the subject.

Troubetzkoy's own interest in the Legend was sparked by his boyhood history tutor, Professor Nicholas Arseniev, and further fuelled by a series of meetings in the late 1950s with Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna, the sister of Tsar Nicholas II, who escaped to the West in 1920 with her husband and two sons. When the subject of Kuzmich was broached, Troubetzkoy writes, Olga "visibly blanched and then declared rather curtly, 'In our family Feodor Kuzmich was not a subject for discussion.' ... A pregnant silence followed, but then she took my hand into hers and, with a touch of a smile, said, 'We really didn't discuss it. But I am old and not long for this world; you are young and apparently have understanding of these things. You should know that we have no doubt that Feodor Kuzmich was the emperor.'"

Later in the book, Troubetzkoy rebukes himself for not checking with Olga whether the "we" included her brother, but he points to a visit by Nicholas ?? when still tsarevich in 1891 ?? to Kuzmich's grave at the Bogoroditsko-Alexeyevsk Monastery near Tomsk, and to the subsequent building of a small chapel over the tomb, as evidence that the last tsar was a believer in the Legend.

Getting the imperial nod, as it were, was a good start for Troubetzkoy, but it took him 20 more years to research "Imperial Legend." Although most of the evidence he uncovers is circumstantial ?? as Troubetzkoy himself admits ?? there is enough of it to lend the Legend credibility.

In the first half of the book, Troubetzkoy chips away at the popular image of Alexander as the dashing young scourge of Bonaparte to reveal a complex character beset by doubts and, later, guilt. As a boy, Alexander was caught up in the animosity between his domineering grandmother Catherine the Great and his volatile father Paul I, and he came to the throne in even more traumatic circumstances, after Paul was murdered during a coup in March 1801. Alexander was aware of the plot to overthrow Paul, and although he did not actively take part in it, and apparently believed that the coup would be bloodless, the shadow of patricide hung over him for the rest of his life.

Accepting that Alexander was desperate enough to contemplate faking his own death and fleeing Russia is, of course, a prerequisite for believing the Legend, and Troubetzkoy does a good job of showing how Alexander's abiding guilt over his father's death, the pressures of his office and his despair at the tragic events of 1824 and 1825 might have driven him to it. Furthermore, Troubetzkoy reveals, Alexander often confided to family and friends his desire to abandon the throne and retire quietly, even stating on occasions that he would do so when he was 50, or after 25 years in power. In reality, Alexander must have known this was impossible: only God (or force) could take the crown away from the anointed sovereign.

So did Alexander resort to staging his own death, and if so, how did he do it? Troubetzkoy offers plenty of peculiar details about Alexander's final weeks that might point to a plot: for example, his decision to move to remote Taganrog, when there were many resorts in the nearby Crimea more suitable for his fragile wife; the vague and conflicting accounts by aides and doctors present of the sudden illness that killed the tsar; and the unnatural speed with which his body decomposed and became unrecognizable.

Perhaps most tantalizing of all are reports that an unknown yacht flying a British flag lay at anchor in Taganrog harbor during Alexander's stay there and then abruptly sailed away on the day of his death. Although the yacht has never been conclusively traced ?? strangely, one nineteenth-century historian found that the records of the Taganrog Port Authority from 1823 to 1826 had vanished after being requisitioned by the Ministry of the Marine in St. Petersburg ?? some believe the owner to have been the Earl of Cathcart, a former British ambassador to St. Petersburg and a friend of Alexander.

If the emperor did escape, his next destination is thought to have been Palestine, where the trail runs cold until the appearance of Kuzmich 11 years later. Nothing is known of the enigmatic Kuzmich before 1836, but from then on his movements are clear. He lived ascetically, spending much of his time in meditation and prayer. He never spoke of his past but was clearly well educated, familiar with St. Petersburg politics and spoke at least two languages fluently. Many diarists and historians ?? some reliable, others less so ?? recorded vignettes in which Kuzmich, by his words or actions, hinted at his imperial origins.

Following Kuzmich's death, the Legend takes on a more macabre hue, with reports of Alexander's tomb in St. Petersburg being dug up and bodies being swapped. As for Kuzmich's grave, it was discovered in 1995 that the body inside was missing its skull.

Sifting through the vast amount of material available on the Legend, Troubetzkoy always maintains an objective, scholarly tone, with none of the wild speculation usually associated with conspiracy theories. Ultimately, however, Troubetzkoy concedes that the only way of establishing the truth about the Legend is to subject the graves of Alexander and Kuzmich to forensic and DNA testing ?? something he hopes his book will help bring about. Until then, he leaves the last word to Tolstoy, who concluded: "So let historical evidence fail to connect Alexander with Kuzmich, the legend lives in all its beauty and sincerity."

"Imperial Legend: The Mysterious Disappearance of Tsar Alexander I." By Alexis S. Troubetzkoy. 320 pages. Arcade Publishing. $27.95.