Kuzmich studies

When he was suddenly taken ill in the southern city of Taganrog on 8 November 1825, the 47-year-old tsar Alexander I had been considering giving up the throne and living out the rest of his days in the Crimea; by 1 December he was dead. Rumours of conspiracy swirled around the body. The remains had become blackened and unrecognisable, making the traditional open-casket ceremony impossible. It was said that the casket in fact contained somebody else’s corpse, or perhaps no corpse at all. Had Alexander, brought to power by a plot in 1801, now resorted to one in order to abdicate it? These specul-ations seemed to be confirmed when an Orthodox mystic called Feodor Kuzmich emerged in the Urals 11 years later, speaking suspiciously fluent French and demonstrating uncanny knowledge of Napoleonic warfare and decade-old court gossip. Rumours of his imperial past had begun to pursue him, to his chagrin, even while he was still alive; after his death in 1864, members of the Romanov family were said to have visited the grave. Since then, a cottage industry in Kuzmich studies has emerged in Russia – and it was given further credence when another layer of rumours claimed that the Soviet government had found Alexander’s tomb empty when it was opened in 1921.