
Sign up to save your podcasts
Or


In the see-saw nature of Russian leadership, Catherine the Great had died before establishing her grandson, the future Alexander I, as her heir, leaving Alexander's father, Paul I, to take the big chair in his stead. This... went poorly for Paul, who was assassinated by a group of his nobles after just four and a half years. Alexander I became Emperor of Russia in 1801, and spent the first part of his reign navigating a complicated relationship with Napoleon Bonaparte's France.
After helping the European alliance to victory in the Napoleonic Wars, he became drawn to mysticism, and gradually seemed to withdraw from interest in the duties of a monarch. When Alexander's wife, Louise of Baden, took ill and required a change of weather in 1825, the couple boarded a train heading south. Stories here diverge; in the official account, Alexander I caught typhus on the journey, dying in the southern town of Taganrog. But another story developed, too, and continues to captivate. A decade later, a mysterious monk named Feodor Kuzmich arrived in Siberia with a knowledge, bearing, and wisdom that grew the legend that the monk was in fact Alexander, having faked his own death to escape the bondage of his title.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
By Hemlock Creatives4.7
277277 ratings
In the see-saw nature of Russian leadership, Catherine the Great had died before establishing her grandson, the future Alexander I, as her heir, leaving Alexander's father, Paul I, to take the big chair in his stead. This... went poorly for Paul, who was assassinated by a group of his nobles after just four and a half years. Alexander I became Emperor of Russia in 1801, and spent the first part of his reign navigating a complicated relationship with Napoleon Bonaparte's France.
After helping the European alliance to victory in the Napoleonic Wars, he became drawn to mysticism, and gradually seemed to withdraw from interest in the duties of a monarch. When Alexander's wife, Louise of Baden, took ill and required a change of weather in 1825, the couple boarded a train heading south. Stories here diverge; in the official account, Alexander I caught typhus on the journey, dying in the southern town of Taganrog. But another story developed, too, and continues to captivate. A decade later, a mysterious monk named Feodor Kuzmich arrived in Siberia with a knowledge, bearing, and wisdom that grew the legend that the monk was in fact Alexander, having faked his own death to escape the bondage of his title.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

8,007 Listeners

1,409 Listeners

744 Listeners

733 Listeners

2,057 Listeners

475 Listeners

988 Listeners

13,600 Listeners

353 Listeners

167 Listeners

576 Listeners

814 Listeners

507 Listeners

90 Listeners

998 Listeners

18 Listeners