And the The Welcome to Russian History Retold. Episode 130. Was the Starets Fyodor Kuzmich, really, Zar Alexander the first.

Well, last time, we recap the four rebellions of the 17th and 18th century.

Now we move on to a totally different topic, which is whether

Zar Alexander the first faked his death in Tagenrog in 1825

to become a wandering monk in Sterets named Fyodor Kuzmich.

Zar Alexander the First, also known as Alexander the Blessed,

was born in 1777.

So when news came of his death in 1825, it was a big shock to all, as he was only

48. While doing my research for this podcast, I've been surprised at how hard it is to get real accounts of the life of Alexander at the time of his passing.

This alone makes me suspicious of what was going on.

The official account of the death of Alexander the first vary according to what work you

read.

Some say it was typhus, others pneumonia, another by an English doctor who conducted a post-mortem on his body,

said it was by a bilious remittance fever of the Crimea, a kind of malarial fever. Now pneumonia can come from having typhus, but according to Dr.

Robert Lee, his lungs were clear. Another contentious issue is whether Alexander was healthy before his death.

One source, David Warren's in his book, Chronicle of the Russian Zars, claimed that he was

sick starting in 1824. He said that the

Tsar had quote suffered a serious attack of irisipolis a streptococcal skin infection.

Now, according to Riazanovsky and Steinberg,

and their book, A History of Russia,

Alexander's death was completely unexpected.

This concurs with Troubit Skoy's account that instead

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