Evgeny Anisimov. Palace secrets

At the beginning of 2000, the Kultura TV channel, highly respected by many for good passes and the lack of advertising, he invited me to participate in the Palace Secrets project as the author and presenter of this program. After thinking a little, I agreed and eventually even came to terms with the name of the program. As you know, if the title does not contain the words "mystery" or "investigation", then many people will not even look. The directorate gave me complete freedom of creativity, which I took advantage of, telling from the screen modern people about the people of the 18th century. I was lucky that the director of my programs was a talented and original woman, Tatyana Lvovna Malysheva, and that almost all the shooting took place in Peterhof, which still flourishes under the beneficent rule of the incomparable director Vadim Valentinovich Znamenov. Gradually overcoming stiffness and fear, I became more and more fond of programs. The letters sent to me by viewers from all over the country said that people are watching these programs, and this inspired me - it turns out that the words about the 18th century I love do not disappear in the void and touch someone.

I myself am a professional historian, a specialist in Russian history XVIII century, wrote several scientific monographs and many popular books and articles intended for the remarkable Russian "general" reader - smart, educated, interested in everything in the world. The fact is that over the years I realized that interest in the past is indestructible in every person, no matter what he does. Perhaps this interest is caused by the course of life itself. Sooner or later, a person, understanding the futility or, conversely, the value of his (unique for him) life, involuntarily puts it in a certain row, a chain of similar human lives, most of which have already broken off. And then a person urgently wants to “jump into a time machine”, for a moment “look into the past”, to understand how they lived, the people of the past, in another (and at the same time similar to ours) world, what they felt, how each other treated to friend. This is where the need arises for the historian's word, which you can trust, knowing that he will not lie, based on political considerations or for the sake of a red word.

But often, having taken at first glance an “appetizing” historical book and sitting comfortably on the couch with it, the reader quickly cools down to it - sometimes the word of a professional historian is so boring, boring, scientific and poor. And sometimes, from the pages of a book written by a non-historian, so much ignorance, authorial conceit, teachings, or, even worse, disregard for people of the past, “crawls out”. Well, of course, because they did not know what an airplane, a laser weapon was, they did not hold a “mobile” in their hands, and just because they lived in an “imperfect” past, they seem more stupid than he himself!

Most of all, I am afraid of just such impressions from my book, so I do my best not to destroy the unsteady trace left from the past, I try to convey all its originality and, at the same time, reflect my feelings from contact with bygone human lives. I am convinced that no matter how we arm ourselves with all kinds of technology, most of us will never be smarter than Voltaire or Newton, more talented than Mozart or Lomonosov. In a word, the people of the past must be treated with respect - after all, they can no longer answer our sometimes absurd claims, they have forever become silent, as we will also become silent, having also become defenseless against the judgments of descendants.

With such thoughts, I conducted the transmission of this cycle, and then wrote this book. Each chapter is a short story about one of the characters Russian XVIII century. Together they represent fifty links of a single chain of human lives, which stretches in time from one infinity to another...

E. V. Anisimov

St. Petersburg, February 2005

Blood enemies

One of the associates of Peter the Great, Guards officer Alexander Rumyantsev, described in a letter to a friend how late at night on June 26, 1718, Peter I summoned him to the Summer Palace. Entering the royal apartments, Rumyantsev saw the following scene: near the sovereign, who was sitting in an armchair, stood the head of the Synod, Archbishop Theodosius, the head of the Secret Chancellery (the political police of that time), Count Pyotr Tolstoy, his deputy Major of the Guard Andrei Ushakov, and Peter's wife, Ekaterina Alekseevna. All of them calmed the weeping king. Shedding tears, Peter ordered Rumyantsev and three other officers to secretly kill his eldest son, Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich, imprisoned in the Trubetskoy bastion of the Peter and Paul Fortress. It was the finale of a truly Shakespearean drama unfolding before the eyes of all Russian subjects...

The future conflict between father and son, their estrangement, which then grew into enmity, was predetermined from the outset by the position in which the heir to the Russian throne found himself. Tsarevich Alexei - the son of Peter from his first wife Evdokia Lopukhina - was born on February 18, 1690. The boy was only eight years old when his mother was taken away from him. The king ordered her to be exiled to a monastery and forcibly tonsured as a nun. Alexei was very worried about separation from his mother, but his father forbade him to see the former queen, the old woman Elena of the Suzdal Intercession Monastery, and, having once learned that the prince, already seventeen, secretly went to Suzdal on a date with his mother, was beside himself with anger.

Peter did not love his eldest son, as a living and unpleasant reminder of an unsuccessful first marriage. He appointed Alexei the content, determined the teachers and educators, approved the education program and, busy with thousands of urgent matters, calmed down, believing that the heir to the right way, and if anything - the fear of punishment will correct the matter. But Aleksey, torn from his mother, given into the wrong hands, an orphan with living parents, tormented by pain and resentment for his mother, of course, could not become a close person to his father. Later, during interrogations under torture, he testified: “... Not only military affairs and others from my father’s case, but the very person froze me terribly ...” Moreover, there was no closeness between father and son later, when the king had new wife Ekaterina Alekseevna, who did not need a stepson. In the correspondence between Peter and Catherine, which has survived to this day, Tsarevich Alexei is mentioned two or three times, and in none of the letters is there even a greeting to him. Letters from father to son are cold, short and impassive - not a word of approval, support or affection. No matter how the prince acted, his father was always dissatisfied with him. In all this tragedy, only the king was to blame. Once he dismissed the boy, giving him to be raised by others, strangers and small people, and ten years later he received an enemy behind him, who did not accept anything of what his father did and fought for.

The prince was by no means the weak and cowardly hysteric that he is sometimes portrayed as. After all, Alexei is still presented in the image that Nikolai Cherkasov talentedly, but biasedly created in the pre-war film "Peter the Great". In fact, Alexei Petrovich, the son of his great father, inherited his will and stubbornness from him. Looking ahead, I note that the heir did not organize any conspiracy against his father, as Peter and state propaganda later tried to present the case. His resistance to his father was passive, never burst out, hiding behind demonstrative obedience and formal reverence for his father and sovereign. But still, the prince was looking forward to his hour, which was to come with the death of his father. He believed in his star, he knew for sure: behind him, the only and rightful heir, is the future, and you just need to clench your teeth and wait for the hour of your triumph. The prince did not feel alone either: loyal people from his inner circle stood behind him, on his side were the sympathies of the nobility, irritated by the dominance of "upstarts" like Menshikov.

When children are the happiness of some and the grief of others

Introduction

1. Relentless fate and unloved son: Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich
Blood enemies
When children are the happiness of some, and the grief of others
An invitation to execution
Terrible sacrifice
Unquenchable candle

2. The last love of the queen: Evdokia Lopukhina
When the wife is not a couple
Get a haircut, my hateful
Romance outside the monastery wall
Persistent Glebov
The extraordinary vivacity of her eyes

3. Furious Prosecutor General: Pavel Yaguzhinsky
The unsleeping "eye of the sovereign"
The power of the white crow
"Small spots" interfering with a career
Two Annas - mothers of sons and daughters
Who needs a brawler who speaks only the truth?

4. Death in an immured cell: Archbishop Theodosius
Founder and tsar's friend
Dagger Worshiping Inquisitor
How sweet it is for a donkey to kick a dead lion
The Bridge Incident, or "Don't Touch Me!"
"Neither I am a black man, nor am I a dead man"

5. Russian Cunctator: Field Marshal Sheremetev
Did not overeat with everyone, like a pig
"Chevalier Maltese certified"
“I have not tested the spirit”
The burden of responsibility and fear
New settlement of the St. Petersburg necropolis

6. Reflections at the Open Crypt: Oberkommandant Roman Bruce
To the will of God and the chief commandant
The rank is honorable, but unenviable
Reliable Scotsman in an unreliable place
Brick from Dutch childhood
Drink Neva water
Destined to die in Russia - be patient!

7. Daughter of a glorious skipper: Tsesarevna Anna Petrovna
For mother's skirt
A beautiful daughter is a valuable commodity
Dynastic game - where the stake is the future of the throne
cut off hunk
The funeral of the skipper's daughter
8 Russian naturalization: Abram Gannibal and his friends
First Russian Salon
Don't talk!
Letters from friends
"Suddenly to the apartment"
How to become Russian

9. Word and deed of the princess: Natalia Dolgorukaya
Marriage intrigue
Annoying and scary guest
Secrets of our choice
The feat of an honest conscience
Siberian torture
The end of everything on the skudelich field

10. Adored Chief Chamberlain: Duke Ernst Johann Biron
Cockroach of Russian history
The truth about eternal love
Handsome and cheeky
live housecom
Not enough power, you need honor!
Bull but with brains
"Sure!"
King for a day
Way to Siberia and back

11. Good Soldier of Fortune: Burchard Christopher Munnich
Copper teapot in the hands and courage in the eyes
Mercenary, duelist and engineer
Channel digger and scammer
Charming and deceitful
Unexpected victories of the unfortunate commander
On the slippery court parquet
With a scythe on the shoulder
“He was not touched by decay, upheavals of happiness”

12. A small treatise on laughter: Balakirev and comrades
Competition for the best fool
Russian laughter through tears
Institute of State Laughter
jester parade
King of Russian Fools
Author, director and presenter
Competition is the engine of wit
Where the laughter ends

13. "Pouch of courage" in the bosom: Alexey Cherkassky
The Art of Dozing Without Prejudice to Biography
Carrying his name
Petersburg builder
Headquarters of noble projectors
Mediocrity, dignity and longevity
The Art of Political Survival

14. Sly priest: Archbishop Feofan Prokopovich
Brilliant bastard
Poltava victory of choleric
Shameless Talent
The power of the earthly ruler
Creator's Optimism
The magic of whitia
Love of life
Friend of the Chief of the Secret Chancellery
Evil is the worst

15. Imaginary patient: First Minister Andrey Osterman
Imp inside
Escape to Russia
Workaholic Career
Negotiator from God
Timely vomiting
Rootless and obedient
This is not your role, director!
Charming Fury's Wrath
The old fox got caught!
Hey Marfa!

16. Russian "Iron Mask": Emperor Ivan Antonovich
Drama on the island
Dynastic combinations
Gold and iron chains of the infant emperor
Do not kill, let him die himself!
The secret of the secrets of the Russian court, which everyone knew about
Dynastic sin of the Romanovs
New instruction
... Then an officer appeared with a team
Divine Truth and State Truth
"God's Guidance Is Wonderful"

17. secret husband Empress: Alexei Razumovsky
Signs of fate
friend of the heart
Secret and sweet marriage
happy return
Resignation, or the wisdom of a courtier

18. The Last Hetman: Kirill Razumovsky
Fairy tale fate shepherdess
"He was good-looking"
President and Hetman
"But why is she so fat?"
Last joke

19. Father of the Russian unicorn and the market: Petr Shuvalov
Faithful and unpretentious
Magic November night
Do not have a hundred friends, but have a wife Maura
A Talented Husband to a Talented Wife
Two faces of Peter Shuvalov
Noble-worker
Noble economist, projector and thief
The fate of the reformer, "floating in usefulness"

20. Terrible scourge of vices: Alexander Sumarokov
"Mother of the Russian theater" and her children
The intoxicating air of the Cadet Corps
Hamlet in Russian
weakness of nature
Order for poetry
The special structure of the soul of the theater director
Teach kings
Professional Complainant
Don't hurt your mother!
Accompanied by archers

21 Ideal Favorite: Ivan Shuvalov
Mystery of the young lover
Deafness to the sound of copper pipes
Enlightened Favorite
Scratch - there will be a Russian master
Unexpected peace and freedom
Happiness to live as you wish

22. "I do honor to the fatherland": Mikhailo Lomonosov
hard work asking
The nature of genius
Spiritual son of Peter
Syndrome and power of Ilya Muromets
Universal genius
Wounded Titan
Friends to the palace threshold
"Children of the fatherland will regret"

23. The secret of the "Bestuzhev drops": Chancellor Bestuzhev-Ryumin
All the trouble in the morning
Long way up with stops
Everything but conscience
Sniffing the Chancellor of Russia
On the benefits of reading other people's letters
Academician of Elizabethan Studies
Briber with principles
A hole in the old woman
“Looking for the reasons why he was arrested…”
Unnecessary field marshal

24. Heat last love: Ivan Betskoy
Courtier and educator
New breed of people
Happy bastard
Virgins of Enlightenment, or Enlightened Maidens
Almost an orphan, or His treasure
Release of brides
Golden cage of senile love
What does he want?
Alimushka cannot be held!
Were you acquainted, young man, with Peter the Great?

25. Fellow son: Alexei Bobrinsky
Crisis of royal marriage
Strange folk love
Is it possible to give birth silently?
Rescue Basket of the Cuckoo Empress
abandoned child
Let's walk in the open!
Away, out of sight!

26. Death in a casemate: Princess Tarakanova
stray
Passion on order
top secret case
Strict oppression
Confessional and interrogation
evasive soul

27. Russian Leonardo: Nikolay Lvov
Tver undergrowth
Ease of genius
Love story
Good fat patron
Salon in the government house
Father of the Russian estate
enjoyment of life
Fountain of ideas
"Let me live a little"

28. Ekaterina Malover: Princess Dashkova
The offspring of a happy family
Love at first sight
Conspiracy Romance
Oversleep coup
The bitter truth of life
Scythian heroine in Edinburgh
A scientific woman at the head of science
Reinforced concrete in character
Payment for the past
The sin of pride

29. Magnificent prince Taurida: Grigory Potemkin
Hero of the hedonistic age
The art of wiggling your ears and breaking fate
Things "more important than Cupid"
New Russia - new destiny
Potemkin villages and cities
last visit
Do not sit in your drogs

30. Peter, son of Peter: Rumyantsev
The sweetness of the first victory
Notoriety and palace secrets
Keys of Kolberg
Harmelons of Ukraine
Summer of immortal glory
Innovator
Three mighty blows
Lost Wand

31. King's Love: Stanislav-August Poniatowski
In the midst of a noisy ball, by chance
“I forgot that Siberia exists”
Flight of the "impatient man" from the stairs
"Don't rush coming here"
Expensive gift-compensation
Straw king with Polish arrogance
To be able to survive one's own homeland
Unromantic date
Still, he is sometimes a Pole!
love vs love
Forgive but remember

32. Walks along the autumn alleys: the Panin brothers
A moment - and you're in Ochakovo!
A moment - and you're in Copenhagen!
Warrior career
"Life with a wife is not so scary"
Influential educator
Voluptuous nature
Adorable koala
Raise a "limited" monarch
Power is given for the good of the people
Hunting and retirement
The resignation of the wounded Starodum
cheeky chatter
"Shortened lope"
On unknown alleys

33. Ropshinsky and Chesme hero: Alexei Orlov
Five tavern eagles
Capricious Guard
Third but leader
Ropsha glory
And there was happiness, and misfortune helped
"Archipelagic expedition", or "Was"
Cavalier George
False husband of "wanderers"
Resignation
Return of the past
With Charon under the brass of the orchestra

34. The secret of the night audience: Emelyan Pugachev
Rare impudent
"Rise of the Buried Spouse"
You can't fool the people!
A stranger to revenge
Morning execution
Search!

35. "Diamond in the crust": Alexander Bezborodko
"To princes from crests"
Extraordinary Secretary of State
The epicurean and the reveler
The Genius of Diplomacy
Secrets of Bezborodko
"I gave a lot of money"
The art of sliding on the floor

36. On the banks of the river of time: Gabriel Derzhavin
Truth through the mouth of a child
"Come, soldier brother!"
Conspiracy of the Muses
State love
On guard of the law and dreams
enjoyment of life
In Search of Immortality

37. Cock crow of a genius: Alexander Suvorov
King's wrath - the messenger of death
Mighty spirit in a flimsy body
Soldier Universities
Success from Failure, or the Rise of a Star
laugh under fire
Win or die!
Myths and legends
Secrets of Suvorov's character
contrary to custom
Suvorochka
Country life
Here lies Suvorov

38. The owner of the "Russian Bastille": Stepan Sheshkovsky
Romance dungeon
I will justify the trust!
Two of a Kind
Eyes and ears of the regime
Deliver, Lord, from his treats!
Evening commemorative to General Kozhina
The sweetness of power

39. Last favorite: Platon Zubov
The inevitability of decay
Walk over the top
Another "baby"
Replica from the stage
The cost of raising "nigella" and "frisky"
"Torturing himself over papers"
Minion of happiness
Killer, brother of killers
wife for a million

At the beginning of 2000, the Kultura TV channel, highly respected by many for its good programs and lack of advertising, invited me to participate in the Palace Secrets project as the author and presenter of this program. After thinking a little, I agreed and eventually even came to terms with the name of the program. As you know, if the title does not contain the words "mystery" or "investigation", then many people will not even look. The directorate gave me complete creative freedom, which I took advantage of, telling modern people about the people of the 18th century from the screen. I was lucky that the director of my programs was a talented and original woman, Tatyana Lvovna Malysheva, and that almost all the shooting took place in Peterhof, which still flourishes under the beneficent rule of the incomparable director Vadim Valentinovich Znamenov. Gradually overcoming stiffness and fear, I became more and more fond of programs. The letters sent to me by viewers from all over the country said that people were watching these programs, and this was inspiring - it turns out that the words about the eighteenth century I love do not disappear in the void and touch someone.

I myself am a professional historian, a specialist in Russian history of the 18th century, I have written several scientific monographs and many popular books and articles intended for the wonderful Russian "general" reader - smart, educated, interested in everything in the world. The fact is that over the years I realized that interest in the past is indestructible in every person, no matter what he does. Perhaps this interest is caused by the course of life itself. Sooner or later, a person, realizing the futility or, conversely, the value of his (unique for him) life, involuntarily puts it in a certain row, a chain of similar human lives, most of which have already been cut short. And then a person desperately wants to “jump into a time machine”, for a moment “look into the past”, to understand how they lived, the people of the past, in another (and at the same time similar to ours) world, what they felt, how each other treated to friend. This is where the need arises for the historian's word, which can be trusted, knowing that he will not lie, based on political considerations or for the sake of a red word.

But often, having taken at first glance an “appetizing” historical book and sitting comfortably on the couch with it, the reader quickly cools down to it - sometimes the word of a professional historian is so boring, boring, scientific and poor. And sometimes, from the pages of a book written by a non-historian, so much ignorance, authorial conceit, teachings, or, even worse, disregard for people of the past, “crawls out”. Well, of course, because they did not know what an airplane, a laser weapon was, they did not hold a “mobile” in their hands, and just because they lived in an “imperfect” past, they seem more stupid than he himself!

Most of all, I am afraid of just such impressions from my book, so I do my best not to destroy the unsteady trace left from the past, I try to convey all its originality and - at the same time - reflect my feelings from contact with bygone human lives. I am convinced that no matter how we arm ourselves with all kinds of technology, most of us will never be smarter than Voltaire or Newton, more talented than Mozart or Lomonosov. In a word, the people of the past must be treated with respect - after all, they can no longer answer our sometimes absurd claims, they have forever become silent, as we will also become silent, having also become defenseless against the judgments of descendants.

With such thoughts, I conducted the transmission of this cycle, and then wrote this book. Each chapter is a short story about one of the heroes of the Russian XVIII century. Together they represent fifty links of a single chain of human lives, which stretches in time from one infinity to another...

E. V. Anisimov

St. Petersburg, February 2005

Blood enemies

One of the associates of Peter the Great, Guards officer Alexander Rumyantsev, described in a letter to a friend how late at night on June 26, 1718, Peter I summoned him to the Summer Palace. Entering the royal apartments, Rumyantsev saw the following scene: near the sovereign, who was sitting in an armchair, stood the head of the Synod, Archbishop Theodosius, the head of the Secret Chancellery (the political police of that time), Count Pyotr Tolstoy, his deputy Major of the Guard Andrei Ushakov, and Peter's wife, Ekaterina Alekseevna. All of them calmed the weeping king. Shedding tears, Peter ordered Rumyantsev and three other officers to secretly kill his eldest son, Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich, imprisoned in the Trubetskoy bastion of the Peter and Paul Fortress. It was the finale of a truly Shakespearean drama unfolding before the eyes of all Russian subjects...

The future conflict between father and son, their estrangement, which then grew into enmity, was predetermined from the outset by the position in which the heir to the Russian throne found himself. Tsarevich Alexei - the son of Peter from his first wife Evdokia Lopukhina - was born on February 18, 1690. The boy was only eight years old when his mother was taken away from him. The king ordered her to be exiled to a monastery and forcibly tonsured as a nun. Alexei was very worried about separation from his mother, but his father forbade him to see the former tsarina - the old woman Elena of the Suzdal Pokrovsky monastery, and, having once learned that the prince, already seventeen, secretly went to Suzdal on a date with his mother, was beside himself with anger.

Peter did not love his eldest son, as a living and unpleasant reminder of an unsuccessful first marriage. He appointed Alexei maintenance, determined teachers and educators, approved the education program and, busy with thousands of urgent matters, calmed down, believing that the heir was on the right track, and if anything, the fear of punishment would improve things. But Aleksey, torn from his mother, given into the wrong hands, an orphan with living parents, tormented by pain and resentment for his mother, of course, could not become a close person to his father. Later, during interrogations under torture, he testified: “... Not only military affairs and others from the father of my case, but the very person froze me terribly ...” Moreover, there was no closeness between father and son later, when the tsar had a new wife Catherine Alekseevna, who did not need a stepson. In the correspondence between Peter and Catherine, which has survived to this day, Tsarevich Alexei is mentioned two or three times, and in none of the letters is there even a greeting to him. Letters from father to son are cold, short and impassive - not a word of approval, support or affection. No matter how the prince acted, his father was always dissatisfied with him. In all this tragedy, only the king was to blame. Once he dismissed the boy, giving him to be raised by others, strangers and petty people, and ten years later he received an enemy behind him, who did not accept anything of what his father did and fought for.

The prince was by no means the weak and cowardly hysteric that he is sometimes portrayed as. After all, Alexei is still presented in the image that Nikolai Cherkasov talentedly, but biasedly created in the pre-war film "Peter the Great". In fact, Alexei Petrovich - the son of his great father - inherited his will, stubbornness from him. Looking ahead, I note that the heir did not organize any conspiracy against his father, as Peter and state propaganda later tried to present the case. His resistance to his father was passive, never burst out, hiding behind demonstrative obedience and formal reverence for his father and sovereign. But still, the prince was looking forward to his hour, which was to come with the death of his father. He believed in his star, he knew for sure: behind him, the only and rightful heir, is the future, and you just need to clench your teeth and wait for the hour of your triumph. The prince did not feel alone either: loyal people from his inner circle stood behind him, on his side were the sympathies of the nobility, irritated by the dominance of "upstarts" like Menshikov.

When children are the happiness of some and the grief of others

Evgeniy Viktorovich Anisimov

Palace secrets

Introduction

At the beginning of 2000, the Kultura TV channel, highly respected by many for its good programs and lack of advertising, invited me to participate in the Palace Secrets project as the author and presenter of this program. After thinking a little, I agreed and eventually even came to terms with the name of the program. As you know, if the title does not contain the words "mystery" or "investigation", then many people will not even look. The directorate gave me complete creative freedom, which I took advantage of, telling modern people about the people of the 18th century from the screen. I was lucky that the director of my programs was a talented and original woman, Tatyana Lvovna Malysheva, and that almost all the shooting took place in Peterhof, which still flourishes under the beneficent rule of the incomparable director Vadim Valentinovich Znamenov. Gradually overcoming stiffness and fear, I became more and more fond of programs. The letters sent to me by viewers from all over the country said that people were watching these programs, and this was inspiring - it turns out that the words about the eighteenth century I love do not disappear in the void and touch someone.

I myself am a professional historian, a specialist in Russian history of the 18th century, I have written several scientific monographs and many popular books and articles intended for the wonderful Russian "general" reader - smart, educated, interested in everything in the world. The fact is that over the years I realized that interest in the past is indestructible in every person, no matter what he does. Perhaps this interest is caused by the course of life itself. Sooner or later, a person, realizing the futility or, conversely, the value of his (unique for him) life, involuntarily puts it in a certain row, a chain of similar human lives, most of which have already been cut short. And then a person desperately wants to “jump into a time machine”, for a moment “look into the past”, to understand how they lived, the people of the past, in another (and at the same time similar to ours) world, what they felt, how each other treated to friend. This is where the need arises for the historian's word, which can be trusted, knowing that he will not lie, based on political considerations or for the sake of a red word.

But often, having taken at first glance an “appetizing” historical book and sitting comfortably on the couch with it, the reader quickly cools down to it - sometimes the word of a professional historian is so boring, boring, scientific and poor. And sometimes, from the pages of a book written by a non-historian, so much ignorance, authorial conceit, teachings, or, even worse, disregard for people of the past, “crawls out”. Well, of course, because they did not know what an airplane, a laser weapon was, they did not hold a “mobile” in their hands, and just because they lived in an “imperfect” past, they seem more stupid than he himself!

Most of all, I am afraid of just such impressions from my book, so I do my best not to destroy the unsteady trace left from the past, I try to convey all its originality and - at the same time - reflect my feelings from contact with bygone human lives. I am convinced that no matter how we arm ourselves with all kinds of technology, most of us will never be smarter than Voltaire or Newton, more talented than Mozart or Lomonosov. In a word, the people of the past must be treated with respect - after all, they can no longer answer our sometimes absurd claims, they have forever become silent, as we will also become silent, having also become defenseless against the judgments of descendants.

With such thoughts, I conducted the transmission of this cycle, and then wrote this book. Each chapter is a short story about one of the heroes of the Russian XVIII century. Together they represent fifty links of a single chain of human lives, which stretches in time from one infinity to another...

E. V. Anisimov

St. Petersburg, February 2005

Relentless fate and unloved son: Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich

Blood enemies

One of the associates of Peter the Great, Guards officer Alexander Rumyantsev, described in a letter to a friend how late at night on June 26, 1718, Peter I summoned him to the Summer Palace. Entering the royal apartments, Rumyantsev saw the following scene: near the sovereign, who was sitting in an armchair, stood the head of the Synod, Archbishop Theodosius, the head of the Secret Chancellery (the political police of that time), Count Pyotr Tolstoy, his deputy Major of the Guard Andrei Ushakov, and Peter's wife, Ekaterina Alekseevna. All of them calmed the weeping king. Shedding tears, Peter ordered Rumyantsev and three other officers to secretly kill his eldest son, Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich, imprisoned in the Trubetskoy bastion of the Peter and Paul Fortress. It was the finale of a truly Shakespearean drama unfolding before the eyes of all Russian subjects...

The future conflict between father and son, their estrangement, which then grew into enmity, was predetermined from the outset by the position in which the heir to the Russian throne found himself. Tsarevich Alexei - the son of Peter from his first wife Evdokia Lopukhina - was born on February 18, 1690. The boy was only eight years old when his mother was taken away from him. The king ordered her to be exiled to a monastery and forcibly tonsured as a nun. Alexei was very worried about separation from his mother, but his father forbade him to see the former tsarina - the old woman Elena of the Suzdal Pokrovsky monastery, and, having once learned that the prince, already seventeen, secretly went to Suzdal on a date with his mother, was beside himself with anger.

Peter did not love his eldest son, as a living and unpleasant reminder of an unsuccessful first marriage. He appointed Alexei maintenance, determined teachers and educators, approved the education program and, busy with thousands of urgent matters, calmed down, believing that the heir was on the right track, and if anything, the fear of punishment would improve things. But Aleksey, torn from his mother, given into the wrong hands, an orphan with living parents, tormented by pain and resentment for his mother, of course, could not become a close person to his father. Later, during interrogations under torture, he testified: “... Not only military affairs and others from the father of my case, but the very person froze me terribly ...” Moreover, there was no closeness between father and son later, when the tsar had a new wife Catherine Alekseevna, who did not need a stepson. In the correspondence between Peter and Catherine, which has survived to this day, Tsarevich Alexei is mentioned two or three times, and in none of the letters is there even a greeting to him. Letters from father to son are cold, short and impassive - not a word of approval, support or affection. No matter how the prince acted, his father was always dissatisfied with him. In all this tragedy, only the king was to blame. Once he dismissed the boy, giving him to be raised by others, strangers and petty people, and ten years later he received an enemy behind him, who did not accept anything of what his father did and fought for.

The prince was by no means the weak and cowardly hysteric that he is sometimes portrayed as. After all, Alexei is still presented in the image that Nikolai Cherkasov talentedly, but biasedly created in the pre-war film "Peter the Great". In fact, Alexei Petrovich - the son of his great father - inherited his will, stubbornness from him. Looking ahead, I note that the heir did not organize any conspiracy against his father, as Peter and state propaganda later tried to present the case. His resistance to his father was passive, never burst out, hiding behind demonstrative obedience and formal reverence for his father and sovereign. But still, the prince was looking forward to his hour, which was to come with the death of his father. He believed in his star, he knew for sure: behind him, the only and rightful heir, is the future, and you just need to clench your teeth and wait for the hour of your triumph. The prince did not feel alone either: loyal people from his inner circle stood behind him, on his side were the sympathies of the nobility, irritated by the dominance of "upstarts" like Menshikov.

When children are the happiness of some and the grief of others

In October 1715, the knot of this tragedy tightened even tighter. By this time, by the will of Peter, Alexei had long been married to the Wolfenbüttel Crown Princess Charlotte Sophia, and on October 12 she had a son named Peter in honor of his grandfather. Charlotte died after giving birth. Literally two weeks later, the wife of Peter the Great, Tsarina Catherine, also gave birth to a long-awaited boy, who was also named Peter. He grew up as a healthy and lively baby. "Shishechka", "Gut" (that is, flesh from the flesh) - this is how Peter and Catherine called their son in their letters. Just as young newlywed parents admire their first-born, so the already middle-aged royal couple enthusiastically met the first steps of their son. “I ask you, my father, for protection,” Ekaterina jokes in a letter, “since he has a considerable quarrel with me because of you: when I mention you to him that dad left, he doesn’t like such a speech that he left, but loves and rejoices more when you say that dad is here. In another letter: “Our dear Shishechka often mentions her dearest dad and, with the help of God, improves at her age.”