Evgeniy Viktorovich Anisimov
Palace secrets
Introduction
At the beginning of 2000, the Kultura TV channel, highly respected by many good passes and the lack of advertising, he invited me to participate in the “Palace Secrets” project as the author and host of this program. After thinking a little, I agreed and over time 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 watch it. The management gave me complete freedom of creativity, which I took advantage of, narrating from the screen modern people about 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 filming took place in Peterhof, which to this day has flourished under the beneficial authority of the incomparable director Vadim Valentinovich Znamenov. Gradually overcoming stiffness and fear, I became more and more interested in the programs. The letters that viewers from all over the country sent me said that people were watching these programs, and this was inspiring - it turns out that the words about my beloved 18th century do not disappear into 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 wonderful Russian “general” reader - smart, educated, interested in everything in the world. The fact is that over the years I realized: interest in the past is ineradicable in every person, no matter what he does. Probably this interest is caused by the flow 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 broken off at some point. And then a person desperately wants to “jump into a time machine”, to “look into the past” for a minute, to understand how they, the people of the past, lived in another (and at the same time similar to ours) world, what they felt, how they treated each other to friend. This is where the need arises for the word of a historian, whom you can trust, knowing that he will not lie, based on political considerations or for the sake of a catchphrase.
But often, having taken at first glance an “appetizing” historical book and sitting comfortably on the sofa with it, the reader quickly cools down to it - so sometimes the word of a professional historian is 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, disdain for the people of the past “crawls out”. Well, of course, they didn’t know what an airplane or a laser weapon was, they didn’t hold a mobile phone in their hands, and just because they lived in an “imperfect” past, they seem stupider than him!
Most of all, I am afraid of precisely such impressions from my book, so I try with all my might not to destroy the fragile 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 much 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, people of the past must be treated with respect - after all, they can no longer respond to our sometimes absurd claims, they have become silent forever, just as we will remain silent, also becoming defenseless before the judgments of our descendants.
It was with these thoughts that I broadcast this series and then wrote this book. Each chapter is a short story about one of the heroes 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
Inexorable fate and unloved son: Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich
Half-blooded enemies
One of Peter the Great's associates, guards officer Alexander Rumyantsev, described in a letter to a friend how late at night on June 26, 1718, Peter I summoned him to his Summer Palace. Entering the royal apartments, Rumyantsev saw the following scene: near the sovereign sitting in the chair stood the head of the Synod, Archbishop Theodosius, the head of the Secret Chancellery (the political police of that time), Count Peter Tolstoy, his deputy, Major of the Guard Andrei Ushakov, as well as Peter’s wife, Ekaterina Alekseevna. They all calmed the crying 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. This was the finale of a truly Shakespearean drama that unfolded before the eyes of all Russian citizens...
The future conflict between father and son, their alienation, which then grew into enmity, were predetermined initially by the situation in which the heir found himself Russian throne. Tsarevich Alexei - Peter's son 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 sent to a monastery and forcibly tonsured as a nun. Alexey was very worried about separation from his mother, but his father forbade him to see former queen- Elder Elena of the Suzdal Intercession Monastery, and, having once learned that the prince, already seventeen years old, secretly went to Suzdal on a date with his mother, he was beside himself with anger.
Peter did not like his eldest son, as a living and unpleasant reminder of his unsuccessful first marriage. He assigned Alexei a salary, identified teachers and educators, approved the education program and, busy with thousands of urgent matters, calmed down, believing that the heir would on the right track, and if anything happens, fear of punishment will improve matters. But Alexey, torn away 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 the military affairs and other affairs from my father, but the person herself really froze me...” 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 that 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 a father to his son are cold, brief and dispassionate - not a word of approval, support or affection. No matter what the prince did, his father was always dissatisfied with him. Only the king was to blame for this whole tragedy. Once he brushed aside the boy, giving him to be raised by others, strangers and small people, and within ten years he had an enemy behind him, who did not accept anything of what his father did and fought for.
The Tsarevich was not at all a weak and cowardly hysteric, as he is sometimes portrayed. 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, Alexey 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 broke out, hiding behind demonstrative obedience and formal veneration of 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, knew for sure: the future belonged to him, the only and legitimate heir, and he just needed to, gritting his teeth, wait for the hour of his triumph. The Tsarevich did not feel lonely either: behind him stood loyal people from his inner circle, and 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, Alexei, by the will of Peter, had long been married to the Wolfenbüttel Crown Princess Charlotte Sophia, and on October 12 she gave birth to a son, named Peter in honor of his grandfather. After giving birth, Charlotte died. 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. “Lishechka”, “Gutted” (that is, flesh of flesh) - this is what 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 greeted their son’s first steps with delight. “I ask you, my father, for protection,” Ekaterina jokes in the letter, “since he has a considerable quarrel with me because of you: when I mention you to him that dad has left, he does not like such speech that he has left, but He loves and rejoices more when you say that dad is here.” In another letter: “Our dear Shishechka often mentions his dear father and, with the help of God, is improving at his age.”
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 host of this program. After thinking a little, I agreed and over time 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 watch it. The management 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 filming took place in Peterhof, which to this day has flourished under the beneficial authority of the incomparable director Vadim Valentinovich Znamenov. Gradually overcoming stiffness and fear, I became more and more interested in the programs. The letters that viewers from all over the country sent me said that people were watching these programs, and this was inspiring - it turns out that the words about my beloved 18th century do not disappear into 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 “wide” reader - smart, educated, interested in everything in the world. The fact is that over the years I realized: interest in the past is ineradicable in every person, no matter what he does. Probably this interest is caused by the flow of life itself. Sooner or later, a person, realizing the futility or, conversely, the value of his (unique for him) life, involuntarily places 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”, to “look into the past” for a minute, to understand how they, the people of the past, lived in another (and at the same time similar to ours) world, what they felt, how they treated each other to friend. This is where the need arises for the word of a historian, whom you can trust, knowing that he will not lie, based on political considerations or for the sake of a catchphrase.
But often, having taken at first glance an “appetizing” historical book and sitting comfortably on the sofa with it, the reader quickly cools down to it - so sometimes the word of a professional historian is 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, disdain for the people of the past “crawls out”. Well, of course, they didn’t know what an airplane or a laser weapon was, they didn’t hold a mobile phone in their hands, and just because they lived in an “imperfect” past, they seem stupider than him!
Most of all, I am afraid of precisely such impressions from my book, so I try with all my might not to destroy the fragile 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 much 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, people of the past must be treated with respect - after all, they can no longer respond to our sometimes absurd claims, they have become silent forever, just as we will remain silent, also becoming defenseless before the judgments of our descendants.
It was with these thoughts that I broadcast this series and then wrote this book. Each chapter is a short story about one of the Russian heroes of the 18th 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
Inexorable fate and unloved son: Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich
Half-blooded enemies
One of Peter the Great's associates, guards officer Alexander Rumyantsev, described in a letter to a friend how late at night on June 26, 1718, Peter I summoned him to his Summer Palace. Entering the royal apartments, Rumyantsev saw the following scene: near the sovereign sitting in the chair stood the head of the Synod, Archbishop Theodosius, the head of the Secret Chancellery (the political police of that time), Count Peter Tolstoy, his deputy, Major of the Guard Andrei Ushakov, as well as Peter’s wife, Ekaterina Alekseevna. They all calmed the crying 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. This was the finale of a truly Shakespearean drama that unfolded before the eyes of all Russian citizens...
The future conflict between father and son, their alienation, which then developed into enmity, were predetermined initially by the situation in which the heir to the Russian throne found himself. Tsarevich Alexei - Peter's son 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 sent to a monastery and forcibly tonsured as a nun. Alexey was very worried about separation from his mother, but his father forbade him to see the former queen, Elder Elena of the Suzdal Intercession Monastery, and, having once learned that the prince, already seventeen years old, secretly went to Suzdal on a date with his mother, he was beside himself with anger.
Peter did not like his eldest son, as a living and unpleasant reminder of his unsuccessful first marriage. He assigned Alexei a salary, identified teachers and educators, approved the educational program and, busy with thousands of urgent matters, calmed down, believing that the heir was on the right path, and if anything happened, the fear of punishment would correct the matter. But Alexey, torn away 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 the military affairs and other affairs from my father, but the person herself really froze me…” 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 that 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 a father to his son are cold, brief and dispassionate - not a word of approval, support or affection. No matter what the prince did, his father was always dissatisfied with him. Only the king was to blame for this whole tragedy. Once he brushed aside 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 Tsarevich was not at all a weak and cowardly hysteric, as he is sometimes portrayed. 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, Alexey 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 broke out, hiding behind demonstrative obedience and formal veneration of 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, knew for sure: the future belonged to him, the only and legitimate heir, and he just needed to, gritting his teeth, wait for the hour of his triumph. The Tsarevich did not feel lonely either: behind him stood loyal people from his inner circle, and 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 the audiobook by Evgeny Anisimov “Palace Secrets. Russia, XVIII century” you will see a series of fascinating stories from the life of the tsars and the Russian nobility.
You will find answers to the questions: what was the the real reason execution of Tsarevich Alexei? Was Mikhail Lomonosov the son of Peter the Great? Who was hiding under the Russian “Iron Mask”? Who was secret husband Empress Elizabeth? How life turned out illegitimate son Empress Catherine the Great? And finally, what was the secret of all the secrets of the Russian court that everyone knew about?
Playing time: 13:06:11
Publisher: Can't buy it anywhere
Audiobook by Evgeny Anisimov “Palace Secrets. Russia, XVIII century" performed by: Vyacheslav Gerasimov
On this topic:
Evgeny Anisimov. Russia in the mid-eighteenth century. The fight for Peter's legacy
The audiobook by Evgeny Anisimov “Russia in the mid-eighteenth century. The struggle for Peter’s legacy” is dedicated to post-Petrine Russia - a controversial, complex and largely unexplored period in literature. Evgeniy Anisimov talks about the struggle on upper floors gives power...
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 host of this program. After thinking a little, I agreed and over time 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 watch it. The management 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 filming took place in Peterhof, which to this day has flourished under the beneficial authority of the incomparable director Vadim Valentinovich Znamenov. Gradually overcoming stiffness and fear, I became more and more interested in the programs. The letters that viewers from all over the country sent me said that people were watching these programs, and this was inspiring - it turns out that the words about my beloved 18th century do not disappear into 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: interest in the past is ineradicable in every person, no matter what he does. Probably this interest is caused by the flow of life itself. Sooner or later, a person, realizing the futility or, conversely, the value of his (unique for him) life, involuntarily places 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”, to “look into the past” for a minute, to understand how they, the people of the past, lived in another (and at the same time similar to ours) world, what they felt, how they treated each other to friend. This is where the need arises for the word of a historian, whom you can trust, knowing that he will not lie, based on political considerations or for the sake of a catchphrase.
But often, having taken a historical book that seems “appetizing” at first glance and sitting comfortably on the sofa with it, the reader quickly cools down to it - so sometimes the word of a professional historian is 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, disdain for the people of the past “crawls out”. Well, of course, they didn’t know what an airplane or a laser weapon was, they didn’t hold a mobile phone in their hands, and just because they lived in an “imperfect” past, they seem stupider than him!
Most of all, I am afraid of precisely such impressions from my book, so I try with all my might not to destroy the fragile trace left from the past, I try to convey all its originality and - at the same time - to reflect my feelings from contact with bygone human lives. I am convinced that no matter how much 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 respond to our sometimes absurd claims, they have become silent forever, just as we will remain silent, also becoming defenseless before the judgments of our descendants.
It was with these thoughts that I broadcast this series and then wrote this book. Each chapter is a short story about one of the Russian heroes of the 18th 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
Inexorable fate and unloved son: Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich
Half-blooded enemies
One of Peter the Great's associates, guards officer Alexander Rumyantsev, described in a letter to a friend how late at night on June 26, 1718, Peter I summoned him to his Summer Palace. Entering the royal apartments, Rumyantsev saw the following scene: near the sovereign sitting in the chair stood the head of the Synod, Archbishop Theodosius, the head of the Secret Chancellery (the political police of that time), Count Peter Tolstoy, his deputy, Major of the Guard Andrei Ushakov, as well as Peter’s wife, Ekaterina Alekseevna. They all calmed the crying 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. This was the finale of a truly Shakespearean drama that unfolded before the eyes of all Russian citizens...
The future conflict between father and son, their alienation, which then developed into enmity, were predetermined initially by the situation 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 sent to a monastery and forcibly tonsured as a nun. Alexey was very worried about separation from his mother, but his father forbade him to see the former queen, Elder Elena of the Suzdal Intercession Monastery, and, having once learned that the prince, already seventeen years old, secretly went to Suzdal on a date with his mother, he was beside himself with anger.
Peter did not like his eldest son, as a living and unpleasant reminder of his unsuccessful first marriage. He assigned Alexei a salary, identified teachers and educators, approved the educational program and, busy with thousands of urgent matters, calmed down, believing that the heir was on the right path, and if anything happened, the fear of punishment would correct the matter. But Alexey, torn away 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 the military affairs and other affairs from my father, but the person herself really froze me...” 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 that 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 a father to his son are cold, brief and dispassionate - not a word of approval, support or affection. No matter what the prince did, his father was always dissatisfied with him. Only the king was to blame for this whole tragedy. Once he brushed aside 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 Tsarevich was not at all a weak and cowardly hysteric, as he is sometimes portrayed. 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, Alexey 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 broke out, hiding behind demonstrative obedience and formal veneration of 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, knew for sure: the future belonged to him, the only and legitimate heir, and he just needed to, gritting his teeth, wait for the hour of his triumph. The Tsarevich did not feel lonely either: behind him stood loyal people from his inner circle, and 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
