Evgeny Anisimov. Palace secrets
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 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 loses interest in 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 initially predetermined 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 education 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 Alexei, 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 October 1715, the knot of this tragedy tightened even tighter. By this time, Alexey, 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,” Catherine 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 doesn’t like such speech that he 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 “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 initially predetermined 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, fear of punishment would correct the matter. But Alexei, 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 true reason for the execution of Tsarevich Alexei? Was Mikhail Lomonosov the son of Peter the Great? Who was hiding under the Russian “Iron Mask”? Who was the secret husband of Empress Elizabeth? How did life turn out for the illegitimate son of 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 at the highest levels of power, gives...
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 loses interest in 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 initially predetermined 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 education 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 Alexei, 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
Introduction
1. Inexorable fate and unloved son: Tsarevich Alexey Petrovich
Half-blooded enemies
When children are the happiness of some and the grief of others
Invitation to execution
A terrible victim
Unquenchable Candle
2. The last love of the queen: Evdokia Lopukhina
When the wife is not a couple
Get a haircut, my hateful one
Romance behind the monastery wall
Steadfast Glebov
The extraordinary liveliness of her eyes
3. Furious Prosecutor General: Pavel Yaguzhinsky
The watchful “eye of the sovereign”
The power of the white crow
"Small spots" that hinder your career
Two Annas - mothers of sons and daughters
Who needs a brawler who speaks only the truth?
4. Death in a walled cell: Archbishop Theodosius
Founder and Tsar's friend
Inquisitor Worshiping the Cutlass
How sweet it is for a donkey to kick a dead lion
Incident on the bridge, or "Don't touch me!"
"Neither am I a black man nor am I a dead man"
5. Russian cummer: Field Marshal Sheremetev
Didn't overeat with everyone like a pig
"Cavalier of Malta attested"
“I do not have a testing spirit”
Burden of responsibility and fear
New settler of the St. Petersburg necropolis
6. Reflections at an open crypt: Oberkommandant Roman Bruce
To the will of God and the Chief Commandant
The rank is honorable, but unenviable
A reliable Scot 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 my mother's skirt
A beautiful daughter is a valuable commodity
Dynastic game - where the stake is the future of the throne
Cut off slice
Funeral of the skipper's daughter
8 Naturalization in Russian: Abram Hannibal and his friends
First Russian salon
Don't talk!
Letters from friends
“Suddenly to the apartment”
How to become Russian
9. The word and deed of the princess: Natalya Dolgorukaya
Marriage intrigue
The guest is annoying and scary
The secrets of our choice
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 impudent
Live in a house
There is little power, you also need honor!
Bull, but with brains
“I suppose!”
King for a day
The way to Siberia and back
11. Good Soldier of Fortune: Burchard Christopher Minich
A copper teapot in your hands and courage in your eyes
Mercenary, Duelist and Engineer
The Ditcher and the Informer
Charming and deceitful
Unexpected victories of a would-be commander
On the slippery court parquet
With a scythe on his shoulder
“He was not touched by decay, revolutions of happiness”
12. A small treatise on laughter: Balakirev and his comrades
Competition for the best fool
Russian laughter through tears
Institute of State Laughter
Parade of jesters
King of Russian fools
Author, director and presenter
Competition is the engine of wit
Where the laughter ends
13. “Pouch of courage” in your bosom: Alexey Cherkassky
The art of dozing without compromising your biography
dragging his name
Builder of St. Petersburg
Headquarters of noble projectors
Mediocrity, dignity and longevity
The Art of Political Survival
14. The crafty priest: Archbishop Feofan Prokopovich
Brilliant Bastard
Poltava victory of the choleric
Shameless talent
The power of the earthly ruler
Creator's optimism
The magic of Vitya
Love of life
Friend of the Chief of the Secret Chancellery
The worst evil
15. Imaginary patient: First Minister Andrei Osterman
The demon inside
Escape to Russia
Workaholic Career
Negotiator from God
Timely vomiting
Rootless and obedient
This is not your role, director!
Wrath of the lovely fury
The old fox has been caught!
Hey Marfa!
16. Russian “Iron Mask”: Emperor Ivan Antonovich
Drama on the Island
Dynastic combinations
Gold and iron chains of the infant emperor
Don't kill, let him die himself!
The secret of the secrets of the Russian court, which everyone knew about
Dynastic sin of the Romanovs
New instructions
...Then an officer and his team appeared
Divine truth and state truth
"God's guidance is wonderful"
17. Secret husband of the 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
Fairytale fate of the shepherdess
"He was good-looking"
President and Hetman
“But why is she so fat?”
The last joke
19. Father of the Russian unicorn and the market: Peter Shuvalov
Loyal and unpretentious
Magical November night
Don’t have a hundred friends, but have a wife, Mavra.
Talented husband of a talented wife
Two faces of Pyotr Shuvalov
Nobleman-worker
Nobleman-economist, projector and thief
The destiny of the reformer, “floating in usefulness”
20. The terrible scourge of vices: Alexander Sumarokov
"Mother of the Russian Theater" and her children
The heady air of the Cadet Corps
Hamlet in Russian
Weakness of nature
Order for poetry
The special structure of the soul of a theater director
Teach kings
Professional Complainant
Don't hurt your mother!
Accompanied by Arkharovites
21. Ideal favorite: Ivan Shuvalov
The Mystery of a Young Lover
Deafness to the sound of copper pipes
Enlightened minion
Scratch - there will be a Russian master
Unexpected peace and freedom
Happiness to live as you want
22. “I do honor to the fatherland”: Mikhailo Lomonosov
It's hard work to ask
The nature of genius
Spiritual son of Peter
Syndrome and power of Ilya Muromets
Universal genius
Wounded Titan
Friends to the Palace Threshold
"The children of the fatherland will regret"
23. The secret of “Bestuzhev drops”: Chancellor Bestuzhev-Ryumin
All the troubles in the morning
Long way up with stops
Everything except conscience
Sniffing the Russian Chancellor
About the benefits of reading other people's letters
Academician of Elizabethan Studies
Briber with principles
Damn the old woman
“We are looking for reasons why he was arrested...”
Unnecessary Field Marshal
24. The heat of last love: Ivan Betskoy
Courtier and educator
A new breed of people
Lucky Bastard
Virgins of Enlightenment, or Enlightened Virgins
Almost an orphan, or His treasure
Graduation of brides
The golden cage of senile love
What does he want?
Alimushka cannot be held back!
Were you familiar, young man, with Peter the Great?
25. Friend's son: Alexey Bobrinsky
Royal marriage crisis
People's love is strange
Is it possible to give birth in silence?
Empress Cuckoo's Rescue Basket
Abandoned child
Let's take a walk in the open air!
Away, out of sight!
26. Death in a casemate: Princess Tarakanova
Tramp
Passion on order
The most secret matter
Oppression by severity
Confession and interrogation
Shifty Soul
27. Russian Leonardo: Nikolay Lvov
Tver undergrowth
The ease of genius
Love story
Kind fat patron
Salon in a government house
Father of the Russian estate
Enjoying life
Fountain of ideas
"Let me live a little"
28. Ekaterina Malover: Princess Dashkova
Scion of a happy family
Love at first sight
Romance of conspiracy
Sleep through the coup
The bitter truth of life
Scythian heroine in Edinburgh
A scientist woman at the head of science
Reinforced concrete in character
Paying for the past
Sin of pride
29. The Magnificent Prince of Taurida: Grigory Potemkin
Hero of the Hedonistic Age
The art of moving your ears and breaking fate
Things “more important than cupid”
New Russia - new destiny
Potemkin villages and cities
last visit
Don't get into your own car
30. Peter, son of Peter: Rumyantsev
The sweetness of the first victory
Notoriety and palace secret
Kohlberg's keys
Garbuzy of Ukraine
Summer of Immortal Glory
Innovator
Three mighty blows
Lost Rod
31. Love of a King: 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 to come here”
Dear compensation gift
Straw King with Polish ambition
Be able to survive your own homeland
Non-romantic date
After all, he is sometimes Pole!
Love vs love
Forgive but remember
32. Walking along the autumn alleys: the Panin brothers
A moment - and you are in Ochakovo!
A moment - and you are 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 benefit of people
Hunting and retirement
Resignation of the wounded Starodum
Sassy chatter
"Shortened hop"
In unknown alleys
33. Ropshinsky and Chesme hero: Alexey Orlov
Five tavern eagles
Capricious Guard
Third but leader
Ropshinskaya glory
Both happiness and misfortune helped
"Archipelago Expedition", or "Was"
Cavalier of George
False spouse of the “tramp”
Resignation
Return of the past
With Charon to the brass of the orchestra
34. The secret of the night audience: Emelyan Pugachev
Rarely impudent
"Rise of the Buried Spouse"
You can't fool the people!
Alien to revenge
Execution tomorrow morning
Search!
35. “Diamond in the bark”: Alexander Bezborodko
"To princes from crests"
The extraordinary secretary of state
Epicurean and reveler
Genius of diplomacy
Secrets of Bezborodko
“I gave a lot of money”
The art of sliding on parquet
36. On the banks of the river of time: Gabriel Derzhavin
Truth through the mouth of a baby
“Come, brother soldier!”
Conspiracy of Muses
State love
Guarding the law and dreams
Enjoying life
In search of immortality
37. Cock cry of a genius: Alexander Suvorov
Tsarev's anger is the messenger of death
A mighty spirit in a frail body
Soldiers' Universities
Successes from failures, or the Rising 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. Owner of the “Russian Bastille”: Stepan Sheshkovsky
Romance dungeon
I will justify your trust!
Two of a Kind
The eyes and ears of the regime
Deliver, Lord, from his treats!
Evening in memory of Generalsha Kozhina
The sweetness of power
39. Last favorite: Platon Zubov
The inevitability of collapse
Walk over the top
Another "child"
Replica from the stage
The cost of raising “blackies” and “revishki”
“Torturing himself over papers”
Minion of Happiness
Killer, brother of killers
Wife for a million