Case file · Folklore / legend
Elder Feodor Kuzmich, the tsar who disappeared?
A tall, educated vagrant exiled to Siberia in 1836 lived as a hermit near Tomsk, and many came to believe he was Tsar Alexander I, who had faked his death in 1825.
1836 CE · 56.48, 84.95 · status: legend
The account
He died in Tomsk in 1864 and was canonised in 1984. Rumours that Alexander's tomb in St Petersburg was empty circulated from the 1860s, including a reported opening in 1921.
The sceptical view
Historians have never confirmed the identity; handwriting comparisons and testimony are inconclusive.