Issue #711 (78), Tuesday, October 9, 2001

WORLD

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Humble Plaque Marks Another Lost Tsarevich

By Robert Coalson

Staff Writer

Sergey Grachev / The St. Petersburg Times

....

No one visiting the graves of the Russian tsars in the cathedral of the Peter and Paul Fortress can miss the magnificent tomb of Peter the Great, in a place of honor before the iconostasis and almost always covered in flowers.

However, it takes a bit of searching to find the grave of Peter's eldest son, Tsarevich Alexei, who is also entombed in this royal sanctuary. Alexei is not to be found among the royals surrounding Peter or anywhere in the main hall of the cathedral.

Instead, his marble plaque hangs on the wall beneath the staircase leading up to the cathedral belfry. On one side hangs the grave marker of his wife, a German princess and the sister-in-law of the Austrian emperor, Sofia Sharlotta-Khristina, who died in childbirth in 1715; on the other is one for one of Peter's sisters, Maria Alexeyevna.

Although Alexei had long been estranged from his father, many historians date the finale to this drama from the death of his wife. After Sofia died, Alexei became increasingly idle and obsessed with religion, two traits that the energetic, Westernizing tsar could not abide. Peter made some efforts to train his son to take over the empire after him, but Alexei's opposition to Peter's reforms and his general disinterest in politics left the tsar outraged.

Toward the end of 1715, Peter wrote to Alexei and threatened to disinherit him, to which Alexei offered to renounce the throne. Before he did so, though, he apparently changed his mind and fled to Austria instead, embarrassing Peter who was on a state visit to Copenhagen at the time. Considerable diplomatic efforts, including promises of amnesty, were made to persuade the tsarevich to return to Russia, which he did in 1717.

He then officially renounced his claim to the throne in a ceremony at the Cathedral of the Assumption in the Moscow Kremlin, but was nonetheless arrested on June 24, 1717, and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress. That very day, a hastily arranged court sentenced him to death for treason, but before the sentence could be carried out, his jailers began to torture him.

According to fortress records, "the rack was applied at 11:00, and that same day at 6:00, the tsarevich gave up his soul."

Apparently, the most mercy Peter could find in his heart for his son was to grant him a tiny corner of the royal cathedral and the eternal company of his German wife.

A powerful evocation of this drama, Nikolai Ge's painting "Peter I Interrogating Tsarevich Alexei," hangs today in the State Russian Museum.