Michael Farquhar: Secret Lives of the Tsars: Three Centuries of Autocracy, Debauchery, Betrayal, Murder, and Madness from Romanov Russia

by Michael Farquhar
© Unofficial Royalty 2014

Winter Palace

The Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, Russia was the official residence of the Romanov tsars; Photo Credit – Susan Flantzer, August 2011

Author Michael Farquhar is sharing with Unofficial Royalty some tidbits from his book Secret Lives of the Tsars: Three Centuries of Autocracy, Debauchery, Betrayal, Murder, and Madness from Romanov Russia, published by Random House.

Did you know that…

  • Peter the Great had a passion for learning new trades—from shipbuilding to dentistry. He even became adept as an executioner, personally hacking off the heads of his recalcitrant subjects.
  • Once, during an anatomy lesson in Amsterdam, Peter the Great became so annoyed by his companions’ squeamishness that he ordered each of them to take a bite out of the human cadaver being dissected.
  • Peter the Great had no tolerance for dissent—even from his own son, whom he ordered tortured to death.
  • Catherine I, Russia’s first empress in her own right, was born and raised a peasant.
  • Empress Elizabeth was so vain that she never wore the same dress twice. Upon her death in 1762, an astonishing 15,000 gowns were reportedly found in her wardrobe.
  • No one was ever allowed to look prettier than Elizabeth. If a woman of the court happened to make that mistake, the empress was known to take a pair of scissors to the unfortunate’s hair and butcher the offending style.
  • Catherine the Great loved horses. She also loved sex. Contrary to popular legend, however, she never managed to unite the two passions. Still, the lusty empress brought all the enthusiasm of a vigorous ride to her extremely busy boudoir—filling it with a succession of eager young studs half her age.
  • Catherine the Great always sent away her lovers with lavish parting gifts of jewels, palaces, and cold hard cash. In 1776, for example, Peter Zavadovsky was given fifty thousand rubles and four thousand serfs for his services—prompting the French charge d’affaires to write to his brother, “You must agree, my friend, that it’s not a bad line of work to be in here.”
  • Emperor Paul was so unbalanced that upon the death of his mother, Catherine the Great, he decided to reunite her with the husband she hated—digging up the long-dead Tsar Peter III to lay in state by her side.
  • Tsar Nicholas I once toyed mercilessly with Dostoyevsky’s mind. Before writing Crime and Punishment and other classics, the acclaimed novelist was sentenced to death for subversion. Just as he was about to stand before the firing squad, however, Nicholas sent a reprieve—allowing the poor man to suffer until the very last moment.
  • Alexander II was subjected to no fewer than seven attempts on his life, including a massive bomb detonated in his own palace. “Am I such a wild beast that they should hound me to death?” he once exclaimed in despair. Another bomb, hurled directly at the tsar, finally did the job.
  • Grigori Rasputin, the Siberian mystic who advised and guided Tsar Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra to ruin, long had intimations of his own violent demise, which were often accompanied by warnings to the Imperial family that if anything happened to him they would share his fate. “When I perish they will perish,” he once predicted—accurately, as it turned out.

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