PERCEPTION OF ALEXANDRA FEODOROVNA IN THE COURTYYARD OF THE DOWAGER EMPRESS MARIA FEODOROVNA (BASED ON S.D. SHEREMETEV’S DIARY)
The article is devoted to the analysis of the perception of the wife of Nicholas II Alexandra Feodorovna by the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna and her court, a prominent representative of which was Count Sergei Dmitrievich Sheremetev. The last Russian Empress often became the subject of their conversations, which the count reflected in detail in his diary. Based on this source, the author tries to reconstruct the ideas about Alexandra Feodorovna that existed in the courtyard of the Dowager Empress. Given the great authority of Maria Feodorovna, this perception made a significant contribution to the formation of a certain image of her daughter-in-law in society. In the course of the research, the author cites numerous censorious remarks that Maria Feodorovna and Sheremetev made to Alexandra Feodorovna, and finds out how much the image that they created corresponded to the real one. He comes to the conclusion that the most common disagreement on their part in relation to the wife of Nicholas II were her secluded life, which isolated the royal couple from society, and the growing political influence of Alexandra Feodorovna. Numerous criticisms of Sheremetev about her, largely got from conversations with the Dowager Empress, in the author's opinion, prove the influence of the latter on the creation of a negative image of her daughter-in-law in Russian society at the beginning of the 20th century.