Fyodor Andreyevich Makhnov: A history of the world’s tallest people

Between 11 September 1905 and 28 August 1912, the tallest person in the world was the circus performer Fyodor Andreyevich Makhnov. He stood 239 cm (7 ft 10 in) tall, though with the help of some heeled boots and a very big hat he achieved global fame as the reportedly 9-foot-tall “Machnow the Giant”.

Fyodor was born on 6 June 1878 into a peasant family in the farming village of Kostyuki. This tiny hamlet was located on the Zaronovka River about 25 km northwest of Vitebsk, Belarus, probably near the present-day villages of Kazaki and Pobedinshchina.

The area was sparsely populated and life for the inhabitants of its small, scattered settlements had probably changed little since they were all serfs, indentured to the service of the local landowner (a practice that only ended in the Russian Empire in 1861).

We don’t have much information about Fyodor’s childhood, as Kostyuki was a remote settlement where few could read and representatives of the government were a rare sight.

Fyodor’s childhood

We do know a few details, however, mostly from stories remembered by local families. Fyodor's mother, whose name is not known, died during childbirth. According to some accounts, this was because of the extreme size of her infant son, but maternal mortality would generally have been extremely high at this time, so this may have been a rumour that started later. The birthweight of people who grow to extreme heights is usually pretty close to average.

Fyodor’s father, Andrey, was mostly absent during his childhood, so young Fyodor was primarily raised by his grandparents. He had a particularly close relationship with his grandfather, a very tall and powerfully-built man who was a prominent figure (literally and figuratively) in the local community.  

It’s not clear when Fyodor’s growth accelerated past the norm, but by the age of eight he was reportedly large enough and strong enough to pick up an adult man. The enormous boy and his grandfather became a common sight around the village.

Fyodor’s height reportedly reached 2 metres (6 ft 6 in) by the time he was 12, making him the subject of jokes amongst his peers. The only retaliation Fyodor indulged in was to take people's hats and hang them from the eaves of nearby buildings, out of the reach of anyone but him.

Discovery and fame

Unable to get clothes that fit him in the village, Fyodor and his father would periodically travel into the nearby city of Vitebsk to visit the market there. In the early 1890s, during one of these trips, the giant teenager was spotted by a German circus manager called Oscar Bollinger, who was passing through the region. Bilinder offered to look after Fyodor, whose living costs were a heavy burden on his family, and take him on the road as a circus performer.

There is little documentation relating to Fyodor's early career in the circus, but it seems that he initially appeared primarily as a strongman, rather than a giant. He would not have been tall enough to credibly challenge the famous giant Julius Koch (aka "Le Geant Constantin"), who at 246 cm (8 ft 0.9 in) tall was widely billed as the tallest man in the world. Fyodor was still an impressive figure, however, and he had a very popular act that involved him doing things like breaking bricks and bending horseshoes.

In the early 1900s, after around nine years on the road, Fyodor decided to settle down. By this time, thanks to an unusually fair business partnership with Otto Bilinder, he had made enough money to return home and buy the feudal estate that encompassed his hometown. Fyodor married a local schoolteacher called Efrosinya Lebedeyevna and soon had two children.

Becoming Machnow the Giant

This period of seclusion did not last long, however. In March 1902 Julius Koch died, leaving a vacancy at the top of the circus world. By 1904, Fyodor was back on the road in Europe, billed as "Riese Machnow" ("Machnow the Giant"). As a headlining act, he could travel in comfort, accompanied by Efrosinya and their two young children.

Promoters now advertised Fyodor as being 9 ft 3 in tall – an exaggeration he helped sell by dressing in clothes that made him seem taller than he was. Common stage costumes included a cossack robe with heeled riding boots and a tall fleece hat. At other times he wore (discreetly heeled) dress shoes and a tailcoat, accessorized, of course, with a large top hat.

The peak of his fame came in 1906, when American theatrical impresario Oscar Bollinger persuaded him to travel to America for a months-long continent-spanning tour. He was well paid for his time – reportedly earning a salary of $1,000 a day (equivalent to around $35,000 in 2024) – and appeared for sell-out crowds in prestigious venues across the US.

He travelled with Efrosinya and their children, as well as a physician and the Russian-born theatrical agent Morris Gest, who acted as tour manager and translator (neither Fyodor nor Efrosinya could speak English, though Fyodor was apparently fluent in German).

On 20 June 1906, Fyodor was invited to the White House, where he met then-president Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt. The president’s reaction on seeing Fyodor was the factually correct, if not very original, observation “He is the biggest man I ever saw!”.

Health troubles

Fyodor's experience of global fame was not all positive, however. Despite years of touring, he was still reportedly quite shy and withdrawn, particularly when visiting countries where he didn’t speak the language. Promoters often described him as “obstinate” and difficult, and in many interviews it appears that he sat silently while his wife did most of the talking.

By late 1906, interviewers often described Fyodor as jumpy and paranoid. He had reportedly become terrified that he might be kidnapped by scientists who wanted to dissect his body, and would frequently try to back out of engagements out of fear that they might be traps.

This was not an entirely irrational fear, medical professionals routinely and publicly speculated about what they might be able to learn by examining his corpse. For example, one profile of Fyodor, published in the San Francisco Call, was accompanied by an editorial by a prominent doctor titled "Why I want Machnow's Brain" – complete with anatomical illustrations showing the location of the pituitary gland. A few researchers apparently went so far as to try to get him to sign contracts giving them ownership of his body on death.

Fyodor seems to have retired from touring in 1908, and that’s more or less the last we hear of him in published sources. He returned to Kostyuki with his growing family (he and Efrosinya had another three children) and lived out the rest of his life in seclusion. He died on 28 August 1912, at the age of just 34. The circumstances of his death are not known, but it was likely complications related to his condition.

He was buried in the village cemetery beneath a red granite gravestone. The gravestone is still there to this day, in the small and overgrown village cemetery, but Fyodor’s remains are long gone. The scientists he feared finally reached him in the early 1930s, when he was exhumed by researchers from the Minsk Medical Institute. His remains were destroyed, along with the institute, during World War II.