2015년 10월 31일 토요일
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Russian Freemasonry 10
Russian Freemasonry 10
Largely due to his ascetic self-discipline of so-called healthy food, cold
showers and so on, Schwartz died in 1784. He was 33 ! So much for the
healthy life style ! !
A new grand Master for the Rosicrucians (Baron Schroder) arrived from
Germany to take over Schwartz's role, and numerous young Russians
thronged the opposite way to Berlin hoping to unravel the "secret".
Originally, the Fraters of the Blessed Order of the Rosy-Cross were pledged
to the relief of the suffering, to attempt the cure of diseases free of charge
and to found hospices and retreats from the world for like-minded
individuals. They spent their lives in search of truth, the knowledge of man
and his possibilities and his relationship with other planes of existence
beyond the material world.
These noble aims were quickly corrupted and added to so that by the 1680s
members were now "scientific dabblers", chemical philosophers, alchemists
and astrologers. Any educated person could find a place under the
Rosicrucian banner. Primarily they sought the universal solvent (what to
keep it in?) the universal cure or remedy and, of course, the transmutation of
base metals into gold.
The movement died out in Europe during the Thirty Years' War but, for the
Russians, science always had an attraction beyond the material gains it
promises. Couple this with a mystical background and you may see what
attraction this had for the budding intelligentsia in Russia.
Gradually the so-called "knightly" degrees fell into disuse and the work of
the Russian lodges became centred entirely on the Rosicrucian Order. In
1786 Prince Frederick William, a practising Rosicrucian, became King of
Prussia, and a bewildering profusion of occult fraternities flooded into a
receptive Russia.
It was argued that the world was the supreme temple of Masonry.
Rosicrucianism was the final level for which the earlier Masonic degrees
were mere preliminaries. To attain this level, one had to flee the rationalism
of the Enlightenment. The true task was to find the Light of Adam through
inner purification and the dedicated study of the hieroglyphics of nature.
This idea that the world is some huge Rosetta Stone awaiting deciphering by
the elite is not new. It goes back to Early Christianity and clearly evident in
the 8th century writings of the Venerable Bede.
Schwartz had transformed the casual moralism and philanthropy of the early
Russian Freemasons into a seductive belief that heaven on Earth (remember
the words of the representatives from Prince Vladimir in the Hagia Sophia?)
could be realised through the concentrated efforts of elite thinkers.
Novikov became increasingly uneasy about this turn to the occult which had
overtaken Russian Freemasonry. In the late 1780s he proposed the formation
of a purely Christian and philanthropic order. His increasing interest in the
religious traditions of Old Russia permeated his publications with a kind of
quasi-religious appeal and he adopted the Old Believer form of counting
dates from the Creation rather than from the birth of Christ. He antagonised
Catherine by criticising the Jesuits in 1784, accusing them of being a
political order thus betraying the monastic ideal. Novikov had portrayed the
Jesuits as faithless, power-seeking, aiming to set up a state within a state.
His work, in fact was what many 'enlightened' mind considered to be an
objective account of the Jesuits.
As the Jesuits' benefactress, Catherine stepped up her attacks on Novikov by
writing three anti-masonic plays in which Freemasons were represented as
charlatans and deceivers who, like Count Cagliostro, promised their victims
philosophic gold, the elixir of life and contact with the world of spirits.
Catherine also closed down the Masonic printing presses and finally had
Novikov arrested in 1792.
These attacks were not limited to Novikov but included other Russian
Freemasons such as Alexander Nicolaevich Radischev. Radischev wrote
what is argued to be the first anti-Tsarist book — A Journey from St.
Petersburg to Moscow. He was sentenced to death, but this was later
commuted to exile in Siberia. He was later pardoned by Catherine's son Paul
and died in 1802. These attacks were part of Catherine's general
disillusionment with the French Enlightenment in the wake of the French
Revolution which she took as a personal attack. As an enlightened despot,
Catherine felt that the French had bit the hand that had fed them.
Certainly her opinions and distrust of the commoners seemed justified when,
in March 1792, Gustav III, albeit an enemy of Catherine's, had been
assassinated.
On 10 August 1792 the French monarchy was overthrown and the royal
family imprisoned. In France in September that year approximately 1 ,200
people were massacred, most of them ordinary citizens of no political
importance. The French armies were starting to successfully sweep through
the Rhineland, annexing territory as they went. In January 1793, the
execution of Louis XVI made Catherine physically ill. As an indication of
the depth to which Catherine now rejected the French, in March 1794 the
sale of French calendars which adopted the new revolutionary neo-classical
chronology were banned. France had become a country of ravening beasts
knowing only how to pillage and kill. The wave of executions and purge
trials of each wave of revolutionary leaders was not to be seen again until
Stalin's trials of the 1930's.
The publication in 1797 of a well-received denunciation of Continental
Freemasonry by John Robinson (1739 — 1805) didn't help the Craft. It was
called Proof of a Conspiracy against all the Religions and Governments of
Europe Carried on in the Secret Meetings of Free Masons, Illuminati and
Reading Societies. This work had gone into 5 editions within one year of its
first publication. It appears Robinson had been initiated into Freemasonry in
1770 before going to Russia as private secretary to Admiral Sir Charles
Knowles. As with the other Masonic "Exposures" such as Three Distinct
Knocks et cetera, Robinson's work contains interesting (albeit coloured)
insights into the activities of eighteenth century Russian Freemasonry —
including what appears to be a Lodge for women!
All this simply reinforced Catherine's concept that Freemasonry was
anathema to her continued governing of the country.
Catherine's attitude towards religion was based on toleration through
indifference. She had been born a Lutheran, educated by Catholics and
Calvinists and welcomed into the Russian Orthodox Church when she
married the Tsar. While she was deeply suspicious of the Jews and sectarian
extremists, she generally ruled without offending or persecuting other
religious orders. She welcomed the intellectual and teaching abilities of the
Jesuits and the agricultural expertise of the German pietists. The sects were
left alone as long as they recognised her authority.
The later years of Catherine's reign were marked by increasing desperation
in the religious communities. Monks fled the monasteries for ascetic
settlements and a tribe of wandering prophets toured the outer edges of the
Empire.
An extremist group called the Skoptsky arose. As a religious protest and as a
purification ritual they would castrate themselves in public. Along with the
self-burning Old Believers, and the Flagellants, the Skoptsky should not be
seen as a masochistic curiosity. The acts were seen as a new baptism into the
elect of the world to come and as a sacrificial atonement for the redemption
of a fallen society.
Realising that her rule had aroused popular religious sentiment against the
crown, she saw Freemasonry as having the potential to foster a concealed
political schism in Russian society.
There is little direct evidence of the political opinions of the Moscow
Rosicrucians, though by their behaviour one can deduce that they were not
necessarily interested in political change so much as in social reform by
means of philanthropy. The austere and high-minded Freemasons rejected
Catherine's blatant disregard for the rules of Christian marriage, which
contrasted so strikingly with the seeming domestic bliss of the ever-faithful
Grand Duke Paul. Novikov, for instance, displayed portraits of the grand
ducal couple on the walls of his country house, and the Freemasons sang
hymns of greeting to Paul.
In you Paul we see
A ledge of heavenly lore.
In your wonderful union
We read the sign of the angel.
When you are adorned with the crown
You will be our Father.
(Madariaga, Russia in the Age., pp.529-530)
Was Paul a Freemason? He denied it, but was certainly attracted to some
aspects of mystical religion, possibly even to the occult. There was no
"Pauline" Party per se, but a general trend in society against Catherine
consolidated around her son, Paul. Paul was not adverse to criticising his
mother's politics, but stopped short of real sedition.
It seems odd that Catherine should suppress a group supporting loyalty to
the sovereign and teaching morality and a belief in God. But Freemasonry
had involuntarily become associated with personal enemies of the Empress.
* First was her late husband, Peter III, who had been favourably disposed
towards the Craft and Catherine was hostile to any favourites of the late-
emperor. * The Russian Freemasons were aligned to Germany and Frederick the Great was the arch enemy of Catherine.
Russian Freemasonry 9
Russian Freemasonry 9
loss of life and, perhaps justifiably, they claim their sacrifice saved western
Europe. Of course there are problems here since Napoleon for one had
defeated most of western Europe before the battle of Borodino. Nonetheless,
these ideas reinforced the concept that Russia somehow had acquired a holy
mission.
But at the time we were talking about, the typical member of the Russian
intelligentsia still longed for the cultural antecedents of other European
nations. So Novikov derived a rich pre-history based on St. Andrew who he
argued had brought Christianity to Russia before St. Peter's visit to Rome.
The Westernising trends for Russia begun by Peter the Great, reached a
zenith with Catherine. She was a cultural vampire, sucking up selected
pieces of European culture and she especially drew to her court out-of-
context aspects of the French Enlightenment. It may be said that the Russian
psyche was such that the spark to evolve a Voltaire, Diderot, D'Alembert or
Montesquieu could never have arisen in Russia.
In the West we have an image of melancholy Russians — manic depressives
to a man. On a whole, that is accurate. The HUGE spaces and absolute
loneliness of the Russian forests engender a smallness in individual Russian
mentality. Look around, and you can't see the forest for the trees.
In 1756 Russia had entered into a new diplomatic and cultural alliance with
France. On her accession to the throne Catherine wrote:
If the gain is not great in commerce, we shall compensate ourselves with
bales of intelligence.
So it was, that by the 1770s and 1780s, the Russian aristocracy under
Catherine's influence found themselves at the crossroads of their religion and
Voltairianism (Vol'ter'ianstvo) by which they meant Rationalism, Scepticism
and a vague passion for Reform.
Catherine was thirty-four, Voltaire was seventy. His Philosophy of History
had the unprecedented sales' figures of 3000 copies sold in St. Petersburg
within a few days of its publication. He quickly became the official historian
of the Russian Empire and a kind of saint for the secular aristocracy.
Voltarianism became the ruling force in Western Culture much as Latinism
had done in the fifteenth century.
Voltaire led the Deists of the French Enlightenment. Their approach to
religion was ambivalent at best. They argued that the only valuable elements
in Christianity were those identical with the teachings of the great
philosophers. All else was nonsense. The Jews of the Bible, the so-called
Chosen People, were primitive peasants with little culture (a sore point here
in Russia for reasons outlined above) and with bad morals, thieves and
murderers. The Church Fathers were little better; they were ignorant,
superstitious, power-hungry, quarrelsome men. The Bible, both Old and
New Testaments, was a collection of incoherent maxims and improbable
stories celebrating crimes and absurdities.
They did believe in a Supreme Being — but one who had created the
Universe and retired. Thereafter the whole thing continued to operate by
immutable laws. Miracles, for example, were impossible as they violated of
the laws of nature.
Changes in the Slavonic Church ritual had already lead to a major schism
some hundred years earlier. You may recall the trauma when the Latin Mass
was replaced by the Mass in English. Well, in Russia an almost similar
revision caused many to simply split away and follow the old ways — The
Old Believers — who were prepared and did die for their beliefs. To us the
changes seem insignificant, invoking the name of Jesus twice instead of
three times, reducing the number of genuflections you must make and so on.
But one Old Believer, Avatum, lived for 40 years in a hole in the ice as a
protest. Others burnt themselves alive in their churches and so on.
But even those who followed the new church rituals were increasingly
anxious to dissociate themselves from the agnosticism and superficiality of
court life. They found in the Swedish system of Freemasonry a chance for
inner regeneration and for a re-discovery of inner truth and the lost unity of
the early Christian church.
Why Swedish?
Cross points out that the primary era of English influence on Russian
Freemasonry was between 1770 and 1776. By 1770, there were at least
twelve major lodges in Eastern Germany and the Baltic. This was to rapidly
spread to Prussia and Russia. For example, in 1761 there had been a Field
Lodge formed in the Russian Army which, at the time, had its Winter
quarters in West Prussia and its head-quarters at Marienburg.
King Guastav III of Sweden gave Swedish Masonry a special stamp of
respectability by freely flaunting his masonic ties in 1776 during a state visit
to St. Petersburg and won the patronage of Grand Duke Paul — a famous
Russian patriot, historian and political rival to and personal enemy of
Catherine. This lead to a linking of Russian and Swedish Freemasonry into
one system when, in 1778, the Moscow Lodge of Prince Troubetskoy joined
the Swedish System. Novikov closed his Petrograd Lodges and transferred
their activities to Moscow.
Swedish Masonry at this time had nine grades and a secret tenth group of
nine members... Commanders of the Red Cross. The strict observance and
mystical-military nature of this had appeals in Prussia and by a kind of
cultural osmosis spread to Russia. Members of the Swedish groups generally
adopted new names as a sign of their inner regeneration and participated in
communal efforts to discover through reading and meditation the inner truth
of Christianity. I've explained the special role and relationship Russia saw
for itself in Christianity. The Russian aristocrats saw this system as a vehicle
whereby they could fortify their realm against incursions of the reformist
ideas of the French Enlightenment.
On 25 May 1779, a Swedish Grand Provincial Lodge of Russia was
officially opened according to the Swedish ritual and thereafter vied for
supremacy with the Grand Provincial Lodge of Elagin. Efforts to unite all
Russian lodges under one system and one grandmaster (the Duke of
Sudermania, brother of Guastav III — had failed when Elagin refused to hand
control of Russian Freemasonry into foreign hands. The two Masonic
systems therefore remained separate. Fears were aroused that the Swedish-
directed lodges of strict observance were Jesuit-inspired, Catholic and
absolutist in tendency. It was their political implications, however, rather
than their esoteric aspects which alienated some Russians and many moved
to Elagin' s system.
In 1782 secret societies were prohibited by the Russian government, but
Freemasonry was not included in this decree. Yet, in 1784 Elagin decided to
close all lodges under his jurisdiction due to increased political pressures
from the Crown.
More importantly for the Russian Freemasons, Prince Gagarin, a friend of
Catherine's son Paul, founded links to the Berlin Lodge Minerva and brought
back with him to Russia the teacher of occult lore Johann Georg Schwartz.
Schwartz, a Transylvanian by birth, had arrived in Moscow in 1779 to take
up a post as professor of German in the gymnasia of Moscow University, a
post probably secured through his Masonic connections (see Madariaga,
Russia in the Age..., p. 522)
With Novikov, Schwartz immediately began to transform Russian Masonry.
They formed the first secret society in Russia (The Gathering of University
Foster Children) and tried to integrate Masonry with the Russian higher
educational system. Schwartz was made inspector of a seminary established
to train teachers for the expected expansion of Russia's educational system.
Novikov founded his own weekly satirical journal Truten' (The Drone) in
which he voiced the increasing dissatisfaction of the native Russian nobility
with Catherine's imitation of French ways and her toleration of social
injustice. In the first issue, Novikov posed a question destined to be the
central preoccupation of the Russian Intelligentsia movement. Confessing he
had no desire to serve in the army, civil service or at court, he asked what
could he do for society?; adding by way of explanation that to live on this
earth without being of use is only a burden to it (see Pipes p.256).
His solution was to turn to publicistic and philanthropic work. He and his
friends took over the moribund Moscow University Press and transformed
the institution itself into a centre of intellectual ferment. The university then
had less than 100 enrolled students who listened to uninspired lectures in
German and Latin. Novikov organised a public library to be associated with
the University and between 1781 and 1784 published more books than had
appeared in the entire previous 24 years.
By 1791 the number of readers of the official University gazette rose from
600 to 4000.
Novikov set up the first two private printing presses in 1783. The next year
he established the first joint-stock insurance company and organised a
surprisingly successful nationwide famine relief system along with the first
private insurance company. He published a regular journal Morning Light in
which he sought to impart the philosophical basis of the classical thinkers.
He also wrote a considerable number of books ranging from children's tales
to history.
In all his writings, Novikov's principal target of attack was the "vice" he
identified with the Russian 'aristocratic' qualities of idleness,
ostentatiousness, indifference to the sufferings of the poor, immorality,
careerism, flattery, ignorance and contempt for knowledge. In comparison,
his "virtues" were industriousness, modesty, truthfulness, compassion,
incorruptibility and studiousness.
The University Press made a considerable profit from Novikov's translations
program. Works translated included Blackstone's Commentaries on the
Laws of Old England (a work commissioned by Catherine herself), Bunyan's
Pilgrim's Progress, Rousseau's Emile, and Grotius' Discourse Against
Atheism (translated by Archbishop Ambrosius of Moscow). For his part,
Novikov's literary output included contributions to a number of periodicals,
some with a pronounced Masonic slant, others catering to the developing
interest in economic or cultural affairs designed to place informative rather
than diverting literature in the hands of the noble and burgher families.
These included such publications as Gorodskaya i derevenskaya biblioteka
(Town and Country Library') or Poko yushchisya trudolyubets (The Busy
Man at Rest') or his popular series for children Detskoye Cheniye.
But Novikov also held a passionate interest not only in editing and
publishing, but in distribution and took a prominent role in the development
Russian Freemasonry 7
Russian Freemasonry 7
But to mention Freemasonry in the same context as "Russia" usually invokes
an immediate reaction of surprise as if our perceptions of the Craft and the
milieu of Russia are and always were antithetical.
We all have images invoked by the mentioning of that nation — salt mines,
the midnight knock on the door, bread queues and hunger, the KGB, the
Gulags, mind-numbing cold, missiles, the Berlin Wall, pathological sadness,
grey skies, grey cities, grey people, hostile, Enemies !
Yet, on reflection, I'm sure we all realised that the blanket term "Russia" we
once used to describe the burgeoning nation of the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics with its 8,649,489 square miles and a population in excess of 250
million spread over fifteen constituent republics was more than these mental
images. Of course, that "Russia" no longest exists, though I am sure the term
will long continue to be used as a convenient tag for the Commonwealth of
Independent States. Yet the CIS is as far removed from our mental "Russia"
as the old Russian Empire and it is with that Empire that this paper is
primarily concerned.
In this paper, I would like to share with you some observations on the
founding of Freemasonry in the old Russian Empire and some of the
personalities involved.
There is an apocryphal story that the Tsar of Russia, Peter the Great,
acquired a knowledge of Freemasonry during a visit to England in 1698
from Sir Christopher Wren. And it is claimed that Peter participated in the
formation of a Masonic Lodge on his return to Russia in which he undertook
the role of Junior Warden — which would be typical of the unassuming Tsar
Peter.
In spite of the doubt that Peter's English mentor, Wren, actually was a
Freemason, the Russians claim Wren founded English Freemasonry. Robert
Gould argued that this legendary basis of Wren's Freemasonry could be
'blamed' on Dr. James Anderson's reference to Wren in his Constitutions of
1738 which are irreconcilable with those in his earlier publication of 1723.
A.G. Cross, on the other hand, claimed that much of the mythical character
of this story stems from Russian reliance on German source material rather
than English.
I used the word "apocryphal" when referring to Tsar Peter's Lodge. He is
attributed with forming a Lodge with the aid of two intimate friends, Lefort
of Geneva and Patrick Gordon, a Scottish Guard, in 1717. Unfortunately for
this story, both Lefort and Gordon died in 1699!
But, putting this account aside for the moment, there is better agreement that
Freemasonry in Russia began with the flamboyant Lord James Keith (1696 -
1758), a descendent from Scottish nobility, banished in 1715 for his support
of the Stuart Pretender. He served in the Spanish Army, before moving to
Russia in 1728 with the recommendation of Phillip V, and by the early
1740's was a leading Russian (sic) Army General. The Russian Empress
Anna appointed him as the military governor of the Ukraine. But,
importantly for our story, Keith was made Provincial Grand Master of
Russian Freemasonry in 1740 by the Grand Master of England who also
happened to be Keith's Cousin. Captain John Phillips had been appointed to
this office for Russia in 1731, but there is no evidence to suggest he ever
exercised it.
The minutes of the premier Grand Lodge of England for 24 June 1731
record:
"Then the Grand Master and his General Officers signed a Deputation for
our Rt. Worshipful Brother John Phillips Esqr. to be Grand Master of free
and accepted Masons within the Empires of Russia and Germany and
Dominions and Territories thereunto belonging, and his health was drank
wishing Prosperity to the Craft in those parts" (Batham, Transactions, p. 34).
The 1738 edition of Anderson's Constitutions records Phillips' appointment
as being Provincial Grand Master for Russia only. But, as Cyril Batham
points out, the appointment of a Provincial Grand Master in those days did
not necessarily indicate the existence of a Provincial Grand Lodge, nor even
the existence of a single lodge within the Province, and, indeed, we have no
reason to believe that Phillips had any lodge operating in this gigantic
Province.
The later appointment of James Keith as Provincial Grand Master of Russian
Freemasonry, of course, was only two years after the general suppression of
the Craft by the Papal Bull of Pope Clement XIII. It is likely that Keith, as a
Jacobite, only paid lip service to the English jurisdiction during the one-year
Grand Mastership of his cousin and thereafter influenced Russian
Freemasonry towards Germany as the inspirational source for ritual.
One of the powerful influences on Russian Freemasonry was the Rite of
Strict Observance. This Rite was sponsored by Baron Karl Gotthelf von
Hund (1722-1776), Provincial Grand Master of the Craft in Germany. This
system, so-called because of its vows of unquestioned obedience to
(unknown) superiors, was based on the myth that Templar secrets had
survived the suppression of the Order in 1312 by fleeing to Scotland. It is
interesting to note that von Hund, a man of integrity, was convinced that the
unknown Grand Master was Charles Edward Stuart. In approximately 1744,
von Hund claimed he had been received into the Order of the Temple in
Paris in the presence of William, fourth and last Earl of Kilmarnock, who
was also Grand Master Mason of Scotland in 1742-1743. Earl Kilmarnock
was executed in 1746 for his support of Charles Edward Stuart (Smythe,
pp. 14- 15). So, with these various links to the Stuart cause, you may see the
attraction of this Rite to the Jacobean Keith. The Rite as such outlived von
Hund by about eighty years.
Another interesting sidelight here was that also in 1740, protocol forced
King George II to receive the exiled Keith as a diplomatic representative of
Russia.
Boris Telepneff describes Keith as "one of the most remarkable personalities
of his time".
In fact, his impact on Russian Freemasonry was such that a song in his
praise exists:
After him [Peter the Great] Keith, full of light, came to the Russians; and
exalted by zeal lit up the sacrifice. He erected the Temple of Wisdom,
corrected our thoughts and hearts and confirmed us in brotherhood. He was
an image of that dawn, the clear rise of which announces to the World the
arrival of the Lightseeking Queen [presumably Freemasonry].
Keith left Russia to take up service with Frederick the Great (King of Prussia
and another Freemason) in 1747. There is no evidence as to why Keith left
Russia, but it could have been occasioned by the Austro-French coalition
which saw Russia as one of the mainstays against Prussia and Great Britain.
Keith was killed in 1758 during the Seven Years' War but his groundwork
saw to it that Freemasonry continued to grow in Russia. In 1756 the first
Russian lodge to actually be consecrated with a name was formed in St.
Petersburg under the patronage of the Anglophile Count R.L. Vorontsov,
Worshipful Master of The Lodge of Silence. The members of Vorontsov's
Lodge included many men who later became famous, viz: Sumarkov
(author), Prince Scherbatov (Historian), Mamonov (Literary fame), Prince
Dashkov, Prince Golitzin, Prince Toubetzkoy and Prince Meschersky.
That same year (1756) came the first official police investigations of
Masonry carried out by the "Secret Chancellery of the Empire" who were
investigating the "Masonic Sect" to determine "its foundation, and who
constitutes its membership". This had been instigated when rumours began
circulating about Freemasonry's foreign and seditious plans.
It is necessary to give background here. Peter the Great had dragged a
feudal, agrarian Russia into the 18th century with education reforms, the
construction of a navy, a few wars to push things along and a shake up of the
bureaucracy based on a European model. This included advancement in the
civil service by examination and demonstrated ability rather than by
purchase or seniority. Russia's isolation and parochialism was hard to beat
and two factions arose. The Westernizers who argued Russia could learn
from the West. And, in a way they were correct. Russia was in a unique
position to abstract from the West all those ideas and processes that had
undergone centuries of trial and error, research and development in the
West, adopting the latest concepts after due trials and refinements that had
been test bedded in the West. In opposition were the Slavophiles who
counter claimed that they were doing very nicely until Peter messed it all up.
This Slavophile notion continued for centuries and, in fact, when Karl Marx
was contacted by the Russian dissidents in the late 19th century, their
argument (and poor old Karl tended to agree with them to keep them
happy... after all they seemed to have been the only ones to have read his
manifesto!).. the argument was that the innate, rural Muzhik of Russia — the
peasant serf and his accidentally socialist way of life in sharing everything
was the model from which Europe could learn, and not the other way
around! Mind you, anyone who associated with a Muzhik deserved
everything he got along with fleas, starvation and more terminal diseases
than you could shake a stick at.
This first investigation exonerated the Craft by finding that its membership
was defined as "nothing else but the key of friendship and of eternal
brotherhood", the reigning Tsar (Peter III who was later assassinated by his
wife Catherine the Great) appears to have joined the movement, and a
number of lodges were founded at places where the Tsar would reside — St.
Petersburg, Oranienbaum and so on. It may be imagined that the Emperor
did not like to travel to meetings and, considering the state of the Empire's
roads in the Spring thaw, who could blame him? Remember, this is
primarily an agrarian society.
But there was no real organisational structure to the lodges... that is until
Ivan Pertfil'evich Elagin [or "Yelaguin" according to Telepneff and Batham]
(1725 - 1793) appeared.
Elagin was an extraordinary bureaucrat, wielding considerable power during
the Reign of Catherine the Great who ruled Russia for 34 years — 1762-
1796. Catherine had a great deal of confidence in Elagin and sometimes
signed her letters "Mr Elagin's Chancellor". Elagin was also tutor to Grand
Duke Paul and one of the first Slavophiles.
Catherine found the English form of Russian Freemasonry quite acceptable
and complimentary to the dilettantish atmosphere of her court. However,
Elagin admitted that he had turned to Freemasonry in the 1750's out of
boredom, curiosity and vanity. He was also attracted by the secrecy of the
proceedings and by the hope of meeting high-ranking Russian courtiers and
statesmen. Elagin initially perceived no other purpose in Freemasonry than
providing a venue whereby discrete meetings could be arranged in order to
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