HISTORY OF FREEMASONRY IN RUSSIA

In 1781, Nikolay Novikov and Ivan Schwarz, two professors of the Moscow University, set up the Learned Society of Friends in that city. They were dissatisfied with the Swedish Rite that was practised in St. Petersburg. Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel as the grand master of the lodges in Germany invited Schwarz to take part in the Wilhelmsbad Masonic Congress (1782) where Russia was recognized as the 8th autonomous province of the Rite of Strict Observance. A schism developed between the lodges of Moscow and St. Petersburg as the former drifted toward a form of Rosicrucianism. Catherine the Great suspected the Masons of turning her son Paul against herself, of being a tool in the hands of her enemy King of Prussia, and viewed their attitude toward women as backwards. In 1785, she clamped down upon Novikov’s printing house and had some 461 titles confiscated. When she saw her new palace in Tsaritsyno adorned with ornamentation suggestive of the cryptic symbols of Freemasonry, Catherine had it pulled down. Novikov was later jailed, and other leading Freemasons had to flee Russia. Anti-Masonic measures were revoked as soon as Paul ascended the Russian throne in 1796. Increasingly haunted by the spectre of the French Revolution, Paul came to distrust Freemasonry and Martinism. Within three years of his reign all secret societies were suppressed, and the lodges closed of their own accord. Two years later Paul was assassinated. The lodges flourished under his successor Alexander I, although it remains unknown whether Alexander himself was an initiate. The most influential figure of this period was Alexander Labzin. The Grand Lodge Astraea was formed in 1815. It united nineteen smaller lodges and counted 1404 members. Its rival was the Swedish Provincial Lodge of Russia, with seven smaller feuding lodges under its umbrella and 230 members. Leo Tolstoy describes some of the rituals in his novel War and Peace and mentions Fyodor Klyucharyov, a noted Masonic poet. According to Filipp Vigel, Freemasonry did little but to provide a fashionable pastime for bored nobles. As Emperor Alexander grew increasingly conservative, the Masonic-style political clubs were outlawed in 1822. This interdict was extended by Nicholas I in the wake of the Decembrist Uprising, since the Decembrists had sprung from the Masonic lodges. Freemasonry was legalized and enjoyed a brief revival after the First Russian Revolution. The Grand Orient of Russian People seceded from the Grand Orient de France, with Nikolai Vissarionovich Nekrasov and Alexander Fyodorovich Kerensky as its main leaders. The Bolsheviks had all the lodges closed in the wake of the October Revolution in 1917.

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