THE BUILDER AUGUST 1929

RUSSIAN FREEMASONRY

[This article supplements that which appeared in THE BUILDER for
June, at page 187, and is from the same source. The writer has good
reasons for withholding his name. Unfortunately outside of the
English speaking world, Masons too often find it absolutely
necessary to conceal their connection with the Craft.]

MASONRY played a very important part in the gradual development of
Russia, more especially so during the second part of the 18th
century when the majority of those, who were the pioneers of
European civilization in the country, belonged to the Masonic
brotherhood.

After Peter the Great, when Russia definitely took the course of a
gradual blending with the West, Masonry became the main channel for
the penetration of ideas of progress and civilization. This took
place in the days of the Empress Elizabeth (1741-1761), and still
more so during the reign of Catherine II, when Masonry accomplished
a great and beautiful historical achievement.

Later on, after 1780, when Novikoff was the leader of Russian
Masonry, it gradually developed along the lines of Christian
mysticism; this was the result of the great success, which German
Rosicrucianism and after wards Martinism, together with the higher
degrees of Swedish Masonry, had gained among the educate classes of
Russian society.

After the French revolution, the Russian Government began to look
with suspicion on all secret societies particularly on F.M. In
1792, drastic measures followed. Novikoff was imprisoned and F. M.
in fact ceased to exist. The Blue Lodges, anyhow, were closed

It is only after Alexander I ascended the throne that we see, in
1805, a revival of Craft Masonry, and in 1810 it received official,
though not public, recognition, and was even to a certain extent
patronized by the Government. Nearly all the ministers belonged to
different lodges in St. Petersburg, and undoubtedly Masonic ideas
had a great influence during the period of liberal reforms by which
Alexander I inaugurated his reign; unfortunately, after the wars
with Napoleon were over, Alexander I's liberalism was changed to
reaction. He founded the Holy Alliance, joined the society of New
Israel, and his very mysticism took a reactionary form. In all this
we may with great probability suspect the work of the Jesuits, who,
after Frederic II of Prussia, greatly influenced German
Rosicrucianism towards reaction. A fact now proved by history.

Masonry in Russia began to work against these reactionary
tendencies and in the attempt to bring on a revolution in December,
1924, the majority of the leaders were Masons. This attempt
completely failed, and the results were disastrous. Masonry was
completely forbidden in 1826. A few Masons escaped imprisonment and
exile, and they even sometimes met in secret. Lodges, but Masonry,
as an organization, ceased to exist and could not have any further
influence in the life of the country. The fact, anyhow, remains
that nearly for a whole century Masonic ideas permeated different
classes of Russian society, and it is interesting to see that the
Russian national character itself always meets these ideas with the
greatest sympathy. This is very noticeable in the higher and more
educated classes.

THE PRESENT SITUATION

After the revolution of March, 1917, the best elements of Russian
society remained in opposition to the Bolshevik Government, because
it endeavors to destroy all intellectual culture, considering it a
bourgeois superstition, has in the same time openly and definitely
replaced the idea of right by violence and has officially
proclaimed religion to be a counter revolutionary principle, waging
a merciless war against it, not only as a church, or a creed, but
even as an idea or a feeling.

Under this condition the sympathy towards Masonic ideas, which had
always existed, very naturally came again to light and found its
expression in a revival of Russian Freemasonry. The hospitality of
French Masonry of the Scottish Rite helped a great deal in this
revival, and so did also the broad ideas of the Rite. The Supreme
Council of France understood very well the important part which
Masonry will have to play in future Russia, and assisted those
Russian Masons, who have gradually created a young but sufficiently
strong Russian Masonic organization in France under the Supreme
Council and the Grand Lodge of the country.

At the present moment four Russian lodges working in Russian exist,
also a Lodge of Perfection and a Rose Croix Chapter, all of which
work in Russian the rituals of Scottish Rite Masonry. The Grand
Lodge of France and the Supreme Council have both granted great
freedom to the different Russian lodges, working under their
jurisdiction, with the result that even now in the Russian Masonry
in Paris the peculiarities of the Russian nationality are very
noticeable, and it is a faithful reproduction of what purely
Russian Freemasonry was in the older days. It has again a certain
religious tendency, but absolutely free of any dogmatism, and
without any difference between creeds or races. The idea of
striving for moral perfection is very strong and equite natural for
mystical Russians. The volume of the Sacred Law is always on the
altar of the meetings of every lodge, and the work is usually the
study of the deeper meaning of Freemasonry. On the whole, the
distinguishing characteristics of Russian Masonry are: moral
improvement, absolute recognition of the principles of personal
liberty, liberty of conscience and equality. The feeling of
brotherhood is very strong as a natural consequence of the
difficult moral and material conditions, in which the Russian
emigrants have to live. Russian Masons fully understand what an
enormous task awaits them, when their country will again have a
normal government and will return to the ordinary conditions of
political and economical life. Only a strong Masonic organization
morally healthy and full of enthusiasm will be able to work for the
restoration of morality and intellectual culture so utterly
undermined in Russia. It will have to assemble in its ranks all
those elements who have still retained some moral strength and
direct them in the reconstruction of Russian society. It will have
to repeat perhaps, under more unfavorable conditions, what the
Russian Masons of the 18th century so successfully did. Those
Masons, who developed civilization in Russia, and gradually created
that peculiar national culture which so often astonished Europe and
America but gained praise and admiration.

But the work will be many times difficult because Masonry will not
only have to create, it will have also to destroy. It will have to
destroy all the evil results of the Bolshevik rule, and the longer
this rule lasts the worse it will be. The true ideas of liberty
will have to take the place of violence and oppression, called
proletarian dictatorship; moral ideas will have to be developed
instead of the coarse material instincts which are at the base of
the actual system in Russia.

It is impossible to foresee at the present moment what the future
forms of government in Russia will be. They will certainly be based
on the will of the nation, and on democratic principles, but when
Bolshevism comes to an end, before new forms of government are
solidly established, it is very possible that the country will pass
through a period of reaction, and here Masonry will perhaps have a
great work to do to moderate and soften the transitory period.

Russian Masonry, not only in its work but even in its innermost
tendencies, has no special political creeds. People with very
different political ideas meet in the brotherly atmosphere of pure
Masonry and unite in the desire of realizing Masonic principles in
the social and national life of Russia for the triumph of liberty,
equality and brotherhood. Whatever form of government the Russian
nation will establish, Masonry will heartily work for the welfare
of the country. Though Russian Masons in France are not very
numerous, their organization is being gradually completed, both in
the Blue Lodges and in the high degrees. The four Craft lodges are
ruled by a committee which in fact represents the future Grand
Lodge of Russia. The Lodge of Perfection works in close contact
with the Rose Croix Chapter. In conformity with the wish, expressed
by the Covenant of Lausanne in 1922, the Supreme Council of France
has sanctioned the existence of a temporary committee in the higher
degrees, which represents the nucleus of a future Supreme Council
for Russia of the Scottish Rite.

