The existence of an organized command structure within the Masonic lodges dates from the installation of a wealthy courtier, Ivan Elagin, as Provincial Grand Master in the Russian Empire. Elagin was a figure of extraordinary influence in the early years of Catherine's reign. She sometimes jocularly signed letters to him "Mr. Elagin's chancellor,"84 and he stands as the organizer and apologist for the first phase of Russian Masonry; the practical-oriented, St. Petersburg-based English form of Masonry which Catherine found relatively acceptable.
English Masonry partook, indeed, of the dilettantish atmosphere of Catherine's court. Elagin admitted that he turned to the movement originally out of boredom; and his main addition to the standard practices of English Masonry lay in the addition of exotic initiation rituals, which he justified on practical grounds as needed substitutes for the rites of the Church. His definition of a Mason differed little from the description of any enlightened member of Catherine's entourage: "a free man able to master
his inclinations … to subordinate his will to the laws of reason."85 Elagin's lodges had a base membership in 1774 of some two hundred Russian and foreign aristocrats, almost all occupying leading positions in the civil or military service.86
Novikov first joined the Masonic order in 1775 through Elagin's lodge in St. Petersburg. But he refused to submit to the usual initiation rituals and was dissatisfied with the way they "played 'mason' like a child's game."87 Within a year he had broken away to form a new lodge and to send Russian Masonry into a second, more intense phase, which was mystical-Germanic rather than English in origin, and had Moscow rather than St. Petersburg as its spiritual center. Novikov took the lead in turning Russian Masonry from the casual fraternal activities of Elagin to the inner groups and esoteric higher orders which were characteristic of this second, Moscow phase of Russian Masonic history and were to have such an important impact on the subsequent development of Russian culture.
This new trend in Russian Masonry was part of a general European movement away from English toward "Scottish" Masonry, which taught that there were higher levels of membership beyond the original three: anywhere from one to ninety-nine additional stages. This "higher order" Masonry88 introduced closer bonds of secrecy and mutual obUgation, special catechisms and vows, and new quasi-Oriental costumes and rituals. Their lodges claimed origins in the sacred past through the Knights Templars or Knights of Jerusalem back to the Gnostics and the Essenes. In Russian these higher orders were generally known as the "Orders of Andrew," the apostle who allegedly brought Christianity to Russia even before Peter took it to Rome.
The turn to "true Masonry" had rather the effect of religious conversion for many members of the aristocracy. Chudi, the "literary chameleon" who had been a leading symbol of frivolity and sensuality, became a passionate apologist for the movement as the only bulwark against the moral disintegration of Europe. From writing pornographic literature, Chudi turned to the writing of Masonic sermons and catechisms, and the founding of his own system of higher lodges of "The Flaming Star."89
The Russian aristocracy was a fertile field for such conversions in the 1770's and 1780's. Increasing numbers were anxious to dissociate themselves from the immorality, agnosticism, and superficiality of court life, and the higher aristocracy was bound together by a new sense of insecurity in the wake of the Pugachev uprising. They felt cut off from the religion of the people they were now empowered to rule, yet not content with the Voltairianism of Catherine's court. "Finding myself at the crossroads between Voltairianism and religion," Novikov writes of his own conversion,
"I had no basis on which to work, no cornerstone on which to build spiritual tranquility, and therefore I unexpectedly fell into the society."60 His philosophic journal of the late seventies, Morning Light, was explicitly designed to "struggle with that sect which prides itself on the title 'philosophical' "91 by publishing the great classical and medieval philosophers. The turn to occult, "higher order" Masonry in Eastern Europe was part of the general reaction against French rationalism and secularism that was gathering momentum in the fifteen years prior to the French Revolution. The model was the so-called Swedish system, which had nine grades and a tenth secret group of nine members known as the "Commanders of the Red Cross," who met Fridays at midnight and conducted special prayers, fasts, and other forms of self-discipline. This idea of a new mystical-military order attracted wide attention in Germany, where the Swedish system became known as the "strict observance." Members of these new brotherhoods 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 and lost unity of the early Christian Church. The theosophic treatises of Jacob Boehme were supplemented in these circles by the works of the Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg, who from 1747 to his death in 1772 had written a long series of occult works, such as Secrets of the Universe and The Apocalypse Revealed. By 1770 there were at least twelve major lodges in eastern Germany and the Baltic region; and the next decade was to see a wild proliferation of these higher orders within the two great powers of the region: Prussia and Russia.92 Higher order Masonry appealed to the princes and aristocrats of Eastern Europe as a vehicle for fortifying their realms against the reformist ideas of the French Enlightenment. Two such princes, King Gustav III of Sweden and Crown Prince Frederick William of Prussia, played a major role in bringing the movement into Russia. Gustav gave Swedish Masonry a special stamp of respectability when he flaunted his Masonic ties during his visit to St. Petersburg in 1776 and won over Crown Prince Paul to friendly association if not full membership.93 He entered into negotiations for a royal marriage and sought to link Russian and Swedish Masonry in one system of lodges under the direction of his brother.
Even more important was the influx from Germany, where the idea of higher orders on the Swedish model was enjoying great vogue. In 1776 Prince Gagarin, a close friend of Paul and leader of the main Swedish type of lodge in St. Petersburg, journeyed to Germany to accept the authority of the Berlin lodge Minerva ("of the strict observance") and to bring back with him both an aristocratic German leader for the Russian "province" and a dynamic young teacher of occult lore, Johann Georg Schwarz.
A twenty-five-year-old, German-educated Transylvanian, Schwarz was given a position at Moscow University and rapidly threw himself into the business of transforming Russian Masonry in collaboration with the two key Russian admirers: Kheraskov and Novikov. Schwarz's lectures at Moscow University on philology, mystical philosophy, and the philosophy of history attracted the attention of a host of admirers, including two prominent visitors of 1780: Joseph II of Austria and Prince Frederick William of Prussia.
In 1781 Schwarz, Novikov, Kheraskov, and others combined to organize "the gathering of University foster children," the first secret student society in Russian history. The following year Schwarz was made inspector of a new "pedagogical seminary" to train teachers for the expected expansion of Russia's educational system and to reorganize the preparatory curriculum for the university. From this position, Schwarz tried in effect to integrate Russian higher education with higher Masonry. With Novikov organizing a supporting program of publication, Schwarz gradually gained the interest of a number of wealthy patrons who joined the two of them in the new "secret scientific [sientificheskaia] lodge, Harmony," of 1780.94