SERGEY LEBEDEV: FREEMASONS AND THEIR BACKGROUND ON THE PAGES OF THE MAGAZINE «SEA». INTRO (PART 2).
See the previous PART 1
Sergey LEBEDEV
Freemasons and their background
on the pages of the magazine "Sea". 1901-1917.
Introduction. Part 3.
The time of issue of the magazine «Sea» (1905-1917) and, hence, the ideas propagandized on its pages, in many respects were the result of the Russian-Japanese war of 1904-1905, and also the product of the active revolutionary performances in Russia in 1905.
Concerning the events in Russia after 1905, A.A.Brusilov, the Supreme commander in chief of the Russian army in the First World war, wrote in his memoirs published in days of the “soviet power”:
«Meanwhile it was necessary to reflect over the circumstances: though the revolution was temporarily extinguished, it has clearly specified that at that time the peasantry has changed, that all the social classes were extremely dissatisfied, almost all intellectuals were revolutionary minded, and it was easy to guess that in any way it was impossible to be limited to the creation of the so-called «Union of Russian people», made besides from geeks.
It was rather characteristic that by the same time different rascals, using mystical mood of the mentally sick Empress, have appeared on the political scene, began to play a serious role in the life of the Imperial couple. They began to influence the government, and this fact has restored all serious circles of public and statesmen against the ruling monarchy, definitively having isolated the Tsar and the Tsarina, who have remained in the environment of the so-called palace camarilla. By the same time Rasputin acts on the scene, beginning to play a serious role in Russia’s government. In many respects it reminded the last years of the reign of Louis XVI and Maria-Antoinette in France. And it is clear, because the same reasons cause inevitably the same actions, and poor consequences.
The World war, for a long time expected and inevitable, has begun in such conditions».
It’s necessary to add here the extract from the memoirs of the ambassador of republican France Georges Maurice Paléologue (France was the ally of Russia on Antante), written in the form of diary records, rather neutral to the Russian realities. Paléologue brought an attention to the question and answered it himself in his diary:
«Whence this surprising prevalence of the mystical lines in the characters of grand duchess Elizabeth Fedorovna and of her sister, Empress Alexandra, undertook? It seems to me that it was inherited from their mother, princess Alice, the daughter of queen Victoria, who since 1862 was married to the crown prince Hessen-Darmstadt and has died in 1878 at the age of 35 years.
Brought up in the most strict anglicanism, princess Alice has felt soon after a marriage a passion of a strange sort, quite spiritual and intellectual. It was the passion towards a great rationalisttheologian David Strauß from Tuebingen, the well-known author of «Jesus Life», who had died four years before her death. He soon got a great influence over her mind. The deep secret still shrouds this novel of two minds and two souls, but it is impossible to doubt, nevertheless, that he has strongly confused her in her beliefs, and that she has endured awful shocks.
Her daughters could inherit her propensity to religious exaltation. Perhaps, it is necessary to see also an action of atavism in them, which was much more ancient, because I find the names of the sacred Elizabeth of Hungary and Mary Stewart in the number of their ancestors on a female line».
One can read more low in the same memoirs of Georges Maurice Paléologue: «I have already noted in my diary those painful bents which Alexandra Fedorovna has inherited from her mother, and which could also be seen in her sister Elizabeth Fedorovna in her charitable exaltation, in her brother, the Grand Duke of Hessen, in strange tastes. These hereditary bents which would be imperceptible if she continued to live in the positive and counterbalanced environment of the West, have found in Russia the most favorable conditions for the full development».
To continue the mystical motive in memoirs, we address to other author. Pavel Grigorevich Kurlov - one of the higher dignitaries in police and gendarmerie of the Russian empire. The general noticed in his memoirs:
«The end of the XIX and the beginning of the XX century are marked by the decadence of religion not only in society, but even in the simple people. The inevitable companion of such falling is the mysticism which mixes up with pure religion in an imperceptible way, even for sincerely believing people. The Emperor was the undoubtedly deeply religious person. Painful events of his reign could not pass for him without traces and directed his spirit, in my opinion, almost involuntarily towards mysticism».
Pavel Afanasevich Buryshkin (by the way, he was a freemason in the Russian masonic obedience called the “Grand Orient des Peuples de Russie”) marked with bitterness:
«In the pre-revolutionary times people knew a little about the valid state of affairs, about that fatal influence which was rendered on the Imperial family by any rascals, like one of the Rasputin’s predecessors - a French healer Philippe, or the well-known Dr. Papus. Some naïve historians of the revolution possibly did not suspect honestly, while speaking on its ‘Jewish and Masonic roots’, that there was the unique moment of the doubtless freemasonic influence on the destinies of Russia - i.e. the martinistic and freemasonic activity of Papus and the creation of the «Cross and Star» martinistic lodge in Tsarskoe Selo. At the beginning of XX century in Petersburg people spoke about the occultist adventures of Philippe and Papus in the imperial court yard. A.A.Polovtsev's and N.A.Bobrinsky’s diaries testify to it, and also Vitte's memoirs».
The colonel of gendarmerie A.V.Gerasimov, later the general (already quoted above), the largest expert on «internal» political history and its direct creator, also writes about Nicholas II mysticism:
«As it is known, the Tsar Nicholas II had a strong propensity to mysticism. He has inherited it from the ancestors. In the beginning of his reign many people fed hopes that the Tsar will recover from excessive mysticism thanks to the influence of his wife -- the literate woman who at one time even has studied in Oxford, it seems to me. The life has not justified these hopes. The tsar has not turned from mysticism towards sober realism under the influence of the recent Oxford student, but, on the contrary, the Tsarina under his influence has run to such mysticism, equal to which we will not find in the biographies of members of our Imperial house. The events of 1904-1906 epoch also have not influenced the Empress beneficently. On the contrary, instead of forcing him to make serious steps towards the necessary reorganization of the Russian state life, she was pushed in the area of the mystical moods further away under the influence of the alarms during the revolution. It is necessary to tell that the events of these years caused in general a strong growth of mystical hobbies in the higher classes of a society. In the Petersburg salons, which were playing such appreciable role in the court circles and have set the fatal seal on the general destinies of Russia, in eager rivalry they were engaged in spiritism, they twirled the tables, talked to the called spirits etc.».
Summarizing the quoted material, we will ask to speak N.N.Berberova:
«In parallel in the same years (1905-1906) the activity of martinists has quickened in Russia, by means of two charlatans, Papus and Philippe, who were the predecessors of Rasputina at the Russian court yard. Count Musin-Pushkin soon became the Great Master of the martinists. They say that in his youth the future Emperor Nicholas II was a martinist, by an example of his English, German and Danish relatives. Nicholas II left, however, a secret society very soon. But his uncle, Grand dukes Nicholas and Peter Nikolaevich (grandsons of Nicholas I and cousins of Alexander III ), and also the Grand duke George Mihailovich remained martinists of high degrees, and they gathered for the ritual meetings from time to time, in a special temple in Tsarskoje Selo. The rituals proceeded till 1916 when the martinists had to stop their very existence. Grand dukes, of course, have not been touched...».
Coming back to the Navy Renovation League, we will ask a question: who promoted its development and actions? It was the father and the son - grand dukes Michael Nikolaevich and Alexander Mihajlovich, and also grand duchess Xenia Aleksandrovna, were those people, who supported N.N.Beklemishev, the founder the Navy Renovation League, its permanent chairman, the editor, the publisher and the author of many articles in the magazine «Sea» (which was the League publication), the most visible and the most active member of the Imperial Russian Technical society, the director of committee of the Museum of inventions and improvements (at one time the Museum submitted to the League, and then became a component of the Society of military, sea and rural techniques).
Grand duke Alexander Mihajlovich has avoided the destiny of other members of the Imperial family, liquidated in the summer of 1918. Abroad, in Paris, in 1933, he published his reminiscences in three parts where he tells the reader about his heading of the secret society of phylalethes. In the memoirs he tells us about his assistant in the matters of this society named: Beklemishev…
See the next PART 3