It would seem, what does Freemasonry have to do with the Soviet Union, where it was promoted that religion is opium for the people, and all kinds of mysticism and occultism were called the word "obscurantism"? Nevertheless, even during the Soviet era, secret occult organizations functioned in Russia.
Soviet masons
In the 1920s, at least 11 lodges of the Masonic or semi-Masonic persuasion operated in the USSR. Among them are the Order of Light, Order of the Spirit, Order of the Holy Grail, Order of the Martinists, Order of the Templars and Rosicrucians, United Labor Brotherhood, Brotherhood of True Service, Resurrection, Hilfernak, "Russian Autonomous Freemasonry", "Space Academy of Sciences".
Martinist Order
The Leningrad Martinist Order was once a branch of the French Order of the same name. After the split that happened in 1912, the St. Petersburg organization declared its autonomy.
The leaders of the order were Grigory Mebes and Boris Astromov. The members of the lodge were given lectures on the history of religion, magic and the occult, and also took practical classes on the development of occult abilities. Basically the organization included representatives of the St. Petersburg intelligentsia - journalists, artists, lawyers, students …
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Boris Viktorovich Astromov (real name Kirichenko) put an end to the Martinist Order. Having joined the "Ausonia" lodge in 1909, belonging to the "Great East of Italy", having returned to Russia, he was appointed by G. Mebes the general secretary of the Order. But as a result of friction in 1921, Astromov left the order. In August 1922, he announced the creation of a new organization, independent of the Martinist Order, called Russian Autonomous Freemasonry.
In May 1925, Astromov appeared at the reception of the OGPU in Moscow and offered cooperation in exchange for permission to leave the USSR. He did not receive such permission, but the Chekists began to keep an eye on the Masons, which led to the defeat of the Leningrad lodges in early 1926 and the subsequent arrests of many of their members, and Astromov himself was the first to be arrested!
Order of the Knights Templar
The “Order of the Templars” deserves special attention, inheriting the traditions of the notorious European knights-templars. Its founder was the anarchist and sociologist Apollo Karelin, who joined the order abroad. In 1920, together with Andrei Bely, he opened the first Russian organization of the Templars. It consisted of several lodges - "Order of Light", "Order of the Spirit", "Temple of Arts", "Brotherhood of Mercy". At the meetings, lectures were given on philosophy, cosmology, history.
The Moscow Knights Templar Lodge - "Order of Light" was headed by Alexey Solonovich, a teacher at the Bauman Moscow State Technical University. They included mainly representatives of bohemians and the creative intelligentsia. Solonovich read lectures at the Kropotkin Museum on the so-called mystical anarchism, opposing the ideals of Bolshevism. Of course, this could not go unpunished. On the night of September 11-12, 1930, most of the members of the order were arrested on charges of anti-Soviet activities. Most of them, like the Leningrad Masons, received three years of exile. However, Solonovich and other leaders were sentenced to five years in the camps.
Are the Bolsheviks Freemasons?
Meanwhile, many researchers closely associate Bolshevism with Freemasonry. There is even a theory that Soviet symbols - stars, sickle and hammer - actually refer to Masonic symbols.
One way or another, according to unverified data, practically the entire Soviet elite consisted of Masonic organizations - Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, Sverdlov …
There is also evidence that in 1919 the chairman of the Petrograd Cheka, Gleb Bokiy, was ordained as a freemason. He allegedly joined the "United Labor Brotherhood" lodge, headed by Alexander Barchenko, a student of the famous occultist George Gurdjieff. Subsequently, Bokiy took the post of head of the 9th Directorate of the Main Directorate of State Security of the NKVD and was considered in the OGPU and NKVD "the chief specialist on Freemasonry." Ironically, he was arrested in 1937 precisely on charges … of organizing a Masonic lodge!
But if the Bolsheviks themselves were Freemasons, then why did they persecute other Freemasons? Let us remember that under Lenin there was no such persecution yet. They began under Stalin, who, although he was fond of occultism, according to some testimonies, was definitely not a Freemason. Perhaps he considered all Freemasons "foreign agents of influence", since Freemasonry originated in the West … However, all these occult-political games remain behind the scenes of history.