On March 18, 1314, the trial of Jacques de Molay, Grand Master of the Knights Templar, and his comrades took place. This ended the history of one of the most powerful knightly societies in Europe. However, his tradition did not die, and many centuries later a new order of templars appeared in Moscow.
Apollon Andreevich Karelin, known under the esoteric name of Santei, stood at the origins of the Moscow Order of the Templars.
Anarchist knights
In 1906, having emigrated abroad, Apollo Karelin lectured at the Higher School of Social Sciences in Paris, where he was apparently initiated into the Freemasons. Karelin returned to his homeland in June 1917 with an established reputation as a theoretician of anarcho-communism. Here he launched a vigorous activity. With his participation, the All-Russian Federation of Anarchists and Anarchists-Communists was established, the Black Cross was created to help needy anarchists, and the famous club in Leontievsky Lane began to work.
Although there were disagreements between the anarchists and the Bolsheviks, Karelin was considered a person accepted by the new government and completely loyal to it. He lived in the 1st House of Soviets and did not hide his good relations with the secretary of the USSR Central Executive Committee Abel Yenukidze and other high-ranking party functionaries.
Apollo Karelin's views at that time were distracted and hazy. According to one of his students Yuri Zavadsky, "they dealt mainly with the problems of subconscious work, problems of mental and spiritual essences." However, soon a mystical circle "Order of the Spirit" was organized around Apollon Andreyevich.
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In the spring of 1924, Karelin's circle was reorganized into the Order of Light, also called the Order of the Templars, headed by Alexander Sergeevich Pol, a teacher at the G. V. Plekhanov. The members of the original circle automatically became the “senior knights” of the order.
The structure of the new organization established seven "degrees of initiation", each of which corresponded to a certain legend: about the Atlanteans, whose descendants lived in underground labyrinths in Ancient Egypt; about zones that have taken on the role of mediators between the world of spirits and people; about the holy grail, etc.
The headquarters of the Templars became the Peter Kropotkin Museum, which was not an accident, because almost all the leaders of the order (Grigory Anosov, Alexei Solonovich, Alexander Uyttenhoven, Nikolai Proferantsev, Nikolai Bogomolov) were prominent anarchists with a long pre-revolutionary experience of political struggle, were members of numerous political committees and members of the anarchist section of the museum.
Rituals of metropolitan followers
In their ideology, the Moscow Templars quite naturally mixed together anarcho-communist ideas, Christianity, Gnosticism, theosophy, anthroposophy, Rosicrucianism, medieval chivalry, and even occult Egyptology.
As for the methods by which the staff of the circle was replenished, the Moscow Templars did not come up with anything original here. We selected people interested in the occult sciences, the history of esotericism; they were invited to lectures on these subjects; then they were offered to become full members of the order.
Here is what a typical member of the order, accountant Nikolai Bogomolov, told about the formation of his worldview: “Anarcho-communism alone seemed to me not enough, it seemed necessary to bring it under broader ideological grounds. Tolstoy linked his teaching with Christianity … So I became one of the competing members of the Tolstoy Society in Moscow. I attended community meetings and thought a lot about which way is correct: with the use of violence or without the use of violence? I considered the solution of this question important for myself. On this path, I even had to turn to reading the Gospel and literature on the history of Christianity. I must make a reservation that I am not a churchman at all, I do not go to church. I have always had a very negative attitude towards the church, as an organization of power, as an organization of a fundamentally hierarchical order. It is necessary to draw a sharp line between the church and Christianity, taking the latter as one of the teachings about morality. After reading some sources, I saw in the teachings of the church that the question of justifying the state and power, justifying violence is illogical, ambiguous and clearly wrong. Reflections on current political activities both in the USSR and abroad, led me to the idea that the use of violence should become less and less effective for those who use it … "led me to the idea that the use of violence should become less and less effective for those who use it … "led me to the idea that the use of violence should become less and less effective for those who use it …"
It is clear that the rank-and-file Templars never missed an opportunity to “persuade” the masses in their favor. Since among the members of the order was actor Yuri Zavadsky, they used the Belarusian State Drama Studio, located in Moscow, as one of their tribunes. The very first performance of this studio - Tsar Maximilian based on the play by Alexei Remizov - was solved in the form of a medieval mystery with the use of knightly symbols. In the same spirit, the second performance was staged - "Apparametnaya".
Is power a disease?
After the death of Apollo Karelin in March 1926, Aleksey Aleksandrovich Solonovich, a teacher of mathematics at the N. E. Moscow State Technical University, became the spiritual leader of the movement. Bauman.
The largest and, unfortunately, not preserved theoretical work of Solonovich is his three-volume study "Bakunin and the Cult of Ialdobaof", which was circulated in typewritten form among the members of the order. Subsequently, it is this work that will be cited in the indictment as the main proof of the guilt of the Templars before the Soviet regime. Here is what the assistant to the head of the 1st branch of the SD OGPU chose from plump typewritten work in order to expose the leader of the order:
“The principle of power is instilled into humanity as a disease similar to syphilis. It is necessary to be cured of lust for power, and mercilessly fight against his madness, for larvae crawl in the footsteps of Ialdobaof and demonic dirt fouls the souls of people and their lives …
Thanks to the alliance of workers and peasants with the intelligentsia, the Russian revolution was victorious in October. And then the Bolsheviks drove a wedge of the state between the workers and peasants, separated the city and the countryside, thanks to the measures of the era of war communism and then in 20-21. suppressed the revolution, which went deeper … The last bursts of revolution rolled out with the thunder of the Kronstadt uprising, the Makhnovism, peasant uprisings and the so-called hunger riots … Having strangled the revolution, ruining the revolutionary elements of the peasantry, the Bolsheviks thereby prepared for themselves a lasting and inglorious death in the arms of the bourgeois elementary bourgeois …
Man is the "tomb of the Lord" - he must be liberated with new crusades and for this a new chivalry must arise, new orders of chivalry - a new intelligentsia, if you will, which will base its invincible will for real freedom, equality and brotherhood of all in humanity."
The defeat of the Moscow Knights Templar and the arrests associated with the case against him were largely due to the struggle waged against Solonovich by his opponents, led by the prominent anarchist Alexei Alekseevich Borov. Striving at all costs to remove Solonovich from the Kropotkin Museum, he did not hesitate in funds, putting in print a circle of his former comrades-in-arms in the revolutionary struggle as a "citadel of reaction and Black Hundreds." Solonovich himself was called "a notorious anti-Soviet and anti-Semite."
The order of the Light was really started in August 1930. Within a few days, 33 members of the order were arrested. Painful interrogations began. Some Templars, sensing danger, tried to justify their activities with the frivolous "playful" nature of the order.
This tactic was not successful, because the Chekists themselves were not too interested in the order's affairs. Their main attention was focused on stating the illegal nature of meetings and anti-Soviet statements by members of the circle. The indictment in the case of the "counter-revolutionary organization of the Templars" (case No. 103514) was approved on January 9, 1931, and already on January 13, a special meeting of the OGPU Collegium decided the fate of the arrested: the leaders received 5 years in prison, the rest - 3 years each. With regard to those who actively helped the investigation, the case was dropped.
Anton Pervushin