"Freemasonry and the Russian Intelligentsia" by Boris Bashilov, summary

This book is a historical and philosophical study, published in 1956 in Buenos Aires with funds from Russian émigrés. It is part of a multi-volume series on the history of Russian Freemasonry. The author views the Russian intelligentsia as an anti-national ideological order created for the deliberate destruction of historical statehood and the Orthodox faith. Bashilov draws on the works of the Slavophiles, Nikolai Gogol, and Fyodor Dostoevsky. He demonstrates a direct connection between European secret societies and Russian revolutionaries of the nineteenth century.

Distortion of the historical path

The organic development of the Russian nation was interrupted by the revolution of Peter the Great. The Tsar acted on the advice of European Freemasons, forcibly imposing alien customs. The Orthodox Church lost its spiritual independence. Peter subordinated church governance to the secular bureaucracy. The Russian nobility quickly became disconnected from its native soil. The educated class began blindly copying Western philosophical trends, and the people lost the faith of their ancestors. Voltaireanism and a profound contempt for their own people took root in the minds of the nobility. The loss of a national ideal paved the way for future catastrophes.

Nicholas I attempted to halt the mindless imitation of Europe. The Tsar sincerely sought to abolish serfdom, having carried out extensive preparatory work through Count Pavel Kiselev and Mikhail Speransky. The Tsar wanted to return the country to the ideals of Holy Rus’. Nicholas I saw the autocracy as the supreme arbiter over the estates. However, the Tsar was surrounded by a rigid bureaucracy and an indifferent nobility. These people constantly sabotaged the monarch’s reforms. The official Church remained completely paralyzed. The Holy Synod was controlled by secular officials like the hussar colonel Protasov, and the highest church hierarchy was afraid to openly defend canonical truths.

Metropolitan Philaret proved to be a typical example of cold, official welfare. The clergy had completely lost the habit of directly defending church canons. They resigned themselves to their servile position, ignoring the urgent need to swiftly restore the patriarchate. The idea of a Third Rome never became a guiding star for synodal officials. The Russian state lost its mystical core, turning into an ordinary European monarchy.

Nikolai Gogol was the first to recognize the tragic gap between the intelligentsia and the people. The writer published his famous book, "Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends." Gogol called on his contemporaries to seek immediate moral purification. He believed spiritual reliance on Orthodoxy was essential. He demonstrated the inseparable connection between service to God and faithful service to the Tsar. Earthly happiness was utterly impossible without an inner Christian transformation. Gogol categorically rejected revolutionary methods for correcting a sick society. He demanded that any social change begin with one’s own soul.

Westerners met Gogol’s sincere preaching with furious persecution. Vissarion Belinsky lashed out at the writer in an angry letter, calling him "a preacher of the whip, an apostle of ignorance." Radical youth readily believed the slander, immediately declaring the thinker a mad obscurantist. Liberal critics saw in the brilliant writer’s books only shallow social satire on the Nicholas era, completely missing their profound metaphysical meaning. Gogol suffered profoundly from this profound misunderstanding. He keenly foresaw the coming triumph of socialist utopianism and constantly warned his contemporaries of social entropy.

Ideas of the Slavophiles

The Slavophiles attempted to return Russian society to its ancient national roots. Alexei Khomyakov, Ivan Kireevsky, and Konstantin Aksakov harshly condemned Peter the Great’s Westernization, convincingly arguing for the uniqueness of Russian culture. They considered European civilization too one-sided and rational, believing that the Western mind had completely lost its spiritual integrity. Roughly speaking, Europeans had traded faith for mere reason, and this lost integrity was preserved only in Orthodoxy. The Slavophiles resolutely opposed the preservation of serfdom, calling for the gradual emancipation of the peasants without much bloodshed or brutal violence.

Ivan Kireevsky brilliantly analyzed the profound contradictions between Russian and European cultural principles. Western civilization has always relied on brutal conquest and the constant, hostile division of social classes. The Roman Church merged with the state, striving for a dead legality and formalism. Ancient Rus’ developed historically through organic, natural growth. Prayerful monasteries long remained the primary centers of higher knowledge. The Russian people have always possessed a profound silence of inner self-awareness. The European spirit suffered from perpetual inner anxiety and a painful duality of thought.

The Slavophile doctrine met with a rather cold reception. Government officials constantly suspected the Slavophiles of secret disloyalty, so the government frequently banned the publication of their original works. Radical youth, the spiritual children of the Decembrist Freemasons, openly scoffed at calls for a return to the past, feverishly seeking rapid and radical change. The Slavophiles succeeded in awakening public opinion, but they were unable to stem the gathering storm.

The Russian intelligentsia gradually emerged as an isolated, closed sect. This spiritual order completely severed its natural ties to historical Russia, blindly hating the autocracy and Orthodoxy. Boris Bashilov calls this social marginality "spiritually crippled." The order firmly united people of completely different beliefs: radical socialists, populists, and orthodox Marxists. Simply put, this motley crowd was united by a burning hatred of the legitimate tsarist authority. The intellectuals replaced traditional religion with a blind faith in social progress and economic egalitarianism. For the sake of their fantastical constructs, the revolutionaries readily sacrificed the lives of thousands of real people.

Alexander Herzen, Mikhail Bakunin, and Vissarion Belinsky became the first ideologists of the new order, passionately preaching militant atheism and total destruction. They openly admired the merciless, bloody terror of Marat and Robespierre, fervently justifying absolutely any immoral means for the rapid achievement of political goals. Moral nihilism became the only norm for revolutionary youth, and ordinary human honesty and Christian mercy were considered shameful weaknesses.

The intelligentsia categorically rejected the very idea of peaceful social evolution. Any attempt at gradual reform of the country evoked nausea and revulsion in the members of the order. They blindly worshiped the Masonic myth of the unconditional superiority of a democratic republic. Russian radicals completely failed to understand the real difficulties of governing a vast, multinational country. The harsh historical burden of constant defensive wars was blatantly ignored. Democracy seemed to them a universal magic wand. These political fantasists decided to forcibly reshape living Russian reality according to foreign, literary models.

Masonic Roots of Destruction

The author traces in detail the direct Masonic origins of intelligentsia social doctrines. Secret societies in the West secretly directed Russian radicals. European Freemasons sought to completely deconstruct Christian states and establish a single world republic. Many prominent Decembrists belonged to secret Masonic lodges. Pavel Pestel wrote his radical program strictly according to the Illuminati model. The Paris Commune became a bloody model for Russian rebels. Karl Marx’s International directly guided the destructive activities of Russian socialists. Masonic lodges in Europe regularly provided fugitive Russian terrorists with safe haven and generous funding.

Utopian socialism quickly transformed into an aggressive secular religion of the intelligentsia, confidently promising to build an absolute material paradise on earth. Sergei Nechayev compiled the terrifying "Catechism of a Revolutionary," sternly demanding from his followers the complete and unconditional renunciation of personal conscience. The ideal revolutionary was supposed to be a blind instrument of political assassination, so Pyotr Tkachev and Nikolai Chernyshevsky directly called upon Rus’ to take the axe. Gradually, individual terror became the primary method of political struggle, and the intelligentsia enthusiastically welcomed the frequent assassinations of tsarist ministers and officials.

The creators of great Russian culture never belonged to the aggressive intelligentsia. Alexander Pushkin, Mikhail Lermontov, Fyodor Tyutchev, and Leo Tolstoy stood far outside this political sect. Brilliant Russian writers and outstanding scholars deeply despised leftist political fanaticism. The intelligentsia always repaid them with mutual, vicious hostility, methodically pitting independent national thinkers against each other. Genuine, free scholarship and authentic art were cynically replaced by shallow political propaganda. Educated Russian society found itself completely defenseless against the constant onslaught of this aggressive revolutionary sect.

The government bureaucracy completely lost its firm spiritual foundation. Officials weakly attempted to combat destructive ideas with police measures alone. The Russian tsars naively hoped to appease the radicals with gradual political concessions. Any government compromises only further whetted the revolutionaries’ appetites. The Freemasons skillfully manipulated Russian liberals and naive socialists, intensifying their subversive activities during World War I. Alexander Kerensky and Alexander Guchkov successfully united the opposition into a single political bloc. The conspirators staged a successful military rebellion in February 1917, and this treacherous coup finally crushed the Russian monarchy.