The Relationship Between Russian and French Freemasonry ( 1905 – 1945 )
the Apprentice and Master degrees . Ritual was simplified in the extreme , and some women were admitted , including Yekaterina Kuskova ( 1859 – 1968 ), wife of Brother Sergei Propokovich , who organized clandestine Masonic meetings in Moscow in 1916 . The Masonic offices were dismissed as useless , and the GOPR issued no diplomas . Lodges were obliged to consist of between seven and fourteen members , which fact explains their proliferation , with a total of four to five hundred GOPR members in forty-two lodges . The work of the lodges was mostly limited to lectures . There were lodges located in around twenty cities , particularly in regions with strong nationalist movements . Masons were often federalists and pacifists until the First World War , when they supported the Triple Entente . They were involved in national movements in , for example , Lithuania , Belarus , Poland , and Ukraine . The GOPR was unable to impose directives because of the diversity of its members , who ranged from Trudoviks to Mensheviks , and even some Bolsheviks , united solely to fight against the Tsar ’ s regime . Nevertheless , the GOPR settled more to the left of the political spectrum after the arrival of figures like Kerensky , who joined The Little Bear in 1912 and became secretary of the GOPR in 1916 ; Nikolai Avksentiev ; and the SR member Boris Savinkov , who joined French Masonry in exile .
All the governments after the February Revolution had a strong Masonic presence . Among the fifteen ministers in the government formed on May 6 , 1917 , were Brothers Kerensky
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( Minister of War and Navy ), Shingarev ( Minister of Finance ), Skobelev ( Minister of Labor ), Pereverzev ( Minister of Justice ), Tereshchenko ( Minister of Foreign Affairs ), Nekrasov ( Minister of Transport ), and Konovalov ( Minister of Trade and Industry ). To what extent did the Supreme Council suggest or impose the appointments of ministers or provincial or military commissioners during the war ? Did the GOPR leaders plan to overthrow Tsar Nicholas II in a coup d ’ état ? These questions and others remain unanswered . There were representatives of all the democratic parties among these politically engaged Masons , and in 1917 many of them were part of the center-left Progressive Bloc formed by Brother Krivoshein . The GOPR ’ s influence was already declining , however , when the October Revolution put a definitive end to its existence . It had ultimately become a political pressure group that grew ever more inefficient as passions ran higher and collaboration between members of different parties became more fraught .
III . Russian Freemasonry in Exile in France ( 1922 – 1945 )
Several factors allowed Russian Masonry to flourish in France : the huge influx of upper-class refugees , the presence of a Slavic diaspora in France before 1914 , the fact that the Russian ambassador in Paris was , from November 1917 , Brother Maklakov , and even more importantly the fact that the Consul was Brother Leontiy Kandaurov . Kandaurov was a committed , although non-practicing , Ortho-