The Relationship Between Russian and French Freemasonry ( 1905 – 1945 )
on November 9 , 1931 , by a delegation from the Council of Order led by Georges Voronoff , who was of Russian descent , and in the presence of the current and former Worshipful Masters of five lodges as well as representatives of the Russian high-degree groups in the GLDF . It was formed as a spin-off of The North Star when that lodge grew too large . It had twenty-nine founding Brethren , some of whom never left . Besides Maklakov , Margulies , Mirkin-Getzevich , and Pereverzev , its members included the doctor Karapet Agadzhanian ; the writer Agafonov ; the corporate director Abram Alperin ; Berberov ; the painter Ivan Bilibin ; the doctors Samuel Epstein and Alexandre Finikoff ; the industrialist and banker Samuel Halperin ; Aleksandr Khatisov ( 1874 – 1945 ), former mayor of Tbilisi and president of the Comité des Arméniens émigrés ( Committee of Armenian Émigrés ) at the League of Nations ; the writer Michael Ossorguine ( 1871 – 1947 ), initiated into the Grand Lodge of Italy in 1914 and contributor to the Russian newspaper Poslednie Novosti ( Latest News ); the lawyers Nikolay Petrovsky and Jacob Scheftel ; Grigoriy Tiraspolsky ( 1871 – 1947 ), who was initiated in 1907 “ into a secret lodge under the auspices of the GODF ” in Saint Petersburg and later affiliated with Lotos in 1935 ; and Marc Wolfson , a bank employee .
There is only one surviving Tracing Board showing the members of Free Russia in 1938 . The lodge ’ s forty-seven active members met monthly . Eleven had been born between 1869 and 1875 , and thirteen between 1875
75 and 1880 , and were thus old enough to have played a role in the events in Russia from 1906 to 1917 . Margulies was the only member to have been initiated under the Old Regime , in 1907 . Count Orlov-Davydov , who had first joined Admirateurs de l ’ Univers in 1920 and then seems to have rejoined The Polar Star , became affiliated with the lodge but withdrew in 1934 when he moved out of Paris and into the Maison Russe ( a retirement home for white Russian émigrés ) in Villemoisson , near Epernay . The lodge ’ s affiliates included Ruben Barberian , who had been initiated in 1902 into Vrais Amis in Paris but only received his Fellowcraft degree in The North Star in 1930 , and the lawyer Alexey Staal , initiated in 1913 into Unité Maçonnique and affiliated with Free Russia in 1932 . Only six of the Brethren who had originally come from The North Star remained . After an initial period of growth , Free Russia had only a few new admissions each year . The most common professions among its members were jurists , lawyers , journalists or writers , and engineers .
Until 1939 , the lodge was presided over by Manuil Margulies , who became vice president of the Council of Russian Organizations ( those of a democratic bent ) and received the 33 rd degree . Weakened by illness and a car accident , he died in 1939 , leaving the lodge in a poor condition . Because of the émigrés ’ financial struggles , the lodge was deeply indebted to the GODF , which subsidized it , and it eventually moved its meeting place to rue de l ’ Yvette , where the rent was lower .