O. Przhslavsky wrote that, "When in a circle of officials the selection of candidates for a vacant position depended on a mason, and if one candidate was a mason, then regardless of the criteria for the selection, the chosen candidate was always a mason."

Yelagin was soon disillusioned with the "Strict Observance" charter, and in the early 1770s he received a license from the Grand Lodge of England to form a Freemasonry lodge in Russia. At the same time, German Baron George von Reichel also established a masonic fraternity in St. Petersburg that functioned according to the Swedish Zinnendorf system.

While Yelagin's embraced a mostly of a mystical search for the masonic "mystery," adherents of the Zinnendorf system aspired only to self-perfection. Despite the large number of lodges (in Moscow alone there were 27 in the 18th century), the Russian masons were not so numerous. In Yelagin's lodge were only 400 people, but in 1776 the two systems united, though friction continued between them.

The battle between Yelagin and Reichel was fought in St. Petersburg, but towards the end of the 1770s Moscow lodges began to have more influence. Publisher Nikolai Novikov played the most important role in this period, and he was part of the delegation of Russian masons at the historic Wilhelmsbad Masonic Convention in 1782 in which Russia was recognized as a separate masonic province.

He published primers, textbooks and Western classics. In 1788, he published up to 40 percent of all Russian books and magazines, among which was masonic literature. But what attracted the attention of authorities was not masonic literature but the fact that Novikov's magazines were reporting on events of the Revolutionary War in North America.

The magazines were inspected by Moscow Metropolitan Platon II, who found only six "damaging" issues and said of Novikov that, "I pray to God that Christians in the whole world could be like Novikov."

Nevertheless, persecutions did not end, and in 1791 the press was closed and Novikov was investigated when a secret printing press was found on his estate. A year later he received a 15-year prison sentence as a state criminal. Other important freemasons were punished with internal exile.

From that time on Freemasonry in Russia was basically banned. While four years later the new Russian emperor, Paul I, pardoned Novikov and his colleagues, the publisher did not return to his former book-publishing activities and spent the last years of his life on his estate in Avdot'ino, dying in 1818.

By the way, when in 1812 Napoleon's army entered Russia, Novikov's estate was left untouched, because many French officers were masons. The same thing happened at Bolshiye Vyazemy, the Golitsyn mansion near Moscow. The walls were decorated with images of apples and acacia, famous masonic symbols. The Golitsyns were well-known in Europe as prominent masons.

Pchelov thinks that the legend claiming Peter the Great was a mason can be characterized in the same manner. "There are no documents, no evidence to prove this, and it's completely impossible: legend says the Czar joined the masons during his Grand Embassy visit to Europe (1697-1698) before the official formation of Freemasonry in 1717."

In every era of masonic history, we encounter myths and mysteries concerning what it was about Freemasonry that attracted wealthy and notable Russians. One can only wonder what the future of Freemasonry will now be in Russia. It was reborn in Russia in 1990, when Georgy Dergachev became a mason.