PUSHKIN and MASONS

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

What role did Pushkin play in the history of Russia? Who was he really - a freemason, chamberlain, sexot or just a poet?

In one of our previous issues, we considered the version of "Pushkin-Dumas", but now we will pay attention to the poet's young years, and what will now be revealed does not actually contradict the version of Dumas-Pushkin, but supplements it. So let's go. In the biographies of Pushkin written by researchers, continuous oddities, ambiguities, and even just myths can be traced. Let's start with the simplest question - where did he get the money for his turbulent life? Father and mother, as you know, “they didn’t lend him money,” publications were not particularly paid for.

The answer is simple: Pushkin was a civil servant. On June 9, 1817, the nineteenth-ranked student of the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum, Alexander Pushkin, who was released as a 10th grade official, was appointed to the Collegium of Foreign Affairs as an interpreter with a salary of seven hundred rubles a year.

The Collegium of Foreign Affairs was created by Peter the Great to carry out, above all, secret missions. It is no coincidence that the authors of Essays on the History of Russian Foreign Intelligence, edited by Academician Primakov, tell in detail about the activities of the Collegium - the predecessor of the foreign department of the Cheka-OGPU, the First Main Directorate of the KGB of the USSR and the current Foreign Intelligence Service of Russia. It was the only institution subordinate not to the Senate, but directly to the emperor - just as the current foreign intelligence service is subordinate only to the President of Russia.

The Collegium of Foreign Affairs included the Secret Expedition, which was also called the "political department". One of the employees of this Secret Service was Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin. Pushkin had the rank of chamberlain - the level of a general in the special services, and that is how he was called in posthumous documents. We talked about this in the last issue. But how did he become a secret agent?

According to one version, the aspiring poet allowed himself too bold poetic liberty to address the royal family, for which he was subject to punishment in the form of flogging. However, the rank of nobleman allowed him to avoid humiliating punishment in exchange for cooperation with the authorities. For obvious reasons, he did not leave memories of what he did at the College.

According to the official version, from time to time Pushkin composed epigrams that were offensive to the authorities and, allegedly as punishment, he was sent to a new duty station. The official authorities did not refute common speculation. Indeed, it is impossible to announce publicly that the employee of the Collegium of Foreign Affairs Alexander Pushkin has left for business reasons. Nevertheless, rumors about his activities still circulated. In one of his letters to Vyazemsky, Pushkin says: "Alexey Poltoratsky blurted out in Tver that I was a spy, and I get 2,500 a month for that."

There are other facts as well. So, for example, Pushkin arrived in Yekaterinoslav at his place of service on May 17, 1820, and a week later, after swimming in the Dnieper, he allegedly "fell ill with a fever" and was released for treatment in the Caucasus for two months.

Is it possible to take seriously the story that a disgraced official, exiled by the tsar, is suddenly released to rest with a familiar general passing by because of a cold? To heal a patient, you just need to put him to bed, and not drag hundreds of miles across the Caucasus and the Crimea, where he was formally accompanied by Colonel Liprandi, the famous creator of a secret political investigation.

In fact, there is only one explanation for such long business trips. This trip can be called a secret mission, but not a wellness walk. The task with which Pushkin was seconded to Chisinau was not quite usual for such a department - to create a precedent for the introduction of a formal ban on the activities of Masonic lodges in Russia. Why was it necessary? The story is as follows.

Freemasonry was brought to Russia under Peter the Great almost simultaneously with its emergence in the West, and spread extremely quickly after 1812, when a huge mass of Russian military men from different strata of society ended up in the center of Freemasonry - Paris. The main ideas of Freemasonry - freedom, equality, brotherhood - very quickly penetrated into consciousness, creating the prerequisites for opposition sentiments with the aim of transforming society. Masons are now considered to be secret conspirators, but in those days there were remarkable people among them who made a special contribution to national history. Peter the First, Paul the First, Grand Duke Constantine - brother of Alexander I, Suvorov, Radishchev, Novikov, Fonvizin, Kutuzov, Bestuzhev, Ryleev, Chaadaev, Pestel, Muravyov-Apostol, Kheraskov, Bryullovs, Vorontsovs, Bazhenov, Glinka, Rimsky-Korsakov, The Turgenevs, Zhukovsky, Karamzin, Vyazemsky, Griboyedov, Nekrasov …