The Role of Russian Freemasonry in the February Revolution: Another Scrap of Evidence

Abstract

THE BRIEF PASSAGE from the unpublished memoirs of Prince Vladimir Andreevich Obolenskyl reproduced below in translation is, for all its brevity and reticence, an important bit of evidence for any historian of the February Revolution and the Provisional Government. Since the appearance of Miliukov's thinly veiled charge of a masonic key to the political behavior of the Kerensky-Tereshchenko-Konovalov-Nekrasov bloc in the Provisional Government2 and the subsequent appearance of testimony by E. D. Kuskova and Alexander Kerensky, political freemasonry is a topic that can hardly be ignored in future reconstructions of this critical period in Russian history. Available firsthand evidence about the movement, however, is incredibly limited3 and raises as many questions as it answers. Although attempts have been made to assess the role of freemasonry in connection with the fall of autocracy and afterward, most recently and importantly by George Katkov,4 I believe that these attempts are not only obviously provisional but somewhat premature as well. This may be shown by mentioning a few of the unsolved problems raised by the existing evidence.