AN INTERVIEW WITH THE HISTORIAN OF RUSSIAN FREEMASONRY, ANDREY SERKOV

In the following, will present to readers' attention an interview with the historian of Russian freemasonry, Andrey Ivanovich Serkov. I would like to thank him because he accepted once more to meet and to discuss.

For russian click here and for romanian click here.

Good day Andrey Ivanovich. Please tell us how it all began and why is your work so closely connected with the history of Freemasonry? 

This topic has been a concern for me for more than 30 years, but it all started when I was a first-year student at the Moscow University and I was entrusted with a lecture about Novicov's life and activity. From that moment on, since I started to read Novicov's papers, there are 30 years already. Thus, the interest in this movement appeared, and I have come to make this subject the fundamental of my work.

Alright, but why precisely masonry and not other aspects of Novicov's life and creation?

In the begining, to a large extent, I was interested in the December movement, a subject that supports the interest of many, but the masonic aspect and the activity of the formation of the December movement organizations have not been analyzed. There is only a small article by Academician Drujinin "The Masonic Signs of P.I.Pestel". And although more than 120 of the December movement members were masons, no one has looked at this closely. That's why I decided to deal with this topic, to clarify how it was constituted and what were the connections to masonry. During the study of the December movement member’s connections with masonry, the latter supported my interest, and then I even wrote the diploma paper on the subject and, consequently, the dissertation as candidate for science.

In your books you rely on research almost exclusively on archive materials. You refer to an impressive number of documents. How long have you worked in the archive institutions? 

As I have already mentioned, I have been working in archives for more than 30 years, this assuming more than 19,000 biographies, trying every day to come up with new additions, corrections to the biographies of the freemasons, new names appear, data about kinship, about work. That's why I strive, as the writer Iurii Oleşa said, "No day without a row". So did I. I try everyday to bring a little detail, something new about my character biography. Regarding strictly to the writing work, the gathering of information for the Dictionary (Russian Freemasonry, 1731-2000. Encyclopaedic Dictionary), it took 17 years of work in the archives, with the original documents.

Do you plan a new edition of the dictionary?

I hope, given that the number of biographies, especially for the 18th century, has increased considerably, and of course, in the meantime, more details about the biographies of the masons have become known. Probably we will have to divide up all the information and so we will get about 6 books. But these are just provisional plans, while I continue to complete my database of the masons biographies, not knowing whether a new edition of the Dictionary will follow. This depends on the publisher.

What are you working on at the moment? 

At the moment we have prepared an article and two books that are in the final stage of technical processing. Together with the historian Roman Alexandrovich Gorodniţkii, we have prepared the publication of all Masonic rituals of the 18th century, which will be published in a separate volume. But not only this, there will also be the ritual works that Novicov worked with. The second project is another collaboration book with Roman Alexandrovich Gorodniţkii, dedicated to the history of martinism and marxism relations with the Freemasons. I also prepared an article in which I present all the known, but still unpublished masonic papers of Gheorghi Victorovici Adamovici, poet, a well-known literary critic.

During your archival researches, did you have the chance to find something unusual?

We had a similar case. Being in Paris, I found a document which, so to speak, amazed me. For me, the alchemical concerns of the masons were legends, but then I faced such a document that shattered my doubts about the reality of these facts. Major Commander of the Supreme Russian Council in France was Alexandr Feodorovici Keller. To some extent, he can be considered as the adoptive son of the father of the sinarchic movement, mason, Alexandre Saint-Yves d'Alveydre. Saint-Yves d'Alveydre gave Keller the results of his alchemical experiences. Keller in turn would have been sewing a gold sample obtained as a result of these alchemical experiences in his 33th grade masonic ribbon. He was a famous occultist, he did excavations in Syria and Egypt. And before he died, in the last days of his life, he transmitted this ribbon with the sample of the alchemic gold, to the new Grand Commander of the Supreme Council, Nicolai Laurentievich Goleevskii which, after the Second World War, returned to Russia, trying to bring back masonry to life. Tentative, which obviously, was a failure. But even that the fact that these people had connections with alchemical experiences being already masons of the 20th century, for me it was a discovery that survived the legend. That is why this fact remains, and for me this was something unexpected and extraordinary. I couldn’t find the ribbon anymore, as he returned to Russia. He was a military attaché of the American Embassy in France, then he joined the movement of the Soviet patriots returning to Russia. Instead I found and I keep, Goleevskii's 33 degree patent, which is in a poor state. Unfortunately, he did not have direct succesors and other documents were not preserved. It was only by chance to find this patent at some acquaintances of mine. 

In which other archive institutions did you work outside of Russia?

Not as many as much as I would have liked. I have been able to do research in France and the US for a short period of time. But due to the fact that in the West this subject is studied very intensively and the materials are published constantly, I have the opportunity to find out new dates. We must keep in mind that the fascists founded an impressive museum of "Jewish-masonry" and, after the war, in a Czech castle, this huge archive of masonic documents from all over the Europe was found. At first fascists gathered these documents in order to study them, and then the entire archive was transported to Moscow and kept in the NKVD's Special Archives. Now, a large amount of these documents have been taken into the custody of the Russian State Military Archives. I mean, I didn’t even have to travel too much, as all these documents are in Moscow. Now these documents are no longer in the "Secret" compartment, and I managed to work with them.

Andrey Ivanovich, thank you! Till we meet again...