Russian freemasonry

In all his activities, as journalist, publisher and historian, Novikov's desire had been not to act in isolation. Preface after preface had called on Russian writers and patriots to help him in his ventures, and that help had been forthcoming. The journals had drawn the young literary men, many of them graduates of Moscow University, into an embryonic literary society, and the Ancient Russian Library had obliged Novikov to form strong bonds of interest with men like Gerhard Muller and P. K. Khlebnikov. This urge for collectivism had been fostered by Catherine, as was evident in the organisation of the combined literary endeavours of the minute-writers of the Legislative Commission, and of her ‘family’ of satirical periodicals. By acknowledging at every turn the lead given to him by his sovereign, Novikov was showing how abiding an influence were the ancient presumptions of Muscovite centralisation. In Catherine's age the old system of tutelage (opeka) was still alive: indeed it had not really passed from the Russian scene for, as Pypin argued, even the enforced character of the Petrine reforms, although condemned by the Slavophiles for being enforced, was itself the heritage of ancient state practice.