ABSTRACT
In May of 1821, Alexander Pushkin joined a Masonic lodge. It was a secret society, but it didn’t entail any sort of opposition. Inzov, the governor-general of the kray, was also a member of the lodge, as well as his officials and officers who belonged to truly secret societies. Charles Saint-Pierre’s ideas about justice were obvious and attractive, but in practice could scarcely have been realized. The Abbe considered that governments, while perfecting themselves, would gradually establish eternal and general peace on earth. In the traditional consciousness of literary critics, the image that Pushkin had grown up with of a victorious Russian army, one that had reached Paris, hung over him. For him the looming war was supposedly a repeat of the expedition to Europe, and even though it was into southern Europe, the possibility of going there with the army was moreover completely legal and even heroic.
