This article, which is a historical and critical commentary, presents a translation of the French-language text of Prince A. S. Menshikov’s note on secret societies of the late 1810s, previously unknown to researchers. It is a copy made by N. K. Schilder, a historian of the early twentieth century, and has been preserved in the library of the Winter Palace. In historiography, the figure of Prince A. S. Menshikov is mentioned in the context of the activities of the Order of Russian Knights, one of the first secret political organisations. Even though the Order did not leave any traces of its activities, contemporaries cited the names of its members, among which A. S. Menshikov was named by S. P. Trubetskoy. At the same time, any personal evidence that would refute or prove Menshikov’s involvement in the Order or at least contain his own assessments of the political activities of secret societies is unknown. The published text is a copy made by Schilder of Menshikov’s unknown auto-document from 1819, which, apparently, was presented by the prince to his superior, P. M. Volkonsky, prince, chief of the General Staff of His Imperial Majesty. Schilder called the list of this text a note, however, apparently the historian’s terminology was applied quite arbitrarily in this case. The original is entitled Some Reflections to Consolidate My Ideas about Secret Societies. At the beginning of the text, Menshikov poses questions about the role and place of secret societies in Russia’s socio-political life. In the answers he expresses a negative assessment of the activities of secret organisations of a purely Masonic or political nature. The prince writes about several possible ways to reduce the influence of secret societies and believes that with the strength of autocratic power that exists in Russia, they could be banned altogether. In the accompanying article, assumptions are made about the eventual context of the origin of the 1819 note and its functioning in 1822.
Ksenia Donik (Mon,) studied this question.