Freemasons takes the headlines in The MoscowTimes' March 28nd article with masonry's Russian lodges.

The headline states, "Today's Freemasons of a More Modest Order" and it reads, "Aspiring for world supremacy? Then the Russian Freemasons are not the group to join.  "Many walk away disappointed when they don't find buttons to operate the world behind my armchair," Russia's top Freemason, former presidential candidate Andrei Bogdanov, said jokingly in his office in central Moscow.

Freemasonry -- whose obscure origins have been traced to sometime between the building of King Solomon's temple in the 10th century B.C. and the 16th century A.D. -- once boasted an elite following in Russia, including 18th- and 19th-century nobility, poet Alexander Pushkin, architect Vasily Bazhenov and war heroes Alexander Suvorov and Mikhail Kutuzov.

These days, however, it is a more modest order. Indeed, the secret fraternity does not count any billionaires or senior politicians as members, said three Freemasons and two historians.

"There are people close to the ruling circle among us, but they are in the second tier, and you will rarely see them on TV," Bogdanov said, declining to provide any names.

Most members are middle-class intellectuals, retired military officers and small-time businessmen, said Sergei Karpachyov, a historian who has authored several books about Russian Freemasonry..."

...read more of the story in http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&tab=wn&ned=us&q=freemason