The book of the famous Masonic scholar V.S. Brachev is devoted to one of the most difficult problems of Russian history associated with the activities of Masonic and Paramason communities in the 20th century. Unlike previous publications on this topic, the author made an attempt to comprehensively cover the topic: along with political Freemasonry, communities of an occult-mystical nature were studied in detail in the work, before that, as a rule, they did not attract the close attention of historians.