In 1864, the government censor Osip Antonovich Przhet-slavsky retired to his modest estate near Tver to tend his garden and study Freemasonry, a subject that had long fascinated him. Convinced as he was that Freemasons were in league not only with foreign revolutionary and socialist societies but also with terrorists inside Russia, Przhetslavsky spent several years compiling his suspicions,findings and conclusions into a work he called 'The Great Secret of the Freemasons.' He sent the manuscript to his former colleagues in St Petersburg.