Apollon Karelin

Apollon Andreyevich Karelin was a Russian anarchist activist, writer and mystic. Due to his activism, he faced arrest and internal exile from an early age. In 1905, he fled the Russian Empire to Paris, where he joined the exiled Russian anarchist movement. He became a leading voice of Russian anarchist communism, although he also generated controversy within the movement due to his association with Freemasonry and esoteric mysticism. After the outbreak of the Russian Revolution of 1917, he returned to Russia, where he agitated against the nascent parliamentary system and in favour of an agrarian socialism. After the Bolsheviks seized power, he became a leading figure of Soviet anarchism and was elected to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. In Moscow, he founded a Russian order of the Knights Templar, through which he promoted his philosophy of anarcho-mysticism. His organisations were suppressed in the wake of the Kronstadt rebellion, although after his death, his order continued clandestinely under the leadership of Aleksei Solonovich.