Ivan Vladimirovich Lopukhin (1756-1816) was inspired by the thought of Johan Arndt, Jacob Böhme, Karl von Eckartshausen, and Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin. Lopukhin was a colonel in the Russian army until 1782 and was afterwards appointed president of the Court of Appeals in Moscow. As one of the leading Freemasons and Rosicrucians, he sought to mitigate the cruelties of Russian legislation as much as he was able. When the decree on the free presses was issued by Catherine the Great in 1783, he founded his "I.V. Lopukhin Free Press," enabling him to publish a great number of mystical, Masonic, alchemical and enlightened books in the Russian language. In 1784 he also became a member of the "Typographical Society in Moscow" which had been established by the Moscow Rosicrucians around Nikolai Novikov.