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Friends United Meeting |
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January 1998
Friends Today in the Former Soviet Union
By Tom Anthony
Foreign Quakers who came to Russia helped drain swampland on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, assisted Russian pacifists to emigrate, published and distributed Bibles in Russia, and fed the hungry in the Famine. Friends met with several of the Russian Tsars, and Peter the Great attended a Friends Meeting when he visited England. Old records even tell of small groups of "Kvakeri" appearing and being suppressed in Siberia, although it is difficult to verify whether they actually held Friends' beliefs or were simply labeled as such because they did not agree with Russian church authorities.
Moscow is now home to an active Monthly Meeting. It's under the care of the European and Middle Eastern Section of FWCC, as we don't have our own Yearly Meeting. There are smaller worship groups in St. Petersburg and Novgorod in the northwest, Elektrostal and Izhevsk to the east. Seekers are widely scattered around Russia. Outside of Russia are worship groups in Kaunas, Lithuania and Pereslavl-Khmelnitsky, Ukraine, as well as individual seekers in Lithuania, Estonia, Belarus and even Georgia.
Moscow Meeting has a yearly retreat each summer. Russian Young Friends have held summer gatherings for the past four years, as well as smaller New Year's gatherings. (See Epistle of Russian Young Friends Gathering, page 9.)
Local Friends and Friends from abroad have been active in publishing. The Quaker Former Soviet Union Committee, formerly the Quaker US/USSR Committee, was formed in 1983. It publishedThe Human Experience in 1989, which Russian writer Daniil Granin called in his foreword "apparently the first joint anthology of works by Soviet and American writers." It included prose and poetry, half by Soviet writers and half by American writers, and was simultaneously published in Russian and English.
The Committee has since translated and published Thomas Kelly's A Testament of Devotion and Douglas Steere's Quaker Spirituality. Most recently they and Friends United Press co-published an impressive hardcover Russian translation of the Journal of John Woolman. They are now raising funds and gathering children's artwork for a bilingual edition of an expanded, illustrated version of the children's book Lighting Candles in the Dark. It will be sold or donated to schools for use in English classes.
Moscow Meeting has published a Russian-language newsletter since 1992. This past year, the Clerk of Moscow Meeting, Sasha Gorbenko created Spiritual Circle, an English-language periodical combining local and foreign writing. Maxim Nilov, a young Friend from Elektrostal, is also creating his own Quaker periodical.
Quakers in Russia today are also involved in Quaker social witness. Many of us protested the war in Chechnya. In 1995, for example, several members of Moscow Meeting participated in the Mothers' March for Compassion, with Buddhist monks and Russian and Chechen women bringing a message of peace to Grozny, Chechnya. Some of us are also active in efforts to bring about a law on alternative service for conscientious objectors to military service. The Russian constitution guarantees alternative service, but the legislature has delayed implementing it. We also work to support the draft-age young men who are victimized by this Catch-22.
Tatiana Pavlova, the first Russian Friend since the forming of the USSR in 1918 and essentially the "mother" of Moscow Meeting, has a concern for a small group of elderly Russians. Inflation has rendered their pensions too small to live on, and many of them also have health problems. Tatiana responded by choosing a limited group of eight people in their seventies and eighties.
She has brought each of these older people a small amount of money every month for the past five years. But more importantly, she checks on them regularly, showing them that someone cares about them. Tatiana is constantly in search of funding, usually from abroad. For these people, Tatiana's life truly does speak.
Tom Anthony teaches English in Moscow, where he has lived for more than five years. He recently transferred his membership from New Haven (Conn.) Friends to Moscow Monthly Meeting.
Copyright (c) 1998 Friends United Meeting
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