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The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers)
has a long association with Russia. In 1654 the Society’s founder, George
Fox, sent an epistle to the then reigning Tsar of Muscovy, Aleksei
Mikhailovich. However, this had no consequences; nor did subsequent episodic
contacts in the 1690s and 1760s. In this period the word ‘Quaker’ occurs in
Russia as elsewhere in Europe as a pejorative term for any religious individual who challenged earthly
powers – prince, priest, parliament – in the name of personal experience of
the divine. At the same time William Penn and his foundation of
Pennsylvania (1682) projected to Europe a quite different Quaker image of upright responsible citizenship.
Quaker connections with Russia blossomed
under Alexander I (ruled 1801-1825), whose evangelical Christian beliefs
matched those of contemporary Friends: especially William Allen, who worked
in Russia with the American Stephen Grellet to promote the Bible Society,
education and prison reform, and Daniel Wheeler and his family who drained
the marshes around St Petersburg and left behind them a Quaker burial
ground, still extant, at Shushary.
In 1854 British Friends sent a mission to
Emperor Nicholas I seeking, unsuccessfully, to avert the Crimean War. Later
they worked with Leo Tolstoi, whose daughter-in-law became a member of the
Society. An important facet of Quaker involvement with
Russia which began at this time was war and famine relief, first carried out in
Russian Finland in the 1850s.
British and American Friends gave
considerable help during the Volga famine of the 1890s, and during and after World War I, the revolutions
and Civil War (1916-mid1920s). The small
Moscow office set up in connection with this
work managed to maintain cooperation with the new Soviet authorities in the
field of health, and survived until 1931.
In the Stalin period contacts were limited
to a few unusual and energetic individuals; after WWII, from 1950 onwards,
the British Friends’ East-West Committee and the American Friends’ Service
Council tried to expand links, with some success, especially in the
Khrushchev years (1956-64). Encounters were organised between scientists,
diplomats, philosophers, young people and religious representatives.
With the advent of perestroika in the
1980s personal and organisational contacts became easier, and American and
British Friends, as well as Quakers in other countries, responded to the
challenge and the new opportunities.
FUM YM supports a group of
seekers in Electrostal. Quaker Peace and Service sent Roswitha and Peter
Jarman as their Representatives. They were followed by Patricia Cockrell and
Chris Hunter. A small Meeting (worship
group) was formed after
1991, which became Moscow Monthly Meeting. Friends House Moscow was
established in 1994.
This brief history is based on a longer academic paper on
The Religious Society of Friends
(Quakers) and Russia,
which can be found here. |
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