Next year marks its thirtieth anniversary of Friends House Moscow. Its opening marked a period of optimism that followed the thawing of East–West relations, circumstances very different to those today. Those who conduct the work in Russia do so under circumstances that are not only difficult but dangerous. However, we are mindful that, as one Friend has said, “We are standing on the shoulders of giants.” The work done by Quakers in war-torn and disease-ridden Russia more than one hundred years ago was also difficult and dangerous. Their work continues to inspire us. Particularly inspiring is the thought of how generations of Friends have been led to support work with children. In 1922, in a village in south-eastern Russia, one Friend organized workshops that supplied children with warm felt boots. Today, we assist Russian teachers who provide refugee children and vulnerable young people with warm, safe environments in which they can learn.
“Nancy Babb way last spring announced to the peasants in Totskoye volost that she would exchange old clothes for wool. The wool came in quickly. It was handed over to skilled valenki experts who worked for a Quaker ‘special workers pyok’. The Cooperative Society of Totskoye offered its shelves and counters to facilitate the transactions, over five hundred pairs of children valenki is the result. In Bogdanovka volost, to the south, over 1200 children will be valenkied according to a similar scheme carried out under the direction of Miss Babb in cooperation with the local Russian Famine Relief Committee. A thousand more children will be skipping about over the white snows of Pronkinskaya and Baclanovskaya and Markovskaya volosts. ”
— Report from the field excerpted in Sergei Nikitin, Friends and Comrades: How Quakers helped Russians to survive famine and epidemic.
photo credit: Archives of the American Friends Service Committee
And the tradition continues — one of the children in one of our projects practicing writing!