Constructive Spirit: Quakers in Revolutionary Russia, a new book by David McFadden and Claire Gorfinkel (and a chapter by Sergei Nikitin) is a fascinating case study in building a holistic Friends mission in a time of crisis. The book touches on important themes that relate to the present "Evangelism and the Friends Testimonies" forum, including:
If we say too much about our spiritual motives, will we still be acceptable to the Bolsheviks? How will we respond when the people we help ask us about why we are there? (Interestingly, the AFSC and British Quaker workers didn't seem to be shy about using Christian language to describe their motives.)
Can we operate a school with the compulsory Soviet requirement of atheism? Is it good enough that they tell us informally they won't enforce it in our case?
How much assistance and coordination from the US government can we accept? (The US did not recognize the Soviet government at the time, so some accommodation with the government seemed necessary to get past official restrictions.)
Later this year, Quaker Life plans to print my review of this book. In the meantime, here's a brief note I prepared for the Friends House Moscow newsletter:
Constructive Spirit: Quakers in Revolutionary Russia
by David McFadden and Claire Gorfinkel, with an overview by Sergei Nikitin
Intentional Productions, 2004, 232 pages, $16.95
Friends House Moscow inherits a long legacy of Quaker involvement in Russia. One of the best ways of learning about this legacy is by reading the new book, Constructive Spirit: Quakers in Revolutionary Russia.
Although the focus of this book is the joint British-American Friends service work of 1916-18 and 1921-27, the authors summarize earlier episodes of Quaker-Russian contact, dating back to Peter the Great and including Friends' intervention in the gathering clouds of the Crimean War.
Constructive Spirit goes on to describe the nearly epic story of Quaker response to the economic collapse and famines of the First World War and the revolutionary/civil war era. Many Friends may have no idea of the scale of this involvement. At their peak, Quaker service teams were keeping as many as 397,000 people alive in the area between Samara and Orenburg, a thousand miles southeast of Moscow, centering on the town of Buzuluk. Friends ran a thousand feeding centers, a hospital, over 40 malaria clinics, and a number of children's homes; they negotiated with their own governments, with the shifting cast of Soviet bureaucrats, with local officials; they taught tractor mechanics, bought and sold horses, organized employment, and advocated passionately for Russian relief among variously supportive and skeptical home-office Quaker leaders, all in the service of (in the words of the AFSC's director, Wilbur Thomas) "a Christian message of goodwill...."
Sergei Nikitin's introductory chapter provides a historical summary and gives an overall context for this service. Succeeding chapters describe the medical, famine-relief and reconstruction phases of the work, as well as the political, public-relations and interpersonal dilemmas involved. The cooperation and conflicts between the American Friends Service Committee and Friend Herbert Hoover, and the occasional clashes of philosophies and personalities within the relief teams, illustrate perennial dilemmas of emergency relief ministry. This book is the successful culmination of years of dedicated research and writing, and is highly recommended.
Johan Maurer (clerk of the board of Friends House Moscow)
This page is moderated by Johan Maurer as part of the "Evangelism and the Friends Testimonies" project, supported during the academic year 2003-04 by the Ferguson Quaker Fellowship program of Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre. Johan has a minute of service from Reedwood Friends Church.
