A.O.S.A. 2004 ANNUAL REPORT

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This beautiful city is celebrating. Peter the Great founded the city intending that it should be for Russia the gateway to the West. The fast flowing river Neva passes through the city, parts are built on islands as there are tributaries and canals besides the main river. Fine bridges give one ready access to all areas, the gardens open spaces with Birch and Oak show off the many great buildings at their best. Many of the churches and museums have their spires and onion domes decorated in gold. This is the Venice of the north.

Ours was a repeat family visit. In 1992 food was hard to come by, with rationing and little in the shops; now food is plentiful supermarkets provide all your needs and the open market stalls are full of every type of fruit and vegetable. It was a great joy to be with the friends we had first met in Yorkshire in 1989. They took us to Palaces and museums we had not seen in ’92,the most notable being Peter’s summer palace with its gold gilded statues and fountains on a hillside, trees and shrubs in autumn colours, hooded crows in abundance and wee red squirrels prepared to eat nuts from your hand. Inside the Palace, armed with protective shoe covers, we hardly had time to appreciate the art collection, the furniture and history in each room we entered. The quality of the display though smaller was equal to that of the famous Hermitage .

We travelled to this Palace by Hydrofoil on the south shore of the Baltic.

The streets are broad, and even over some of the bridges there may be eight lines of traffic, so it is an exciting experience to be driven fast amongst some new vehicles but many old Ladas too, not to mention the trams and trolley buses .

We enjoyed a visit to the ballet celebrating a 21st, seeing Swan Lake. Sitting above the orchestra and some few feet from the stage itself was a treat indeed. Perhaps the most memorable and moving evening was a visit to the Philharmonic Hall where we listened to a rendering of Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony, composed during the wartime siege of 41/43. To be part of an audience of well over a thousand young and old was something very special.

When we were about to leave for home Natalia Uspenskaya (Natasha) who is the lady we first met in ’89, and head of the family, showed me a lecture she had given to her colleagues in the Academy of Sciences where she is Professor of Linguistics. She kindly did a translation; it tells of the Quakers in St. Petersburg. Peter the Great had visited Britain in 1697, working in the London docks incognito to discover why the west was so much in advance of Russia industrially. He went to a Friends’ Meeting and also met William Penn. Over 100 years later Tsar Alexander 1st welcomed Daniel Wheeler a Yorkshire Quaker and farmer to St. Petersburg to drain the marshes around the city. He took a surveyor, tools he would need, some cattle and sheep and a few Quaker families , some fifty folk in all. Over 50,000 acres were drained during ten years after 1820 with the help of some Russian soldiers and labour. This work made it possible for the city to expand to its present size. The introduction to Natasha’s lecture is for me as a Friend most challenging , I quote:

“The ‘Religious Society of Friends’ is better known as Quakers nowadays. This nickname has stuck fast since the middle of the 17th. century. It was given to the followers of George Fox, who being a devout Christian, as all Quakers are, proclaimed his understanding of authentic religion as not concerned with church order and dogma, but with spiritual values to be discovered deep in the human personality.

There were many people who, in spite of the strictness and severe persecution for blasphemy and heresy by medieval Christianity, had been seeking religious freedom, 'the inward light of Christ.' They wanted to have direct communion with God without the mediation of church or priests. So it can be said that for George Fox and his followers the quest for truth started with the awareness of values known in their personal experience. For them Christian qualities matter much more than Christian dogmas.

Quakers have always been essentially practical in their approach to religion. Their corporate conviction that there is that of God in every one has been the continuing basis of their deep concern for peace and social justice; their interest in prisoners; the proper care of the mentally sick and their concern for oppressed people everywhere.

The core of the Society of Friends life is the Meeting for Worship. Quakers meet together to acknowledge the religious values and to share their love and care for one another. Quakers are modest, good and reasonable people, very friendly and caring.

To understand and to feel the essence of Quakers’ belief one should attend the meeting several times, to sit with everybody in silence for an hour to listen to what is occasionally said by this or that Friend, to shake hands after the meeting is over and you’ll feel that is exactly what you need, that such religious outlook is reasonable and spiritual.”

Martyn Gaudie (1935-38)

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