The Kelep family. Photo: Courtesy of Sergei Nikitin.
‘I had long ago desired to know the truth about you.’
Early British Friends knew all about persecution but the Russian story is less familiar. Sergei Nikitin tells the tale of the railroadman whose enquiry about Quakers eventually led to his execution
In 1999, when I was working for Friends House Moscow (FHM), we decided to rekindle the historic Quaker connection with the city of Buzuluk, where Quaker aid missions worked during the first world war, the Russian civil war and during the terrible famine in the 1920s.
I got involved in setting up a computer class at the sanatorium for children with long-term heart diseases. It was exciting: an American had approached FHM offering a shipment of second-hand computers for Russian kids, and I was doing 100 deals to arrange for the computers to be delivered to a remote Russian town. Eventually everything worked out well. The computers were delivered without even customs fees required.
The head of the sanatorium was extremely puzzled by my role in this business. He stared at me in total bewilderment when I explained that there was no material profit for me. A teacher told me: ‘You know, Victor Ivanovich thinks you are either mad or you get some profit from this business, but he cannot understand what it is.’ But I was – and I still am – only very happy that sick children could get some computer skills while they were spending weeks and months at the sanatorium.
Then I recalled a story I came across some time prior to my work for FHM.
Browsing through the documents at the Quaker archives, I found an interesting letter, which I copied. It was an English translation of a letter addressed to Quakers and originally written in Russian.
It said:
To the Society of Friends
It has long ago been a day dream to know what represents of itself the Society of Friends called Quakers. The only things I knew about them is what I have read about them in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. But this did not satisfy me. I have heard many different opinions with regard to the question why you are feeding the hungering of Russia. Some people pretended you would receive in remuneration for your relief work some Russian gold, or Russia will have to give up Kamchatka to America. Others denied it and thought we were helped just by such workers as we ourselves are. However, I personally did not believe in any of these explanations as I see that all people not excluding our politicians are partial and unjust, seeking only to maintain their power and position.
I had long ago desired to know the truth about you, but I did not know of whom to inquire, and I did not dare to apply to you directly thinking that you had no time to spare on such trifles. But today, I have heard that you answer willingly all questions regarding aims and problems of your Society and therefore I beg you if possible to make the above-mentioned questions clear to me. If you have some pamphlets, please send them to me, if not, please give me a little brief information on your aims, aspirations, measures and ways of spreading out your belief, your attitude towards politics and your general ideas on the world, on Christ, on God, etc. I shall be deeply grateful for your letter.
(signed) Sergei Kelep
May 12 1923
Mechanic in Charge of Water Pump. Station Novo-Sergeevka, Tashkent Railroad, Russia.
As there was no original Russian letter at the archives, I thought it might be a public relations move by the Quakers: answering a letter they’d never received. Yes, the answer was there too. It was in English:
Dear Russian Friend
I have been asked by the Quakers to answer your letter of May 12th, in which you ask information about their aims and aspirations, fundamental beliefs and reasons for working in Russia.
First of all the Society of Friends or Quakers is a religious society, one of the many Protestant Sects found in England and America. Since its beginnings in England in the middle of the 17th century the Society of Friends has consistently opposed war whatever its provocations may have been, holding that no one who tried to follow the teaching of Jesus could kill a fellow man. And so, during the last great war, the Quakers in both England and America took their stand on the side of peace. Many young men when called to the army refused to go, believing that the inner law of their conscience was above the authority of the state. Of course, many suffered imprisonment and torture for following this course.
The Society of Friends, however, realised that it could not take a wholly negative attitude, but must express its belief in the brotherhood of all people by doing constructive work as opposed to the destruction of war. It therefore sent over a unit to France to do relief work among the civilian population driven away from their homes in the war zone, and after the armistice, it helped in the reconstruction and rehabilitation of the peasants in the devastated areas, after it sent Missions to Austria, Poland and Germany to give help to the suffering people of those lands. For the Quakers recognize no enemies and no enemy countries. Then came the terrible famine here in Russia which you have witnessed. The fact that people were dying brought the Quakers here. The nationality, religion and political beliefs of the people had no weight one way or the other.
So you see the Quakers are simply trying to put in practice the way of living which Jesus taught. Their form of worship is very simple, and their place of worship has few or no decorations. They claim to have no creed, for a creed ties and binds. But the heart of their belief may be expressed in this: There is an inner light in every man which lights his way thru life. Man finds God within his own heart and need not depend on the intermediary of ceremony or a priest.
This belief in the inner light allows the widest sympathy and toleration of people following a different faith, for all ceremonies and creeds are but the projections in the outer world of the more significant world within. The Society of Friends as an organization has no interest in politics although its members of course have their own individual political convictions. It also seeks to maintain an international outlook in all its activities.
The Quakers receive no money or concession from the Russian Government and receive no salary for their work. All food, clothing and medical relief which is given to the Russian people is a free gift from the people of America and is administered by the Quakers.
The Quakers do not actively try to increase their membership. They are interested in bringing a new spirit into the world rather than building up an organization.
I hope this brief message gives an answer to your questions. We appreciate the interest you show in the meaning of our work.
Very sincerely yours
Edwin Vail
There were no follow-up documents in the archive – the documents that would tell us what happened after the correspondence between Sergei Kelep and the Quakers. My Google search brought some results: Sergei Semenovich Kelep, from the Poltava Cossacks, really lived in Novo-Sergeevka and worked there as a machinist of a water pump at the railway station. He owned a house, a well-equipped metalwork shop, and brought up seven children. Sergei Kelep was a deeply religious person, for which he paid. I think that the correspondence with the Quakers worsened his situation a few years later.
I also found Sergei Kelep’s diary online (I am not surprised he was interested in the Quakers).
He wrote:
So, Comrade Lenin, you are deeply mistaken with your Soviet power: despite your sincere desire to give the people good, you failed… It is not enough to increase one’s salary and share other people’s property to make an individual happy and satisfied. It is necessary to teach people how to love and they will not kill each other. If individuals are able to feel love, they would share what they have with the poor. But this the most important law is missing and you cannot issue a decree demanding everyone should love others.
These kind of thoughts were dangerous in Soviet Russia. On 28 January 1930 Sergei Kelep was arrested, and on 27 April 1930 he was convicted on charges of ‘participating in the Novo-Sergeevka counterrevolutionary organisation engaged in the preparation of an anti-Soviet armed insurrection’ by the political police, the GPU. The sentence was capital punishment, but the execution was replaced by imprisonment for ten years.
The Orenburg human rights organisation Memorial reports that 259 clergymen and ordinary people were arrested on this case. Of these, fifty people were shot. The rest were sentenced to various prison terms and concentration camps.
Sergei Semenovich Kelep said at his questioning by the GPU: ‘I believe that the collectivisation and the Bolshevik power seek to strangle religion with the help of the anti-religious propaganda.’
A report submitted to the GPU by a secret informer stated:
The members of the Novo-Sergeevka counter-revolutionary organization believed that fasting it is not enough, in addition to that good deeds also have to be done. The counter-revolutionaries thought that it was impossible to observe indifferently how people groan. Of course it means that they were preparing for an uprising against the Soviet state.
Having served his term in the prisoners’ camps, Sergei Kelep was arrested again – on 2 August 1937. Now the troika, under the NKVD of the USSR in the Orenburg region, sentenced him to be shot for anti-Soviet agitation and sabotage. On 1 September 1937, Sergei Semenovich Kelep was shot. He was ‘rehabilitated’ (pardoned) fifty-two years later, in 1989.
Coming back to my Buzuluk story, I felt that the director belonged to the generation that survived the hardship of Joseph Stalin’s purges. Communist power did not select for goodness. I strongly believed that the new generation, the sick kids at the sanatorium fiddling with the second-hand computers, would see things differently.
They would know that it is normal to trust people, to help each other, to care about those whom you may not know. And I hope they will keep that light of trust and love in their hearts, cured at the sanatorium.
Comments
Thank you for a fascinating article by Sergei Nikitin. In it a Quaker, asked to explain what being a Quaker is all about, closes his letter of explanation with the following words:
‘The Quakers do not actively try to increase their membership. They are interested in bringing a new spirit into the world rather than building up an organisation.’
I wonder if a 21st century friend would say that?
By lizrees@btinternet.com on 13th June 2019 - 12:47
A fascinating article. Thank you.
By doreen.osborne@outlook.com on 14th June 2019 - 9:35
A moving and inspiring story! I’m so glad you have brought it to our attention. Thank you.
By AnniqueS on 15th June 2019 - 14:09
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