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Friends United Meeting |
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May/June 2006
Quaker Book Sent to Chechnyan Schools
By Valery Nicolsky
Chechnya’s school libraries have received a copy of the new Quaker book Dikallin Nitsk (in Russian Sila Dobra; in English The Power of Goodness), published in Moscow with a 3000-copy press run. The book, subtitled Stories of Nonviolence and Reconciliation, has text in three languages—Chechen, Russian and English—and is aimed at students and teachers of English.
This book is the continuation of the same project that published Candles in the Dark in 1999. Stories from the earlier volume form the major part of this new book, to which Chechen translations were added. For English language students, the book provides discussion questions. The endpapers include an illustration by the Ingush artist Ali Khashagulgov and a quotation from the well-known Chechen sheikh Kunta-Khadzhi.
Young people between the ages of 6 and 20, including several from Chechnya’s capital Grozny, provided the illustrations for the individual stories. The idea for the book itself came from a small group of 12-year-olds.
The collection includes an excerpt from poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko’s autobiography, depicting an incident of compassion displayed by Muscovites toward German prisoners in 1944; a story drawn from the Sanctuary movement that assisted Central American refugees in the USA; and a story about the Little Star center in Grozny, helping young people with emotional and physical war injuries. Other stories include one about Patricia Cockrell and colleague Chris Hunter who served under Quaker Peace and Service in Russia beginning in 1994 and one by Mikhail Roshchin, who carried an Orthodox icon at the head of the 1995 Women’s March for Peace, walking through the length of Chechnya, about the 42-day hunger strike outside the Memorial building by Victor Popkov and Alexander Gorbenko in the frigid fall of 1999. Other stories are drawn from literature as well as historical events.
A group of activist believers originally called the Quaker US-USSR Committee were responsible for the new book. Continuing their work beyond the dissolving of the USSR, they changed their name two years ago to the Friends International Library. Johan Maurer, a Quaker minister, and Janet Riley, an activist with 20 years involvement in Russian Quaker publications, took leading roles in the project. Janet Riley was the instigator of the joint publishing project with the Union of Soviet Writers in 1986 that resulted in the collection The Human Experience. Janet Riley is now the coordinator for the Power of Goodness project.
Russian Mikhail Roschin stated that The Power of Goodness is not the last such project planned in Russia. The next book, planned in about two years, will include more stories from Russian children.