Baltic and Russian Methodism Collection

S. T. Kimbrough was the collector of these records.

The Methodist Episcopal Church first entered Russia during the late 19th century. By 1874, a few Finnish men, who were members of the Swedish Annual Conference, felt that the church needed to have a presence in both Finland and Russia. It took ten years for Finland to get their first appointed pastor. Russian Methodism had to wait another five years before any formal activity could be realized. Bishop Charles H. Fowler with Helsinki minister, B. A Carlson, rented a house on Vasili Ostroff in St. Petersburg to start the new mission. By November of that same year, the first Methodist congregation was organized with seven members. All of the workers at that time came from Finland, including Sister Anna Eklund, who aided George A. Simons as the officially appointed missionary to the St. Petersburg work. By 1911, there were nineteen appointments to be filled in western Russia. Two additional congregations were set up in Siberia as well.

During the First World War and Russian Revolution, Methodist Episcopal charges had only six pastors. Simons left the field in October 1918 to which Sister Eklund stepped in and filled the resultant leadership vacuum. Later bishops John Nuelsen and Raymond Wade visited the work on a haphazard basis until 1939. Once the Second World War really began taking its toll on the Soviet population, the Methodist Church faded into obscurity. A small Methodist remnant survived and was later reinvigorated in 1989 with the General Board of Global Ministries Russian Initiative.

Southern Methodism Mission to Russia was divided between Harbin, Manchuria, Nikolsk, Siberia, in the east along with Klarysew, Poland, in the west and whose work primarily focused on the White Russians. The Harbin work was an outgrowth of the established mission work in Korea. When native Korean Southern Methodists migrated north to flee from Japanese occupation, they tended to settle in the Harbin area where many Russians lived as well. The mission was officially established in 1921 under the leadership of Bishop Walter Lambuth. At that time he sent W.G. Cram, J. S. Ryang and Chung Chai Duk to Manchuria as full time missionaries. Under their leadership the work flourished to a point that in 1924 more than one thousand persons were members of the church with an additional five thousand in regular attendance.

By 1927, Soviet officials barred the presiding bishop from visiting the area to give episcopal oversight. All of the workers were now from Korea who focused their efforts on Korean speaking congregations. The work in Siberia took off after Bishop Boaz sent George Erwin to Vladivostok in 1921. Erwin later transferred to Harbin because of the same Soviet pressure that faced the Manchurian mission. Here he ministered among the ethnic Russians with great success until 1927 when it was dismantled. Korean congregations continued to struggle for another ten years.

Polish work began as an extension of the 1918-1919 Centenary Commission's effort to give relief to war ravaged eastern Poland through preaching and social missionand money for Methodist missions. The mission was technically started on June 5, 1919 when the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, voted it an official mission work. Relief became the primary objective of the mission due to deprivation from World War 1. Unlike its filial work in the east, the Polish work survived and continues to this day.