St. Andrew's Church in Moscow is a community of Christians who seek to
- nurture the development of our faith through an Anglican form of worship, providing regular services which communicate the Gospel of Christ;
- apply our Christian beliefs to our daily lives;
- develop a community to support each other while living in Moscow;
- encourage ecumenical initiatives and activities;
- serve the community
History of St Andrew's
Some time after the building of the church, the architect B. V. Freidenberg was given the project of building a two-storey house for the incumbent of the church to live in. On the lateral wall under the plaster image of St. George and the heraldic symbols of England, Scotland and Ireland - rose, thistle and clover - it is possible to make out the following inscription: "Built for St. Andrew's church in memory of Robert McGill by his widow. AD 1894".
Moscow's Anglican Church was not only a place of prayer and religious services but also a club, the centre of the community. In the church building were a library, a room for meetings, and a place for archives. A secure room was built at the top of the tower, in which members of the community kept their valuables - valuables that were lost at the time of the October Revolution. The incumbent of the church informed London that representatives of the new authorities had visited him and had taken away 126 boxes and 193 thousand roubles. The incumbent was imprisoned several times, but managed to survive and leave for Great Britain.
The First World War directly affected Moscow's British community - more than 85 of its members served in the Army in battle. In Moscow Britons organised a British hospital, in which more than 1300 Russian wounded were treated, and also cooked more than 800 thousand free dinners for refugees.
In the fighting of October 1917, troops of the Provisional Government advanced along Bolshoy Thernishevsky and Bryusov streets in the direction of the Mossoviet. The Bolsheviks fixed up a machine-gun on the highest edifice, St. Andrew's church tower, to prevent the troops' advance. The Bolsheviks were dislodged on the 29th October 1917. The incumbent wrote that when he came out of the basement after six days had passed, he saw two big pools of blood and the court was covered by machine-gun and hand-gun cartridge-cases.
The Church functioned for some time after the October revolution - the last record dates back to 1920 when on April 11th Franc Albert and Helene Balakov were married, but it is possible that services continued unofficially for some time after this. The church was then closed and only recently, from July 14th 1991, have services been held here again.
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