The first appearance of the English organ in Russia is historically documented as in the time of Queen Elizabeth.  It was in 1586 that the English Ambassador Gerome Gorsey recorded in his diary the purchase of an organ and various clavichords built in England for the Tsaritsa Irina Fyodorovna, the sister of Boris Godunov (who reigned 1598--1605).

    From the time of Peter the Great (1682--1725), who took a lively interest in western European culture, organs became widespread, especially in foreign churches, which were built throughout the country.  English organ builders installed instruments in the Anglican churches in St Petersburg (1753, rebuilt by Giacomo Quarenghi in 1814), Moscow, Archangel, etc..  Towards the end of the 1770s the Tsaritsa Catherine II (1762--1796) commissioned an organ from Samuel Green (1740--1796), presumably for Prince Potyomkin in St Petersburg.

    The sole English organ which has survived in its original form, and which was still playable in the mid 1950s, is the Brindley and Foster organ (1877, II/P/23) in the English church in St Petersburg.  There had been two more Brindley and Foster organs in the English churches in Moscow (II/P/19) and Kronstadt (1875), but they were completely destroyed during the imposition of the `new culture' in the USSR.

    Thus by the 1990s in Russia there were no instruments for the authentic performance of the English organ repertoire, as well as no place where one could broaden his knowledge by and in the use of the modern English organ console.