Basil Kliuchevsky's study of Russian history contains the following passage showing what the Church practice of charity meant to Russian society and government.
Over the course of centuries in ancient Russia, society, guided by the Church, diligently strove to understand and fulfill the second of the principal commandments in which were summarized the Law and the Prophets: the commandment to love one's neighbor. In times of social disorder, in times of insufficient security for the wronged, the application of this commandment was understood in one principal way: love for one's neighbor was to be expressed first of all in the podvig, the spiritual struggle of compassion. Its basic requirement was acknowledged to be personal almsgiving. Such a concept had its foundation in practical ethics. Stressing of the need for such a podvig infused every method of spiritual teaching. According to Kliuchevsky, to love one's neighbor was to feed the hungry, to give drink to the thirsty, to visit the prisoner. In practice, love of man meant love for the needy. In ancient Russia, charity was not so much a method of supporting good social order, as it was an essential condition for personal moral health. It was more greatly needed by the lover of the needy than by the needy. The healing power of almsgiving rested not so much in wiping away the tears of the sufferer by allotting to him part of one's estate, but in seeing those tears and sharing in that suffering, and thereby experiencing that feeling which is called brotherly love. When two hands met - one asking and the other offering alms for the sake of Christ, it was difficult to say which conferred the greater charity on the other. The need of the one and the help of the other merged in mutual brotherly love.
This is why ancient Rus' understood and valued only personal, direct, almsgiving - charity .given from the hand of one to the hand of the other. Such charity was hidden from the eyes of bystanders. Moreover, the left hand was not to know what the right was doing. The poor man was his benefactor's best petitioner before God, his intercessor, his spiritual benefactor. In ancient times it was said: "[Men) enter into Heaven through sacred charity.... The poor man receives nourishment from the rich, and the rich man finds salvation through the prayers of the poor." The benefactor had to see with his own eyes the suffering which he eased in order to receive spiritual help. The indigent had to see his benefactor in order to know for whom to pray. In ancient Russia it was the practice of the czars on the eves of great feast days, to go early in the morning to the prisons and almshouses and, with their own hands, distribute alms to those under care or under arrest. They also visited the poor who lived alone. Just as it was difficult to study and heal a disease if using not a diseased body itself but a drawing or a model of it, so did impersonal almsgiving seem ineffectual.
Because of this understanding of the meaning of acts of charity, in ancient Rus' poverty was not considered an economic burden on the people, or an ulcer upon the social order. Rather, it was considered to be one of the primary resources for the moral education of the people, with the Church standing as a practical institute of good social behavior. Charity was a necessary complement to the act of Church services a practical consequence of the rule that faith without deeds is dead.