Studies on History of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in China: Basic Directions, Approaches and Prospects

The article discusses the studies on the history of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in China. The main attention is paid to books and articles written by Russian scholars after the first scientific conference “Orthodoxy in the Far East” (1991), which played an important role in the formation of this scholarly trend. Over the past 30 years after the conference, many works on the history of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission and Orthodoxy in China have appeared, some dissertations have been defended, archival documents and other materials have been actively published. Numerous publications of Russian scholars have brought this topic to a new level, turning it into an interdisciplinary direction of modern humanities. In recent years, researchers have begun to study a wide range of issues related to determining the place and role of the Beijing Ecclesiastical Mission in the history of the missionary activity of the Russian Orthodox Church, in the history of Russia-China relations, in the development of spiritual ties between the peoples of Russia and China and in the process of sociocultural interaction between the two countries. These studies comprehensively highlight the Mission’s multifaceted activities in the religious, scientific and diplomatic fields and cover all related topics.