Restored from Ashes. The Album of the Beijing Ecclesiastic Mission from the Archive of Baron F. R. Osten-Sacken

In this section of the special issue of the Bulletin of the Historical Society of St. Petersburg Theological Academy dedicated to the history of Orthodoxy in the Far East, photographs are published – some of them for the first time – from the album “Russian Ecclesiastical Mission. Beijing, 1904”. At present, this album is kept in the Russian State Historical Archive of Ancient Documents in the collection of Baron Fyodor Romanovich Osten-Sacken (RGADA. Coll. 1385. Box 1. Item 1943). It is assumed that such an album exists in more than one copy. Most likely, the albums were sent as gifts to various persons who took an active part in the affairs of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Beijing. The album is unique in that it contains photographs of newly built ecclesiastical mission buildings in China. The former buildings of the northern courtyard of the mission, as is known, were destroyed in 1900 during the Boxer Rebellion. The new buildings were rebuilt through the efforts of the head of the mission, Bishop (later metropolitan) Innocent (Figurovsky).