Authors

Anastasiia Akulich¹;  ¹ University of Leeds, UK

Discussion

The 1910s saw the end of both the Qing (1911-1912) and the Romanov (1917) Empires. In their aftermath, came civil wars and disruption. This paper is going to examine the case of how one institution, the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in China, tried to navigate these fractured political landscapes and redefine its position within them. By examining the commemorations of the mission’s 200th (1912) and 250th (1935) anniversaries, this paper will demonstrate how the mission rewrote its history, even changing the date of its foundation from formation of the ‘first’ official mission in 1712 to the capture of the first Russian Orthodox Christians and priest brought to Beijing in 1685. The study of historical narratives reveals not only the changes in relation to political institutions, the fading of connections to the Russian Empire, the need to root the mission in the Republic of China and relate it to the histories of the White Russian emigration, but also the shifting power balance within the mission itself. In the wake of the Russian Civil War, hundreds of thousands of refugees from the former Russian Empire came into the Republic of China, significantly increasing the number of Orthodox Christians and clergy in the country. This change, however, also brought about a debate over the mission’s purpose and the role of Russian and Chinese Christians and clergy within the mission.