Datsan Gunzechoinei – The First Buddhist Monastery in Russia

Datsan Gunzechoinei was built in St. Petersburg between 1909-1915. The initiator of the monastery was the Buryat lama Agvan Dorzhiev (1853-1938) a teacher and close friend of His Holiness The XIII Dalai Lama Thupten Gyatso. Simultaneously with the temple in 1910, a four storey dormitory for monks and pilgrim Buddhists and housekeeping wing were erected.

The architectural design of the temple was made by students of the Institute of Civil Engineers, N.M. Berezovsky and the architect G.V. Baranovsky, who took as a sample a Tibetan temple (Tsogchen-dugan). However the design incurred a sufficient amount of europeanization in the Northern Modern style.

The actual construction was conducted by the architects G.V. Baranovsky and R.A. Berzen (on the final stage), along with the special committee, which comprised prominent Russian orientalists and Buddhism experts V.V.Radlov and S.F. Oldenburg, F.I. Shcherbatskoy, V.L. Kotvich, A.D. Rudnev, duke E.E. Ukhtomsky, artists N.K. Rerikh and V.P. Shneider, as well as the author of the approved project G.V. Baranovsky. Funds for the construction were partly donated by Dorzhiev and the XIII Dalai Lama, partly gathered amongst religious people in Buryatia and Kalmykia.

The temple was sanctified on the 10th of August 1915; after the sanctification the temple was given the Tibetan name: Kun la brtse mdzad thub dbang mchhos ‘byung ba’i gnas (The Well of Holy Teaching of All-Compassive Master-Hermit). The main worship objects were the Burkhan of the Great Buddha, sculpted from clay by Buryat craftsmen, and two alabaster statues brought from Siam – The Sitting Buddha (Shakyamuni) and The Standing Buddha Maytreya, which were located in the lower and upper altars respectively. During the Civil War (1919) the temple wsa vandalized by the Red Army and suffered a pogrom, losing the major part of its relics and hieratic utensils.

For the period of 1922-1937 the templar homestead belonged to Tibetan-Mongolian mission in the USSR, which was patronized by the People's commissariat for Foreign Affairs. The head of mission was plenipotentiary representative of Tibet in the USSR Agvan Dorzhiev.

In 1927 public worship in the Temple was resumed but for a short time only. During the mid-1930's the lamas were arrested and the Buddhist community ceased to exist.

In 1938 the building of the temple and two domestic houses around it were municipalized. Items of Buddhist culture were delivered to the Museum of History of Religion and Atheism. During subsequent years (until the end of 1980s) the temple was occupied by a physical culture base, a military radio communications set, and the laboratories of the Zoological Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

In 1987 His Holiness Dalai Lama The XIV Tenzin Gyatso, who is traditionally considered to be the Protector of the temple, visited it.

On the 9th of July 1990 according to the resolution of the executive committee of the City council of Leningrad the Temple was given to the hands of the Leningrad Buddhists Association.

In 1991 the Temple assumed its present name – Datsan Gunzechoinei – which was an abbreviation of its original name.

In 1994 the statue of the Great Buddha made by Mongolian craftsmen in traditional Mongolian style was set in the main altar (the statue of the religious teacher made of papier-mache plated with golf leaf). The height of the Buddha’s body is 2,5 m, and with the nimbus and the pedestal – approximately 5 m. In 2003 after the restoration the statue of the Siam “Standing Buddha” was brought back to the Temple (presented in 1914 by the Russian Consul in Bangkok G.A. Planson).