Datsan Gunzechoinei

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Datsan Gunzechoinei stands at the northern edge of Buddhist Europe, a Buryat temple rising in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Its full name translates as "The source of the Buddha's Religious Teaching that has Deep Compassion for All Beings." That name was bestowed on the 10th of August 1915, at the consecration of a building that had taken years to reach completion against fierce opposition. What drove someone to plant a Buddhist temple in the heart of imperial Russia? Why did the Russian Orthodox Church mount a campaign across the entire country to stop it? And how did a temple in Leningrad survive when the monks who served it did not?

• 2. A Temple Born of Ambition

  ›

  Agvan Dorzhiev obtained permission from the Tsar in 1909 to build a large and substantial Buddhist datsan in Saint Petersburg. His vision stretched beyond architecture. He hoped the temple would become the residence of the first Buddhist ruler of Russia. That ambition was enormous in a city dominated by Russian Orthodox Christianity.

  The Russian Orthodox Church did not let the project pass quietly. It campaigned strongly against construction of this temple, calling it "pagan," and the opposition spread across the country. The resistance was effective enough to delay construction significantly. Yet the project pressed forward. The first service was held on the 21st of February 1913, even before the building was finished.

  By 1915, Tsar Nicholas II confirmed the arrival of a staff of nine lamas. Three came from Transbaikalia, four from Astrakhan Province, and two from Stavropol Province. The stained glass windows inside were commissioned from Nicholas Roerich, an artist already known for his deep engagement with eastern spiritual traditions.

• 3. Sacred Gifts and Consecration

  ›

  On the 9th of June 1914, a second major service drew the community together to consecrate two remarkable statues. The first was a large gilded copper statue of the sitting Buddha Shakyamuni. It had traveled from Siam, sent as a gift from King Rama VI of Thailand. The second statue depicted Buddha Maitreya in a standing posture, a gift from G. A. Planson of the Russian Council in Bangkok.

  Those two figures, one seated and one standing, came from opposite sides of a diplomatic relationship between Russia and Southeast Asia. Their presence in Saint Petersburg represented something unusual: a royal Thai gift to a Buddhist temple on Russian soil, arranged through the Russian diplomatic mission in Bangkok. The consecration of the datsan itself followed the next year, on the 10th of August 1915, when the temple received the name it still carries today.

• 4. Persecution and Survival

  ›

  After 1917, the building lost its original purpose almost immediately. A Red Army detachment took it over and damaged it in 1919. Some repairs followed in 1922, and more substantial restoration work was undertaken around 1926. But the broader environment for Buddhism in Russia was turning hostile. Monasteries across the Buryat-Mongol Republic and the Kalmyk Autonomous Region were closed. Sacred books, altar ornaments, and other property were seized. Lamas faced heavy repression.

  The Leningrad temple held out longer than most, partly because of its foreign connections. In late 1933, the last Buddhist service before a long silence was held there. It honored Thubten Gyatso, the 13th Dalai Lama of Tibet, who had died on the 17th of December 1933. By 1935, a large group of lamas was arrested by the NKVD and sentenced to three to five years of hard labor. In 1937, the Buddhists remaining in the city were arrested and shot the same day.

  The building survived the Siege of Leningrad in a way its congregation did not. Buddhist sympathizers within the Ahnenerbe lobbied to spare it from bombing, and the temple was left standing while the city around it endured devastation.

• 5. Return and Recognition

  ›

  In 1989, the Buddhist community in Saint Petersburg received official recognition from the Soviet state during the Glasnost era. That year, the Most Reverend Lama, the 19th Kushok Bakula Rinpoche, led a service at the temple. It was the first service held there in fifty years.

  On the 14th of July 2004, the 150th birthday of Agvan Dorjiev was marked at the temple with a ceremony that included the unveiling of a memorial plate. The American Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman delivered a talk on the occasion. As of 2013, the datsan functions as an active place of practice for scholars and students of the Tibetan Gelugpa school, the tradition to which the temple has always belonged.