Academic Periodical

The article deals with the missionary activities of the Russian Spiritual Mission in China, a country with a specific culture, in the second half of the XIX century. The author describes a six-year experience of the XIV Spiritual Mission led by Archimandrite Gury (Karpov) (1858–1864) and the attempts by the posterior missions to continue these efforts until 1900 when the mission was crushed by the Boxer Rebellion and then revived in the early XX century. Particular attention is paid to analysing the role of the missionary’s personality in relation to the success of mission.