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« on: November 25, 2006, 07:29:38 PM »
Hello,
What a lovely thread of pictures and explainations of Harbin, China. Of course, as usual, my curiosity has been ignited, so I did a little research and here is what I found about the current Russian history of Harbin and Orthodoxy.
The Orthodox Church of the Holy Protection of the Virgin in Harbin, China
Thank you, Alex
The Boxer Rebellion of 1898 - 1900, an anti-Western and anti-missionary uprising in China, saw violent attacks on Chinese converts to Christianity. The Orthodox Chinese were among those put to the sword, and in June every year we commemorate the 222 Chinese Orthodox, including Father Mitrophan, who died for their faith in 1900 during the upheavals.
After the Russian Revolution of 1917 the Orthodox Church in China lost its traditional support base and had to fend for itself. Any investments it made in the Czar’s bonds became valueless. However it became the spiritual home of large numbers of anti-Bolshevik Russians who left Russia for China, and the numbers of Orthodox in China swelled. By around 1930 there were more than 50,000 Orthodox in China, mostly Russians. Dioceses were established in Shanghai and Tianjin in addition to Harbin and Beijing.
After the October Revolution the Orthodox bishops in China came under the jurisdiction of the Synod of Russian Bishops Outside Russia, convening in Karlovci, Yugoslavia, and subsequently in Munich and New York. The surrender of the Axis powers at the end of World War II gave rise to a change in the situation in the Far East, and the Moscow Patriarchate resumed jurisdiction over the episcopate in China in the late 1940’s.
The Chinese People’s Republic was established in 1949 under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, which had close relations with the Soviet Communist Party in the 1950’s. Treaties were signed between the Chinese and Soviet governments which provided for the turning over of Russian churches to Chinese control. Archbishop Viktor, the last Russian bishop and leader of the 20th Spiritual Mission, returned to the Soviet Union in 1956, drawing to a close a variegated chapter in the history of Orthodoxy in China.
After the communists came to power in China most of the Russians left for Australia, the United States and other places. Now there are very few Russians left in China, and the numbers of the Orthodox from the old Russian-organised dioceses have dwindled drastically. There is only one functioning Orthodox church on the Mainland - the Pokrov church (the church of the Protection of the Theotokos) in Harbin. The resident priest, Father Grigori Zhu, is 75. There are about 18 parishioners who attend Sunday services, most of them elderly. The youngest is 65. Yet on the great feast of Easter this year, about 400 people filled the church - many who have settled overseas, and their children, returned to the mother church in Harbin for Pascha.
Pascha is the central message of Christianity. God brings life out of death. What man or human organizations plan could never get around or defeat God’s plan. Perhaps there were people who expected, or even wanted, to see a dying Orthodox church in China. After 1997 this has totally changed.