The History of Collections

The first Chinese artifacts were delivered to the Museum in the reign of Peter the Great. They were partly bought in Russia, the rest of them - purchased in Europe during the foreign travels of the Russian Tsar. The things of Chinese origin that used to belong to L.Lang, who visited China by the order of Peter the Great in 1721-1722, were given over to the Kunstkammer. A lot of earlier collected exhibits perished in the fire of 1747. To recoup the losses, the Academy of Sciences sent an academician doctor Franz Luka Yelalich to China in 1753. In 1756 he brought 224 exhibits from China. In the first half of the 19th century more than a thousand artifacts were presented by the Colonel of the General Stuff M.V.Ladyzhensky, who had visited China as the Superintendant of the Russian Spiritual Mission. At the turn of the 19th-20th centuries the things from a famous collector of the time Prince E.E. Ukhtomsky, as well as from L.N. Shrenk, A.V.Vereshchagin, I.S.Polyakov, P.K.Kozlov, S.F.Oldenburg and others were added. At the beginning of the 20th century the exhibits for the Museum were purchased by the future academician-sinologist V.M.Alekseyev. Many outstanding and famous personalities took part in forming the Chinese ethnographic fund - diplomats, officials, travelers, scientists and merchants. The artifacts supply still goes on in our days.

At present the Chinese ethnographic fund exceeds 30.000 exhibits in number. It is one of the oldest, complete and valuable in the MAE RAS.