The Church of Saint Sophia was built in March of the 33rd (1907) Qingguangxu, a military chapel originally built for the Fourth Infantry Division of the Russian East Siberia when it built the Middle East Railway. In the same year, Russian tea merchant I. Fei Chisjakov funded the reconstruction of a wooden church based on the military church. In 1911, a brick wall was built on the exterior of the wooden wall, forming a brick-and-wood structure church. On 27 September 1923, the second reconstruction of St. Sophia's Church took nine years and was completed on 25 November 1932, making it the largest Orthodox church in the Far East.