“Gunzechoinei” in Tibetan means “The Source of the Holy Teaching of the All-Suffering Hermit Lord”. The Buddhist temple was built in St. Petersburg in 1909-1915. The initiator of the construction was the envoy of the XIII Dalai Lama, the learned Buryat Lama Agvan Lobsan Dorzhiev. The funds for the construction were partly donated by Dorzhiev and the XIII Dalai Lama, and partly collected among believers in Buryatia and Kalmykia.

The temple was consecrated on August 10, 1915 and received the Tibetan name “Kun la brtse mdzad thub dbang mchhos byung ba'i gnas” (The Source of the Holy Teaching of the All-Suffering Hermit Lord). During the Civil War, the temple came under severe attacks and lost most of its relics and religious paraphernalia.

In 1922-1937, the temple estate belonged to the Tibetan-Mongolian mission in the USSR, which was under the patronage of the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs. In 1938 (after the arrest of the lamas and the abolishment of the mission), the temple building and two residential premises attached to it were municipalized, and the objects of worship were transferred to the Museum of the History of Religion and Atheism. In subsequent years (up to the end of the 1980s), the temple housed a sports base, a military radio station, laboratories of the Zoological Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences. In 1987, the temple was visited by His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso, who is traditionally considered its Patron.

On July 9, 1990, by the decision of the executive Committee of the Leningrad City Council, the Temple was transferred to the Leningrad Society of Buddhists. In 1991, it received its current name — Datsan Gunzechoinei, which is an abbreviation of its original name. The abbot of the temple was Danzan-Khaybzun Samaev, who, after many years of study and spiritual practice, received full monastic ordination from the XIV Dalai Lama in Dharamshala. The abbot sought to revive the center of Buddhist education and culture by establishing the work of both the novice schools and the publishing business, actively organizing holidays, concerts and exhibitions, inviting famous Buddhologists from abroad. A Tibetan doctor, a specialist in the field of traditional Tibetan medicine, receives patients in Datsan.