The article is devoted to the reflection of the officials of the Russian Foreign Ministry on the problem of accumulating “knowledge about the Orient”, bringing them into the system and implementing into political practice. The key source for the analysis was the two issues of the “Materials on the Study of the East” published on the eve and at the beginning of the Great War, the authors and editors of which sought to raise this problem and propose ways to solve it. The question is raised about the role of expert knowledge in determining the strategy of St. Petersburg in the Near and Middle Eastern policy.