Khabarovsk

The confluence of the Amur and the Ussuri has a long past. Tungusic peoples, among them the Nanai, lived here, and in 722 the Tang dynasty set up the seat of its Heishui Protectorate near the site, which Chinese records call Boli. In 1651 the Cossacks of Yerofey Khabarov built a fortified winter camp somewhere in the area and fought off a Manchu attack the following spring, but the Treaty of Nerchinsk of 1689 left the region to Qing China for the next century and a half.

The Treaty of Aigun passed the land to Russia in 1858, and the military post of Khabarovka was founded and named after Khabarov. It became a town in 1880 and took the name Khabarovsk in 1893; a branch of the Russian Geographical Society, set up in 1894, founded libraries, theatres and museums. In 1916 the bridge across the Amur allowed Trans-Siberian trains to cross without ferries. Japanese forces occupied the city in September 1918 during the Civil War.

After the Second World War, Khabarovsk hosted the trials of twelve members of Japan's Kwantung Army and Unit 731 for making and using biological weapons, and the last Chinese emperor, Puyi, was held here from 1945 to 1950. Trams arrived in 1956 and trolleybuses in 1975. Between 1989 and 2003 a memorial to those executed in the Great Terror was built. From the early 2000s Khabarovsk was the centre of the Far Eastern Federal District, until that role passed to Vladivostok in December 2018. In July 2020 the arrest of the regional governor, Sergei Furgal, set off weeks of street protests.

Khabarovsk's cultural life has grown since the 1890s, when the Geographical Society began founding its institutions, and a cluster of museums now stands on Shevchenko Street near the river. The regional museum's ethnographic displays on the peoples of the Amur, the art museum's old Russian icons, and the petroglyphs of Sikachi-Alyan, carved by the river to the north, connect the city to the region's indigenous history, much of it Nanai.

Sport is a passion, especially on ice. Amur Khabarovsk, named after the river, plays in the KHL at the Platinum Arena, far from every other team in the league except Admiral Vladivostok, and SKA-Neftyanik, founded in 1947, plays bandy in Russia's top division; the city hosted the Bandy World Championship in 1981.

Military memory is strong: the city was named a "City of Military Glory" in 2012, and the war memorial with its eternal flame stands on the high bank. In summer life moves outdoors, to the promenade, the beach and the beer tents.

About 617,000 people lived in Khabarovsk at the 2021 census, making it the largest city of the Russian Far East and the administrative centre of Khabarovsk Krai. The great majority of residents are Russian, with small Ukrainian, Korean, Chinese, Tatar and Uzbek communities.

Industry includes iron processing and steel, a shipyard, machine-building, oil refining, flour milling, pharmaceuticals and meatpacking, and the city is a major railway centre on the Trans-Siberian, with river transport on the Amur and the Ussuri and road links west and south. A fibre-optic cable links it with Fuyuan across the border in China, and Chinese traders are a familiar sight in its markets. A toll bypass road around the city was completed in 2021.

The rhythm of the year follows extremes: average temperatures swing from about −19°C in January to about 21°C in July. Winters are dry, with only light snow, and the Amur freezes; summers are humid and bring most of the rain. Universities, including Pacific National University and the medical, transport and humanities universities, give the centre a student population.

Khabarovsk eats in the Russian way, with Far Eastern touches. Traditional restaurants serve blini pancakes, patties, borscht, and sturgeon or meat brought sizzling on hot stones, and cheap fast food is easy to find. In summer the city's drinking moves out of the bars into beer tents by the river and in the parks, some with live music.

The wider Russian table is here too: soups such as shchi, solyanka and the cold, kvass-based okroshka in summer, pelmeni dumplings, and kasha porridges. The stolovaya, a cheap café surviving from the Soviet era, is the quick way to eat traditional food. Morkovcha, the spicy marinated carrot salad of the Koryo-saram, the ethnic Koreans of the former Soviet Union, is a reminder of the Korean presence in the region.

The city's closeness to China shows in its markets. The Vyborg Market on Vyborgskaya Street is huge and lively, with halls of fruit, vegetables and meat and many Chinese traders selling imported goods alongside Russian stallholders.