Nikolayevsk-on-Amur
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| Nikolayevsk-on-Amur (English) Николаевск-на-Амуре (Russian) |
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  Location of Nikolayevsk-on-Amur on the map of Russia
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| Coordinates 53°08′N 140°44′E / 53.133°N 140.733°ECoordinates: 53°08′N 140°44′E / 53.133°N 140.733°E |
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| Coat of Arms | |
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| Administrative status | |
| Federal subject In jurisdiction of Administrative center of |
Khabarovsk Krai Khabarovsk Krai Nikolayevsk District |
| Local self-government | |
| Charter | n/a |
| Municipal status | Urban okrug |
| Mayor | Aleksandr Kosinov |
| Representative Body | n/a |
| Area | |
| Area | n/a |
| Population | |
| 2002 Census - Rank - Density |
28,492 inhabitants n/a n/a |
| Events | |
| Founded | 1850 |
| Town status | 1856 |
| Other information | |
| Postal code | 682460 |
| Dialing code | +7 42135 |
| Official website | |
| http://www.nikoladm.ru | |
Nikolayevsk-on-Amur (Russian: Никола́евск-на-Аму́ре; traditional Chinese: 廟街; simplified Chinese: 庙街; pinyin: Miàojiē) often romanized as Nikolayevsk-na-Amure, is a town and the administrative center of Nikolayevsky District of Khabarovsk Krai, Russia located on the Amur River close to its liman in the Pacific Ocean. Population: 28,492 (2002 Census).
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[edit] Geography
The town is situated on the left bank of the Amur, 80 km from where it flows into the Amur estuary, 977 km north of the regional capital Khabarovsk, and 582 km from the Komsomolsk-on-Amur railway station.
[edit] History
[edit] Medieval and early-modern history
In the late Middle Ages, the people living along the lower course of the Amur (Nivkh, Oroch, Evenki) were collectively known in China as the "wild Jurchen". The Yuan Dynasty Mongols sent expeditions to this area with an eye toward using the region as a base for attack on Japan, or for defending against the Sakhalin Ainus. According to the History of Yuan, in 1264 the Nivkhs recognized the Mongol suzerainty. In 1263, the Mongols set up the "Command Post of the Marshal of the Eastern Campaign" (Chinese: 東征元帥府, Dongzheng Yuanshuai Fu) near the modern village of Tyr, some 100 km upstream from today's Nikolayevsk. At roughly the same time a shrine was built on the Tyr Rock (Тырская скала).[1][2]
From 1411 to 1433, the Ming eunuch Yishiha (亦失哈), a man of Haixi Jurchen origin, led four large missions to win over the allegiance of the "Jurchen" tribes along the Sunggari and Amur rivers. During this time, the Yongning Temple (永宁寺, Yongning Si) was constructed at Tyr, and stelae with inscriptions erected.[1]
[edit] The Russian city
The Russian settlement, likely preceded by the Manchu village of Fuyori,[3] was founded as Nikolayevsky Post by Gennady Nevelskoy on August 13, 1850, named for Nicholas I of Russia.
The settlement quickly became one of the main economic centers on the Pacific coast of the Russian Empire. The main Russian Pacific harbour was moved from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky to Nikolayevsk in 1855 after the Siege of Petropavlovsk. It was granted town status and renamed Nikolayevsk-on-Amur in 1856, when Primorskaya Oblast was established. Admiral Vasily Zavoyko supervised the construction of a naval base in Nikolayevsk.
The town emerged as an important commercial harbour, however due to navigational difficulties caused by the sand banks in the Amur estuary and sea ice making the harbour unusable for five months each year, the main centre for Russian shipping transferred to the better situated Vladivostok in the early 1870s. The city remained the administrative centre of this region until 1880, when the governor relocated to Khabarovsk. Anton Chekhov, visiting the town on his journey to the Sakhalin in 1890, noted its rapid depopulation, although this trend was slowed somewhat in the late 1890s by the discovery of gold and establishment of salmon fisheries.
During the Russian Civil War, the town's population plummeted from 15,000 to 2,000, as a local partisan leader, later executed by the same Bolsheviks he was supposed to be aligned to, razed the entire city to the ground and massacred the minority Japanese population.
Around 1940, a prison camp of the gulag system was located in the town.[4]
Like many other cities in the Russian far east, the town has seen a drop in population since the collapse of the Soviet Union, dropping from 36,296 inhabitants recorded in the (1989 Census) to around 28,000 today.
[edit] Economy and Infrastructure
Fishing and fish processing are the main industries of the town, along with ship maintenance and some agricultural production in the surrounding area.
Nikolayevsk has no land transport connections. Traffic to and from the town enters via the port on the Amur, or the small airport.
[edit] External links
[edit] References
- ^ a b Головачев В.Ц. (V.Ts. Golovachev), "Тырские стелы и храм «Юн Нин» в свете китайско-чжурчжэньских отношений XIV-XV вв." (The Tyr stelae and the Yongning Temple viewed in as an aspect of Sino-Jurchen relations), Etno-zhurnal, 2008-11-14. (If the web site is not available, the article can be found with Google caching.
- ^ Объекты туризма — Археологические. Тырские храмы (Regional government site explaining the location of the Tyr (Telin) temples: just south of the Tyr village)
- ^ [1]
- ^ Nikolayevsky-ITL on the website of Memorial (German)
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