Khabarovsk

Khabarovsk is among the largest cities of the Russian Far East.

The Governor-General of Amur resides at Khabarovka (哈巴羅甫喀，即，伯利), in the Primorsk Province (東海濱省).

The distance between China's Heihe harbor and the Soviet city of Hailanpao is only 1.5 km and the distance between Tongjiang harbor and the largest city in the Soviet Far East, Khabarovsk, is only 270 km.

The major obstacle to a border settlement is the status of Heixiazi, a 330-square kilometer island at the confluence of the Amur and Ussuri rivers. The island is claimed by the Chinese but controlled by the USSR. Because Heixiazi overlooks Khabarovsk as well as the point where the Trans-Siberian Railway crosses the Amur River, the Soviets are reluctant to give it up.

Heihsiatzu Island, the most strategically important of the Amur islands, is situated at the juncture of the Amur and Ussuri Rivers and screens Khabarovsk from Manchuria. Here too, the main channel had shifted from south to north of the island.³² Khabarovsk was the second largest city in the Soviet Far East and the administrative center of the Far Eastern Army. If the channel north and east of Heihsiatzu Island were recognized as the boundary, Japanese naval vessels would be within their rights to steam right up to the city’s docks and Japanese artillery on the island would have the ability to fire at point-blank range into the city.

People’s anger over their depleted fish stock is so widespread that it has been a driving force behind the anti-Kremlin protests that have been shaking the Far Eastern city of Khabarovsk, on the Amur, since early July.