Zabaykalsk


Zabaykalsk is an urban locality and the administrative center of Zabaykalsky District of Zabaykalsky Krai, Russia, located on the Sino-Russian border just opposite the Chinese border town of Manzhouli. Population:

Geography

The formerly disputed Abagaitu Islet in the Argun River is located about to the east.

Climate

Zabaikalsk, apparently has a chilly continental climate influenced by monsoons, just like most of East Asia.

History

It was founded in 1904 as a station on the Chinese Eastern Railway.
Since 1924, a border guard detachment has been stationed there. In the aftermath of the Sino-Soviet conflict the station was renamed Otpor.
in China. On the plaque written in Russian letters "Russia"
Until the mid-1930s, Razyezd 86 / Otpor had little significance as a station, as all border formalities were done at Matsiyevskaya station and at Manzhouli Railway Station, on the Chinese side of the border. The station was expanded in the mid-1930s, as the railway on the Chinese side had been sold by the USSR to Manchukuo and converted from the gauge of the Russian Railways to the China Railway; Otpor thus became the last Russian-gauge station. The station became quite important in 1945, as one of the bases of the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, which also saw the rail line on the Chinese side temporary re-converted to Russian gauge. The station's importance continued as the main rail connection between the USSR and the Communist China. On China's request, in 1958 the Soviets changed the name "Otpor" to the neutral Zabaykalsk.

Otpor Incident

The incident which later became known as the Otpor Incident occurred in 1938, when the many Jews who fled the Nazi Germany were stranded in Otpor, asking entry into Manchukuo. By Hideki Tojo's order, Major General Kiichiro Higuchi of the Harbin branch of Kwantung Army, assisted by Norihiro Yasue and supported by Yosuke Matsuoka in Japan, let the Jewish refugees enter Manchukuo and further move to Shanghai or Japan, in spite of Japan's alliance with Germany at that time.

Transportation

The Russo-Chinese highway AH6 passes through the town.
Zabaykalsk/Manzhouli is one of the three direct connections between Russian and Chinese Railways. The other two are in Primorsky Krai, much farther to the east; besides, much traffic between Russia and China travels on the rail line crossing Mongolia. It is served by what is now officially called the Southern Branch of the Transbaykal Railway : a line that branches off the present-day main Trans-Siberian Railway line at Karymskaya junction, and continues southeast toward the Chinese border. Originally, this line was part of the main Moscow-to-Vladivostok rail route, where trains coming from the west would continue into China on the former Chinese Eastern Railway, in order to cut across Manchuria on their way to Russian Vladivostok. After the modern route of the Trans-Siberian Railway, located entirely within Russian national territory, was completed in 1916, the Southern Branch's role was restricted to that of servicing Russia's border communities, and providing connectivity to China.
Zabaykalsk has been a transshipment station for a break of gauge since the 1930s, when the railway on the Chinese side had been sold by the USSR to Manchukuo and converted from the gauge of the Soviet Railways to the Manchukuo National Railway.
Since 2005, a number of projects have been carried out to increase the capacity of the "Southern Branch", and its connection to China.
The goal was to enable the railway by 2010 to handle 30 trains in each direction, each one up to 71 cars long. By 2005, the maximum weight of the trains using the line had already been increased from 4,000 to 6,300 tons.
In 2008, TransContainer's container transshipment facility was expanded.
Work on modernizing the facility for passenger railcar bogie exchange was conducted as well.

Notable residents