The first generation of Russians built the city from scratch. By 1913, Harbin had become an established Russian colony for the construction and maintenance work on the China Eastern Railway. A record shows Harbin had a total of 68,549 people, most of Russian and Chinese descent. There were a total of 53 different nationalities.Bakich, Olga Mikhailovna, "Emigre Identity: The Case of Harbin," The South Atlantic Quarterly, Vol.99, No.1 (2000): 51–73. Most of the Harbin population were of European descent. Most were ethnic Russian including a minority of Germans, Ukrainians, Jews and Poles.
