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International city

A small village in 1898 grew into the modern city of Harbin. Polish engineer Adam Szydłowski drew plans for the city following the construction of the Chinese Eastern Railway, which the Russian Empire had financed. The Russians selected Harbin as the base of their administration over this railway and the Chinese Eastern Railway Zone. The railways were largely constructed by Russian engineers and indentured workers. The Chinese Eastern Railway extended the Trans-Siberian Railway, substantially reducing the distance from Chita to Vladivostok and also linking the new port city of Dalny (Dalian) and the Russian naval base of Port Arthur (Lüshun). The settlement founded by the Russian-owned Chinese Eastern Railway quickly turned into a boomtown, growing into a city within five years. The Russian-speaking settlers in Harbin came from all over the Russian Empire, including Ukrainians, Poles, Jews, Georgians, and Tatars, in addition to Russians, eventually making Harbin a Russian town, with the majority of population coming from the south of the European Russia, i.e., actually from Ukraine.

The city was intended as a showcase for Russian imperialism in Asia and the American scholar Simon Karlinsky, who was born in Harbin in 1924 into a Russian-Jewish family, wrote that in Harbin "the buildings, boulevards, and parks were planned—well before the October Revolution —by distinguished Russian architects and also by Swiss and Italian town planners", giving the city a very European appearance. Starting in the late 19th century, a mass influx of Han Chinese arrived in Manchuria, and taking advantage of the rich soils, founded farms that soon turned Manchuria into the "breadbasket of China" while others went to work in the mines and factories of Manchuria, which become one of the first regions of China to industrialize. Harbin became one of the main points through which food and industrial products were shipped out of Manchuria. A sign of Harbin's wealth was that a theater had established during its first decade and in 1907 the play K zvezdam by Leonid Andreyev had its premiere there.

During the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05), Russia used Harbin as its base for military operations in Manchuria. Following Russia's defeat, its influence declined. Several thousand nationals from 33 countries, including the United States, Germany, and France, moved to Harbin. Sixteen countries established consulates to serve their nationals, who established several hundred industrial, commercial and banking companies. Churches were rebuilt for Russian Orthodox, Lutheran/German Protestant, and Polish Catholic Christians. Chinese capitalists also established businesses, especially in brewing, food, and textiles. Harbin became the economic hub of northeastern China and an international metropolis.

The rapid growth of the city challenged the public healthcare system. The worst-ever recorded outbreak of pneumonic plague spread to Harbin through the Trans-Manchurian railway from the border trade port of Manzhouli. The plague lasted from late autumn of 1910 to spring 1911 and killed 1,500 Harbin residents (mostly ethnic Chinese), or about five percent of its population at the time. This turned out to be the beginning of the large so-called Manchurian plague pandemic, which ultimately claimed 60,000 victims. In the winter of 1910, Dr. Wu Lien-teh (later the founder of Harbin Medical University) was given instructions from the Foreign Office, Peking, to travel to Harbin to investigate the plague. Dr. Wu asked for imperial sanction to cremate plague victims, as cremation of these infected victims turned out to be the turning point of the epidemic. The suppression of this plague pandemic changed medical progress in China. Bronze statues of Dr. Wu Lien-teh were built in Harbin Medical University to remember his contributions in promoting public health, preventive medicine, and medical education.

The first generation of Harbin Russians were mostly the builders and employees of the Chinese Eastern Railway. They moved to Harbin in order to work on the railroad. At the time Harbin was not an established city. The city was almost built from scratch by the builders and early settlers. Houses were constructed, furniture and personal items were brought in from Russia. After the Manchurian plague epidemic, Harbin's population continued to increase sharply, especially inside the Chinese Eastern Railway Zone. In 1913 the Chinese Eastern Railway census showed its ethnic composition as: Russians – 34,313, Chinese (that is, including Hans, Manchus etc.) – 23,537, Jews – 5,032, Poles – 2556, Japanese – 696, Germans – 564, Tatars – 234, Latvians – 218, Georgians – 183, Estonians – 172, Lithuanians – 142, Armenians – 124; there were also Karaims, Ukrainians, Bashkirs, and some Western Europeans. In total, 68,549 citizens of 53 nationalities, speaking 45 languages. Research shows that only 11.5 percent of all residents were born in Harbin. By 1917, Harbin's population exceeded 100,000, with over 40,000 of them being ethnic Russians.

Immediately after the February Revolution of 1917 Harbin Soviet was organized. It sought to seize control over the Chinese Eastern Railway and to defend Russian citizens in Manchuria. The Bolshevik Martemyan Ryutin was the chairman of the Harbin Soviet.

After Russia's Great October Socialist Revolution in November 1917, the new Soviet government in Russia recognized the Harbin Soviet as its representation in Manchuria and placed Russian citizens in Manchuria under its protection. Subsequently, the Harbin Soviet requested recognition of the local taotai. On December 12, 1917, Bolsheviks seized control over the Harbin Soviet, pressuring Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries to leave the body. Through Golos Truda the Harbin Soviet declared itself as the government of the area. On December 18, 1917, the Harbin Soviet declared the Chinese Eastern Railway administrator Dmitry Horvat dismissed and directed its militia to seize control of the railway installations. The Bolshevik militia was soon confronted by Chinese troops and Horvat loyalists, who disarmed and deported some 1,560 Bolshevik fighters. Ryutin went underground.

In 1920 more than 100,000 defeated Russian White Guards and refugees retreated to Harbin, which became a major center of White Russian émigrés and the largest Russian enclave outside the Soviet Union. Karlinsky noted that a major difference with the Russian émigrés who arrived in Harbin was: "Unlike the Russian émigrés who went to Paris or Prague or even to Shanghai, the new residents of Harbin were not a minority surrounded by a foreign population. They found themselves instead in an almost totally Russian city, populated mainly by people with roots in the south of European Russia." The city had a Russian school system, as well as publishers of Russian-language newspapers and journals. The Russian Harbintsy community numbered around 120,000 at its peak in the early 1920s. Many of Harbin's Russians were wealthy, which sometimes confused foreign visitors who expected them to be poor, with for instance the American writer Harry A. Franck in his 1923 book Wanderings in North China writing the Russian "ladies as well gowned as at the Paris races strolled with men faultlessly garbed by European standards", leading him to wonder how they had achieved this "deceptive appearance".

The Harbin Institute of Technology was established in 1920 as the Harbin Sino-Russian School for Industry to educate railway engineers via a Russian method of instruction. Students could select from two majors at the time: Railway Construction or Electric Mechanic Engineering. On 2 April 1922, the school was renamed the Sino-Russian Industrial University. The original two majors eventually developed into two major departments: the Railway Construction Department and the Electric Engineering Department. Between 1925 and 1928 the university's Rector was Leonid Ustrugov, the Russian Deputy Minister of Railways under Nicholas II before the Russian Revolution, Minister of Railways under Admiral Kolchak 's government and a key figure in the development of the Chinese Eastern Railway.

The Russian community in Harbin made it their mission to preserve the pre-revolutionary culture of Russia. The city had numerous Russian language newspapers, journals, libraries, theaters, and two opera companies. One of the famous Russian poets in Harbin was Valery Pereleshin, who started publishing his intensely homoerotic poetry in 1937 and was also one of the few Russian writers in Harbin who learned Mandarin. The subject of Pereleshin's poetry caused problems with the Russian Fascist Party, and led Pereleshin to leave Harbin for Shanghai, and ultimately to the United States. Not all of the Russian newspapers were of high quality, with Karlinsky calling Nash put', the newspaper of the Russian Fascist Party "the lowest example of gutter journalism that Harbin had ever seen". Nikolai Baikov, a Russian writer in Harbin was known for his novels of exile life in that city together with his accounts of his travels across Manchuria and the folklore of its Manchu and Chinese population. Boris Yulsky, a young Russian writer who published his short stories in the newspaper Rubezh was considered to be a promising writer whose career was cut short when he gave up literature for activism in the Russian Fascist Party and cocaine addiction. Moya-tvoya (mine – yours), a pidgin language that was a combination of Russian and Mandarin Chinese that had developed in the 19th century when Chinese went to work in Siberia, was considered essential by the Chinese businesspeople of Harbin.

In the early 1920s, according to Chinese scholars' recent studies, over 20,000 Jews lived in Harbin. After 1919, Dr. Abraham Kaufman played a leading role in Harbin's large Russian Jewish community. The Republic of China discontinued diplomatic relations with the Russian Republic in 1920, leaving many Russians stateless. When the Chinese Eastern Railway and government in Beijing announced in 1924 that they agreed the railroad would employ only Russian or Chinese nationals, the émigrés were forced to announce their ethnic and political allegiance. Most accepted Soviet citizenship.

The Chinese warlord Zhang Xueliang, the "Young Marshal" seized the Chinese Eastern Railway in 1929. The Soviet military force quickly put an end to the crisis and forced the Nationalist Chinese to accept the restoration of joint Soviet-Chinese administration of the railway.