Blagoveshchensk

Capital city, economic and cultural centre of Amur oblast (region) in the Russian Far East; population (1996 est) 215,000. It is located at the confluence of the Amur and Zeya rivers opposite the Chinese town of Heihe. A 110 km-long spur of the Trans-Siberian Railway from Belogorsk terminates here. Blagoveshchensk is a river port with shipbuilding and ship-repair facilities, and also has saw-milling, mining, engineering, and food-processing industries.

Blagoveshchensk (then known as Ust-Zeyski) was founded as a military post in the mid-17th century, but soon fell into Manchurian hands. It was retaken by Russia in 1856 and renamed. During the Chinese Boxer Rebellion in 1900, Russian troops evicted and drowned the city's 5,000 Chinese inhabitants in retaliation for the murder of Europeans in Beijing. Blagoveshchensk was the scene of Sino-Soviet tension in the 1960s and 1970s, but a lively cross-border trade has developed.