ABSTRACT
Russians first arrived in Manchuria in large numbers in the late 1890s, after the Chinese had signed an agreement allowing the Russian Empire to construct the Chinese Eastern Railway, which would branch off from the recently built Trans-Siberian Railway at Chita and run south-east through Manchuria, Chinese territory, to end in Vladivostok, the Russian port on the Pacific Ocean. Ethnic Russians were the largest but not the only nationality to come from Russia to Manchuria. Ignaty Volegov moved east from the Urals to Vladivostok and then Manchuria, settling in the late 1920s in Hailar, where he worked in odd jobs before establishing a small leather factory. His daughter, Galina, left Hailar in her teens to pursue her education in Harbin, where she subsequently married. As it turned out, the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, from 1931 to 1945, was an increasingly difficult time for the Russians. Harbin’s population almost doubled over the period.
