On August 13, 1850, at the mouth of the Amur, Captain Gennady Nevelskoy hoisted the Russian flag and founded the Nikolaev post
The rich Amur region has long attracted Russian settlers. The first Russian settlement on the Amur, Albazin, appeared in the middle of the 17th century.
In 1684, the Albazin Voivodeship was formed here, the eastern border of which ran along the Zeya River. Despite the fact that the colonization of these territories was prevented by the Chinese, who besieged the Russian fortresses of Albazin and Nerchin, and imposed an agreement on the Russian kingdom in 1689, according to which the developed territories of the Amur region were withdrawn to China, the movement of the Russians to the Pacific Ocean could not be stopped.
At the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th centuries, settlers began to appear on the shores of the Sea of Okhotsk, they founded the cities of Okhotsk and Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, and the active development of the Far East began. But the Amur, the only waterway connecting the Far East with Siberia, was not used.
It was not known how the river flows into the Pacific Ocean, and whether ships from Pacific ports can enter. The development of the Amur basin was hindered by the Chinese, and the Russian government, which did not want conflict situations with its neighbor, did not equip a full-fledged research expedition.
In 1845, only one brig "Constantine" was sent to the expedition, but the crew did not manage to determine the mouth of the Amur, moreover, the incorrect conclusions of the commander Peter Gavrilov almost turned against us. Emperor Nicholas I ordered the Amur research to be stopped as useless. And only the enthusiasm of individuals who decided to continue research allowed the opening of the mouth of this Far Eastern river.
Among these persons, Captain 1st Rank Gennady Nevelskoy, having enlisted the support of the Governor of Eastern Siberia Nikolai Muravyov, in June 1849 from the Petropavlovsk port of Kamchatka on the ship "Baikal", he set out on a journey.
The highest permission for the study was not received, so Gennady Ivanovich took all the risks. He studied all the available literature and was sure that the entrance to the Amur from the sea was feasible. And I was not mistaken in my assumption. With the help of local residents, he discovered the entrance to the Amur estuary, and walked several tens of kilometers up the river in rowboats.
The two-century delusion was dispelled, Nevelskoy proved that Sakhalin is an island, and the entrance to the Amur is possible.
On August 1 (13), 1850, at the mouth of the Amur, on Cape Kuegda, he founded the military-administrative settlement Nikolaevsky post, named after the living emperor, and hoisted the Russian flag at the post.
“On behalf of the Russian government, this is announced to all foreign ships sailing in the Tatar Strait. the coast of this gulf and the entire Amur Territory up to the Korean border with Sakhalin Island are Russian possessions …"
Under the command of the topographer Pyotr Popov, 6 sailors were left, subsequently the Nikolaev post grew up in Nikolaevsk-on-Amur.
The founding of the post did not contradict the Treaty of Nerchinsk, tk. one of its points read: "… the rivers flowing from the northern side of the Amur and in all directions north of the Khingan mountains, even to the sea, to be under the power of the tsarist majesty of the Russian state …"
Only geographic ignorance did not allow the Russians to be here earlier. They did not know about this in St. Petersburg either. Captain Nevelskoy's "arbitrariness" could threaten him with very big troubles, since his actions ran counter to the Far Eastern policy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The head of the department, Karl Nesselrode, proposed abandoning the Amur basin and transferring it to China forever.
However, the political will of the emperor turned out to be stronger than Nesselrode's ideas, he called the act of Gennady Nevelskoy valiant, and on the report of the Special Committee considering this case, he wrote:
"Where the Russian flag is once raised, it should not go down there."
China's plans to colonize these lands turned out to be buried, and after all, quite recently, after the Cossacks left Albazin, China made loud statements:
"Lands, several thousand li lying on the Khingan slopes facing the Middle State [slopes], starting from the far north, and deserted, will entirely belong to the Middle State."
But the act of Nevelskoy, approved by the Russian autocrat, and the soon-to-follow negotiations on the territories, culminating in the signing of the Tianjin and Beijing treaties, put an end to this issue.
