Old postcards Amur

The 1975 cards in this section trace a route down the Amur: from Khabarovsk past Amursk and the Nanai District to Nikolaevsk-on-Amur and Cape Chnyrrakh. Measured from the confluence of the Shilka and the Argun, the Amur runs 2,824 km before entering the sea through the Amur Liman, and the last views on this route were taken not far from its mouth.

Khabarovsk, founded in 1858, appears with a view of the river, the city beach and Lenin Square. The card “Near the town of Amursk” recalls what was then a very young town: it began in 1958 as a tent camp for the builders of a pulp-and-cardboard mill, and in 1960 the project was declared an All-Union Komsomol shock construction site. “A string of log rafts. Nanai District” shows timber being floated downstream.

Nikolaevsk-on-Amur gets several cards — the cargo port, “In the port” and the western part of town. The navigator Gennady Nevelskoy founded a settlement at the mouth of the Amur in 1850, and it became a town in 1856. The series ends with “The lower Amur. Near Cape Chnyrrakh”.

Read in order, this 1975 run of vintage postcards of the Amur shows a working river of ports, rafts and a town beach rather than formal panoramas.