MOSCOW -- The city of Khabarovsk is ill-starred. Founded by hopeful entrepreneurs as a major trade hub in the Russian Far East on the doorstep of China, it turned into a big dump -- a symbol of missed opportunities and disillusionment.
For nearly 70 years, the area had been a place to concentrate troops and later missile silos -- the springboard of war, first against Japan and then, when Mao Zedong broke loose, against China. Yet, unlike its Pacific Coast sibling 600 km south, Vladivostok, where foreigners couldn't go, Khabarovsk was sort of an open city, where the Soviets paraded their nonexistent achievements.
Apart from a handful of dilapidated 19th-century mansions and mosquito-ridden pristine woods in the suburbs, every visit to which had to be planned carefully so as not to cross the borders of numerous military bases, the only worthy sight was the Amur River.