Raychikhinsk

Raitschichinsk (Russian Райчихинск ) is a town in Amur Oblast (Russia) with 20,534 inhabitants (as of October 14, 2010 ).

Geography

Raitschichinsk is located in the southeast part of the Zeya - Bureya level in the Far East of Russia, nearly 40 kilometers from the Amur and the Chinese border. The city is located 165 kilometers east of the Oblasthauptstadt Blagoveshchensk.

It is the Oblastverwaltung report directly. For administrative structure Raitschichinsk city include the six kilometers east located urban-type settlement Schiroki with 1488 inhabitants and the village with only 37 inhabitants Ugolnoje, so that the total population is 24 095 (calculated 2009).

In the 1989 census, 90 % of the inhabitants Russians, 5.7% Ukrainians, 1.5% Belarusians, and 0.8 % Tatars.

History

In the well-known since the late 19th century brown coal deposits Raitschichinskoje, named after the river Raitschicha, began in 1913 with the mining of the plant a cleat on the middle reaches of the creek Kiwda east of the present town.

In 1932 the settlement Raitschicha ( Райчиха ) was founded in the wake of the intensified coal mining in the region. From 1938 to 1942 existed in the Raitschicha Raitschichlag, a labor camp in the Gulag system with up to 11,000 inmates who were employed in the coal mining industry.

On 23 May 1944, the site of the city was raised and received its present name.

Demographics

Note: Census data

Education

Raitschichinsk has a medical college, an economic evening classes and three technical vocational schools.

Economy and infrastructure

Raitschichinsk is the center of lignite mining. There are two open pits, Severo- Vostochny and Jerkowezki which virtually surround the city along with already reduced residual holes on all sides. In addition, there are farms of mechanical engineering, building materials industry and light industry.

The town is the terminus of a 39 -kilometer-long, 1936 built railway line which branches off in Bureya of the Trans -Siberian Railway. In the area an extensive industrial railway network for the transportation of coal exist.

Sons and daughters of the town

• Sergei Savelyev (1948-2005), cross-country skier who competed for the Soviet Union in the 1970s