Zhenbao Island () or Damansky Island (russian: о́стров Дама́нский, ''ostrov Damanskiy'') is an island with an area of only . It is on the

Ussuri River The Ussuri or Wusuli (russian: Уссури; ) is a river that runs through Khabarovsk and Primorsky Krais, Russia and the southeast region of Northeast China. It rises in the Sikhote-Alin mountain range, flowing north and forming part of the S ...

on the border between

Primorsky Krai Primorsky Krai (russian: Приморский край, r=Primorsky kray, p=prʲɪˈmorskʲɪj kraj), informally known as Primorye (, ), is a federal subject (a krai) of Russia, located in the Far East region of the country and is a part of t ...

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-ei ...

, and

Heilongjiang Province Heilongjiang () formerly romanized as Heilungkiang, is a province in northeast China. The standard one-character abbreviation for the province is (). It was formerly romanized as "Heilungkiang". It is the northernmost and easternmost provinc ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...

. Prior to the

1991 Sino-Soviet Border Agreement The 1991 Sino-Soviet Border Agreement was a treaty signed between China and the Soviet Union on May 16, 1991. It set up demarcation work to resolve most of the border disputes between the two states. Initially signed by China and the Soviet Union, ...

, the island was disputed between China and the Soviet Union. It got its Russian name from the railway engineer Stanislav Damansky, who died there in an incident in 1888 while he was charting the future route for the

Trans-Siberian railway The Trans-Siberian Railway (TSR; , , ) connects European Russia to the Russian Far East. Spanning a length of over , it is the longest railway line in the world. It runs from the city of Moscow in the west to the city of Vladivostok in the ea ...

Conflict between Soviet Union and China

The island was the subject of a

territorial dispute A territorial dispute or boundary dispute is a disagreement over the possession or control of land between two or more political entities. Context and definitions Territorial disputes are often related to the possession of natural resources s ...

between the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

and China. Battles were fought with a considerable loss of life during the

Sino-Soviet border conflict The Sino-Soviet border conflict was a seven-month undeclared military conflict between the Soviet Union and China in 1969, following the Sino-Soviet split. The most serious border clash, which brought the world's two largest communist states ...

in March 1969. The dispute over Zhenbao raised concerns that it could ignite

World War III World War III or the Third World War, often abbreviated as WWIII or WW3, are names given to a hypothetical worldwide large-scale military conflict subsequent to World War I and World War II. The term has been in use since at ...

until an initial resolution of the conflict in November 1969. On 19 May 1991, both sides came to an agreement that the island was part of the territory of China, and the Soviet troops withdrew. A 2004 Russian

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in te ...

, ''

Damansky Island Year 1969 Zhenbao Island () or Damansky Island (russian: о́стров Дама́нский, ''ostrov Damanskiy'') is an island with an area of only . It is on the Ussuri River on the border between Primorsky Krai, Russia, and Heilongjiang Province, Ch ...

.'' ("Остров Даманский. 1969 год"), was made about the 1969 Zhenbao incident.

References

External links

Centuries-old dispute became open combat during Cold War
(archived webpage)
Geo Coords: 46°29'8.13"N, 133°50'40.04"E. Google Earth FileGoogle Maps satellite imageGoogle Earth BBS article
Islands of Heilongjiang Territorial disputes of China China–Russia border River islands of China Ramsar sites in China {{Heilongjiang-geo-stub