Mogocha ( rus, Могоча, p=mɐˈgotɕə) is a

town A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than city, cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world. Origin and use The word "town" shares ...

and the

administrative center An administrative center is a seat of regional administration or local government, or a county town, or the place where the central administration of a commune is located. In countries with French as administrative language (such as Belgium, L ...

of Mogochinsky District in

Zabaykalsky Krai Zabaykalsky Krai ( rus, Забайкальский край, r=Zabaikal'skii krai, p=zəbɐjˈkalʲskʲɪj kraj, lit. " Transbaikal krai"; bua, Yбэр Байгалай хизаар, Uber Baigalai Xizaar) is a federal subject of Russia (a krai ...

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-eigh ...

, located northeast of Chita, the administrative center of the

krai A krai or kray (; russian: край, , ''kraya'') is one of the types of federal subjects of modern Russia, and was a type of geographical administrative division in the Russian Empire and the Russian SFSR. Etymologically, the word is relat ...

. Population:

Etymology

The name "Mogocha" is derived from the river on which it stands, whose name comes from the Evenki word ''mongochi''. This meaning of this word is ambiguous; it can be translated as ''golden valley'', but also as ''belonging to the Mongo tribe''.

Geography

Mogocha is located near of the southern slopes of the Olyokma-Stanovik, at the

confluence In geography, a confluence (also: ''conflux'') occurs where two or more flowing bodies of water join to form a single channel. A confluence can occur in several configurations: at the point where a tributary joins a larger river ( main stem); ...

of the Mogocha and Amazar rivers. Google Earth

History

It was founded in 1910, with the construction of the local section of 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 eas ...

. Rail traffic began in 1914. In addition to its status as a supply point for the railway, from the 1920s and 1930s it became the base for gold mining in the surrounding area. Town status was granted to it in 1950. From 1947 until 1953, Mogocha was site for the ''Klyuchevlag'' prison labor camp of the

gulag The Gulag, an acronym for , , "chief administration of the camps". The original name given to the system of camps controlled by the State Political Directorate, GPU was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps (, )., name=, group= ...

system. The camp held up to 3,000 prisoners at any one time, mainly used as forced labor for

molybdenum Molybdenum is a chemical element with the symbol Mo and atomic number 42 which is located in period 5 and group 6. The name is from Neo-Latin ''molybdaenum'', which is based on Ancient Greek ', meaning lead, since its ores were confused with le ...

and gold mining in the villages to the southwest of the town. During the deterioration of Sino-Soviet relations in the 1950s, a large airbase was created near Mogocha, which hosted several helicopter regiments until the 1990s. The remoteness of Mogocha combined with the harsh climatic conditions, gave rise to the Soviet military slang expression ''God created Sochi, and

Satan Satan,, ; grc, ὁ σατανᾶς or , ; ar, شيطانالخَنَّاس , also known as the Devil, and sometimes also called Lucifer in Christianity, is an entity in the Abrahamic religions that seduces humans into sin or falsehoo ...

Mogocha''. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union and subsequent economic crisis, Mogocha lost around one third of its population, a common occurrence for cities in the

Russian Far East The Russian Far East (russian: Дальний Восток России, r=Dal'niy Vostok Rossii, p=ˈdalʲnʲɪj vɐˈstok rɐˈsʲiɪ) is a region in Northeast Asia. It is the easternmost part of Russia and the Asian continent; and is admin ...

. At the same time, a significant number of Chinese citizens and companies have moved to the region.

Administrative and municipal status

Within the framework of administrative divisions, Mogocha serves as the

of Mogochinsky District, to which it is directly subordinated.''Registry of the Administrative-Territorial Units and the Inhabited Localities of Zabaykalsky Krai'' As a municipal division, the

of Mogocha, together with four rural localities, is incorporated within Mogochinsky Municipal District as Mogochinskoye Urban Settlement.Law #317-ZZK

Economy

Other than railway-related industries, there is logging and timber milling conducted in the surrounding area.

Transportation

Mogocha has a station on the

. The town's small airport, which had opened in 1937, was closed during the 1990s.

Climate

Mogocha has a subarctic climate (

Köppen climate classification The Köppen climate classification is one of the most widely used climate classification systems. It was first published by German-Russian climatologist Wladimir Köppen (1846–1940) in 1884, with several later modifications by Köppen, nota ...