Сахалин облысының Холмск қаласы: тарихы мен қазіргі жағдайы

Town in Sakhalin Oblast, Russia

Kholmsk (Холмск), known until 1946 as Maoka (真岡), is a port town and the administrative center of Kholmsky District of Sakhalin Oblast, Russia. It is located on the southwest coast of the Sakhalin Island, on coast of the gulf of Nevelsky in the Strait of Tartary of the Sea of Japan, west of Yuzhno Sakhalinsk. Population:

It was founded in 1870 as a military post for the Russian Army. After the Russo Japanese War of 1904 1905, it was transferred to Japanese control, along with the rest of southern Sakhalin, under the Treaty of Portsmouth. The Japanese renamed it Maoka (真岡), it is said to mean "quiet place" in Ainu language. On August 20, 1945, a combined marine battalion and the 113th infantry brigade landed in Port Maoka. They were preceded by a group of scouts, landed secretively by submarine Sh 118, in the Maoka area to successfully complete their task. However, Japanese resistance was desperate, and the landing party had to fight particularly fiercely. Japanese fire set one of the coastguard vessels on fire, to which the Russian response was intense naval bombardment of the town, causing more civilian deaths. See Soviet assault on Maoka for details. The Red Army retook the whole of Sakhalin at the end of World War II, with the town receiving its present name in 1946. The name is derived from the Russian word Kholm for hill, referring to the town's location on the hillside surrounding the harbor. As with a number of urban areas in the Russian Far East, Kholmsk has seen a large drop in population since the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the economic crisis which followed in the 1990s.

Within the framework of administrative divisions, Kholmsk serves as the administrative center of Kholmsky District and is subordinated to it. As a municipal division, the town of Kholmsk and twenty three rural localities of Kholmsky District are incorporated as Kholmsky Urban Okrug.

Kholmsk is an important seaport for Sakhalin Island. Since 1973, it has been the Sakhalin terminal of a Vanino Kholmsk train ferry to the port of Vanino on the Russian mainland, connecting the mainline rail network with that of the island. Until 2019, Sakhalin railways continued to use the Japanese gauge of 1067, which required that railcars coming from the Russian mainland to have their bogies changed in Kholmsk. The island's narrow gauge railway network underwent conversion to Russian broad gauge in August 2019. It's the largest transport center on Sakhalin, which includes a non freezing seaport with 2 terminals, 3 railway stations and a knot of highways. Kholmsk is connected with Vanino port by the Kholmsk—Vanino sea railway passenger and freight ferry. From the town, the federal highway R495 Kholmsk—Yuzhno Sakhalinsk begins. Kholmsk is a large economic, industrial and cultural center of the Sakhalin Oblast, a center of sea fishery and ship repair.