The First Freemen of Khabarovsk

In the second half of the 19^th century Russian cities had received their rights to entitle “The honorable citizen of the city”, like it was in European countries. The award procedure with this title compare to present days was very complicated. Firstly a candidate for honorable citizen was presented in Duma meeting. Then the members of Duma voted for that candidate.

After that the decision of the city authority was reported to Governor-General and Home Secretary, who “asked about greatest pleasure of the Emperor”. This order was a kind of reliability of the candidate and no surprise there were honorable citizens mostly in central Russian cities who became high-ranking officials and people close to province elite. Provincial towns used this right to protect their interests, trying to take on a high-ranking official with moral and ethic duties.

The first honorable citizen of Khabarovsk became a military-governor of the Primorye area Mikhail Pavlovich Tikhmenev. He promoted Khabarovka to become the center of the Primorye area, and to get the city status, thus Khabarovsk became the center of Pryamursky General-Governorship.

The largest contribution in development of Khabarovsk was made by the first architect of the city engineer-colonel Vladimir Grigorievich Mooro, the first Governor-General baron Andrey Nikolayevich Korf, general-lieutenant Nikolay Lvovich Gondatty, merchants of the 1^st guild Sergey Yakovlevich Bogdanov, Vasily Fedorovich Plusnin, Innokenty Pavlinovich Pyankov, and etc. 13 persons became freemen of Khabarovsk before the Great October Socialist Revolution, among which were four Governor-Generals*, a colonel-engineer, 7 merchants and one entrepreneur. Each of them deserved this title for the contribution to improvment the lives of Khabarovsk citizens.