Chita (Russian: Чита, IPA: [tɕɪˈta]) is a city and the administrative center of Zabaykalsky Krai, Russia, located on the Trans-Siberian Railway route,[8] roughly 1,100 kilometers (680 mi) east of Irkutsk and roughly 2,100 kilometers (1,300 mi) west of Khabarovsk.

[8] According to George Kennan, who visited the area in the 1880s, "Among the exiles in Chita were some of the brightest, most cultivated, most sympathetic men and women that we had met in Eastern Siberia.

He estimated Chita's population at under 1,000, but predicted that the city would soon experience fast growth, due to the upcoming annexation of the Amur valley by Russia.

The Imperial Japanese Army occupied Chita from September 1918 to 1920 in the course of the Siberian intervention.

On behalf of the White movement, Ataman Grigory Semyonov's Eastern Okraina ruled from Chita for some few months in early 1920 with Japanese support.

In 1945, the Soviet authorities held Puyi, who had reigned (1908–1912, 1917) as the last Emperor of China, and some of his associates as prisoners in the city, in a former sanatorium for officers.