High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! As portion of the Guandong Leased Territories (Guandong zhou), the city of Dalian came under the territorial control of Russia from 1898 until that country’s defeat in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. The Russians called the city Dalny (Russian: Дальний), which means “distant” or "remote", describing the city`s location relative to the Russian heartland while also being a sort of transliteration of the Chinese ‘Dalian’. Under Russian control Dalny grew into a vibrant port city and before its loss in 1905 was one terminus of the Russian controlled Chinese Eastern Railway.