The future site of Komsomolsk-on-Amur was conquered by the
Mongols in the 13th century, becoming part of the
Yuan dynasty. It was later held by the
Qing dynasty until the area was ceded to the
Russian Empire in the
treaty of Aigun in 1858. The village of
Permskoye () was established on the later site of Komsomolsk in 1860 by migrant peasants from what was then called the Nizhne-Tambovsky District, Far Eastern Territory (now
Khabarovsk Krai). The government of the
Russian SFSR announced in 1931 plans to construct a shipyard on the Amur at the present site of Komsomolsk, with construction beginning in 1932. According to official accounts, the town was built using volunteer labor from the
Communist youth organization
Komsomol (and after 1991, the
Russian Communist Youth League), and on that basis receiving the name
Komsomolsk. However, the construction of the town was done with the extensive use of forced labour from the
concentration camps under the
Gulag administration, specifically the Dallag (Far East Camp) complex. The site had been the centre of the system for the Khabarovsk krai. According to Adashova and Kovalev, there was not a single entreprise constructed there in the 1930s or 1940s which had not involved Dallag forced labour, and at least 900,000 forced labourers passed through the area throughout its existence. The suffix
on Amur was added to differentiate from
other towns with the same name. It was granted town status in 1933. By the end of the 1940s, the shipyards along with facilities for other heavy industry had been completed. The city developed into a regional center for industries such as
aircraft manufacturing,
metallurgy,
machinery,
oil refining, and
shipbuilding. At present, Komsomolsk-on-Amur is the main center for the manufacture of Sukhoi military aircraft and the Sukhoi Superjet airliner. The
MiG-15bis and the Lisunov
Li-2 were both manufactured in Komsomolsk-on-Amur. ==Administrative and municipal status==