The history of the Chinese Eastern Railway goes back for more than 100 years. Today we must objectively assess its historical signifcance and its place in the history of sociocultural relations between the peoples of Russia and China. Recently, in both Chinese and Russian science we can see the withdrawing from the study of the political history of relations between Russia and China in late 19 - early 20 centuries in favor of the study of the history of cultural interaction between the two nations. No matter how modern Chinese and Russian scientist evaluate the role of CER in the history of Sino-Russian relations, the majority of them agree that the railway itself together with the city of Harbin represent a unique sociocultural phenomenon. Historians of St. Petersburg University in cooperation with Chinese colleagues from Harbin Institute of Technology are working on the following aspects: the role of the Chinese Eastern Railway in creation of the image of China in Russia, the Railway status after the Russo-Japanese war, economic policy on the Chinese Eastern Railway line, the Chinese labor migration in Russia during the First World war, engineering and construction solutions.