Vladivostok

EDITOR’S NOTE: Below is some basic information about Vladivostok. The Engage Russia team will be visiting Vladivostok over the next few weeks and months and will be posting videos, photos, and print materials from those trips as soon as they become available. If you are interested in getting more information about Vladivostok or creating a partnership in that area, send an email to TellMeMore@EngageRussia.org.

Vladivostok, Russia

Vladivostok is Russia’s largest port city on the Pacific Ocean and the administrative center of Primorsky Krai. It is situated at the head of the Golden Horn Bay not far from Russia’s border with China and North Korea. It is the home port of the Russian Pacific Fleet.

The name Vladivostok loosely translates from Russian as “rule the East” a name based on that of Vladikavkaz, at that time a Russian fortress in the Caucasus. The traditional Chinese name for the city is Hǎishēnwǎi (literally “sea cucumber cliffs”).

History
Vladivostok was part of China before Russia acquired the entire Maritime Province including the island of Sakhalin by the Treaty of Aigun (1858) when China, which had just lost the Opium War with Britain, was unable to act. The Pacific coast near Vladivostok was settled mainly by the Chinese, Jurchen, Manchu and Korean during Imperial Chinese Qing dynasty period. A French whaler visiting the Zolotoy Rog in 1852 discovered Chinese or Manchu village fishermen on the shore of the bay.

The naval outpost was founded in 1859 by Count Nikolay Muravyov-Amursky, who named it after the model of Vladikavkaz, a Russian fortress in the Caucasus. The first child was born in Vladivostok in 1863. An elaborate system of fortifications was erected between the 1870s and 1890s. A telegraph line from Vladivostok to Shanghai and Nagasaki was opened in 1871, the year when a commercial port was relocated to this town from Nikolayevsk-on-Amur. The municipal coat of arms, representing the Siberian tiger, was adopted in March 1883.

The city’s economy was given a boost in 1903, with the completion of the Trans-Siberian Railway which connected Vladivostok to Moscow and Europe. The first high school was opened in 1899. In the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution, Vladivostok was of great military importance for the Far Eastern Republic, the Provisional Priamurye Government, and the Allied intervention, consisting of foreign troops from Japan, the United States, Canada, Czechoslovakia, and other lands. The taking of the city by Ieronim Uborevich’s Red Army on 25 October 1922 marked the end of the Russian Civil War.

As the main naval base of the Soviet Pacific Fleet, the city was closed to foreigners during the Soviet years. Nevertheless, it was at Vladivostok that Leonid Brezhnev and Gerald Ford conducted the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks in 1974. At the time, the two countries decided quantitative limits on various nuclear weapons systems and banned the construction of new land-based ICBM launchers.

Demographics
The city’s population was 594,701 as of the 2002 Census. Ethnic Russians and Ukrainians make up the majority of the population.

From 1958 to 1991, only Soviet citizens were allowed to live in or even visit Vladivostok (and even Soviet citizens had to obtain official permission in order to enter the city). Before this closure, the city had large Korean and Chinese populations. Some Koreans who were deported during Stalin’s rule from the Russian Far East have since returned, particularly to Vladivostok.

Vladivostok has one of the largest Armenian communities in eastern Russia. There are a number of Armenian bakeries and restaurants in the city. There are also sizable communities of Chechens, Azeris and Tajiks in the city. According to the latest statistics, there are currently about 100,000 Muslims living in the Russian Far East.

Text Source: Wikipedia – 2009