page_title: Vladivostok
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Vladivostok / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Manchuria AMS Topographic Maps
context_page_description: Vladivostok is a city and the administrative centre of the Far Eastern Federal District and Primorsky Krai, Russia, located around the Golden Horn Bay, not far from Russia's borders with China and North Korea. The population of the city as of 2019 was 605,049, up from 592,034 recorded in the 2010 Russian census. Harbin in China is about 515 kilometres away, while Sapporo in Japan is about 775 kilometres east across the Sea of Japan.
  The city is the home port of the Russian Pacific Fleet and is the largest Russian port on the Pacific coast.
context_section_description: The aboriginals of the territory on which modern Vladivostok is located are the Tungusic-speaking Udege minority, and a sub-minority called the Taz which emerged in the 1890s through members of the indigenous Udege mixing with the nearby Chinese and Hezhe. The region had been at least nominally part of many states, such as the Mohe, Balhae Kingdom, Liao Dynasty, Jīn Dynasty, Yuan Dynasty, Ming Dynasty, Qing Dynasty and various other East Asian dynasties, before Russia annexed Primorsky Krai and the island of Sakhalin by the Treaty of Beijing (1860). Qing China, which had just lost the Opium War with Britain, was unable to defend the region. The Manchu emperors of China, the Qing Dynasty, had banned Han Chinese from most of Manchuria including the Vladivostok area (see Willow Palisade)—it was only visited by illegal gatherers of ginseng and sea cucumbers.
  On 20 June 1860 (2 July for Gregorian style), the military supply ship Manchur, under the command of Captain-Lieutenant Alexey K. Shefner, called at the Golden Horn Bay to found an outpost called Vladivostok. Warrant officer Nikolay Komarov, with 28 soldiers and two non-commissioned officers under his command, were brought from Nikolayevsk-on-Amur by ship to construct the first buildings of the future city.
  The Manza War in 1868 was the first attempt by Russia to expel the Chinese inhabitants from  territory it controlled. Hostilities broke out around Vladivostok when the Russians tried to shut off gold mining operations and expel Chinese workers there. The Chinese resisted a Russian attempt to take Askold Island and in response, two Russian military stations and three Russian towns were attacked by the remaining Chinese.
  An elaborate system of fortifications was erected between the early 1870s and the late 1890s. A telegraph line from Vladivostok to Shanghai and Nagasaki was opened in 1871.  That same year a commercial port was relocated to Vladivostok from Nikolayevsk-on-Amur. Town status was granted on 22 April 1880. A coat of arms, representing the Siberian tiger, was adopted in March 1883.
  The first high school was opened in 1899. The city's economy was given a boost in 1916, with the completion of the Trans-Siberian Railway, which connected Vladivostok to Moscow and Europe.
  After the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks took control of Vladivostok and all the Trans-Siberian Railway. During the Russian Civil War, from May 1918, they lost control of the city to the White-allied Czechoslovak Legion, who declared the city to be an Allied protectorate. Vladivostok became the staging point for the Allies' Siberian intervention, a multi-national force including Japan, the United States, and China; China sent forces to protect the local Chinese community after appeals from Chinese merchants. The intervention ended in the wake of the collapse of the White Army and regime in 1919; all Allied forces except the Japanese withdrew by the end of 1920.
  In April 1920, the city came under the formal governance of the Far Eastern Republic, a Soviet-backed buffer state between the Soviets and Japan. Vladivostok then became the capital of the Japanese-backed Provisional Priamurye Government, created after a White Army coup in the city in May 1921. The withdrawal of Japanese forces in October 1922 spelt the end of the enclave, with the Red Army under Ieronim Uborevich taking the city on 25 October 1922.
  As the main naval base of the Soviet Pacific Fleet, Vladivostok was officially closed to foreigners during the Soviet years. The city hosted the summit at which Leonid Brezhnev and Gerald Ford conducted the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks in 1974. At the time, the two countries decided quantitative limits on nuclear weapons systems and banned the construction of new land-based ICBM launchers.
  In 2012, Vladivostok hosted the 24th APEC summit. Leaders from the APEC member countries met at Russky Island, off the coast of Vladivostok. With the summit on Russky Island, the government and private businesses inaugurated resorts, dinner and entertainment facilities, in addition to the renovation a
caption: Map of Vladivostok
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