Vladivostok

The land around Golden Horn Bay was part of Outer Manchuria until the Treaty of Aigun and the Convention of Peking passed it from Qing China to Russia. On 2 July 1860 the transport Mandzhur landed a military unit on the bay to found a post, named Vladivostok after the bay itself. In 1872 Russia's main Pacific naval base moved here, and the town grew fast: 4,163 people at the first count in 1878, about 29,000 in 1897, and three times that a decade later. The railway station opened in 1894, the first tram ran along Svetlanskaya in 1908, and a free port regime made the city an economic hub of the Asia-Pacific.

By 1914 more than 100,000 people lived here, and ethnic Russians were less than half of them. Chinese, Koreans and Japanese made up much of the population, and the Chinese quarter of Millionka, a warren of courtyards with its own shops, theatres and opium dens, housed up to 50,000 people. Under Stalin this world was destroyed: Millionka was cleared in 1936, repression and migration cut the population, and in the late 1930s and early 1940s a forced labour camp stood near Vtoraya Rechka station.

For most of the Soviet era Vladivostok was a closed naval city, opened to foreign visitors only on 1 January 1992. Its population peaked at about 648,000 that year, then fell. The 2012 APEC summit on Russky Island brought two cable-stayed bridges, a new university campus and an upgraded airport, and in December 2018 the city replaced Khabarovsk as the seat of the Far Eastern Federal District.

Vladivostok's culture is shaped by the sea and by its Asian neighbours. The Pacific Fleet has its headquarters here, the naval memorial and the museum submarine stand on the embankment, and the Pacific Fleet has its own drama theatre. The Chinese name for the bay, Haishenwai, means "bay of the trepang", a reminder of the city's older history, and Korean and Chinese minorities remain, alongside newer arrivals from Central Asia, mostly Uzbekistan.

Performing arts have grown in recent years. In January 2016 the city's opera and ballet theatre became the Primorsky Stage of the Mariinsky Theatre of St Petersburg, and the Gorky drama theatre, founded in 1931, a puppet theatre and a youth theatre fill out the stage. Contemporary art centres such as Zarya and Salt, the latter growing out of the university's art museum, have become active. The Pacific Meridian film festival each September brings filmmakers from across the Asia-Pacific, and the city also holds an international jazz festival.

Sport is followed closely: Admiral Vladivostok joined the KHL ice hockey league in 2013, which made it one of only two teams from the Russian Far East, with Amur Khabarovsk. The waterfront at Sportivnaya Harbour is the city's summer meeting place, and locals swim from its beach between the yachts.

About 600,000 people lived in Vladivostok at the 2021 census, with about 635,000 in the wider urban area. It is the administrative centre of Primorsky Krai and the capital of the Far Eastern Federal District, home to consulates and foreign businesses, and host of the Eastern Economic Forum each September.

The port and the navy drive the economy. The main industries are shipping, commercial fishing and the naval base; fishing accounts for almost four-fifths of the city's commercial production, and the import of Japanese cars is a major employer and source of income. The Zelyony Ugol market is the largest car market in Russia. The Far Eastern Federal University, the largest of the city's universities, has its campus on Russky Island, alongside maritime, medical and fisheries universities.

The city is built on steep hills: the old centre lies at the water's edge, while the streets running inland rise up the slopes of the hills. Getting around means buses and marshrutkas on winding roads, and the Golden Bridge, opened in 2012, took about half the traffic off the congested Lugovaya Square. Summer life turns to the beaches and islands; winter brings cold, dry days on the bay.

Vladivostok eats from the sea around it. The waters around the city hold herring, smelt, navaga and flounder, as well as mussels, scallops, octopus, crab and trepang, the sea cucumber that gave the bay its Chinese name. Fishing accounts for almost four-fifths of the city's commercial production, and fish and seafood fill the restaurants and the stalls of Sportivnaya Market, the largest market in the city.

The long presence of Korean, Chinese and Japanese communities shows in what people eat. Morkovcha, a spicy marinated carrot salad, comes from the cuisine of the Koryo-saram, the Korean community of the former Soviet Union, and is a variant of the Korean side dishes called banchan. Millionka, the old Chinese quarter, is being transformed into the centre of the city's café life.

Everyday Russian food is here as everywhere: soups such as shchi, borscht and solyanka, pelmeni dumplings, and cheap meals at the stolovaya, a self-service canteen surviving from the Soviet era.