Vladivostok

Vladivostok is the largest city and the administrative center of Primorsky Krai and the capital of the Far Eastern Federal District of Russia. It is located around the Golden Horn Bay on the Sea of Japan, covering an area of 331.16 square kilometers (127.86 square miles), with a population of 603,519 residents as of 2021. Vladivostok is the second-largest city in the Far Eastern Federal District, as well as the Russian Far East, after Khabarovsk. It is located approximately 45 kilometers (28 mi) from the China–Russia border and 134 kilometers (83 mi) from the North Korea–Russia border. Vladivostok was historically part of Outer Manchuria. Shortly after the signing of the Treaty of Aigun between Qing China and the Russian Empire and affirmed by the Convention of Peking – from which it is also known as the Amur Annexation – the city was founded as a Russian military outpost on July 2, 1860. In 1872, the main Russian naval base on the Pacific Ocean was transferred to the city, stimulating its growth. By 1914 the city had experienced rapid growth economically with a population exceeding over 100,000 ethnically diverse inhabitants of which slightly less than half of the population were Russians. During this time, large Asian communities developed in the city. The public life of the city flourished; many public associations were created, from charities to hobby groups. After the outbreak of the Russian Revolution in 1917, Vladivostok was occupied in 1918 by White Russian and Allied forces, the last of whom, from the Japanese Empire, were not withdrawn until 1922 as its wider intervention in Siberia wound down alongside the collapse of the antirevolutionary White Army forces. The Red Army occupied the city that same year, absorbing the Far Eastern Republic into the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Following the...