World War II Database

Contributor: C. Peter Chen

ww2dbaseThe southern tip of the Muravyov-Amursky Peninsula had been settled by Chinese and Jurchen/Manchu fishermen dating back at least to the 1200-1300 period. The Treaty of Aigun of 1858 and the Treaty of Peking of 1860 moved the small town within Russian borders. In 1860, a small Russian naval contingent arrived at the town to establish a military outpost named Vladivostok, thus establishing the foundations of a modern city. By 1871, shipbuilding operations were already already underway, military headquarters, and elements of the Siberian Military Flotilla were slowly being moved from Nikolayevsk-on-Amur (Nikolayevsk-na-Amure) further north to Vladivostok. By 1917, the city had become the cultural, trade, and industrial center of the Russian Far East. In 1921, however, now flying the flag of the Soviet Union, the entire city was closed to foreigners (and would remain so for decades to come), thus transforming the city from a commercial city to one focused on military functions. In the 1930s, Joseph Stalin conducted several campaigns of oppression against several ethnicity groups in the Soviet Union, and Vladivostok, being the eastern terminus of the Trans-Siberian Railway, served as a transit point for large groups of prisoners who would board ships at Vladivostok for gulag camps in the Kolyma region to the north. During WW2, the Soviet Union upheld its non-aggression treaty with Japan for nearly the entire period, thus the Red Banner Pacific Fleet based at Vladivostok was reduced in size in order to bolster the strength of the Red Banner Northern Fleet based in northwestern Russia. In the final days of WW2, the military bases at Vladivostok collectively served as the staging point for the offensives against Japanese forces in northeastern China, northern Korea, the Japanese half of the island of Sakhalin, and the Japanese Kurile Islands. After the war, Vladivostok remained the headquarters of the Red Banner Pacific Fleet. The city was not re-opened to foreign trade until after the fall of the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War.

Vladivostok Naval Base Interactive Map

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