Vladivostok, Russia

An Introduction and History Roles Play by Vladivostok, Russia

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. 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.

(extracted from Wikipedia)

Dr David Tien
Chair / IEEE NSW Section
Charles Sturt University, Australia

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