A Strange Summit Site

When Russian settlers founded an outpost on the Pacific Coast in 1860, they named it "Ruler of the East," partly to taunt the Chinese. The magnificent harbor was the choicest item in a territorial package that Alexander II had wrested from the politically declining and militarily impotent Manchu rulers of China in one-sided frontier adjustments in the mid-19th century.

To this day, the name of the city sounds provocative to Chinese ears, and even though Communists have replaced monarchs in both Moscow and Peking, conflicting claims on Vladivostok and the surrounding Maritime Province have flared up frequently during the Sino-Soviet quarrel. In March 1963, the Chinese newspaper The People's Daily attacked the Kremlin for retaining control over land that "Russian imperialists" had acquired by "unequal and temporary treaties."

For the Russians, Vladivostok was the most fortuitous acquisition in the Far East; for the Chinese, it was the most galling loss. The port is situated on Golden Horn Bay, which opens onto the Sea of Japan; it was linked to Moscow by the Trans-Siberian Railway in 1903.

The strategic importance of Vladivostok made it a principal target of foreign intervention during the Russian Civil War after the 1917 Revolution, and at various tunes it was occupied by Japanese, British, Italian and French forces, as well as some 9,000 American soldiers sent by Woodrow Wilson in August 1918. The interventionists vied for influence over the Trans-Siberian railhead off and on until 1922, when the new Bolshevik regime in Moscow finally managed to extend control over the Far East.

Vladivostok is the home port of the Soviet Pacific fleet. The harbor freezes in the winter but is kept open by icebreakers. Naval war games have frequently been staged offshore. That fact, combined with the heavy concentration of vessels in its harbor and the presence of a missile base, explains why the city has been out of bounds to foreigners.

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