Place:Primorsky, Russia

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Primorsky Krai, informally known as Primorye and translated in full as Maritime Territory, is a federal subject (a krai) of Russia, located in the Far East region of the country and is a part of the Far Eastern Federal District. The city of Vladivostok is the administrative center of the krai, and the second largest city in the Russian Far East, after Khabarovsk. The krai has the largest economy among the federal subjects in the Russian Far East, and a population of 1,956,497 as of the 2010 Census.

The krai shares Russia's only border with North Korea, along the Tumen River in Khasansky District in the southwestern corner of the krai. Peter the Great Gulf, the largest gulf in the Sea of Japan, is located along the south coast.

Historically part of Manchuria, Primorsky Krai was ceded to the Russian Empire by Qing China in 1860 as part of a region known as Outer Manchuria, forming most of the territory of Primorskaya Oblast. During the Russian Civil War it became part of the Far Eastern Republic before joining the Soviet Union, going through numerous changes until reaching its current form in 1938. Primorsky Krai is home to the Russian Navy's Russian Pacific Fleet.

History

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The area was settled by several Tungusic and Turkic tribes, such as the Sushen, the proto-Mongol Shiwei and the Mohe. The Udege people are said to have traditionally settled in territories along the Bikin River long ago, however, they are possibly of Jianzhou Jurchen origin.

During the Balhae Kingdom, most of the krai was within the boundaries of the provinces of Dingli, Anbian and Anyuan. After Balhae was conquered by the Khitans, the territory became part of Liao Dynasty's Eastern Circuit and Jin Dynasty's Supin Circuit. It then came under Mongol and Manchu rule.

The acquisition of Siberia by the Tsardom of Russia and the subsequent Russian expansion to the Far East brought the Russians into direct contact with China. The Nerchinsk Treaty of 1689 demarcating the borders of the two states gave all lands lying south of the Stanovoy Mountains, including Primorye, to the Qing Empire. However, with the weakening of the Qing Empire in the second half of the 19th century, Russia began its expansion into the area. In 1858, the towns of Khabarovsk and Blagoveshchensk were founded. In 1858, Nikolay Muravyov-Amursky signed the Aigun Treaty with China, followed by the Beijing Treaty two years later. As a result of the two treaties, the Sino–Russian border shifted south in the Amur Annexation to the Amur and Ussuri Rivers, granting Russia full control of Primorye.

Primorskaya Oblast was established as the easternmost division of the Russian Empire in 1856. It included the territory of modern Primorsky Krai as well as the territories of modern Khabarovsk Krai and Magadan Oblast, stretching from Vladivostok to the Chukchi Peninsula in the far north.

In the period from 1859 to 1882, ninety-five settlements were established in the Primorye region, including Vladivostok, Ussuriysk, Razdolnoye, Vladimiro-Aleksandrovskoye, Shkotovo, Pokrovka, Tury Rog, and Kamen-Rybolov. The population was primarily engaged in hunting, fishing and cultivation. More than two-thirds of the territory's inhabitants followed these occupations.

During the latter part of the 19th century, there was a significant resource, industrial and resulting economic development in Primorye. Coal mining became a prominent industry, as did the export of sea-kale, velvet antlers, timber, crab, dried fish, and trepangs. The rapid economic expansion of Primorye was financed in large measure by Russian and foreign capital investment.

After the Russian Revolution and the victory of the communists, the new government renamed Primorskaya Oblast as the Zemstvo of Maritime Territory. It was defined as the Far-Eastern Republic (1920–1922). Within the Russian SFSR, this became Far-Eastern Oblast (1922–1926) and then Far-Eastern Krai (1926–1938).

The area became a battleground for allied and Bolshevik troops during the Siberian Intervention. In 1922, shortly before the end of the Civil War, Primorye came under Bolshevik control. The new government directed the economic, scientific, and cultural development of the territory. The Soviet Government spent the following ten years combating "bourgeois ideology" in many areas of life and culture. As a result, the music, theater, literature, and the fine arts of Primorye were censored.

Primorsky was the center of the ethnic Korean minority of Russia. The Pos'et Korean National Raion was created under the policy of Korenizatsiya. The Krai had 105 both fully and mixed Korean towns where residents used the Korean language as an official language. Nearly 200,000 ethnic Koreans were living in the Krai by the time of their deportation in 1938. The Soviet Union had earlier deported ethnic Chinese from western Siberia.

During this period, the Soviet government emphasized centralized planning of the economy. As in the rest of the Soviet Union, priority was given to heavy industry, with a special emphasis on mining and commercial fishing. There was a widespread investment in the construction of rail and sea transit, and new port facilities were constructed.

Primorsky Krai was formed by further subdivision of Far-Eastern Krai in 1938, as part of the Stalin-era policy of "unbundling". Primorsky Krai, as defined in 1938, corresponds to the northeastern part of the historical region of Outer Manchuria.

On April 18, 1942, the region became accidentally involved in World War II, which the United States had entered after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Primorsky Krai was the location where one of 16 United States Army Air Corps B-25 Mitchell medium bombers landed. The group had been launched from USS Hornet to carry out the Doolittle Raid on Japan. Japan and the Soviet Union were not then at war. The landing occurred 40 miles (65 km) west of Vladivostok; the bomber's crew could not return to their base, the aircraft carrier Hornet, by the mission plan. The crew later returned home via Iran.

During the 1970s, the Soviet Union expanded scientific institutions in Primorye, especially in the city of Vladivostok. Several large research institutions are located here, such as the Institute of Biology and Agriculture, the Pacific Institute of Bio-organic Chemistry, the Institute of Marine Biology, the Pacific Institute of Geography, the Pacific Oceanological Institute, as well as several Institutes affiliated with the Far Eastern Division of the Russian Academy of Science.

By the early 1990s, once-small enterprises in the city had developed into large companies. Some of the most prominent include the DVMP (FESCO) shipping company, the Dalmoreprodukt , Progress Arsenyev Aircraft Works, and Vostok Mining. Commercial fishing plays an important part in the economy of the Primorye and includes firms like Vladivostok Trawling and Refrigerating Fleet (VBTRF), the Active Marine Fisheries Base of Nakhodka, and the Fishing and Marine Transport Fleet of Primorye. Numerous enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex were also established in Primorye.

The Udege people, led by Pavel Sulyandziga, are trying to gain control over their traditional territories along the Bikin River and in particular a Territory of Traditional Natural Resource Use of federal status.^[1]

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