Ruler of the East

1860: Vladivostok founded

vladivostok is a city of surprises – a Russian port on the Pacific Ocean built along the shores of a bay with the magical name “Golden Horn” (Золотой Рог), that leads into the “Eastern Bosporus Strait” (пролив Босфор Восточный), which in turn separates the Muravyov-Amursky Peninsula (Полуостров Муравьёва-Амурского), on which the city sits, and Russky Island (остров Русский).

In 1860, a Russian military expedition reached this peninsula, which at the time was a sort of no-man’s-land, with a sparse native population and just a few Russian and Chinese hunters and fishermen. Neither Russia nor China had any official presence, so it did not really belong to anyone. Legend has it that Russian officers were struck by the similarity between the geography here and the strait that runs through Istanbul and that this is how the Eastern Bosporus got its name. In fact, the name may have less to do with geography and more to do with Russia’s disappointed aspirations. This new, Far Eastern world opened up before Russia only five years after its hopes of gaining access to the Balkans via the Bosporus had been dashed by its utter defeat in the Crimean War. Now, treaties had just been signed with China that established the border running through these boundless coastal expanses and it seemed as if the Far East would give Russia a completely new face.

Vladivostok (the name means “Ruler of the East”) never became a New Constantinople, and Khrushchev’s dreams of turning it into a Russian San Francisco also did not come to pass. Nevertheless, the city makes a powerful impression. Huge ships are anchored along the roadstead leading into the harbor, although they number only a fraction of what long-time residents recall from bygone days. There is a real submarine right on the street, set up as a “hands on” museum where you can play with all the controls. In the evening you can catch an absolutely amazing view of the port from the hilltops overlooking the city. The darkness conceals the rust of the ships and the dilapidation of the houses, and you can understand how the bay earned itself the name Golden Horn.

Here, everything is powerful, including the forces of nature. Spring is a long time coming because the ocean continues to breathe cold, and in the fall it is the other way around – the ocean holds the heat of summer. The advertising banners flapping overhead have special slits to prevent the fierce sea winds from tearing them to shreds.

The things of man are also impressive. The railroad that begins here and ends in Moscow is one of the longest in the world. After the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), Vladivostok began to be transformed into the main bulwark of the imperial navy and sixteen underground forts were built here – gigantic structures with huge interiors, passages, ventilation ducts, and special devices making it possible to observe what was happening above ground. People came from all over Russia to build these fortifications. After a year’s work you could save enough money to buy a house, but what a year it was – you had to chisel the rocky earth and stay “dry” (no liquor allowed).

Today there is a museum in one of these forts. Its director, obviously a former military man, talks about his fort as if it were still ready to defend the country: “And when the Japanese come, you can shoot from here and then calmly drink a cup of tea, since they can’t do anything to you.”

“Doing something” really would be hard. All you see from the surface is a little hill, and it is hard to imagine that it hides an underground citadel. In the 1930s there was a prison in this fort. The walls are pockmarked with bullet holes from the executions that took place here. This is yet another side of Vladivostok – its Gulag past. In a city suburb, along the banks of the Second River (the military exhausted its imagination naming the bay and used numbers to name minor rivers) is the camp where the poet Osip Mandelstam starved to death. A memorial stands here that is occasionally defaced with paint by some, after which others come to carefully clean it.

The city, however, does not seem too worried about all this – it has its own problems. Ten years ago the Russian media was filled with stories about entire districts that went months without electricity and almost years at a time without warm water; and then there was the ruthless war waged between the mayor and the governor. Photographs of military conscripts, mere boys, dying of hunger at the Russky Island military base made their way all across Russia. Today the city does not strike one as being impoverished, dark, or hungry. By Russian standards, while not a boomtown, it seems to be perfectly prosperous, although its residents clearly long for the city’s wealthier past, when it was a closed port and the Soviet government paid people a premium to work here.

These days, to help make ends meet, teachers and pensioners travel to China on tourist visas and come back loaded with Chinese goods, serving as couriers for Chinese traders (the popular terms for such people is помогайки, or “helpers”). For their services to Chinese commerce they are put up in Chinese hotels (breakfast included, to say nothing of electricity and water). They are even paid a small fee for allocating whatever available weight they can offer under the duty-free limit to sweaters and umbrellas destined for the Russian market.

It is almost as if China is now a part of Vladivostok (or Vladivostok is part of China, as some locals worry), and it is hard to find anyone in the city who has not spent time in one of China’s border towns. Not long ago these strange Chinese cities – Suifenhe, Mudanjiang – were tiny villages. Now they are filled with skyscrapers, restaurants, and casinos. And everyone speaks Russian. Men are addressed as “капитан” (captain) and along with goods they are immediately offered куню (a woman), while Russian women are addressed as “подруга” (female friend) and are offered men, although not quite as insistently. Small-time traders called “челноки” (shuttlers – a term common throughout Russia, while помогайки is a purely local term), who leave with truckloads of goods that will be sold throughout Primorye (the territory of which Vladivostok is a part), also travel here, but so do people just wanting to do a little shopping for themselves, celebrate New Year’s Eve, etc. And of course the Chinese come to Vladivostok, ready to take on any jobs spurned by out-of-work Russian sailors or their wives.

Chinese and Japanese advertising is everywhere. Cars with a steering wheel on the left are a rarity here – most come straight from Japan. The ships moored in port are brimming with cars, hanging like bunches of bananas. An invitation “to our good restaurant” is a sign that you will be offered sushi and sake. Here, strange Asian herbs and trees surround people for whom it is easier to go to China for the weekend than to Moscow, or rather “Europe,” which is what the locals call everything west of the Urals. Geographically speaking, this is perfectly correct, but it takes some getting used to.

Russians here are worried about the Chinese. While the Russian population is shrinking as people leave for “Europe,” everyone is talking about growing Chinese power and influence in the Russian Far East. Local radio reports with horror that more than 30 women in Vladivostok have entered into legal wedlock with Chinese men and nobody knows how many couples have yet to formalize their relationships.

Which just goes to show that xenophobia vanishes in the face of the normal human relations that develop among people who find themselves at the junction of two empires.