The industrial base of Vladivostok was much diversified during the Soviet period. In addition to large ship-repair yards, there are railway workshops and a plant for the manufacture of mining equipment. Light industry includes instrument and radio factories, timber-working enterprises (notably those producing furniture and veneer), a china ware works, and manufacturers of pharmaceutical products. Food industries are also important. In the 1990s, in the post-Soviet period, most industry declined, with the exception of food processing. Mechanical engineering continues to be important. A railroad town, Vladivostok is the eastern terminus of the Trans- Siberian Railway. The city also has an airport.
Vladivostok is the chief educational and cultural centre of the Russian far east. It is the site of the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Far Eastern State University (founded 1920), and medical, art education, polytechnic, trade, and marine-engineering institutes - not surprisingly, students make up a significant proportion of the city's total population. The city's lively cultural life is also well served, with a symphony orchestra, theatres, galleries, and museums, including the V. K. Arsenyev Museum, devoted to regional lore, the Pacific Fleet History Museum, the Museum of Fishery and Oceanography, and an aquarium. Off the coast of Vladivostok is the Far East Marine Biosphere Reserve, an important area of marine biodiversity.
Sakhalin Island
Sakhalin Island lies off Russia's far-eastern coast, between the Tatar Strait and the Sea of Okhotsk, north of the Japanese island of Hokkaido. It may seem an unlikely place to visit, and indeed until the collapse of the Soviet Union foreigners were forbidden to do so. But today tourism is rapidly expanding, thanks largely to massive foreign investment in the island's offshore gas and oil resources.
The island was first settled by Japanese fishermen along its southern coasts; the first Russians arrived only in 1853. By an agreement of 1855 Russia and Japan shared control of the island, but in 1875 Russia acquired all Sakhalin in exchange for the Kuril Islands; it was then that the island soon gained notoriety as a Russian penal colony, where conditions were said to be among the harshest in the country. In 1945 the Soviet Union regained the southern half of the island, territory that Russia had lost in 1905 as a result of the Russo-Japanese War, and at the end of the Second World War Sakhalin's entire Japanese population was eventually repatriated,
Sakhalin is 589 miles (948 km) long from north to south and about 100 miles (160 km) wide, covering 29,500 square miles (76,400 square km). The landscape is wild and largely unspoiled: the vegetation ranges from tundra and stunted forests of birch and willow in the north to dense deciduous forest in the south. Fishing is plentiful. Though there is a lowland plain in the north, most of the land is mountainous, reaching 5,279 feet (1,609 m) at Mount Lopatin, and snowboarding has become a tourist attraction. Other than the capital, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, there are no major towns; the town of Neftegorsk was largely destroyed in a major earthquake in 1995.
For devotees of the author and playwright Anton Chekhov the island has another fascination. In early 1890 Chekhov suddenly decided to escape the irritations of urban intellectual life by undertaking a one-man sociological expedition to the island. Chekhov's journey there was a long and hazardous ordeal by carriage and riverboat. After arriving unscathed, studying local conditions, and conducting a census of the islanders, he returned to publish his findings as a research thesis, which retains an honoured place in the annals of Russian penology: The Island of Sakhalin (1893—4).
INDEX
Note: Where more than one page reference is listed against a subject, page references in bold indicate significant treatment of the subject.
Abkhazia 129
abstract art 19Л-9, 204, 205 Acmeists 159, 163 Afghanistan, invasion (1979) 89 agitki newsreels 208-9 agitprop 62, 208-9 agriculture 7, 22, 23, 26-7, 241, 2434, 2S4 Brezhnev era 91 failures 59-60, 67-8, 83, 97 Krushchev era 83, 84, 85 Siberia 304, 305
see also collectivization; kolkhozy, sovkhozy Akademgorodok 313-14 Akhmatova, Anna 15, 157, 159, 163
Akvarium (rock band) 192-3 alcohol 6, 269, 270 Alekhine, Alexander 263, 264-5 Alexander 11 (1818-81) 34, 38, 39,
120, 145, 149-50 Alexander 111 (1845-94) 40 Alexandra, Tsaritsa 41 Ail-Union Communist Party 56 All-Union State Institute of
Cinematography 2Ь8-9, 211-12 alphabet, Cyrillic 265 Andropov, Yuri V. 85, 94
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (1972) 123
anti-Semitism xiii, 78, 168 Aral Sea 242 aristocracy ix, xiv, xv armaments industry 247-8 armed forces 10-11, 81, 124,233,
238-9 Armenia 56, 117, 239 arms exports 124, 126, 248 arms race xь, 86, 87, 87-8, 93-4 army 73, 236 arts 15, 62, 135-42 repression 72, 157-8, 161^1, 168,
169, 188 see also ballet; cinema; literature; music; socialist realism; theatre; visual arts Aurora (cruiser) 296 autocratic rule 14, 33^1, 34-5, 38, 39 Azerbaijan 56, 100, 117, 239
Baikal, Lake 20, 314 Baikal-Amur Main Line 248, 305-6, 309
Bakst, Lйon 201, 223, 223-4 Balanchine, George 224, 225 ballet xvii, 220-5,226,227, 292, 311, 313
designs for 196, 197, 201, 223, 223-4
see also Diaghilev; Khachatunan; Prokofiev; Stravinsky; Tchaikovsky Ballets Russes 178,181, 196, 197,
201,220, 221-5 Baltic states x, 77, 100, 117, 118 banks 242, 250-1, 254 barter 58, 59, 114
Battleship Potemkin (film, Eisenstein,
1925) 209-10 Bauhaus school 63, 198, 205, 206 Belarus 117, 118, 239, 252 Bel in sky, Vissarion 149 Beria, Lavrenty 78 Berlin Wall 86 birth rate xviii, 5, 29 Bolsheviks 44, 46, 47-50, 54, 60, 62^1
see a ho Civil War; Lenin; New Economic Policy; War Communism Bolshoi Theatre 180, 225, 226, 280, 286
Bonaparte, Napoleon 20, 277, 280 boreal forest 21-2 Borodin, Aleksandr 174, 175, 177 Borodino (battle, 1812) 280 boyars 34, 35, 144, 146 Brest-Litovsk, Treaty of (1918) 45, 50
Brezhnev, Leonid (1906-82) 85, 89, 90, 94
Brezhnev era (1964-82) 89-94, 169,
256,267 Britain 52, 53, 55, 56 Brodsky, lsaak 199 Brodsky, Joseph 166, 168, 169 Bronshtein, Lev Davidovich see
Trotsky Buddhism 267, 268 Bulgakov, Mikhai! 167, 167-8 Bulganin, Nikolay 83 Bunin, Ivan 157, 166 bureaucracy xviii, 58, 81, 89, 253 bureaucrats 95, 96, 97, 236 Bush, George H. W. xi Bush, George W. 123
Bvzantine influences 135, 136, 265 calendar 43, 138-9 canals 70, 248, 289-90, 291, 295 Caspian Sea 245, 259 Cathedral of St Basil the Blessed
[Moscow) 137,283, 285 Cathedral of St Peter and St Paul (St
Petersburg) 296 Catherine II (Catherine the Great,
1729-96) 34, 38, 120, 295 caviar 245, 257, 258-9 censorship 62 arts 141, 147, 161, 162^4, 171, 212, 214
Central Committee 48, 50,54, 82, 95,
99, 108 Chagall, Marc 199-203 Chechnya xviii, 23, 76, 105, 116-17,
121-2, 124, 131 Cheka 51-2, 64, 129-30 Chekhov, Anton 15, 155-6, 215-Н6,
319
chemical industry 90, 240, 247, 300 Chernenko, Konstantin 94 Chernobyl accident (1986) 242, 246 Chernomyrdin, Viktor (b. 1938) 107,
108, 109-10, 110 chess 263-5
China 80, 255, 309, 317
relations with 83, 87, 93, 119, 123 Christianity 116, 265-8
see also Russian Orthodox Church churches xiv, 136, 278, 283-4, 285,
310 Churchill, Winston 52, 78 cinema xvii, 63, 207-13
CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) 14-15, 95, 117, 118-19, 239