Sovetskaya Gavan is a city in the Khabarovsk Territory of Russia,
the administrative center of the Sovetsko-Gavan region. Forms an
urban settlement, the city of Sovetskaya Gavan as the only
settlement in its composition.
Located on the shores of the
bay of the same name, which in turn is part of the Tatar Strait.
Together with the suburban area (the villages of Lososina, Maisky
and Zavety Ilyich, it forms the only Sovgavan-Vanino agglomeration
on the coast of the Tatar Strait with a total population of about 40
thousand people.
Geographical
position
The city is located on the shore of the Sovetskaya Gavan
Bay (Tatar Strait), 581 km from Khabarovsk, 10 km from the port of
Vanino, one of the largest Russian ports on the Pacific Ocean. It is
located in a mountainous area, in the immediate vicinity there is a
Sovetsky ridge with a height of up to 560 m (Sovetskaya), a spur of
Sikhote-Alin.
The end point of the BAM. The city is connected
with the Komsomolsk-on-Amur by railroad, the highway 08A-1 “Lidoga -
Vanino - Sovetskaya Gavan”, the city is connected with the highway
“Khabarovsk - Komsomolsk-on-Amur”. The May-Gatka airport operates.
The Russian Empire
The first information about a
certain closed bay, located on the coast of the Tatar Strait south
of De-Kastri, was received by the participants of the Amur
expedition in the spring of 1852 on Lake Kizi from local Orocs, who
called the Khody or Khojo bay. Subsequently, in the Russian
language, the distorted name of Hadji was fixed for him. The Gulf
immediately interested the commander of the Amur Expedition GI
Nevelskoy as a potential base for the Navy, where the ships could
take refuge from a possible attack from the enemy fleet. The latter,
taking into account the complication of Russian-British relations
and the increased activity of the British fleet in the Far East, was
quite real. At first, two ways of searching for Haji were considered
- land (through the rivers flowing from the Sikhote-Alin and flowing
into the bay) and sea; because of the riskiness of the first path,
Nevelskoy chose the second.
The first discoverer of the
Khadzhi Bay was Lieutenant of the Russian Imperial Navy N.K.
Boshnyak, who was sent by Nevelskoy to search for a sea route to the
bay. He was accompanied by three companions - two Cossacks and a
Yakut translator. It happened on May 23 (June 4), 1853. On the
shores of the bay, Boshnyak counted about 50 orcs, who lived in 10
dwellings, scattered in 5 places along the shores of the bay. The
discoverer named the bay the harbor of Emperor Nicholas I (later the
name was shortened to Imperial Harbor). He gave the coves of the
gulf the names of the members of the imperial family. This decision
was made by him deliberately due to the fact that many close
associates of Nicholas I, in particular the Minister of Foreign
Affairs K.V. Nesselrode, had a negative attitude to the study of new
Far Eastern territories. On one of the capes, later named in honor
of the Grand Duchess Anastasia, a wooden cross was installed on
which a board was fixed with the inscription: “The harbor of Emperor
Nicholas is open, and is visually described by Lieutenant Boshnyak
on May 23, 1853, on a native boat, with companions Cossacks Semyon
Parfentiev, Kir Belokhvostov, Amga peasant Ivan Moseev. " The local
Oroch were given an official letter in Russian, German and French,
which indicated that the Imperial Harbor belonged to Russia.
On August 4 (16), 1853, Nevelskoy himself arrived in the Imperial
Harbor on the Baikal transport, wishing to personally participate in
the creation of the first Russian settlement in the newly discovered
bay. By his order, in one of the bays (Boshnyak called it
Konstantinovskaya, later she received the name Postovoy), a
"military post of His Imperial Highness General-Admiral of the Grand
Duke Constantine," headed by the sergeant D. Khoroshikh, was
exhibited. On October 7, 1853, N.K. Boshnyak again arrived in the
harbor, appointed by Nevelskoy as the first head of the Constantine
post.
For the winter of 1853-1854, the crews of the
transports "Irtysh" and "Nicholas I", about 90 people in total,
remained in the bay for the winter. The first wintering of the
Russians in the Imperial Harbor was tragic: 29 people died from poor
nutrition, cold and scurvy in the Constantine post and on ships.
Nevelskoy, in turn, ordered to arrange this poorly prepared
wintering, later tried to shift the blame for the death of people to
N.V. Busse (who allegedly did not share food and did not replace the
sick from the crew of the Irtysh transport when he was on the
roadstead of the Muravyevsky post ). To this end, he personally made
changes, accusing the head of the post, as it were on behalf of
Lieutenant Boshnyak, in the memoirs of the latter, published in the
"Marine collection" (No. 10, 1859). As it turned out soon, the
editorial board of the magazine instructed Nevelsky only to “look
through the article of Mr. Boshnyak and express his opinion about
it” (No. 2, 1860). NV Busse, in a letter to the editor, published in
No. 7 for 1860, set out his own version of events that fully
justifies it, presenting as evidence the original report of the
commander of the Irtysh. However, many years later, Nevelskoy
presented his inventions in chapter XXIV of the book "The exploits
of Russian naval officers in the Far East of Russia" (published
posthumously in 1878 and, thanks to the authority of the author, is
still considered a reliable source of information).
In 1887, a memorial sign was erected in memory of the victims;
subsequently, its location changed four times. In 2016, in the
village of Zavety Ilyich, a new monument to those who died from
scurvy was erected, on which they are listed by name.
On May
22, 1854, the frigate "Pallada" entered the harbor, as well as the
steam schooner "Vostok", which met the "Pallada" at the entrance to
the Tatar Strait. The commander of the "Vostok" delivered to
Vice-Admiral E. V. Putyatin, who was on board the "Pallada", an
official message that Britain and France had declared war on Russia:
from the arriving ships they learned about the beginning of the
Crimean War at the Constantine post. In the vicinity of Postovoy
Bay, a forest was cut down, and the construction of two batteries
began to, if necessary, repel an attack by an enemy fleet, which
could appear at any time. Putyatin personally supervised the
construction of the batteries. He was assisted by the senior
artilleryman of the "Pallada" Lieutenant Colonel K. I. Losev, who,
together with the sailors, erected breastworks with embrasures,
equipped parking places for guns.
On June 28, 1854, the
Pallada left the Imperial Harbor, planning to arrive in Nikolaevsk
through the Amur estuary. After unsuccessful attempts to make the
last "Pallada" at the end of September 1854 returned to the harbor
for the winter, where she was guarded by a team of 10 people led by
boatswain V. Sinitsyn. In March 1855, a new head of the
Constantinovsky post, a member of the Amur expedition, Ensign DS
Kuznetsov, who took over from V. Sinitsyn, arrived in Postovaya Bay.
In the spring of 1856, by order of the chief of the land and sea
forces of the Amur region, VS Zavoiko, the frigate "Pallada" was
flooded so that it would not fall to the enemy. After that, the
Constantine post was removed, its chief D.S.Kuznetsov and his
subordinates left the Imperial Harbor.
In May 1856, after the
end of the Crimean War, a British squadron entered the Imperial
Harbor abandoned by the Russians: the steamer HMS Barracouta, the
frigates HMS Pique and HMS Sybille. The squadron stayed in the gulf
for about ten days, before leaving, the British burned all the
buildings of the Konstantinovsky post. In mid-July 1856, the British
returned again to map the coast of the Gulf. The bay itself was
named "Barracouta Harbor" - in honor of the British steamer. Many
other geographic sites have also received English names, mostly in
honor of the Barracuda's crew.
In 1857, the Constantine post
was restored and worked until 1903.
On November 2 (14), 1860,
the Peking Treaty was signed, which officially secured for Russia
the lands east of the Amur River, including the territory of the
Imperial Harbor. Prior to that, the Imperial Harbor was formally
located on the territory not delimited between Russia and China.
At the end of the 19th century, a lighthouse was built on the
promontory at the entrance to the bay, one of the oldest on the
Russian Pacific coast. After the revolution, the Bolsheviks renamed
the lighthouse "Krasny Partizan" in memory of the Bolshevik
partisans who were shot here during the civil war. A monument was
also erected not far from the lighthouse.
The territory of
the modern city began to actively develop in the 1900s in connection
with the activities of loggers and fish traders. At the beginning of
October 1906, engineer Pülkkenen won a tender for the sale of 2
million logs from the Ternei Bay area (including from the Imperial
Harbor), who entered into a 4-year contract with the State Property
Administration and began the construction of a timber mill in
Imperial Harbor. However, the larch boards that Pülkkenen tried to
sell in Shanghai turned out to be of poor quality, and their sale
did not justify the entrepreneur's expenses for setting up a
sawmill. This forced Pühlkkenen to abandon the concession, handing
it over to the British Oriental Timber Corporation Ltd. In 1907, an
Australian entrepreneur, Harold Crofton Slay, was sent by the
Eastern Timber Society to Imperial Harbor, where he bought a timber
processing plant and logged timber from Pühlkkenen. In addition,
Slay was awarded a contract to remove another 400,000 logs from
Imperial Harbor over three years. The company spent more than 300
thousand rubles. for the arrangement of the concession: with this
money, administrative buildings and residential buildings were built
on the shores of the Okocha Bay. By 1910, the total costs of the
company for an enterprise in the Imperial Harbor amounted to more
than one million rubles, of which 517.5 thousand rubles were spent
on workers' wages. The Australians removed only about 230 thousand
logs from the Imperial Harbor, without covering 33% of the costs. In
this regard, in 1911, Slay filed a petition for an extension of the
logging contract to 12 years and full legalization of the production
activities of the Eastern Timber Society in Russia. However, the
Russian administration did not satisfy his request, after which the
Australians refused to conduct the case on the same terms.
At the end of August 1908, VK Arseniev visited the Imperial
Harbor as part of the Jubilee Expedition of the Amur Department of
the IRGO. One of the most important tasks of the expedition was to
find the shortest summer route from Khabarovsk to the Imperial
Harbor. The expedition was also responsible for describing and
determining the area of areas suitable for resettlement, mapping
them, determining the composition and depth of soils, collecting
statistical information on the population of the area, finding out
the presence of roads, trails and other communication routes.
Ethnographic research was also an important task, primarily the
study of the Udege and Oroch people. The members of the expedition
stayed in the harbor for about two weeks on vacation, after which
they left it. The expedition returned to the harbor in the summer of
1909. In the period from August to October 1909, Arseniev surveyed
the basins of the surrounding rivers Khadya, Tutto, Ma, Ui and
Chuanka.
By 1912, a village was formed around the sawmill,
which received the name Znamenskoye. It consisted of three
settlements located along the shores of Mayachnaya, Yaponskaya (now
Kuriksha Bay) and Concession (now Okocha Bay) bays.
On
October 27, 1914, in Znamenskoye (at that time it was part of the
Khutsin volost of the Olginsky district of the Primorsky region) a
post and telegraph office was opened with the receipt of domestic
and international telegrams. A telegraph line was extended from
De-Kastri to the Imperial Harbor.
Civil war and the
establishment of Soviet power
In 1919, in the area of the
Imperial Harbor, four fishing industries operated under the
management of Russian entrepreneurs - in Lososina Bay, Olga Bay,
Alexandra Bay (now Severnaya) and near the Menshikov Peninsula, as
well as the aforementioned Australian concession in Okocha Bay.
There were two lighthouses with servants: the Nikolaevsky lighthouse
on the Cape of St. Nicholas and another lighthouse at the entrance
to the bay.
On April 5, 1919, a partisan detachment under the
command of Peter Kuriksha entered the Imperial Harbor. The
guerrillas arrested local police officers, seized the Australian
concession, and shot several people from the administration and
entrepreneurs. The head of the local post office managed to request
help by telegraph, and in May 1919 the steamer Vzryvatel arrived
from Vladivostok. A White Guard landing force landed from it, which,
after a short battle, knocked out the Reds. Pyotr Kuriksha and the
partisans of his detachment (his backbone were employees of the
Nikolaev lighthouse) were shot by the White Guards near this
lighthouse: in 1926 the lighthouse received a new name "Red
Partisan").
On April 6, 1920, the Far Eastern Republic was
proclaimed on the territory of the Russian Far East, which included
the Primorskaya Oblast, and with it the Imperial Harbor. However, in
fact, the harbor continued to remain under the control of the White
Guards, who did not recognize the FER.
In April 1922, the 1st
expeditionary partisan detachment of the Reds under the command of
V.S.Kolesnichenko in the amount of 45 people arrived from Olga to
the village of Znamenskoye. The headquarters of the detachment was
located in the building of the post and telegraph stronghold. A
gathering of the villagers was held, at which most of the residents
of Znamenskoye demanded the departure of the detachment, however,
Kolesnichenko and the detachment commissar G.P. Kharchuk managed to
convince the residents. Soviet power was established in the Imperial
Harbor, and the Harbor itself was renamed Soviet power by order of
the partisan detachment.
Throughout 1922, the Kolesnichenko
detachment defended the coast of the harbor from the White Guards.
The first collision occurred with the beginning of navigation, at
the end of May: the white ship was forced to leave without engaging
in battle. This was followed by clashes with detachments of whites
near the villages of Znamenskoye, Grossevichi, near the Kazimierz
barracks. At the end of September 1922, the Whites landed a landing
party in Sovetskaya Gavan, under the blows of which Kolesnichenko's
detachment withdrew from Sovetskaya Gavan to join the main forces of
the partisans. As a result, the partisans managed to defeat the
white landing on the Samarga River. This was the last attempt by the
Whites to establish control over Soviet Gavan; after its failure,
Soviet power was finally established in the city.
Soviet
period
1920s
On November 15, 1922, the FER was liquidated. The
territories that made it up became part of the RSFSR as the Far
Eastern Region. The Primorskaya Oblast, which included the Imperial
Harbor, was transformed into Primorskaya Province with the center in
Vladivostok.
On February 19, 1923, the All-Russian Central
Executive Committee issued a resolution, according to which the
harbor was officially named Soviet. In the same year, 1923, the
Znamensky village council was formed. By this time, Znamenskoye was
a fairly large village, there were about 80 houses in it.
In 1925, the Sovetsky District was formed as part of the Primorsk
province with the center in Znamensky.
In 1926, an
administrative-territorial reform was carried out in the Far East.
Primorskaya province, along with three other provinces, was
abolished and became part of the newly formed Far Eastern Territory
(DVK). The region was divided into districts, one of which was the
Khabarovsk District - the Soviet District was included in the
latter.
In 1927, on the route Sovetskaya Gavan - Khabarovsk,
a complex expedition of the Far Eastern Resettlement Administration
under the leadership of V.K.Arsenyev took place, which was engaged
in the search for a route for the railway between these cities.
Working settlement Sovetskaya Gavan (1930-1941)
In the 1930s,
the village of Znamenskoye was transformed into a working settlement
Sovetskaya Gavan. In the same year, the Khabarovsk District was
abolished, and the Sovetsky District, renamed Sovetsko-Gavansky,
went under the direct control of the DCK. By this time, four fish
processing plants, three fishing collective farms, the Soviet timber
industry enterprise, the Soviet-Gavan timber mill, and the Oroch
national collective farm were established in the village. In 1932,
the first issue of the city newspaper "Sovetsko-Orochskaya Zvezda"
(later called "Sovetskaya Zvezda") was published.
On October
20, 1932, the Primorskaya Oblast was formed as part of the DCK, with
its center in Vladivostok. Sovetsko-Gavanskiy region became part of
it.
In 1933, the Sovgavan fish processing plant was founded
on the shores of Lososina Bay, later reorganized into the Sovgavan
Ocean Fishing Base (SBOR) [14]. Collection was one of the largest
industrial enterprises in the USSR - it employed up to 3 thousand
people. Since 1969, after the settlement of Lososina was separated
from the city limits, the collection has been located on its
territory.
In 1934, the construction of plant No. 263 began,
later named the Northern Shipyard (SSRZ). In 1937 the construction
was completed, at the same time the first ship was repaired at the
plant. The construction of a mill, a special-purpose Far East power
plant, and a seaport was started.
In 1934, in Sovetskaya
Gavan, then a border town (on the other side of the Tatar Strait was
the Japanese part of Sakhalin), he began to create a fortified area.
This year, the first two coastal batteries, No. 908 and No. 909,
were commissioned. They were erected urgently, of a lightweight
type, armed with four 152-mm Kane cannons each. These batteries
could not effectively counteract the artillery ships of the heavy
cruiser class and above, therefore, in 1938, coastal battery No. 925
of 180-mm caliber began to be built on Cape Vesyoliy.
On
October 20, 1938, the DCK was divided into the Khabarovsk and
Primorsky Territories. Sovetskaya Gavan, as part of the Primorsky
region, became part of the Primorsky Territory. Already in 1939, the
Primorsky region was abolished, and the Sovetsko-Gavansky region
became directly subordinate to the regional authorities.
In
1940, the Soviet-Gavana fortified area was transformed into the
Soviet-Gavana naval base of the North Pacific military flotilla.
The city of Sovetskaya Gavan (from 1941)
On January 18, 1941,
the settlement of Sovetskaya Gavan received the status of a city.
On May 21, 1943, the USSR State Defense Committee issued a
decree on the construction of the Komsomolsk-on-Amur (Pivan) -
Sovetskaya Gavan railway line and a seaport in Vanin Bay, which was
yet to be built. Thousands of prisoners from Stalin's forced labor
camps were thrown into the construction of a railway along the
Hungari River in the foothills of the Sikhote-Alin. On October 8,
1943, the Far Eastern Shipping Company approved the staffing table
of the "port point of Vanino", the actual work of the Vanino port
began a year later, in 1944. In 1945 the road Komsomolsk -
Sovetskaya Gavan was completed. The first passenger train arrived at
Sovetskaya Gavan in 1947.
In August 1945, during the military
campaign against Japan, an assault force was landed from Sovetskaya
Gavan in the port of Maoka on southern Sakhalin. After the
annexation of South Sakhalin to the USSR, the need for the coastal
battery No. 925 disappeared: at first it was mothballed, and in 1972
it was closed.
In 1946, a construction organization was
formed in the city, the construction of the first stone buildings
began: residential buildings on the central street of the city -
Primorskaya (now Lenin), school No. 1 (now the building of the
Inter-school educational center) and the city hospital (now the
building of the health department) ... Japanese prisoners of war
worked at many construction sites in the city.
The importance of Sovetskaya Gavan increased sharply since the
summer of 1946, after the port facilities in Nakhodka were destroyed
by the explosion of the Dalstroy steamer. On February 17, 1947, a
decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR was issued, making
the Vanino port the main civilian port of the Soviet Far East. By
the same decree, the port was transferred from the jurisdiction of
the Ministry of the Navy to the jurisdiction of Dalstroy.
In
May 1948, the first civil aircraft landed at the airfield of the
42nd Aviation Regiment - the PO-2 aircraft with mail and one
passenger on board. Since that time, regular air traffic began
between Sovetskaya Gavan and other cities in the Far East.
On
September 15, 1948, the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme
Soviet of the RSFSR "On the transfer of the city of Sovetskaya Gavan
from the Primorsky Territory to the Khabarovsk Territory" was
issued.
In 1950-1953, the city was the seat of the
Construction Department 508, and in 1953-1954 - Ulminlag. By 1953,
the prisoners built the Sovetskaya Gavan-Sortirovochnaya -
Sovetskaya Gavan-Gorod railway line.
In 1954-1956, a House of
Culture was built in Sovetskaya Gavan in the style of Soviet
neoclassicism.
On June 5, 1958, the Khabarovsk regional
executive committee made a decision: "On the separation of the
village of Vanino from the city limits of the city of Sovetskaya
Gavan and its assignment to the category of workers' settlements."
Thus, the village of Vanino (which also included the housing estate
of the sawmill, which was allocated in 1985 as a separate village)
became an independent settlement.
In 1959, the villages of
Maysky and Oktyabrsky were withdrawn from Sovetskaya Gavan, and in
1960 - the urban-type settlement Zavety Ilyich.
In 1966, a
museum of local lore appeared in the city (now it is a regional
museum of local lore named after N.K. Boshnyak).
In 1969 the
settlement of Lososina was removed from the city.
In 1973,
the Vaninsky district was created with the center in the village of
Vanino, to which most of the territory of the Soviet-Gavansky
district was transferred. Since then, the boundaries of the city and
district have not changed.
In the 1980s, a number of
ambitious projects were launched to build new large shipbuilding
enterprises in the city, mainly for military purposes. In
particular, it was planned to build the largest shipbuilding plant
in the USSR "Pallada" (after the sailing frigate dumped in
Sovetskaya Gavan Bay), focused on the construction of nuclear
aircraft carriers, as well as a number of auxiliary industries (the
"Priboy" plant). In this regard, a significant expansion of the city
was planned with an increase in its population to 220 thousand
people, which would make Sovetskaya Gavan the third city in the
region in terms of the number of inhabitants after Khabarovsk and
Komsomolsk-on-Amur. To carry out these works, in 1981, a
construction department No. 106 was formed in the city. For 10
years, global landscape work was completed and the construction of
residential and industrial premises began, however, due to the
collapse of the USSR and the ensuing economic crisis, the project
was canceled.
Russian Federation
In the early 1990s, the
first Russian-Japanese joint venture for wood processing,
Vanino-Tairiku, was established in Sovetskaya Gavan.
In 1993,
the first ship under a foreign flag entered the Soviet-Havana port;
before that the port was closed.
In 1997, the first products
that received an international quality certificate were produced by
the fish processing enterprise Vostokryba LLC.
In 1999, the
construction of the Lidoga - Vanino highway began, which was to
connect the city and other settlements of the bay area with the
All-Russian motor transport network. In 2001, a through car traffic
was opened on the highway. Construction completed on October 30,
2017.
In 2000, the port "Sovetskaya Gavan" received
international status. In the same year, shipyards began to fulfill
orders for the modernization of equipment used in the development of
the Sakhalin oil shelf.
On July 22, 2002, one of the two
backbone enterprises of the city, the Northern Shipyard, was finally
declared bankrupt.
From 2003 to 2005, a branch of the
Komsomolsk-on-Amur shipbuilding plant, the Pallada plant, was opened
in the city, the Orlan oil rig was repaired. The reinforced concrete
plant resumed the production of building materials, and the
production of building stone was started on the basis of the
Sovetsky open pit.
Until 2004, the entire district was a
single municipal entity "City of Sovetskaya Gavan with
Sovetsko-Gavansky District". In accordance with the Law of the
Khabarovsk Territory of July 28, 2004 No. 208 "On endowing
settlement and rural municipalities with the status of urban, rural
settlements and on the establishment of their boundaries", a
separate municipal formation was created in each settlement of the
district. The city became the administrative center and the only
settlement of the City Settlement "City of Sovetskaya Gavan".
In November 2007, the first private fish hatchery in the
Khabarovsk Territory with a capacity of 15 million salmon fry per
year was opened in the city.
On December 31, 2009, a
Resolution of the Government of the Russian Federation was signed on
the creation of a port special economic zone (PSEZ) in the port of
Sovetskaya Gavan. PSEZ existed for seven years, during which time
not a single resident was registered on its territory. As a result,
according to the Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation
of September 28, 2016 No. 978, the existence of the Soviet-Gavan
PSEZ was terminated.
In 2012, a decree of the President of
the Russian Federation was signed, envisaging the construction of
several new power plants in the Far East, including the
Sovgavanskaya CHPP, designed to replace the outdated Mayskaya GRES
and ineffective city boiler houses, as well as to solve the problem
with the lack of hot water in the houses of citizens in the summer.
In June 2013, PJSC RusHydro established JSC CHPP in Sovetskaya
Gavan, and in December 2014, concreting of foundations for the frame
of the main building of the CHPP under construction began.
Subsequently, the construction of the CHPP proceeded significantly
behind schedule, in particular, due to the change of the general
designer that occurred at the end of 2015. At present, the
construction of the CHPP is almost completely completed -
commissioning is underway at the station, and the laying of the
heating main from the CHPP to Sovetskaya Gavan is nearing
completion. The launch of the power plant is scheduled for September
2020. The city authorities pin their hopes on attracting new
investors to Sovetskaya Gavan with the completion of the
construction of the power plant.
On July 4, 2018, President
V.V.Putin signed a bill to extend the regime of the Free Port of
Vladivostok to the Sovetsko-Gavanskiy region. In August of the same
year, the first application for the status of a resident of a free
port in Sovgavan was submitted by Bunker-Port LLC, which intended to
reconstruct the infrastructure of the Sovetskaya Gavan port.
In October 2019, the last dock of the Yakor shipyard was sold in
Primorye. Thus, ship repair in Sovetskaya Gavan completely ceased to
exist.