VLADIVOSTOK COMMERCIAL SEAPORT IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE 1920s: EXPORT COMPETITION AND INTERDEPARTMENTAL CONTRADICTIONS

Abstract

The article is devoted to the problem of the development of the Vladivostok commercial port in the early 1920s. The first quarter of the XX century was a time of severe trials for the whole of Russia in general and the Far East in particular: World War I; Civil War; foreign intervention. All this time, the Vladivostok Harbor was in fact the only source of external contacts of the remote region. Being the largest Russian port on the Pacific Ocean, Vladivostok has historically been a kind of center of attraction, both in socio-economic and military-political aspects. However, the destroyed logistics chains and the colossal damage that the era of political instability brought with it deprived him of the primacy in the struggle for the markets of the Pacific Rim. This publication is based on archival documents, many of which are being introduced into scientific circulation for the first time. The author sets himself the task of demonstrating the key activities of the central and local authorities aimed at restoring the competitiveness of the Vladivostok commercial port in the «Manchurian transit» — its distinctive «Visiting card» since the beginning of the century. The author concludes that despite the cardinal change in the vector of the country's political and economic development after 1917, the port of Vladivostok managed to retain the status of the Russian «Window to Asia». The key means of implementing these plans was the establishment of the so-called «Transit harbor» in the port, which became the logical result of generalization and application of the colossal pre-revolutionary experience in the functioning of «free economic zones».