The Manza War in 1868 was the first attempt by Russia to expel Chinese from territory it controlled. Hostilities broke out around Vladivostok when the Russians tried to shut off gold mining operations and expel Chinese workers there. The Chinese resisted a Russian attempt to take Ashold Island and in response, two Russian military stations and three Russian towns were attacked by the Chinese, and the Russians failed to oust the Chinese.
An elaborate system of fortifications was erected between the 1870s and 1890s. A telegraph line from Vladivostok to Shanghai and Nagasakiwas opened in 1871, the year when a commercial port was relocated here from Nikolayevsk-on-Amur. Town status was granted on April 22, 1880. A coat of arms, representing the Siberian tiger, was adopted in March 1883.
Vladivostok circa 1898
The first high school was opened in 1899. The city's economy was given a boost in 1903, with the completion of the Trans-Siberian Railway, which connected Vladivostok to Moscow and Europe. In the wake of the October Revolution, Vladivostok was of great military importance for the Far Eastern Republic, the Provisional Priamurye Government, and the Allied intervention, consisting of foreign troops from Japan, the United States, Canada, Czechoslovakia, and other nations.1,600 Chinese troops also intervened in response to a request by the Chinese community in the area for aid. The taking of the city by Ieronim Uborevich's Red Army on October 25, 1922 marked the end of the Russian Civil War.
American troops in Vladivostok during the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War (August 1918)
As the main naval base of the Soviet Pacific Fleet, the city was officially closed to foreigners during the Soviet years. It was at Vladivostok that Leonid Brezhnev and Gerald Ford conducted the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks in 1974. At the time, the two countries decided quantitative limits on
