Concession (territory) - Russian Concessions

Russian Concessions

• Kwantung (Port Arthur), since 27 December 1897 occupied by imperial Russia, on 27 March 1898 Port Arthur became the Russian leased territory of Kwantung (Kvantunskaya oblast, i.e. imperial province), since 12 August 1903 seat of Russian Viceroyalty of the Far East, until 2 January 1905 when occupied by Japan, since 5 September 1905 Japanese leased territory (Kwantung Territory)
• one of the Concessions in Tianjin (then known as Tientsin).
• one of the concessions of Hankou (now part of Wuhan).
• Hanko (Hangö in Swedish), a peninsula near the Finnish capital Helsinki, was leased for a period of 30 years by the Soviet Union from its northwestern neighbour—and former possession in personal union—Finland for use as a naval base in the Baltic Sea, near the entry of the Gulf of Finland, under the Moscow Peace Treaty that ended the Winter War on 6 March 1940; during the Continuation War, Soviet troops were forced to evacuate Hanko in early December 1941, and the USSR formally renounced the lease—early given the original term until 1970—in the Paris peace treaty of 1947. The role of the Hanko naval base was replaced by Porkkala, another Finnish peninsula, a bit farther east at the Gulf of Finland, in the armistice between Finland and the Soviet Union of 19 September 1944; it was returned to Finland in January 1956. In both cases, the Soviets limited themselves to a military command, without any civilian administration.