History
The bay on which Sovetskaya Gavan is located was discovered on May 23, 1853 by Lt. Nikolay Konstantinovich Boshnyak in Russian-American Company ship "Nikolay", and named Khadzhi Bay. On August 4, 1853, Captain Gennady Nevelskoy founded a military post named after Admiral Grand Duke Konstantin, and renamed the bay to Imperatorskaya Gavan ('Emperor's Harbor'), after the then reigning Emperor Nicholas I. Nikolay Boshnyak was appointed the commander of the post, which became the first Russian settlement in the area, and the predecessor of today's Sovetskaya Gavan.
After the abandonment of the military post before 1900, the area became a center for timber production, including concessions to companies from other countries such as Canada.
The bay and the settlement were renamed Sovetskaya Gavan in 1922.
During World War II, construction was begun on a railway from the right bank of the Amur River near Komsomolsk-on-Amur to the Pacific coast, with Sovetskaya Gavan chosen as the endpoint. Sovetskaya Gavan was granted town status in 1941; the railway reached the town in 1945. This section of railway was the first section to be completed of what would later became the Baikal-Amur Mainline.
From 1950 until 1954, the town was the site of the prison camp Ulminlag of the gulag system.
In 1958, the town's northern neighborhood, on the Vanino Bay, was separated into a separate urban-type settlement of Vanino.
In 1963-1964, six sounding rockets of "Kosmos 2"-type were launched. They reached the height of 402 kilometers (250 mi).
Read more about this topic: Sovetskaya Gavan
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“There is no example in history of a revolutionary movement involving such gigantic masses being so bloodless.”
—Leon Trotsky (1879–1940)
“The history of his present majesty, is a history of unremitting injuries and usurpations ... all of which have in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world, for the truth of which we pledge a faith yet unsullied by falsehood.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“What you don’t understand is that it is possible to be an atheist, it is possible not to know if God exists or why He should, and yet to believe that man does not live in a state of nature but in history, and that history as we know it now began with Christ, it was founded by Him on the Gospels.”
—Boris Pasternak (1890–1960)