Primorsky Krai (Russian: Приморский край, tr. Primorsky kray, informally known as Primorye Приморье, and translated in full as Maritime Territory, is a federal subject (a krai) of Russia, located in the Far East region of the country and is a part of the Far Eastern Federal District. The city of Vladivostok is the administrative center of the krai, as well as the largest city in the Russian Far East. The krai has the largest economy among the federal subjects in the Russian Far East, and a population of 1,956,497 as of the 2010 Census.
The krai shares Russia's only border with North Korea, along the Tumen River in Khasansky District in the southwestern corner of the krai. Peter the Great Gulf, the largest gulf in the Sea of Japan, is located along the south coast.
Historically part of Manchuria, Primorsky Krai was ceded to the Russian Empire by Qing China in 1860 as part of a region known as Outer Manchuria, forming most of the territory of Primorskaya Oblast. During the Russian Civil War it became part of the Far Eastern Republic before joining the Soviet Union, going through numerous changes until reaching its current form in 1938. Primorsky Krai is home to the Russian Navy's Russian Pacific Fleet.
During the latter part of the 19th century, there was significant resource, industrial and resulting economic development in Primorye. Coal mining became a prominent industry, as did the export of sea-kale, velvet antlers, timber, crab, dried fish, and trepangs. The rapid economic expansion of Primorye was financed in large measure by Russian and foreign capital investment.
After the Russian Revolution and the victory of the communists, the new government renamed Primorskaya Oblast as the Zemstvo of Maritime Territory. It was defined as the Far-Eastern Republic (1920–1922). Within the Russian SFSR, this became Far-Eastern Oblast (1922–1926) and then Far-Eastern Krai (1926–1938).
The area became a battleground for allied and Bolshevik troops during the Siberian Intervention. In 1922, shortly before the end of the Civil War, Primorye came under Bolshevik control. The new government directed the economic, scientific, and cultural development of the territory. The Soviet Government spent the following ten years combating "bourgeois ideology" in many areas of life and culture. As a result, the music, theater, literature, and the fine arts of Primorye were censored.
Primorsky was the center of the ethnic Korean minority of Russia. The Pos'et Korean National Raion was created under the policy of Korenizatsiya. The Krai had 105 both fully and mixed Korean towns where residents used the Korean language as an official language. Nearly 200,000 ethnic Koreans were living in the Krai by the time of their deportation in 1938.[16] The Soviet Union had earlier deported ethnic Chinese from western Siberia.
Примо́рский край (Примо́рье) — субъект Российской Федерации.
Приморский край был образован 20 октября 1938 года указом Президиума Верховного Совета СССР «О разделении Дальневосточного края на Хабаровский и Приморский край» (в состав Приморского края вошли Приморская и Уссурийская области Дальневосточного края, упразднённые в 1939 и 1943 годах, соответственно).
Граничит на западе с КНР, на юго-западе — с КНДР, на севере — с Хабаровским краем.