The Light Reckoning of Vladivostok's Cosmopolitan Past

In one of the exhibition rooms of the main regional museums of Vladivostok, photographs and objects depict the original Chinatown of the city from the 19th century.  Nicknamed Millionka, the neighborhood inhabited by Chinese Settlers was just one of several ethnic communities in a city with only 20% ethnic Russian population.  Even among the Russian Settlers, the background was diverse, with Settlers coming in from not only the country's European heartland but also Ukraine, Belarus, and the Caucasus.  Foreigners and Russians alike mingled.

Such mingling allowed for the city's rapid development from a tiny village to one of the largest ports on the Pacific coast.  European, Chinese, and Russian entrepreneurs built industries, commercial firms, and worked on barren lands to make them agricultural productive.  The city's free port status and the tsar's program of giving land to new Settlers, along with building of the Trans-Siberia railroad to the city, ensure that getting enough people to the town was not an issue.  Plenty of people from across Europe and Asia came to seek fortune. 

The fact that the museum gushes about the city's Cosmopolitan past only serve to highlight just how much the city's potential has been squandered in the decades since.  As the city became a key Soviet military outpost on the edge of tense border standoff with China, non-Russian residents were no longer welcome.  It was only the last nail in the coffin in the dying Cosmopolitan feel of the place, already dented severely by most foreigners' departure after defeat of the White army to the Bolsheviks in the Civil War decades ago.

While Putin tries hard to provide the incentives, political motivation, and the infrastructure to get development going again, the city has fallen so behind its Pacific counterparts to the south that it is difficult to see it as a potential competitor anymore.  In the age of global commerce, ports to the south like Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Singapore have emerged as major players in both maritime shipping, and as engines of growth in their respective local economies.  Vladivostok's port, while still the biggest Pacific one for Russia, do little beyond importing used cars and export raw materials to feed East Asian industries. 

Of course, foreigners are still around.  New Chinatowns are being developed, albeit much more hidden than the Millionka from the previous century.  But life for foreigners in the free port is no longer so free.  Chinese migrants complain about random identification checks from police who are happy to extract bribes.  They also face complicated visa situations where yearly departure from Russia is necessary for extension and renewal.  Despite official rhetoric of welcoming foreign businessmen, the officialdom behave in not-so-welcoming ways.

The reality begs the question on the rationale behind the museum talking about the city's Cosmopolitan past.  Perhaps they talk about not out of nostalgia or any genuine desire to return to the days when only 20% of the city was Russian.  Instead, maybe the nuance is one of Cosmopolitanism being a necessary evil at the time, when the newly set up town genuinely lacked enough resources, both human and financial, to exploit its great potential.  In other words, the exhibit may be thanking foreigners of the decades past for their help, but is determined not to let them take the initiative in the city again.

The Chinese residents of the city seem to agree with such sentiments.  Some do speak of the local Russians' increasing desires to learn Chinese and interact more with them.  But when asked whether that is an effort to make the Chinese part of the city, Chinese residents are skeptical.  They find Russian efforts to keep in touch with them a practical way to tap the Chinese market in China, and perhaps go to China for business in the future.  For those Russians who are determined to stick around in Vladivostok, the desire to interact with the Chinese is quite low in contrast.

Asian tourists who visit the museum are oblivious to the treatment of the city's modern foreign residents.  They only see a city grounded in historical Cosmopolitanism and put on an air of sustaining it even today.  The city, for its part, is happy to keep up such an illusion for the purpose of attracting more international tourists.  While foreigners investing money to start businesses can be harangued, it gladly facilitate foreigners spending money locally.  The differing treatments of the two groups speaks volumes about the city's relationship with foreigners today.