Sights in Russian Far East
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Vladivostok Fortress Museum
Attention fort fans: Vladivostok teems with sprawling, rather unique subterranean forts (130 in all) built between the 1880s and early 20th century to ward off potential Japanese (or American) attacks. Neophytes are best sticking with the easily accessible Vladivostok Fortress Museum, overlooking Sportivnaya Harbour. This hilltop museum is built in a fort that operated from 1882 to 1923, and is now home to many cannons and a five-room indoor exhibit of models, photos and artefacts – all refreshingly subtitled in English. You can climb onto (and aim) anti-aircraft guns pointing towards Hokkaido. You reach the fort from ul Zapadnaya.
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Antique Automobile Museum
If you’re a bit of a car (or Soviet) nerd, the newish Antique Automobile Museum – stranded under the smoke of a nearby factory in east Vladivostok – is an absolute classic. A room full of Sovietmobiles (motorcycles, too) from the 1930s to 1970s, includes a 1948 M&M-green GAZ-20 ‘Pobeda’ (Victory). If they start selling reproductions of the poster with an acrobat on a motorcycle holding a Stalin flag, send us one, please! Take bus 31 along ul Svetlanskaya and exit after it reaches ul Borisenko’s end.
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Mask of Sorrow
On a small hill overlooking the town, the striking Mask of Sorrow was built in 1991 in memory of those who perished in Kolyma's camps. Names of old camps are along the small hillside down from the monument - a grey stone face, with minifigures, an inner cell and a weeping woman behind. Views take in two bays. The monument is about 500m south of the bus station (visible the whole way).
Though you're pretty near a Gulag site anywhere in Russia, Magadan and the surrounding Kolyma Region is most often linked to the terror of the Gulag. Following the discovery of gold here in 1932, prisoners poured in. The setting was 'perfect' for Gulag overseers - ice-locked and 9000km from …
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Regional Museum
Home to the Karafuto administration before the USSR seized the island from the Japanese in 1945, the pagoda-roofed Regional Museum is the city's best museum. On the 1st floor are photos of the island's (and the Kurils') natural features and Chekhov-era prisons, plus 19th century seal-hide tunics worn by the Ainu (some of the island's indigenous population). The wildlife room - a taxidermy-rama - features a seal exhibit complete with a model of a bird dung-splattered cliff.
Upstairs highlights the Soviet days - best is the photo of the 1931 komsomol group with a mix of races sitting sides by side. A small Korean exhibit has recently been added. It's all in Cyrillic (except…
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Arsenev Regional Museum
Grey-haired ladies keep watch over every Russian museum in existence, but none do it more sweetly than at the interesting Arsenev Regional Museum, which dates from 1890. You’re likely to befriend at least a couple of ‘guards’ while walking through the three floors of exhibits recounting Vladivostok history. Exhibits are in Russian only, but it’s still enjoyable for non-Russian speakers. On the 1st floor note the stuffed tiger and bear interlocked as if dancing; the 2nd floor is filled with great 19th-century photos of Vlad’s early days, including a display of the Brynner family; also note the turn-of-the-last-century telephone booth and a collection of samovars anchored b…
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Permafrost Institute
The world of global-warming activist watches goings on at places like Yakutsk’s Permafrost Institute, about 2km west of the centre. Buses 17 or 41 will get you nearby. It’s a real institute, but opens its 12m-deep icicle-filled basement (a lab in the frozen earth) to the public. The lab stays a constant -6°C (wrap up warmly, though there are usually coats around to use). A tour includes a short film. You’ll see 10,000-year-old deposits of vegetation (though some melted due to excess visitors in 2007). There’s also a model of a baby mammoth discovered on the Kolyma River in 1977 (the original was hauled off to St Petersburg’s Museum of Zoology).
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Sakhalin Regional Museum
The pagoda-roofed Sakhalin Regional Museum has a 21st-century exhibit exploring the Japanese/Soviet overlap of the city’s history, typified by the building itself, which served as the home of the Karafuto administration before the Soviets seized the island from the Japanese in 1945. The 1st floor is full of much older exhibits, including realised dreams of taxidermy and some fascinating Aino artifacts and photos from back before the original south Sakhalin inhabits fled to Japan. The front gardens are a popular sitting area for locals, as are the armoured vehicles next to a jet fighter at the old Officers’ Club (Dom Ofitserov), a block east.
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Primorsky Art Gallery
Vladivostok’s bipolar art museum, the Primorsky Art Gallery, has a small collection at its original locale (ul Aleutskaya 12), but the main collection has moved indefinitely to two separate halls east of Park Provotsky (with separate admissions). The one to the west features 19th- and early 20th-century oil masters (including Feshin’s sassy Golden Hairs from 1914), packed onto limited wall space. The east gallery features changing exhibits of local painters (when we dropped by they featured fascinating graphic artwork from ’60s Soviet-ho! books).
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Regional History Museum
The Regional History Museum offers a series of well laid-out halls in an evocative 1894 red-brick building. Highlights are many, particularly a far-better-than-average look into native cultures, a few English captions in the stuffed-animal section, and a full-on panorama of the snowy 1922 civil war battle at Volochaevka. No Gulag coverage, though the nearby prison population was bigger than the city’s in the ’30s. At research time, the museum was busy adding on a second wing as the Amur RiverMuseum, which may require an additional ticket.
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Kamchatka State Unified Museum
Several Crimean War monuments can be seen off ul Leninskaya, which you can follow south a few hundred metres and reach the Kamchatka State Unified Museum, housed in an attractive half-timbered building overlooking the bay. The museum features an imaginative mix of relics and murals that outline Kamchatka’s history, for example dioramas of nomadic herders, old cannon balls and flags, photos of the 1975 Tolbachik eruption and maps showing Alaskan expansion.
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Fort No 7
Sixteen protective forts encircle Vladivostok. The best (but pricey) is the hill-top Fort No 7, 14km north of the centre. It has 1.5km of tunnels, pretty much untouched since the last 400 soldiers stationed here left. (The sole inhabitants now include two pet cats to keep rats out.) Views are good too. Visiting on your own is very difficult, as the fort doesn't keep regular hours and it's hard to find. Organise a trip through an agency instead.
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S-56 Submarine
Keeping with the aquatic theme, the S-56 submarine is worth a look. The first half is a ho-hum exhibit of badges and photos of men with badges (all in Russian). Keep going: towards the back you can climb through porthole doors to peek at various rooms, including a lounge of sorts and a bunk room with Christmas-coloured torpedos. Outside note the ‘14’, marking the WWII sub’s ‘kills’.
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BAM Museum
The BAM Museum, a couple of blocks southwest of the Orthodox cathedral (Sobor Svyatoy Troitsy), covers native Evenki culture, WWII, local art and regional wildlife, but is known for its four rooms of BAM relics and photos (no English). Two rooms cover the railway’s early years and the Gulag prisoners who built it. Look for the photo of sci-fi author Ivan Efremov, who secretly wrote while in the Gulag.
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Museum of the Battle Fame
At the Museum of the Battle Fame, in a fine old pillared building, a guy in a navy outfit will probably help you put shoe covers on for the carpeted floors of the three-floor exhibit. The museum is geared chiefly to border patrol history (despite its more marketable war-oriented name), with imaginative 'boat' and 'plane' doors to such-themed rooms. Up top you can spy on hipsters outside through high-definition binoculars.
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Gagarin Park
Scrappy but loved, the 220-acre Gagarin Park, at the city's east side, is Yuzhno's greenest hang-out spot, with loads of rides, shaded walkways and free concerts on Sunday afternoons in summer. Nearby, from the east end of Kommunistichesky pr, is a trail you can climb for a view of town (and the smokestacks), which is near the Gorny Vozdukh ski area in winter. Head south at ul Gorkogo, then follow the trail to the east.
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Municipal Museum of Regional Studies
Worth it even if you can’t read Russian, the well-arranged Municipal Museum of Regional Studies has several rooms filled with old photos and knick-knacks showing how Komsomolsk rose from the tent camps of original pioneers in 1932 to an industrial Soviet city. One exhibit triumphs the Soviet devushki (young women) who followed the calls for women out to this all-male city in 1937.
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Regional Museum
A good place to delve deeper into Sakha culture, the Regional Museum packs nine rooms devoted to wildlife (including a 2900-year-old human skeleton), first Russian settlers, regional minerals, revolution, WWII and Soviet life. Outside there’s a huge whale skeleton found in 1961. The museum is actually located off pr Lenin (a wood sign across from Le Grand hotel points the way).
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Museum of Sakhalin Island: A Book by Ap Chekhov
A few blocks northwest, the (brace yourself for the name) Museum of Sakhalin Island: A Book by AP Chekhov is a simple two-floor showing of Chekhov’s few months in Sakhalin, including a picnic photo with visiting Japanese dignitaries (looking rather like the bearded Bob Dylan on the New Morning album cover). A couple of signs are in English.
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historic centre
The most walkable part of Petropavlovsk is around the historic centre - particularly up from pl Lenina at bayside Nikolskaya Hill, where there's a small chapel and several monuments to those who fell in the failed Crimean War invasion in 1854. Some buses (including 1 and 22) continue south of town along the hillside road to Rakovaya village, with even better bay views.
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Fine Art Museum
The ladies running the Fine Art Museum will be eager to help you appreciate the two floors of changing exhibits, often modest works by regional artists. One recent exhibit we saw was of Khabarovsk-based artist Nikolai Dolbilkin, who made many of the wonderful Soviet mosaics around town when he lived here in the ’50s and ’60s.
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National Art Museum
Try to look past the (tripled) foreigner admission price at the excellent new National Art Museum, as its three floors show off many local customs and much scenery, with huge oil paintings (of heroic train construction, the life-like pillars atop Mt Kisilyakha etc). English descriptions follow changing themes over the years.
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Archaeology & Ethnography Museum
All that permafrost in the area has resulted in some of the world’s best preserved mammoth skeletons. You can see some at the Archaeology & Ethnography Museum, with skeleton sketches comparing the hair and trunk of mammoths with those of elephants. It’s in one of the university buildings facing the canal.
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City Park
A pleasant City Park stretches 1.5km downriver (northwards). On the promontory is a cliff-top tower in which a troupe of WWI Austro-Hungarian POW musicians was shot dead for refusing to play the Russian Imperial anthem. It now contains a café, Kafe Utyos. Opposite the tower is a statue of Count Nikolai Muravyov-Amursky.
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Regional Museum
The Regional Museum has exhibits on local Jewish history (including an ad for a cheesy 1980s band Freilekhs), plus boars and bears and a mini- diorama of the Volochaevka civil war battle (akin to Khabarovsk’s bigger one, but here blood pours from the 3-D dead guy’s head).
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Art Museum
A couple of blocks west, the upstairs permanent collection (pre-Soviet Russian oils, Korean and Japanese textiles) at the Art Museum usually beats the changing exhibits of local artists downstairs; best is getting inside the unique building, a former Japanese bank built in 1935.
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