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History: Nakhodka (Russian: Находка) is a port city in Primorsky Krai, Russia. The city had 148,826 inhabitants as of the 2002 Census, down from 160,056 recorded in the 1989 Census. During the years from 1950 until 1991, when the nearby large port of Vladivostok was closed to foreigners and foreign shipping, Nakhodka became the primary deep water port in the Russian Far East.
Nakhodka Bay, around which the city is organized, was discovered in 1859 by the Russian corvette "Amerika", which sought shelter in the bay during a storm. In honour of this occasion, the ice-free and relatively calm bay was named Nakhodka, which in Russian means discovery or "lucky find".
Until the 20th century the area around the bay remained uninhabited, with the first settlement a small fishing village founded in 1907. When the Soviet government decided to build a harbour in the area in 1930s, a number of small settlements were founded, which were merged as a work settlement in 1940s. In 1950 the town, now with around 28,000 residents, was given town status.
In the early 1950s, Soviet authorities decided to close Vladivostok to foreign shipping and use it as the base for the Soviet Pacific Fleet. Nakhodka became both the eastern terminus for passenger trains on the Trans-Siberian Railway and only port in the Russian Far East which was open to foreigners, these factors stimulating the town's rapid growth. Many of the buildings in the city date from the 1950s, when Japanese prisoners of war were used as forced-labour to build housing for the incoming port workers. The city's heyday was apparently in the 1970s and 1980s, when it was very well-cared for due to its visibility to foreigners.
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