Vanino

 town, district center

Urban locality (a work settlement) and the administrative center of Vaninsky District of Khabarovsk Krai, Russia, operates as a port on the Strait of Tartary. Population: 17,001 (2010 Census). Vanino is located 15 kilometers (9.3 mi) north (straight-line distance) from Sovetskaya Gavan, but the actual road distance is about twice as much, as the sea coast is highly indented.
Vanin Bay on the Strait of Tartary was named after a topographer who worked in a team that prepared maps of the coast in 1874. Vanino was established in 1907. The Vanino Harbor, then considered part of Sovetskaya Gavan, received an overland connection with the rest of the USSR with the construction of railway from Komsomolsk-on-Amur (the easternmost section of the future Baikal-Amur Mainline), which was started in 1943 and completed in 1945. Vanino railway station was opened in 1947. That caused quick growth of the port in Vanino Harbor. During the 1940s, Vanino, along with Vladivostok, was a major port for shipping convicts from the "mainland" USSR to Magadan, the port for the Kolyma Gulag labor camps. In post-Stalin era, the importance of the port continued to increase, as it provided the shortest connection to the seaports of Russian north-east. The cargo volumes handled by the port peaked in 1989, at 11.5 million tons. In 2005, the volume was 6.2 million tons. In 1958, Vanino was administratively separated from Sovetskaya Gavan, becoming an urban-type settlement. In 1973, it became the administrative center of the newly created Vaninsky District.