Port Arthur, or Lushun

The most equipped military base of China is located in a provincial town with a non-speaking name Lushun, but the world is known as Port Arthur.

The harbor in the western part of the Liaodong Bay, on which this port is located, is surrounded on four sides by hills, as if specially created for the purpose of hiding military ships from the enemy.

Since the late nineteenth century, when China acquired an armored fleet, Port Arthur turned into the main base for its northern grouping. Occupied by the Japanese from 1894 to 1895, he was, according to the Shimonoseki treaty, rented. However, this step was contrary to the interests of Germany, France and Russia, which urged the return of China taken away by force of the peninsula.

Expanding their presence in the East, the Russians even took a number of steps aimed at obtaining a lease for the Liaodong Gulf and the peninsula, and there have even been cases of offering bribes to Chinese high-ranking officials. And in 1898 such an agreement was reached, and Port Arthur gradually began to become the main base of the Russian fleet in this Pacific region.

This development did not really like Japan. In February 1904, the Russian-Japanese confrontation began, during which the military command of Russia made many mistakes. And although the sailors and ordinary soldiers fought like real heroes, however, the military department, which was not ready for such an outcome of events, still lost this war. The payment for such a lack of leadership for Russia was truly appalling. In addition to material and human losses during the fighting, she had to agree to shameful conditions. The surrender of Port Arthur ended with the Portsmouth Treaty, according to which not only the Liaodong Peninsula and the South Manchurian railway track depended on Japan, but also half of Sakhalin.

Satisfaction Russian had to wait almost four decades.

And only in August 1945, the military forces previously concentrated in the Far East and Trans-Baikal managed to start combat operations. The Japanese fiercely resisted, but as soon as our troops succeeded in breaking the Hailar bastion and overcoming the unassailable, as the Japanese believed, Great Khingan, the morale of the enemy was broken.

On August 24, an impressive landing descended on Port Arthur on parachutes and seaplanes, the Japanese surrendered the city without a fight.

This was, perhaps, at that time the only operation of its scale, which the Russians brilliantly held from the beginning to the very end.

In the same year, the USSR concludes with the Kuomintang government a well-known treaty, according to which Port Arthur leases him for as long as thirty years. But just a few years later Chiang Kai-shek fled, and then the leadership of the CPSU, in order not to spoil relations with the fraternal CCP in those years, in early 1955 liberated Port Arthur, removing all his troops from it.

Port Arthur today is a closed city, foreigners are not allowed there. And only on the 203rd height and the Russian cemetery access is still open.