Vladivostok’s Free Harbor: the Fate of an Anti-Crisis Project from the First Quarter of the 20th Century

The article is devoted to a little-studied page in the historiography of the economic history of the region. The focus is on the Vladivostok Free Harbor project, whose history can be traced from the moment it was presented to S. Y. Witte in the autumn of 1902 to October 1917. The project is considered as an anti-crisis measure to increase the competitiveness of the port as a commodity distribution center of the region and maritime trade. The history of the project and its anti-crisis potential are considered within the framework of the main periods, the criteria for which are the priorities of government policy in the region. The source was based on documents from the office of the local administration, as well as documents from the Vladivostok Stock Exchange Committee, rarely used by researchers, stored in the relevant funds of the Russian State Historical Archive of the Far East.