Vysotsk
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Vysotsk (Russian: Высо́цк and Тронгзунд (prior to 1917), Finnish: Uuras, Swedish: Trångsund) is a coastal town and sea port in Vyborgsky District of Leningrad Oblast, Russia, located on Karelian Isthmus, on the eastern shore of the Bay of Vyborg, 12 km south-west of Vyborg and 159 km north-west of St. Petersburg. It hosts a base of the Russian Baltic Fleet. Population: 1,673 (2002 Census). It was incorporated as a town in 1940 and remains one of the smallest towns in the country.
[edit] History
The fortress of Trångsund (literally: "narrow strait") was built to the order of Peter the Great in the beginning of the 18th century after Russia had captured the area from Sweden during the Great Northern War. In 1812 Trongzund was included by Alexander I of Russia into the newly-created Grand Duchy of Finland.
Between 1918 and 1940 the town was part of independent Finland under the name Uuras. As a result of the Winter War, in 1940 with the Moscow Peace Treaty it was annexed by the Soviet Union and became part of the Karelo Finnish SSR. In 1941 Uuras was recaptured by Finnish troops and reannexed to Finland in the Continuation War. In June 1944 the town fell to the Red Army again and was ceded to the Soviet Union by Finland according to the Moscow Armistice and Paris Peace Treaty. In July 1948 the town was renamed Vysotsk, in honour of the Soviet machine gunner Kuzma Demidovich Vysotsky, who was killed in the area on March 4, 1940, during the final days of the Winter War.
Vysotsk may be considered a place where radio was born, because it was there that Alexander Stepanovich Popov conducted his pioneering experiments in 1897 and 1902.
A major oil port started operating at Vysotsk in 2004.
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