Murmansk was the last city founded in the
Russian Empire. In 1915,
World War I needs led to the construction of the northern part of the
Kirov Railway: a
railroad from
Petrozavodsk to an ice-free location on the
Murman Coast in the
Russian Arctic, to which Russia's
allies shipped military supplies. The terminus became known as the Murman station and soon boasted a port, a naval base, and an adjacent settlement with a population that quickly grew in size and soon surpassed the nearby towns of
Alexandrovsk and
Kola. On , 1916, Russian
Transport Minister Alexander Trepov petitioned to grant urban status to the railway settlement. , flagship of the
British North Russia Squadron in Murmansk in the
First World War In the winter of 1917 the
British North Russia Squadron under
Rear Admiral Thomas Kemp was based at Murmansk. From 1918 to 1920, during the
Russian Civil War, the town was
occupied by the Western powers, who had been
allied in
World War I, and was also controlled by
White Army forces. On 13 February 1926, local self-government was organized in Murmansk for the first time, during a
plenary session of the Murmansk City
Soviet, which elected a Presidium. However, the provisions of the resolution were not fully implemented, and due to military construction in Polyarnoye, the administrative center was instead moved to Murmansk in the beginning of 1935.
Wehrmacht and Finnish forces in Finnish territory launched an offensive against Murmansk as part of
Operation Silver Fox (29 June to 17 November 1941). Fierce Soviet resistance and harsh local weather, with the bad terrain, prevented them from capturing it. The
Luftwaffe bombed Murmansk 792 times during World War II. It suffered extensive destruction, the magnitude of which was rivaled only by the destruction in
Leningrad and
Stalingrad. On 6 May 1985, the city's resistance was commemorated at the 40th anniversary of
the victory over
Nazi Germany in the formal designation of Murmansk as a
Hero City. During the
Cold War Murmansk was a center of Soviet
submarine and
icebreaker activity. Since the
dissolution of the Soviet Union (December 1991), the nearby city and naval base of
Severomorsk remain the headquarters of the Russian
Northern Fleet. in Murmansk, 2018 In 1974, a tall statue
Alyosha, depicting a Soviet World War II soldier, was installed on a high foundation. The
Hotel Arctic opened in 1984, becoming the tallest building above the Arctic Circle. On 1 January 2015, the territory of Murmansk was expanded when the
urban-type settlement of
Roslyakovo, previously under the jurisdiction of the
closed administrative-territorial formation of Severomorsk, was abolished and its territory merged into Murmansk. ==Administrative and municipal status==