On May 23, 1853, Lt. Nikolay Konstantinovich Boshnyak of the
Russian-American Company ship
Nikolay discovered the bay on which Sovetskaya Gavan is located and named it Khadzhi Bay. On August 4, 1853, Captain
Gennady Nevelskoy founded a military post named after Admiral
Grand Duke Konstantin, and renamed the bay to
Imperatorskaya Gavan ('Emperor's Harbor' or 'Port Imperial'). The bay was also known to the English as Barracouta Harbour. Nikolay Boshnyak was appointed the commander of the post, which became the first Russian settlement in the area, and the predecessor of today's Sovetskaya Gavan. After the abandonment of the military post before 1900, the area became a center for
timber production, including concessions to companies from other countries such as Canada. The bay and the settlement were renamed Sovetskaya Gavan in 1922. During
World War II, construction was begun on a railway from the right bank of the
Amur River near
Komsomolsk-on-Amur to the Pacific coast, with Sovetskaya Gavan chosen as the endpoint. Sovetskaya Gavan was granted town status in 1941; the railway reached the town in 1945. This section of railway was the first section to be completed of what would later become the
Baikal-Amur Mainline. From 1950 until 1954, the town was the site of the prison camp
Ulminlag of the
gulag system. In 1958, the town's northern neighborhood, on the Vanino Bay, was separated into a separate
urban-type settlement of
Vanino. In 1963–1964, six sounding rockets of "Kosmos 2"-type were launched. They reached the height of . ==Administrative and municipal status==