In early 1992, the ZVEZDA Shipyard 

 located in Bolshoi Kamen near Vladivostok, 

 (this shipyard was formerly building military 

 vessels , especially nuclear submarines, for 

 the Ministry of Defense), began building 

 refrigerated fishery vessels. The Shipyard 

 has a contract to build 12 such vessels, the 

 first of which is scheduled to be completed in 

 early 1993.'' 



B. Foreign Shipyards 



A total of 3.5 million gross registered 

 tons was added to the Russian fishery fleet in 

 756 vessels built in foreign shipyards. These 

 deliveries are described in appendix 8 both by 

 country and the class of vessels. It must be 

 pointed out that this appendix lists only vessel 

 classes that were in the Russian registry in 

 July 1993. Foreign shipyards have built 

 many more vessels during the 1951-1993 

 period, but these have been scrapped, 

 reflagged, sunk, sold, or otherwise 

 decommissioned and are no longer on the 

 Russian registry of fishing and fishery support 

 vessels. To illustrate with a few examples: in 

 the early 1950s, the Stralsund shipyard in the 

 former German Democratic Republic built 

 over 60 TROPIK class stern factory trawlers 

 for the Soviet registry. By 1993, there is not 

 one single vessel of this class left and 

 appendix 8 does not even list it. The entire 

 class (over 160,000 gross tons) was 

 scrapped.'* Similarly, the first series of 24 

 stern factory trawlers (PUSHKIN class) which 

 were built in the Federal Republic of 

 Germany from 1955 to 1958 are no longer 

 operational. This is no wonder since this 

 vessel class was designed to be in service for 

 30 years. Examples like the two above could 

 be given by the dozen, but neither time nor 

 space permits it. A rough estimate would be 

 that the foreign shipyards have built another 

 million gross registered tons of fishing vessel 



capacity for the Soviet Union and that most of 

 it has been scrapped or otherwise 

 decommissioned. 



A perusal of the 16 countries which 

 have been selling fishing and fishery support 

 vessels to the Soviets is illuminating. It is 

 clear at first glance that two-thirds of the 

 gross tonnage was built in East Germany and 

 Poland, where the Soviet Union had 

 considerable political and economic leverage 

 and may have been bartering vessels for other 

 commodities. A total of 2.4 million gross 

 registered tons was constructed in those two 

 countries. These opportunities, however, 

 have now diminished with the disappearance 

 of the German Democratic Republic and the 

 end of the Communist regime in Poland. In 

 the last few years, Russia has been ordering 

 fishing vessels from Sweden, Portugal, Spain, 

 and Norway. In these countries, the 

 payments must now be made in hard 

 currency. It is estimated that the Russian 

 Federation has on order, or had accepted 

 deliveries for almost a billion dollars worth of 

 fishery vessels from West European shipyards 

 during the past few years. Most of these 

 vessels are state-of-the-art constructions which 

 will make future Russian fishermen far more 

 productive than their fathers were. 



Some of the most recent deliveries are as 

 follows: 



Denmark: In 1990, the former Soviet 

 Ministry of Fisheries received 4 

 KOMANDOR-class, specialized fishery 

 protection vessels from the DANYARD 

 Shipyard. These vessels (2,618 GRT), which 

 were designed to perform tasks of fishery 

 inspection by helicopter, offshore 

 surveillance, and support work for the Soviet 

 fishing fleet, were the first vessels acquired 

 by the USSR, especially for fisheries 



102 



