What waters washes Sakhalin Island? Open left menu Sakhalin. Sakhalin Island: where is it located?

I posted a note about Sakhalin and illustrated it with such wonderful photographs that I can’t resist reposting it:

Sakhalin is the largest island in Russia. It is located at east coast Asia, and is washed by the waters of the Sea of Okhotsk and Japan. Sakhalin is separated from the mainland by the Tatar Strait, which connects the Sea of Okhotsk and the Sea of Japan. And from the Japanese island of Hokkaido - through the La Perouse Strait. From north to south, Sakhalin stretches for 948 km, with an average width of about 100 km.

Nivkhi. Photo by IK Stardust

The indigenous inhabitants of Sakhalin - the Nivkhs (in the north of the island) and the Ainu (in the south) - appeared on the island during the Middle Ages. At the same time, the Nivkhs migrated between Sakhalin and the lower Amur, and the Ainu - between Sakhalin and Hokkaido. In the 16th century, Tungus-speaking peoples—Evenks and Oroks—came to Sakhalin from the mainland and began to engage in reindeer herding.

Sakhalin Ainu

Many may be surprised to learn that several geographical names Sakhalin region are of French origin. For this we must thank the great navigator Jean-François La Perouse, who during trip around the world in 1787 he put the strait between Sakhalin and Hokkaido on the world map. Nowadays this 101-kilometer-long body of water bears the name of its discoverer. They sang about him in the soul Soviet song: “And I throw pebbles from the steep bank of the wide La Perouse Strait.”

Strait of La Perouse

The presence of the French in this region far from the banks of the Seine is reminiscent, for example, of the Crillon Peninsula, named after the bravest military leader of the times of Henry IV, Louis Balbes Crillon. Fans of Alexandre Dumas remember this colorful character from the novels “The Countess de Monsoreau” and “Forty-Five.” “Why am I not a king,” he whispers to himself on the last page of “The Countess,” ashamed of his monarch’s indifference to the villainous murder of Comte de Bussy.

Dinosaurs of Cape Crillon. Photo Olga Kulikova

By the way, on the Krillon Peninsula there are earthen ramparts of the medieval fortress of Siranusi. It is not known for certain who built it - it could have been either an outpost of the Mongol Empire or the Tungus tribes of the Jurchens, who created the Jin Empire in the territory of Primorye and northern China. One thing is obvious: the fortification was built according to all the rules of fortification of that time.

The ramparts of the Siranusi fortress and the lighthouse at Cape Crillon

The island of Moneron in the Strait of Tartary was also named La Pérouse, in honor of his associate, the engineer Paul Moneron. On this piece of land is located the first marine natural park in Russia.

Tourist complex on Moneron Island

Moneron is famous for its unique waterfalls, columnar rocks and wildlife. The island has every chance of becoming a Mecca for the country's underwater photographers in the near future.

Sea lions on Moneron Island. Photo by Vyacheslav Kozlov

On Moneron. Photo by Vyacheslav Kozlov

After La Perouse, Russian expeditions began exploring the region. In 1805, a ship under the command of Ivan Kruzenshtern studied most Sakhalin coast. By the way, for a long time on various maps Sakhalin was designated either an island or a peninsula. And only in 1849, an expedition under the command of Grigory Nevelsky put a final point on this issue, passing on the military transport ship “Baikal” between Sakhalin and the mainland.

Lighthouse on Cape Aniva. Photo by Anvar

In the 19th century, the Sakhalin land was a refuge for exiles for more than thirty-five years - the official Russian penal servitude. Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, who visited the island in 1890, called it “hell on earth.” The most inveterate criminals of the empire served their sentences here, for example, the thief Sonya Zolotaya Ruchka, who tried to escape from here three times and became the only woman whom the penal servitude administration ordered to be shackled.

The famous thief Sonya Zolotaya Ruchka in Sakhalin penal servitude

After the capture of Sakhalin by the Japanese in 1905 and the signing by the tsarist government, under pressure from the United States, of the “Treaty of Portsmouth,” hard labor was abolished. At the same time, the southern part of Sakhalin and Kurile Islands were proclaimed the governorate of Karafuto and ceded to Japan. 15 years later, the Japanese occupied and northern part islands and left it thanks to the efforts of Soviet diplomacy only in 1925. Only after the end of the Second World War, Sakhalin again became part of our state. Although to this day Russia and Japan argue about whose foot set foot on this island first.

Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk

Monument at the birthplace of Vladimirovka

In 1882, the settlement of Vladimirovka was founded for convicts who had served their time on Sakhalin. From 1905 to 1945, when Southern Sakhalin was Japanese territory, Vladimirovka was the center of Karafuto Prefecture and bore the name Toyohara.

Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. Photo by Sir Fisher

In 1945, the territory was occupied by Soviet troops, and Southern Sakhalin became part of the USSR. A year later, Toyohara was renamed Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, and a year later it became the capital of the Sakhalin region.

Museum of Local Lore. Photo Illusionist

Museum of Local Lore. Photo by Irina V.

Perhaps one of the most striking attractions of the island can be called the Sakhalin Regional Museum of Local Lore. It is located in the building of the former Japanese governorate of Karafuto, built in 1937; this is almost the only monument of Japanese architecture in Russia. The museum's collections span the period from ancient history to the present day.

Model 1867 eleven-inch gun. The cannon was manufactured in 1875 in St. Petersburg, and during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. took part in the defense of Port Arthur

The Museum of Chekhov's Book "Sakhalin Island" is another pride of Sakhalin residents. The museum building was built in 1954, has an attic and its architecture resembles Chekhov’s “house with a mezzanine”. This museum can tell a lot of interesting things about the writer’s Sakhalin journey: for example, about the fact that Anton Pavlovich took a pistol with him on the voyage to these shores in order... to have time to shoot himself if the ship sank. The classic was terribly afraid of drowning.

Near the station there is a museum of railway equipment, where samples of Japanese equipment that worked on Sakhalin are collected, including the Japanese snowplow "Wajima" and the head section of the Japanese passenger diesel train ("Ki-Ha") shown in the photograph.

Voskresensky Cathedral in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. Photo by Igor Smirnov

Skiing is one of the most popular entertainments among Sakhalin residents. The most a nice place within the boundaries of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk there is the Mountain Air tourist center. At night, it can be seen from almost anywhere in the city.

View of the Mountain Air route from Victory Square

Sakhalin apocalypse

Damn bridge. Photo by Father Fedor

An abandoned tunnel and bridge on the old Japanese railway Kholmsk - Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. Going into the tunnel, the road deviates to the right and rises, then, after exiting the tunnel, it goes around the hill and then crosses itself along a bridge. above the entrance portal of the tunnel. In this way, a giant spiral is formed, ensuring that the road rises to the ridge while maintaining an acceptable slope.

And here are the remains of the steamship "Luga", which ran aground at Cape Crillon sixty years ago.

Danger Stone Island

Lighthouse on the Danger Stone

The Danger Stone is a rock located 14 km southeast of Cape Crillon - the extreme southern point Sakhalin Islands - in the La Perouse Strait. The rock greatly hampered the movement of ships through the strait. To avoid a collision, sailors were stationed on the ships, whose duty was to listen to the roar of the sea lions located on the Danger Stone. In 1913, a concrete tower with a lighthouse was erected on the rock.

Flora and fauna

Sakhalin crab. Raido Photos

Fish day is a common thing for Sakhalin residents. Fish, fish caviar, crustaceans, shellfish, algae - all this variety makes incredibly tasty dishes rich in protein.

A giant sandwich with red caviar was prepared for Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk City Day. The dimensions of the culinary masterpiece are 3 by 5 m. It was made in the shape of a heart, symbolizing love for the birthday person.

Sakhalin fox. Photo by Andrey Shpatak

According to scientists, without compromising reproduction, more than 500 thousand tons of fish, about 300 thousand tons of invertebrates, and about 200 thousand tons of algae can be harvested annually in Sakhalin waters. The fishing industry has been and remains the main one for the region.

Europeans discovered Sakhalin in the 17th century. The first to visit the island in 1640 were the Cossacks, led by the ataman and explorer Ivan Moskvitin. Three years later, the expedition of the Dutch navigator Martin de Vries went there. However, Frieze mistakenly considered Sakhalin to be a peninsula connected to Hokkaido. Disputes about whether it was connected to the mainland or other islands continued until the mid-19th century. In 1849, Admiral Gennady Nevelskoy sailed the warship Baikal through the strait between the island and the mainland. Sakhalin was marked on maps as an island, and the strait was later given the name Nevelskoy.

In 1869, those sentenced to hard labor, most often lifelong, began to be sent here. Initially, prisons were built for them only in the northern part of the island, but then settlements appeared in the south. Gradually, convicts became the main part of the population of Sakhalin.

IN late XIX centuries, Anton Chekhov came to the island. He got acquainted with the life of convicts, wrote down petitions and memories of Sakhalin residents, and conducted a population census here. Later, the writer published an artistic and journalistic book “Sakhalin Island”, in which he described in detail the local nature, the way of life of the indigenous people and exiles, and included fragments of documents, statistical data, records of scientists and travelers who had visited the island before. This book is dedicated a whole museum in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk: its exhibition includes exhibits related to the life and work of Chekhov (including his personal belongings). Several settlements in the Sakhalin region are named after the writer. Monuments to Chekhov are erected in several cities of the island, and the Literary and Art Museum of the Book of A.P. is opened in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. Chekhov "Sakhalin Island".

The indigenous population of Sakhalin are the Nivkhs and Ainu. However, today they make up less than 1% of all island residents. In addition to Russians, Koreans, Ukrainians, and Tatars live in the Sakhalin region.

Historical and cultural monuments of Sakhalin

Sakhalin passed from Russia to Japan and back several times, and many monuments of Japanese culture have been preserved on the island. One of them is the building of the Local History Museum in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. It is built in a traditional Japanese style in 1937. The modern exhibition of the museum includes more than 170 thousand exhibits: these include samples of flora and fauna, household items of the island’s indigenous inhabitants, historical documents, and ancient weapons.

Another monument of Japanese architecture is the ritual torii gate made of white marble near the village of Vzmorye. Previously, the Tomarioru Jinja Temple was located behind them, but it has not survived to this day.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Japanese built the Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk - Polyakovo railway line on the island. Nowadays it is not used for its intended purpose and has become historical monument. From the Devil's Bridge - the highest in the Sakhalin region - opens beautiful view in the vicinity of the railway.

Nature of the island

The flora and fauna of Sakhalin are poorer than on the mainland, but dense forests grow here and animals and plants listed in the Red Book are found. In addition, scientists have recorded a phenomenon characteristic only of this region: herbaceous plants on Sakhalin often grow to gigantic sizes. Nettle, buckwheat, bearsfoot and other herbs can reach 3-5 meters in height.

They nest on Lake Tunaicha different types birds, and on Tyuleniy Island near Sakhalin there is a large seal rookery and huge bird colonies. In the vicinity of the high point islands - the Vaida mountains - located karst caves. From the top mountain range Zhdanko offers views of the picturesque surroundings. At Cape Velikan you can see natural arches, grottoes and pillars that arose under the influence of wind and salt water. sea water. Sakhalin is home to an active mud volcano, as well as mineral and thermal springs.

The most interesting thing on Sakhalin is Sakhalin itself: the largest Russian island in area (about the size of the Czech Republic) and population (490 thousand people), stretching strictly from north to south between the Sea of Okhotsk and the Strait of Tartary. Its “spot” attractions are rather disappointing, especially in comparison with the Kuril Islands or Primorye. But the overall color is overwhelming on every square meter. In I showed a couple of randomly selected villages, later I will write separate posts about the Japanese heritage and about unusual Sakhalin railways, and today - the nature, history and realities of Falcon Island.

On the map, Sakhalin cannot be confused with anything: if Italy looks like a boot, then this island is definitely a fish! Big Fish - 948 kilometers from north to south and from 25 to 160 from west to east. A narrow head (Schmidt Peninsula) with an eye (Okha), a long back fin (Terpeniya Peninsula), a narrow articulation of the body and tail (Poyasok isthmus) and a pair of caudal fins - the Krillon and Aniva Peninsulas - are clearly visible. Below the inscription "Welcome!" the 50th parallel was drawn - the border of the North and the South, and in 1905-45 - our country with Japan. But almost the entire life of Sakhalin is at the tail, from Poyask to the base of Aniva and Crillon. From there there will be 3/4 “local” posts, and I only passed through the middle of the island by night train.

1a.

Visually, Sakhalin is quite homogeneous: from south to north, its nature only decreases in diversity. A quick glance leaves the impression that the North does not have much of what is in the South, but the South has almost everything that happens in the North. The details are much more excellent - cloudberries, lingonberries and even moss grow in the North, on which reindeer graze. But either we didn’t go far enough north (half the way from Nogliki to Okha), or all this can only be appreciated by going deep into the forest.
Basically, Sakhalin along its entire length looks like this - winding shores, dense vegetation and low wooded hills

The relief of Sakhalin is unexpectedly soft - you can hardly see rocks, boulders and steep cliffs here. The attraction of the coast is not so much the capes (although they also exist) or kekurs, but rather the “lagoon-type bays” separated from the sea by thin sand spits:

The Sakhalin mountains are lower than the Ural mountains (the first hundred meters, maximum - Mount Lopatina in the north, 1609m) and there are almost no forest peaks:

Swampy, dank swamps stretch across sparse plains - m A ri:

There are no geysers or volcanoes on Sakhalin - but there are hot springs (like under the awning in the frame above) and mud volcanoes:

Pay attention to the gloom creeping along the peaks. As they write in the guidebooks: “the locals joke - if you don’t like the weather, wait 10 minutes.” This phrase has a continuation: “...and you will be completely disappointed.” And I would also replace “10 minutes” with “10 kilometers”: night usually brought us new weather, but the map of Sakhalin was a bizarre mosaic of the sun, low clouds, winds, cold and warm rains and creeping fogs. Which is no wonder if two seas approach the mountains...

To the west of Sakhalin lies the Strait of Tartary - formally part of the Sea of Japan, but in fact it is a sea unto itself, especially since its width extends from 100 to 300 kilometers. There is a warm current along the shores of Sakhalin, so in August you can even swim here:

To the east is the open Sea of Okhotsk, which locals call the “refrigerator sea.” But its icy water is extremely rich in life, and it is from the “refrigerator” that Sakhalin residents take red fish and crabs, and whales approach the lagoons in the north of the island.

From the south, between the “tail fins”, Aniva Bay juts out. It refers to Sea of Okhotsk, but his son is clearly illegitimate - small, warm and in the lived-in part very dirty. But closer to the exit to the sea it is not difficult to see killer whales.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about local nature- this is vegetation, the abundance and riot of which Sakhalin is similar to the planet Pandora. Moreover, this is why it is better to visit here not in September (when the weather is sunnier), but in August, while all this abundance remains green and lush.

10.

There is almost no real taiga on Sakhalin - its forest is mostly deciduous (less often larch, as in the frame above), transparent and quite passable:

11.

The mountains with their rapids add to the picturesqueness:

12.

Lianas climb through the birches:

And many plants seem completely unfamiliar to people from the European part:

13.

14.

15.

Judging by the fact that no one picked them by August, the blue berries from the frame above are inedible.
But the bug is a small red berry that really smells like bedbugs. It is considered very useful (for example, it helps with blood pressure), and therefore it is perhaps the most expensive berry on sale in Russia - 1000 rubles per kilogram. In addition to Sakhalin, Klopovka (or Krasnik, as it is sometimes called in stores) grows on Iturup, and in the north of Primorye, closer to the coast, it is occasionally found. The berries themselves are unbearably sour, but the syrup in the “de clope” tea made us happy until the end of the trip:

15a.

But perhaps the most impressive property of Sakhalin grasses is gigantism. Hog parsnip (and not that infection from a research institute near Moscow, but quite authentically local ones) here grows as small as a small tree:

16.

If it rains in the mountains, just pick a burdock:

17.

Giant burdocks are one of the strongest impressions of Sakhalin. Especially when you consider that these are not actually burdocks, but a species of coltsfoot - Japanese butterbur.

18.

It, like fern, is readily prepared for food here, and pickled burdock tastes like meat:

18a.

But the main grass of Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands is bamboo:

19. Iturup

In the shot above, Olya is not sitting, but standing at full height. Bamboo plant, although a relative of bamboo, is not similar to it - tall soft stems are topped with spreading, hard leaves that rattle loudly when walking. In principle, it is possible to wade through virgin bamboo, but you will have time to curse everything. If you walk along the path, you actually find it only by touch, since the leaves close at chest level:

20. Kunashir

Often the leaves are crossed from edge to edge by a dotted line of small holes - they are gnawed by insects in the spring, when the young and soft leaf is rolled into a tube.

20a.

Sakhalin "Pandora" is rich not only in vegetation. Among the animals that most often catch your eye are chipmunks:

21a.

A little less often - foxes:

21.

There are eagles in the sky:

22.

Underfoot are numerous evil vipers. There are few mosquitoes in the local forests, but ticks are fierce in June-July and spread encephalitis in its especially harmful Japanese form.

23.

The men from Khoe said that they hunt for sable in the local forests. But here it is small and not very fluffy, so not a single family here can live on sables alone, as in the depths of Siberia. I have only seen large forest animals, be it wapiti, musk deer or bear, in the museum. There are almost no wolves on Sakhalin, which cannot cope with deep, loose snow in winter, but there are so many bears that my failure to meet them is the exception rather than the rule.

24.

But perhaps the most interesting Sakhalin animal is not to be looked for in the forest, but in river water. This is kaluga - the world's largest freshwater fish (up to 6 meters in length, up to 1 ton in weight) of the sturgeon, also found in the lower reaches of the Amur. There is also the Sakhalin sturgeon - it is smaller, but its caviar was considered more valuable. But sturgeon here became scarce even earlier and deeper; their fishing has been prohibited since 1959, and I saw kaluga only in the Vladivostok aquarium.

25.

The grandfathers smeared the “Sakhalin-style sandwich” with two types of caviar - red and black. Salmon fish here have also decreased (according to old-timers, several decades ago red fish were caught almost with bare hands in dachas near Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk), but many on Sakhalin still live from one fishing season to another. Typical dialogue with a Sakhalin resident:
-Tell me, Muscovite, why is our fish so expensive!?
-Come on! Is 150-200 rubles for pink salmon really a lot?
-Well, you have 70!
-I’ve never seen anything like this, at least 300 rubles.
-Oh, okay.. We don’t accept fish for money at all.!
Marine departments of the South Sakhalin shopping centers“Success” and “Technician” are real fish markets, where Olya and I stocked up more than once:

26.

And not only fish: crabs, shrimp, octopuses, spizulas, scallops, whelks, sea cucumbers and many other unknown sea reptiles in Moscow are sold here in any form from frozen to live, and most (except caviar, scallops and sea cucumbers) are cheaper than in in the cheapest Moscow stores, one and a half to two times. However, about seafood Far East, .

27.

Along the roads where they lead to the Sea of Okhotsk, sometimes you come across crab markets like these, consisting of several stalls. They exist quite officially, but their products are mostly poached and therefore cheap (500 rubles per kilo of crab, for example), and what kind of balance of interests is at work here - I’m even afraid to delve into it. The most famous crab markets are in the villages of Okhotskoye and Vzmorye, the second is considered to be of better quality.

28.

Theoretically, the soils on Sakhalin are quite suitable for agriculture. Under the Soviets, the region provided not only itself, but also its neighbors with vegetables and milk, and in Japan it was a center for the production of sugar from beets. All this was abandoned in the 1990s, and farming is now only timidly raising its head in the “Far Eastern hectares”. Sakhalin residents can grow a good vegetable garden, but they just need to do it specifically. For example, the best natural fertilizer here is fishmeal.
So Sakhalin residents often prefer fishing to gardening:

29.

And of course, people with fishing rods on bridges and banks are only a small part of fishing life.

30.

The coastal hinterland is literally covered with nets:

31.

Which are even used as fences:

32.

But even where the sound of the sea is not heard, we cannot forget that we are on an island:

32a.

And shells on Sakhalin are a kind of symbol of its first people: the most important archaeological sites From the Stone Age, there are “shell hills” that extend meters into the cultural layer. The first people appeared on Sakhalin tens of thousands of years ago, most likely during the Ice Age: glaciers absorbed great amount water, causing the level of the World Ocean to drop by tens of meters. A land “bridge” grew between the mainland and Sakhalin, and an even larger “bridge” of the Bering Isthmus connected Eurasia with America. Primitive hunters who lived on the shores of Okhotsk rushed across these bridges for new prey, giving rise to the Indians in America, and where they came here - scientists have debated for centuries. Newest technologies genetic analysis showed that the ancestral home of the Indians, abandoned by their ancestors about 25 thousand years ago, is . When the ice melted and, returning water to the ocean, opened bridges, the proto-Indians on Sakhalin were cut off from the mainland, remaining in Eurasia and, thanks to their isolation, preserving their identity in subsequent centuries.

33.

Japanese chronicles feature the mishihase barbarians, for the sake of expelling them from the island of Honshu to the north in the 7th century, even the worst enemies of the Yamato and Emishi briefly united. In Chinese chronicles, at about the same time, the Tsiliami were mentioned - this is consonant with “Gilyaks,” an outdated name for the Nivkhs. The Ainu legends feature the Tonians, a warlike people who lived even further north before them. Well, science knows the “Okhotsk culture”, or rather a broader concept - the “Okhotsk historical and cultural community”, which developed on the coasts between Hokkaido and Kamchatka about 3000 years ago. Here are her artifacts in the Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk Museum:

34.

However, the Ice Age built several more land “bridges” in the south. According to them, completely different people dispersed from Asia to Australia, Indonesia and to Japanese islands. The Japanese, with their eternal craving for aesthetics, gave names to all eras of their history, and the oldest of these was the Jomon era. The imperial chroniclers hardly knew its “bottom,” but modern science found it at a “depth” of 13 thousand years. The end to this primordial chaos was put by another people from Altai, the common ancestors of the Koreans and Japanese, who built the state of Buyeo on the mainland, and opened the Yayoi era on the islands. They settled on the island of Kyushu, bringing with them agriculture, trade and simple fortification. On the islands, the aliens encountered Emisi, literally “hairy people”, in our words - barbarians.
The Japanese barbarian was bearded, clear-eyed, toothy, tattooed and wildly ferocious; in a word, he was not very different from the ancient barbarian. The descendants of these barbarians remained the Ainu - perhaps the most mysterious people of Eurasia, since science does not know even approximate relatives for them either in language or in appearance. Japanese scientists believe that bearded men came here from Siberia and are the descendants of its most ancient inhabitants, while European scientists looked for Ainu ancestors among the aborigines of Taiwan and Southern China: supposedly, in time immemorial, some went south, to Indonesia and Australia, others to the north, putting the beginning of the Jomon culture, and all the connecting links disappeared long ago into the cultural layers. Be that as it may, the Yayoi and Emishi began to fight literally from the first meeting, and it was in the wars with the Ainu that Japan was formed, beginning with the state of Yamato. Yes, and there is a lot of Ainu blood in the Japanese - yet outwardly they are not even completely Mongoloids. Samurai by origin are not knights, but serving Cossacks who held full power in the dashing borderlands in exchange for their protection.
In the first centuries, the Ainu were a superior enemy for the Japanese, but little by little the colonialists adopted their military art and began to gradually gain the upper hand. The fight was hard, and I think if the Japanese had not been locked in by the sea, they would have sent the savages to hell three times and retreated. At its height in the 7th century, Yamato controlled Kyushu, Shikoku and only the southern half of Honshu. Only in the 11th century did the Japanese fully master their largest island. The Ainu retreated to Hokkaido, at that time the island of Ezo, which Japan firmly took hold of only several centuries later. By that time, the samurai was certainly stronger than the Emishi, and the Ainu had to retreat even further to the north - that is, to the Kuril Islands and Sakhalin.
Things of the medieval Ainu in the same museum:

35.

By the 17th century, Sakhalin became the land of two peoples who lived throughout its territory, but mainly at opposite ends. In Northern Sakhalin - the Nivkhs, heirs of the Okhotsk culture, those same “Indians who did not leave”, who lived like a typical small Siberian people:

36a.

In Southern Sakhalin there are the Ainu, who raised the Japanese in battles and are unlike anyone else in the world, neither in language, nor in appearance, nor in culture.

36.

Some peoples sometimes penetrated into this strange little world from the west, from the fishing mouth of the Amur. In Northern Sakhalin, in addition to the Nivkhs, there are Evenks and Oroks (Uilta) - one of the closely related peoples of the Amur region. On the Tatar Strait, the remains of fortresses from the 12th and 13th centuries are known - Ako near Aleksandrovsk-Sakhalinsky and Siranusi on Cape Crillon. These were overseas colonies of either the Mongols or, more likely, the Jurchens (Manchus), whose state the Mongols wiped off the face of the Earth. By right of the Manchu heritage, in the 17th-19th centuries Sakhalin considered China its territory, although a Chinese person most likely never set foot on the island.
The first foreigner to see Sakhalin is reliably considered to be Maartin Garretsen de Vries, a Dutch navigator who arrived here in 1643 from Indonesia. A year later, Karafuto, as the Japanese called this coast, was explored by samurai Murakami Hironori from the Matsumae clan, which had ruled conquered Hokkaido since 1605. In the same 1644, the explorer Vasily Poyarkov from distant Kashin spent the winter at the mouth of the Amur, and learned from the Gilyaks there that their relatives lived overseas, on big island. Vasily Danilovich only saw the island itself from the shore, but in Russian historiography he remained its discoverer. For the first time, the Sakhalin Ainu and Nivkh saw a Russian person in 1746, and in 1790 Shiranusi was revived as a Japanese trading post, the center of "sentan" - barter trade between the Japanese, Russians and natives. From the same museum - Japanese funa and Russian koch:

37.

In 1787, the French navigator Jean-François de La Perouse passed from Korea to Kamchatka, leaving a noticeable mark on the local toponymy - Crillon, Moneron, Jonquière, Douai and much more, as well as the naive European “Tatar Strait”: “Tatars” are Mongols , for whom the Frenchman mistook the slanting natives on both sides of the strait. However, the La Perouse Strait separates Sakhalin from Hokkaido, and the steadily decreasing depth when moving north forced the commander to consider Sakhalin a peninsula. Ivan Kruzenshtern did not prove the opposite in 1805, and in fact the discoverer that Sakhalin is an island was in 1808 a Japanese surveyor with the Georgian name Renzo Mamiya. However, the map he compiled remained the property of the Country for a long time. Rising Sun, and only in 1847 was published in Europe. Mamiya, however, traveled by boat, and there were still doubts that the strait was not a sandbank, becoming a spit at low tide. The insurmountability of the strait by land and at the same time its navigability was proven in 1849 by Gennady Nevelskoy, and now he is one of the two most popular historical characters of Sakhalin. There are monuments to him in cities, and this one is in the Japanese interiors of the same museum:

38.

The first Russian flag on Sakhalin was hoisted by Kruzenshtern, but in fact the island remained nobody’s: hardly anyone took the Chinese claims (officially withdrawn in 1859) seriously at that time, and both Japanese and Russians settled here at their own risk. The first official Russian settlement in 1852 was Douai, or simply the Sakhalin post on the Tartary Strait in the northern part of the island. In 1853, the Russian-American Company tried to gain a foothold here, but Crimean War and the English fleet in the Sea of Okhotsk forced the evacuation of the Ilyinsky and Muravyovsky posts established on South Sakhalin the very next year. The Shimoda tract in 1855 only cemented the uncertainty: having divided the Kuril Islands equally, Russia and Japan declared Sakhalin co-ownership. For Russia, this was a missed chance: Japan had already embarked on the path of Europeanization, secured allies in Europe and began to grow rapidly, so by the 1870s it was no longer possible to resolve the issue with it by force, as with some Khiva Khanate. Time was clearly not on our side, and in 1875, under the Treaty of St. Petersburg, Russia transferred all the remaining Kuril Islands to Japan in exchange for the Japanese’s complete abandonment of Sakhalin.
Russian settlers heard an almost epic name in the alien name - Sokolin Island:

39.

Russian Sakhalin was a remote, sparsely populated and very poor periphery, perhaps the worst place in Siberia. At first it was part of the Primorsky region, from which it separated in 1884 as the Sakhalin department. The largest monuments of that time are lighthouses of a typical design for the Far Eastern shores, for example in Aleksandrovsk-Sakhalinsky or on the Schmidt Peninsula. The surviving civil architecture is limited to a pair of wooden buildings in the same Aleksandrovsk:

40.

The main settlements were “posts” on the banks and “stanks” - postal stations on the roads.

40a.

The development of the island, although very slowly, progressed: for example, in 1878, the Scottish merchant Georg Demby from Vladivostok founded a marine fishery on the site of present-day Kholmsk, where he attracted guest workers from Japan and Korea. There were many villages founded by Russian and Ukrainian settlers scattered across the hills and mari, for example Voskresenka, known since 1869 on the site of present-day Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. But the tiny size of the ethnographic hall in the museum speaks for itself...

41.

After all, for the Russian Empire the phrase “Falcon Island” sounded approximately the same as for Soviet Union- Kolyma: the first batch of 800 prisoners arrived here already in 1875. Maybe there were no more convicts here than on average in Siberia - but on the sparsely populated Falcon Island, hard labor determined life. Most of the “free” people of Sakhalin were the same convicts who served their sentences and did not return far away to their hungry homeland. On the contrary, other convicts had their wives come and have children from them. In short, on the cold, wild island there was simply no clear boundary between prison and freedom.

42.

Compared to other exiles and hard labor, Sokoliny Island was somehow very absolute: political prisoners rarely ended up here (but they did, for example, Narodnaya Volya member Ivan Yuvachev, father of Kharms, or Bronislaw Pilsudski, brother of Jozef Pilsudski), and the bulk of the convicts were notorious murderers and thieves . The most famous prisoner of Sakhalin was not some kind of revolutionary, but the “queen of thieves” Sonya Zolotaya Ruchka:

43.

But in 1890, Sakhalin was visited by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, who came here across all of Siberia by land and departed for St. Petersburg by sea through the ports of tropical countries. On Falcon Island, the corrosive writer was hardly welcome, but responsible, literate people were there in spades, and Chekhov found The best way descend into hard labor hell - conduct a census. Over the course of several months, he actually got to know every Sakhalin resident, and soon introduced all this into Russian literature with the journalistic novel “Sakhalin Island.” So the second and main “great fellow countryman” here is Chekhov:

44.

And from across the La Perouse Strait, a sleek and businesslike descendant of a samurai, dressed in a black jacket, looked at all this. He clenched his fists: how much forest, land, fish and coal was wasted! This rich and undeveloped land clearly deserves better than to be a giant prison of murderers. And then in 1905 something happened in the history of Sakhalin sharp turn- Russian-Japanese war. Its symbol on this island was the cruiser Novik, which gave battle to the Japanese at the Korsakov roadstead: guns and things from the ship come across here and there as monuments. The Japanese then occupied all of Sakhalin, but according to the peace treaty they retained only its southern half. The stub of the Sakhalin department in 1909 was transformed into the Sakhalin region, the center of which in 1914 became Nikolaevsk-on-Amur: 2/3 of its area lay on the mainland. IN Civil War Northern Sakhalin was temporarily occupied by the Japanese, and in 1925 it returned to the USSR as the Sakhalin Okrug, and since 1932 - a region. Finally, in 1945, after the surrender of Japan, the territory of the Karafuto governorate was returned to Russia. Together with the Kuril Islands, it was allocated to the South Sakhalin region, which in the first year of its existence had every chance of becoming the Japan-Sakhalin National District (CLEAR!)... but from 1947 the exodus of the Japanese began, and Sakhalin region spread to all the newly annexed islands.
Karafuto’s legacy is a topic for a separate post.

45.

The Ainu were officially defeated back in 1899, that is, they were declared a variety of Japanese. Together with the Japanese, they left Sakhalin forever. Instead, another people remained in the South - Koreans, imported by the Japanese as laborers. The USSR did not let them go home (and the house was devastated in those years), and now Koreans make up 5.5% of the population in the region and 9% in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk.

46.

In the north, “Gilyaks” have not disappeared anywhere, although now this word is as familiar as it is offensive. Evenks and Oroks also fall under it, but first of all, the surviving Nivkhs:

47.

What remains from Japan on Sakhalin is a dense network of half-abandoned roads and tiny settlements. For example, there are 15 cities here - more than in any region of the Far East. Sakhalin cities are similar to each other and unlike the mainland ones. Here is a typical urban landscape on this island - five-story buildings, like a ladder, standing on a steep slope overgrown with lush vegetation, and on the roads there are mainly jeeps:

48.

These cities usually smell of the sea, and everyone you meet may turn out to be a sailor who stole hemp from a hippopotamus in a foreign zoo. Away from the sea, there seem to be only regional center and Okha.

49.

The frame above was taken in Nevelsk, from a plot of land that rose above sea level on August 2, 2007. The city was then destroyed by an earthquake and essentially rebuilt. The earthquake of May 28, 1995 became the bloodiest disaster in post-Soviet Russia - it killed 2,040 people and the entire town of Neftegorsk, which could no longer be restored. These are the posters on Sakhalin - the prose of life, like reminders about mines in a war zone:

49a.

In post-Soviet times, the region lost a third of its population, and most small towns shrank by half or more. Before the trip, I expected to see total destruction, dullness and shabby walls here. In some places this is true (for example, in Chekhov), but more often the Sakhalin city looks something like this:

50.

And you won’t see abandoned high-rise buildings here, like in the Far North. Local historians and bloggers have changed their tune - they are no longer talking about devastation, but about a siding bacchanalia. Although, for me, what’s so bad about siding for a barracks or a hut? Except that the barracks or khrushchev house remains inside. But dilapidated housing on Sakhalin is also being resettled regularly - these houses in tiny Tomari, for example, are brand new:

51.

The locals carefully say, “This is in our last years took over the island, before it was generally scary to watch!" Someone even claimed that the governor involved Belarusians in the matter, who know a lot about setting up a marathon. But no one said the name of the governor out loud - because this is Oleg Kozhemyako, the only one of his kind from the Far East , for his sins equated with Muscovites. Locals describe his biography approximately as Batu’s campaign - first he plundered the Amur region, then he devastated the village of Preobrazhenie, then he robbed all of Primorye, and now he has returned there, having plundered Sakhalin. So the villages repaired under Kozhemyako are for. For locals, the question is about as inconvenient as Hitler’s autobahns are for Germans.

52.

The “good” Sakhalin governors are Pavel Leonov and Igor Farkhutdinov. The first headed the region in 1960-78, built a lot of things (including establishing the Vanino crossing), made the island at least partially independent of imports, and perhaps killed the Korean schools. Siberian Tatar Farkhutdinov ruled Sakhalin from 1995-2003, and would have continued to rule if he had not died in a helicopter crash in Kamchatka. But his contribution... here we have to make a small digression.

53.

Nowadays, the Sakhalin region is no longer fed by fish. Convicts also developed coal mines here, and for the Japanese Karafuto became an invaluable source of wood and coal. The mining hinterland on Sakhalin is no less extensive than the fishing hinterland, and is mostly in total decline. Here in the museum are the miner's tools, and along with them - a model of the "Zotov tower", which to this day stands somewhere in the industrial zone on the outskirts of Okha. Since 1909, oil has been searched for on Falcon Island:

53a.

And the Japanese found it on a scale suitable for industrial production in 1921. The Okha oil fields operated throughout the Soviet era, but only geologists quickly realized that the main riches should not be sought among the marshes, but under sea water!

54a.

But Russia then had no experience in offshore production. And under Farkhutdinov, Projects started working on Sakhalin - so, without explanation, they call them “Sakhalin-1” and “Sakhalin-2”: in the Sea of Okhotsk near Northern Sakhalin there are five drilling platforms built by the American giant Exxon-Mobil:

54.

In the south, near Korsakov, Russia’s first gas liquefaction terminal has been operating since 2009:

55.

All this became the largest foreign investment project in post-Soviet Russia, and the Sakhalin region at the turn of the century was second only to Moscow in terms of investment volume. In the 2010s, the Russian budget grew 1.5 times (that is, within the inflation range), and the Sakhalin budget quadrupled. In terms of GDP per capita, the Sakhalin region ranks 4th in Russia (after the three autonomous okrugs of the Yugra North), and Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk has the largest budget per capita among Russian cities. On its outskirts there is still an American town, built for overseas expats. But the whole island did not become like this, and even similar to Yugra and Yamal is only very, very similar in places.

56.

There is almost no off-road here public transport, in the outback, work is tight, and prices are on average one and a half times higher than on the mainland. Huge budgets are partly spent for show, others are not used at all and are taken “to Moscow” (that is, into the federal budget). At the same time, I would not say that living on Sakhalin is particularly bad. On average, a person here can afford much more than anywhere in the Tver region, and in the outback this contrast is perhaps even more noticeable than in big cities. But it seems that nowhere in Russia do statistics diverge so much from reality.

57.

But the islanders are not discouraged. Unsinkability is generally characteristic of those who live near the sea. And the Sakhalin people are islanders to the core, and here it’s hard to get rid of the feeling that everyone you meet, if you don’t know each other, then at least studied in the same school. On Sakhalin, even in the city, it’s not a problem to talk to a stranger, and Mikha, Lyokha or Seryoga will introduce themselves without blinking an eye, even in work contacts or business cards. A man in a poaching village told me as much about fishing in a couple of hours as I had not been told in the Ugra North for a couple of months. Here, many people dream of “getting off the damned island,” but many of those who have done this suddenly realize that they cannot live on the mainland and return here. It is symbolic: a comfortable ship goes to the Kuril Islands from Sakhalin with seats sold on the Internet, and to the mainland there is the largest minibus in Russia without a schedule and pre-sale. Even if it is huge, it is still an island, and the island is almost a steamship, and its inhabitants are almost a crew...
Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. Shards of Toyohara.
The Sakhalin Frog, or How We Didn't Get to Cape Giant.
Korsakov.
Nevelsk.
Kholmsk. Center.
Kholmsk. Outskirts and surroundings.
Hoshinsen. Mud volcano.
Hoshinsen. Damn bridge.
Vzmorye, Penza, Chekhov.
Tomari.
Northern Sakhalin
Alexandrovsk-Sakhalinsky. Three brothers.
Alexandrovsk-Sakhalinsky. City and hard labor.
Nogliki and Nivkh.
Daginsky springs and Chaivo.
Kurile Islands
Motor ship "Igor Farkhutdinov".
Iturup. Kurilsk and surroundings.
Iturup. Baransky Volcano.
Iturup. White rocks.
Iturup. Killer whale.
Kunashir. Yuzhno-Kurilsk.
Kunashir. Neighborhoods of Yuzhno-Kurilsk.
Kunashir. Cape Stolbchaty.
Kunashir. Mendeleev Volcano.
Kunashir. Golovnino and its volcano.
Shikotan. Malokurilskoye and Krabozavodskoye.
Shikotan. The end of the world.