Sakhalin is the largest island in Russia, resting among the waters of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk and the Sea of ​​Japan.

There was confusion with the very name of the island. The Japanese called it Karafuto, reproducing in their own way the name given to the island by its indigenous population - the Ainu. But the toponym “Sakhalin” appeared as a result of a mistake by unlucky cartographers. Since the time of La Perouse's travels, it was believed that Sakhalin is a peninsula.

In the mid-19th century, the captain of the ship “Baikal” G. Nevelsky was able to circumnavigate Sakhalin. Naturally, it became necessary to make changes to the existing geographic Maps, which is what the cartographers did. They carefully sketched the shape of the island and indicated its coordinates. And then - either the cartographer was busy and delegated the job to a student, or he had glasses with smaller diopters than necessary, but what happened happened. Cartographers mistakenly took the autochthonous name of the Amur River - Sakhalyan Ulla, indicated in the previous map, for the name of the new island. So Sakhalin became Sakhalin. The name has stuck, and now even conservative Japanese are beginning to forget the former toponym “Karafuto”.

Interesting! By the way, Sakhalin has been discovered many times. The expeditions of Poyarkov, Kruzenshtern, Khvostov, Davydov and La Perouse went to him. All expeditions searched and found something of their own. La Perouse, for example, was looking for evidence of the existence of the legendary Tartaria. That’s why he called the strait he discovered Tartarsky. Subsequently, “Tartarsky” turned into “Tatarsky”. This can mislead an unprepared tourist, so it is worth clarifying that the Tatars have nothing to do with the history of the island.

Climate and weather on Sakhalin

The climate on Sakhalin is cool, determined by many geographical factors. The winter is snowy and long, imperceptibly turning into a not very hot summer - excellent conditions for skiers and valuable varieties of fish. There are a great many of both of them on Sakhalin.

When is the best time to go to Sakhalin

The tourism industry of Sakhalin is a rare indicator for our country that it is possible to work not exclusively on the use of natural gifts. There is a reason for this. The overwhelming majority of tourists on Sakhalin are Japanese, who are difficult to attract due to the simple Soviet conditions for recreation. The Japanese demand good cuisine and quality service. Therefore, comfortable hotels and a developed restaurant business have become the norm for Sakhalin. In addition, on Sakhalin, by attracting funds from Japanese investors, the following tourist infrastructure facilities have already been created and are still being created:

1. Tourist complex "Hot Keys".
2. Tourist base "Aquamarine".
3. Historical Center under Japanese ancient temple"Karafuto jinja."
4. A massive tourist complex “Sakhalin City Center” is under construction, capable of attracting tourists from all corners of the Earth in the future.

With all the variety of modern infrastructure facilities, the possibility of ecotourism, beloved by many, with elements of survival, remains.

Sakhalin, of course, is not a museum center, but it still provides tourists with the opportunity to see something unusual, namely the South Sakhalin Museum of Railway Equipment. Considering that many grown-up boys and girls of all nationalities maintain a reverent love for railroad toys, the museum has no shortage of visitors.

Ecotourism and health tourism

For lovers of ecotourism and medicinal hot springs, Sakhalin Island is a real find. Both natural monuments and thermal waters are available in abundance here.

Natural attractions

1. Seal Island is a protected area that can be visited as part of an excursion. The island has a world-famous fur seal rookery. In terms of the number of pinnipeds resting there, Tyuleniy Island has no analogues. Only the Commander Islands are comparable to it. A real paradise for zoologists, zoophotographers and ecotourists.
2. Sakhalin amber deposits - Starodubsky and Vzmorsky beaches. Amber can be collected here like berries. By the way, Sakhalin amber is really berry, cherry in color.
3. Nituy waterfall, which is of particular interest during the salmon spawning period.
4. Stone idols of Cape Stukabis, carved from volcanic rocks by nature itself. Here, near the cape, is an ideal place for fishing, where successful fishermen caught hefty Amur whitefish. Depending on the season, you can watch Japanese cormorants nesting and thick-sided sea lions mating. Cape Stukabis is also highly valued by esotericists, Buddhists and hunters of the elusive Shambhala. They say that contemplating the statues and two cascading waterfalls immerses them in nirvana.
5. Cape Lamanon is a real gift for ornithologists and amateur geologists. Rare Steller's sea eagles are found here, and volcanic mountains provide prospectors with samples of quartz and calcite.

How to get to the thermal springs

There are many of them on Sakhalin, and you can swim and heal in all of them.

Popular ones include:

Sinegorsk hot springs, throwing out cubes of water with a complex chemical composition and a high content of arsenic. This type of Sinegorsk water is rare in the world and treats serious disorders of cell metabolism and the consequences of radiation sickness. Sinegorsk is located 20 km from Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk,

Balneological health centers They are treated with the mud of the Tatar (Tartar) Strait, namely the mouth of the Lechebnaya River and Lake Imenchivoe. The mud of these natural health resorts saves people with severe skin diseases and intractable skin ulcers. Mud procedures are carried out in:

• Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk sanatorium "Aralia" (Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Komsomolskaya str. 371).
• Sanatorium "Gornyak" (Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Gornaya str. 1).
• Sanatoriums "Chaika" and "Sakhalin". Located 20 km from Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, near the Sinegorsk thermal springs.

Daginskie hot waters help with arthritis, arthrosis and other troubles that affect the musculoskeletal system of humans and swans. In any case, the swans chose the Daginsky thermal springs as their habitat and do not complain of illness.

Goryachye Klyuchi is a village with thermal springs of the same name. It's easy to get there. From Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk to Nogliki, and then 30 km following the signs to Klyuchi. The road is not of Japanese quality, it is dirt, but the Japanese drive on it. Probably, they sometimes want something exotic too. You can stay in the Keys themselves. Or you can go to Nogliki and go to Klyuchi for procedures. Most people do just that, because after a ten-minute procedure in hot waters there is absolutely nothing to do in the Keys except wander around tent camp and play Bear Grylls. In Nogliki the conditions are much more comfortable. There is a small hotel. The cost of the room exceeds 2000 rubles per day. In the private sector it is a little cheaper - 1200 rubles per person per day.

The equipment for hot springs in the Keys itself varies. There are well-equipped ones, with clean sunbeds and neat walls. There are some neglected and wild ones. The best are considered to be those belonging to the Dagi cordon house. The cost of one procedure is 100 rubles. Wild springs are not equipped at all or very poorly equipped. Dilapidated walls, holes covered with cellophane and tape, slimy sun loungers and a leaking roof. But each type of source has its fans.

Sakhalin for skiers

International ratings of ski resorts do not ignore Sakhalin. To the pride of the domestic tourism business, Sakhalin is far from being an outsider. Thanks to climatic conditions, the mountain snow cover of Sakhalin lasts up to 6 months a year, and thanks to Japanese investments, places are equipped ski slope and tourist centers.

An interesting feature of Sakhalin ski tourism is the opportunity to combine business with pleasure. To put it exaggeratedly, after descending from the mountain, you can ride to a geothermal spring and take a healing bath.

The tourist complex "Mountain Air" is located in the center of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, on Victory Square, on the slope of Mount Bolshevik. The complex operates from early December to mid-May.

Important! To ski on the slopes of the complex, you must purchase either a weekly pass costing 8,000 rubles, or a one-day ski-pass costing 1,200 rubles. Riding is allowed from 9 am to 9 pm, day off is Monday.

In total, the complex has 14 downhill slopes and ski rentals are available. good quality and snowboards. On the territory there are funiculars, storage rooms, holiday houses, ski jumps, and a children's room.

The Mountain Air complex has hotels with different levels of amenities and services. The rating is headed by Imperial Palace. The name is a bit loud, but the hotel itself is quite good. “Mitos” and “Santa Risot” are approximately equal in rating to it. There are simpler and, accordingly, cheaper hotels, with names familiar to every post-Soviet person - “Rubin” and “Gagarin”. You can eat in several cafes on the territory of the complex and in hotel restaurants.

Food and nutrition

You can taste whatever your heart desires on Sakhalin. The island's food supply is stable and plentiful. Due to the large number of Japanese and Chinese tourists Having their own gastronomic preferences, there are many restaurants and cafes serving Japanese and Chinese cuisine in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. Due to the geographical proximity of these countries, restaurant chefs have the opportunity to undergo internships in restaurants in Tokyo or Beijing, and the abundance of fish resources excludes the very concept of using any salted herring or mayonnaise when making sushi. Therefore, sushi in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk is really sushi, and not rice squares according to the village vocational school recipe. The same can be said about dishes based on Chinese recipes.

Every South Sakhalin cafe offers Korean cuisine. It has become so firmly and long ago rooted in Sakhalin life that it represents a real culinary culture.

Interesting! A separate story about five-minute caviar, which has long become the calling card of Sakhalin. During the chum or pink salmon fishing season, the Sakhalin market explodes with an abundance of caviar. Having gutted pink salmon, Sakhalin residents wash the caviar, roll it out on gauze and dip it in a strong salt solution. Then, in the same gauze, the solution is allowed to drain from the caviar. Five minutes is ready. You can sit at the table and eat with spoons. Tasty and healthy. But in most cases it is expensive.

On Sakhalin it is a sin not to eat fish. Chum salmon, pink salmon, coho salmon, smelt, sea cucumber, halibut, octopus - this is not a complete list of Sakhalin fish abundance.

By autumn, Sakhalin enters the season of crab fishing, and the markets are filled with huge crab claws hanging from the counters.

Scallops are another Sakhalin delicacy, which is obtained artisanally by wading through the shallow sea and feeling the scallops with your feet. To fully enjoy their taste, it is better to eat them immediately on the shore, throwing the scallops on the hot coals of the fire. The doors will immediately open, and inside there will be a piece of white and pink meat, which must be eaten piping hot.

Sakhalin for active tourists

Kurile Islands- an integral part of the Sakhalin region, and therefore trips to the Kuril Islands are among the services provided by travel agencies as part of a trip to Sakhalin. Helicopter travel over the Kuril Islands is one of the most expensive tours. The flight to Mount Spamberg, to an absolutely wild and secluded area near Lake Superior, is not inferior in cost.

A little cheaper is the possibility of group or individual hunting for bears, fur-bearing animals or deer.

K relatively inexpensive tours This could include mushroom and berry picking, fishing or diving.

The travel agency "Imperial Tour" organizes trips for travelers on all-terrain vehicles and cars to places far from popular tourist routes.

The Moguchi travel agency arranges holidays for corporate clients. Tourists are guided by professional rangers who will accompany travelers on hikes around Hirano Island. Tourists will be taught how to catch pink salmon, cook five-minute caviar, make fire, bake pink salmon on coals and do many other exciting things in the spirit of the Discovery Channel. True, according to Russian custom, guests will not only not be allowed to starve, but will even be deprived of the slightest opportunity to lose weight. Throughout the trip, tourists will receive first-class fresh fish and seafood food. In between meals, travelers will be able to admire seal rookeries and flights of cormorants. Still, a wild holiday with survival in Russian is very satisfying and tasty.

Conclusion

Theoretical physicists and simply enthusiasts of this matter say that time travel is possible. Some refer to Tesla, some conduct experiments with speed and particles, however, successes and victorious reports have not yet been heard. Apparently, because of this, the favorite argument of temporary workers is moving into the past when traveling from west to east. It is enough to board a plane at the right time, for example, in St. Petersburg and fly to Sakhalin. After a few hours of flight, the tourist will find himself in yesterday. And returning back in the same way, he will end up in tomorrow. During the experiment, the time traveler can rest very well on numerous tourist centers Sakhalin, swim in hot springs, catch fish and wander around the railway museum.

Russia Region Sakhalin region Population 520 thousand people

Sakhalin island

Sakhalin- an island off the east coast of Asia. It is part of the Sakhalin region, the largest island in the Russian Federation. It is washed by the Seas of Okhotsk and Japan. It is separated from mainland Asia by the Tatar Strait (at its narrowest part, the Nevelskoy Strait, is 7.3 km wide and freezes in winter); from the Japanese island of Hokkaido - through the La Perouse Strait.

The island got its name from the Manchu name of the Amur River - “Sakhalyan-ulla”, which translated means “Black River” - this name, printed on the map, was mistakenly attributed to Sakhalin, and in subsequent editions of maps it was printed as the name of the island. The Japanese call Sakhalin Karafuto, this name goes back to the Ainu "kamuy- kara-puto-ya-mosir", which means "land of the god of the mouth".

In 1805, a Russian ship under the command of I.F. Kruzenshtern explored most of the coast of Sakhalin and concluded that Sakhalin was a peninsula. In 1808, Japanese expeditions led by Matsuda Denjuro and Mamiya Rinzou proved that Sakhalin is an island. Most European cartographers were skeptical of the Japanese data. For a long time, on various maps Sakhalin was designated either an island or a peninsula. Only in 1849 did an expedition under the command of G.I. Nevelsky put a final point on this issue, passing on the military transport ship “Baikal” between Sakhalin and the mainland. This strait was subsequently named after Nevelsky.

Geography

The island extends meridionally from Cape Crillon in the south to Cape Elizabeth in the north. Length 948 km, width from 26 km (Poyasok isthmus) to 160 km (at the latitude of the village of Lesogorskoye), area 76.4 thousand km².

Map of Sakhalin Island 1885

Relief

The island's topography is composed of medium-high mountains, low mountains and low-lying plains. The southern and central parts of the island are characterized by mountainous terrain and consist of two meridionally oriented mountain systems - the Western Sakhalin Mountains (up to 1327 m in height - the city of Onor) and the East Sakhalin Mountains (up to 1609 m in height - the city of Lopatina), separated by the longitudinal Tym- Poronayskaya lowland. The north of the island (with the exception of the Schmidt Peninsula) is a gently rolling plain.

The shores of the island are slightly indented; large bays - Aniva and Terpeniya (widely open to the south) are located in the southern and middle parts of the island, respectively. The coastline has two large bays and four peninsulas.

The following 11 districts are distinguished in the relief of Sakhalin:

1. Schmidt Peninsula (about 1.4 thousand km²) is a mountainous peninsula in the far north of the island with steep, sometimes steep banks and two meridional ridges - Western and Eastern; highest point - Three Brothers (623 m); connected to the North Sakhalin Plain by the Okha Isthmus, the width of which at its narrowest point is just over 6 km;
2. The North Sakhalin Plain (about 28 thousand km²) is a gently rolling territory south of the Schmidt Peninsula with a widely branched river network, poorly defined watersheds and individual low mountain ranges, stretches from the Bay of Baikal in the north to the confluence of the Nysh and Tym rivers in the south, the highest point is the city of Daakhuria (601 m); The north-eastern coast of the island stands out as a sub-region, which is characterized by large lagoons (the largest are Piltun, Chaivo, Nyisky, Nabilsky, Lunsky bays), separated from the sea by narrow strips of alluvial spits, dunes, low sea terraces - it is in this sub-region and the main Sakhalin oil and gas fields are located on the adjacent shelf of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk;
3. The Western Sakhalin Mountains stretch almost 630 km from the latitude of the village. Khoe (51º19" N) in the north to the Crillon Peninsula in the extreme south of the island; the average width of the mountains is 40-50 km, the largest (at the latitude of Cape Lamanon) is about 70 km; the axial part is formed by Kamysovy (north of the Poyasok isthmus) and South Kamyshovy ridges;
4. The Tym-Poronayskaya lowland is located in the middle part of the island and is a hilly lowland stretching approximately 250 km in the meridional direction - from Terpeniya Bay in the south to the confluence of the Tym and Nysh rivers in the north; reaches its maximum width (up to 90 km) at the mouth of the Poronai River, and its minimum (6-8 km) in the valley of the Tym River; in the north it passes into the Nabil lowland; covered with a thick cover of Cenozoic sediments, composed of sedimentary deposits of the Quaternary period. sandstones, pebbles; the heavily swampy southern part of the lowland is called the Poronai “tundra”;
5. The Susunai Lowland is located in the southern part of the island and stretches for about 100 km from Aniva Bay in the south to the Naiba River in the north; from the west the lowland is limited by the Western Sakhalin Mountains, from the east by the Susunaisky ridge and the Korsakov plateau; in the southern part the width of the lowland reaches 20 km, in the center - 6 km, in the north - 10 km; absolute altitudes in the north and south they do not exceed 20 m above sea level, in the central part, on the watershed of the Susuya and Bolshaya Takaya river basins, they reach 60 m; belongs to the type of internal lowlands and is a tectonic depression filled with a large thickness of Quaternary deposits; within the Susunai Lowland are the cities of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Aniva, Dolinsk and about half the island’s population lives;
6. The East Sakhalin Mountains are represented in the north by the Lopatinsky mountain cluster (the highest point is the city of Lopatin, 1609 m) with ridges radiating from it; two spurs in the opposite direction represent the Nabilsky ridge; in the south, the Nabilsky ridge passes into the Central Ridge, in the north, sharply descending, into the North Sakhalin Plain;
7. lowland of the Terpeniya Peninsula - the smallest of the areas, occupies most of the Terpeniya Peninsula east of Terpeniya Bay;
8. The Susunaisky ridge stretches from north to south for 70 km and has a width of 18-120 km; the highest points are Mount Pushkinskaya (1047 m) and Chekhov Peak (1045 m); composed of Paleozoic deposits, at the foot of the western macroslope of the ridge is the city of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk;
9. The Korsakov plateau is bounded from the west by the Susunay lowland, from the north by the Susunay ridge, from the east by the Muravyovsky lowland, from the south by Aniva Bay, and has a slightly undulating surface formed by a system of flat-topped ridged ridges elongated in the northeast direction; at the southern end of the plateau on the shores of Aniva Bay is the city of Korsakov;
10. The Muravyovskaya Lowland is located between the Aniva Bay in the south and the Mordvinova Bay in the north, and has a ridged topography with flat tops of the ridges; within the lowland there are many lakes, incl. the so-called “Warm Lakes”, where South Sakhalin residents like to go on vacation;
11. The Tonino-Aniva ridge stretches from north to south, from Cape Svobodny to Cape Aniva, for almost 90 km, the highest point is Mount Kruzenshtern (670 m); composed of Cretaceous and Jurassic deposits.

View of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk from the high shore near the lighthouse in the Warm Lakes area

Climate

The climate of Sakhalin is cool, moderate monsoon ( average temperature January from −6ºС in the south to −24ºС in the north, August - from +19ºС to +10ºС, respectively), sea with long snowy winters and short cool summers.

The climate is influenced by the following factors:

1. Geographical location between 46º and 54º N. latitude. determines the arrival of solar radiation from 410 kJ/year in the north to 450 kJ/year in the south.
2. The position between the Eurasian continent and the Pacific Ocean determines the monsoon climate. It is associated with the humid and cool, rather rainy Sakhalin summer.
3. Mountainous terrain affects the direction and speed of the wind. A decrease in wind speed in intermountain basins (in particular, in the relatively large Tym-Poronai and Susunai lowlands) contributes to air cooling in winter and warming in summer; it is here that the greatest temperature contrasts are observed; at the same time, the mountains protect the named lowlands, as well as the western coast, from the effects of the cold air of the Sea of ​​​​Okhotsk.
4. In summer, the contrast between the western and eastern coasts of the island is enhanced by the respectively warm Tsushima Current of the Sea of ​​Japan and the cold East Sakhalin Current of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk.
5. The cold Sea of ​​Okhotsk affects the island's climate as a giant thermal accumulator, determining a long, cold spring and relatively warm autumn: snow in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk sometimes lasts until mid-May, and Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk's flower beds can bloom until early November. If we compare Sakhalin with similar (in terms of climatic indicators) territories European Russia, then the seasons on the island succeed each other with a delay of about three weeks.

Air temperature and precipitation in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk in the 21st century (temperature: II.2001-IV.2009; precipitation: III.2005-IV.2009):

Options / Months	I	II	III	IV	V	VI	VII	VIII	IX	X	XI	XII	Year
Maximum air temperature, ºС	1,7	4,1	9,0	22,9	25,0	28,2	29,6	32,0	26,0	22,8	15,3	5,0	32,0
Average air temperature, ºС	−11,6	−11,7	−4,6	1,8	7,4	12,3	15,5	17,3	13,4	6,6	−0,8	−9,0	3,2
Minimum air temperature, ºС	−29,5	−30,5	−25,0	−14,5	−4,7	1,2	3,0	4,2	−2,1	−8,0	−16,5	−26,0	−30,5
Total precipitation, mm	49	66	62	54	71	38	37	104	88	96	77	79	792

The maximum temperature on Sakhalin (+39ºС) was observed in July 1977 in the village. Border on east coast(Nogliki district). The minimum temperature on Sakhalin (-50ºС) was recorded in January 1980 in the village. Ado-Tymovo (Tymovsky district). The recorded temperature minimum in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk is −36ºС (January 1961), maximum is +34.7ºС (August 1999).

The highest average annual precipitation (990 mm) falls in the city of Aniva, the least (476 mm) at the Kuegda weather station (Okha district). The average annual precipitation in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk (according to long-term data) is 753 mm.

The earliest stable snow cover appears on Cape Elizaveta (Okha district) and in the village of Ado-Tymovo (Tymovsky district) - on average October 31, the latest - in the city of Korsakov (on average December 1). The average dates for the disappearance of snow cover are from April 22 (Kholmsk) to May 28 (Cape Elizabeth). In Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, stable snow cover appears on average on November 22 and disappears on April 29.

The most powerful typhoon in the last 100 years (“Phyllis”) hit the island in August 1981. The maximum precipitation then fell on August 5-6, and in total from August 4 to 7, 322 mm of precipitation fell in the south of Sakhalin (about three monthly norms) .

Inland waters

The largest rivers of Sakhalin:

River	Administrative district(s)	Where does it flow	Length, km	Basin area, km²	Average annual runoff volume, km³
Poronai	Tymovsky, Smirnykhovsky, Poronaysky	Terpeniya Bay of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk	350	7990	2,49
Tym	Tymovsky, Nogliki	Nyisky Bay of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk	330	7850	1,68
Naiba	Dolinsky	Terpeniya Bay of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk	119	1660	0,65
Lutoga	Kholmsky, Anivsky	Aniva Bay, Sea of ​​Okhotsk	130	1530	1,00
Shaft	Nogliki	Chaivo Bay, Sea of ​​Okhotsk	112	1440	0,73
Ainskaya	Tomarinsky	lake Ainsk	79	1330	...
Nysh	Nogliki	Tym River (left tributary)	116	1260	...
Uglegorka (Esutoru)	Uglegorsky	Sea of ​​Japan (Strait of Tartary)	102	1250	0,57
Langeri (Langry)	Okhinsky	Amur Estuary of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk	130	1190	...
Big	Okhinsky	Sakhalin Bay of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk	97	1160	...
Rukutama (Vitnitsa)	Poronaisky	lake Nevskoe	120	1100	...
Deer	Poronaisky	Terpeniya Bay of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk	85	1080	...
Lesogorka (Taimyr)	Uglegorsky	Sea of ​​Japan (Strait of Tartary)	72	1020	0,62
Nabil	Nogliki	Nabilsky Bay of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk	101	1010	...
Malaya Tym	Tymovsky	Tym River (left tributary)	66	917	...
Leonidovka	Poronaisky	Poronai River (right tributary)	95	850	0,39
Susuya	Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Anivsky	Aniva Bay, Sea of ​​Okhotsk	83	823	0,08

There are 16,120 lakes on Sakhalin with total area about 1000 km². The areas of their greatest concentration are the north and southeast of the island. The two most large lakes Sakhalin - Nevskoe with a surface area of ​​178 km² (Poronaisky district, near the mouth of the Poronai River) and Tunaycha (174 km²) (Korsakovsky district, in the north of the Muravyovskaya lowland); both lakes belong to the lagoon type.

Natural resources

Sakhalin is characterized by a very high potential of natural resources. In addition to biological resources, the reserves of which Sakhalin ranks among the first in Russia, the island and its shelf have very large hydrocarbon reserves. In terms of the volume of explored reserves of gas condensate, the Sakhalin region ranks 4th in Russia, gas - 7th, coal - 12th and oil - 13th, while within the region the reserves of these minerals are almost entirely concentrated in Sakhalin and its shelf. Other natural resources of the island include timber, gold, and platinum.

Flora and fauna

Both the flora and fauna of the island are impoverished both in comparison with the adjacent areas of the mainland and in comparison with the island of Hokkaido located to the south.

Flora

As of the beginning of 2004, the island's flora includes 1,521 species of vascular plants, belonging to 575 genera from 132 families, with 7 families and 101 genera represented only by alien species. The total number of alien species on the island is 288, or 18.9% of the entire flora. According to the main systematic groups, the vascular plants of the Sakhalin flora are distributed as follows (excluding aliens): vascular spores - 79 species (including lycosperms - 14, horsetails - 8, pteridophytes - 57), gymnosperms - 9 species, angiosperms - 1146 species ( including monocotyledons - 383, dicotyledons - 763). The leading families of vascular plants in the flora of Sakhalin are sedges ( Cyperaceae) (121 species excluding aliens - 122 species including aliens), Asteraceae ( Asteraceae) (120 - 175), cereals ( Poaceae) (108 - 152), Rosaceae ( Rosaceae) (58 - 68), ranunculaceae ( Ranunculaceae) (54 - 57), heather ( Ericaceae) (39 - 39), cloves ( Caryophyllaceae) (38 - 54), buckwheat ( Polygonaceae) (37 - 57), orchids ( Orchidaceae) (35 - 35), cruciferous ( Brassicaceae) (33 - 53).

Fauna

Pink salmon go to spawn in an unnamed river flowing into Mordvinov Bay

"Red Book"

The fauna, flora and mycobiota of the island include many rare protected species of animals, plants and fungi. 12 species of mammals recorded on Sakhalin, 97 species of birds (including 50 nesting), seven species of fish, 20 species of invertebrates, 113 species of vascular plants, 13 species of bryophytes, seven species of algae, 14 species of fungi and 20 species of lichens (t i.e. 136 species of animals, 133 species of plants and 34 species of fungi - a total of 303 species) have protected status, i.e. are listed in the Red Book of the Sakhalin Region, while about a third of them are simultaneously included in the Red Book Russian Federation".

Among the "federal Red Book" flowering plants, the flora of Sakhalin includes Aralia cordate ( Aralia cordata), calypso bulbosa ( Calypso bulbosa), Glen's cardiocrinum ( Cardiocrinum glehnii), Japanese sedge ( Carex japonica) and lead gray ( C. livida), real lady's slippers ( Cypripedium calceolus) and grandiflora ( C. macranthum), Gray's bifolia ( Diphylleia grayi), leafless muzzle ( Epipogium aphyllum), Japanese kandyk ( Erythronium japonicum), tall pot-bellied ( Gastrodia elata), iris xiphoid ( Iris ensata), ailantholfolia nut ( Juglans ailanthifolia), Calopanax sevenloba ( Kalopanax septemlobum), tiger lily ( Lilium lancifolium), Tolmachev's honeysuckle ( Lonicera tolmatchevii), long-legged winged seed ( Macropodium pterospermum), miyakia wholeleaf ( Miyakea integrifolia) (Miyakia is the only endemic genus of vascular plants on Sakhalin), Nestflower capulaceae ( Neottianthe cucullata), peonies obovate ( Paeonia obovata) and mountain ( P. oreogeton), rough bluegrass ( Poa radula) and Wright's viburnum ( Viburnum wrightii), i.e. 23 species. In addition, eight more “federal Red Book” plants are found on the island: two species of gymnosperms - Sargent’s juniper ( Juniperus sargentii) and pointed yew ( Taxus cuspidata), three species of pteridophytes - asiatic grasshopper ( Isoеtes asiatica), leptorumora Mikel ( Leptorumohra miqueliana) and Wright's mecodium ( Mecodium wrightii), two species and one variety of mosses - Bryoxyphium japonica ( Bryoxiphium norvegicum var. japonicum), nekera northern ( Neckera borealis), and plagiothecium obtuse ( Plagiothecium obtusissimum).

Population

According to the results of the 2002 census, the population of the island was 527.1 thousand people, incl. 253.5 thousand men and 273.6 thousand women; about 85% of the population are Russians, the rest are Ukrainians, Koreans, Belarusians, Tatars, Chuvashs, Mordovians, several thousand people each are representatives of the indigenous peoples of the North - Nivkhs and Oroks. From 2002 to 2008 The population of Sakhalin continued to decline slowly (by about 1% per year): mortality still prevails over birth rates, and the attraction of labor from the mainland and from countries neighboring Russia does not compensate for the departure of Sakhalin residents to the mainland. At the beginning of 2008, about 500 thousand people lived on the island.

The largest city on the island is the regional center of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk (173.2 thousand people; 01/01/2007), others are relatively big cities- Korsakov (35.1 thousand people), Kholmsk (32.3 thousand people), Okha (26.7 thousand people), Nevelsk (17.0 thousand people), Poronaysk (16.9 thousand people).

The population is distributed among the regions of the island as follows (results of the 2002 census, people):

Area	Whole population	%% of total	Urban population	Rural population
Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk and subordinate settlements	182142	34,6	177272	4870
Alexandrovsk-Sakhalinsky	17509	3,3	14764	2746
Anivsky	15275	2,9	8098	7177
Dolinsky	28268	5,4	23532	4736
Korsakovsky	45347	8,6	39311	6036
Makarovsky	9802	1,9	7282	2520
Nevelsky	26873	5,1	25954	921
Nogliki	13594	2,6	11653	1941
Okhinsky	33533	6,4	30977	2556
Poronaisky	28859	5,5	27531	1508
Smirnykhovsky	15044	2,9	7551	7493
Tomarinsky	11669	2,2	9845	1824
Tymovsky	19109	3,6	8542	10567
Uglegorsky	30208	5,7	26406	3802
Kholmsky	49848	9,5	44874	4974
Sakhalin in general	527080	100	463410	63670

Story

Archaeological finds indicate that people appeared on Sakhalin in the Paleolithic, approximately 20-25 thousand years ago, when glaciation lowered the level of the World Ocean and restored land “bridges” between Sakhalin and the mainland, as well as Sakhalin and Hokkaido. (At the same time, along another land “bridge” between Asia and America, located on the site of the modern Bering Strait, Homo sapiens moved to the American continent). In the Neolithic (2-6 thousand years ago), Sakhalin was inhabited by the ancestors of modern Paleo-Asian peoples - the Nivkhs (in the north of the island) and the Ainu (in the south).

These same ethnic groups formed the main population of the island during the Middle Ages, with the Nivkh migrating between Sakhalin and the lower Amur, and the Ainu migrating between Sakhalin and Hokkaido. Material culture theirs was similar in many ways, and their livelihood came from fishing, hunting and gathering. At the end of the Middle Ages (in the 16th-17th centuries), Tungus-speaking peoples appeared on Sakhalin - Evenks (nomadic reindeer herders) and Oroks (Uilta), who, under the influence of the Evenks, also began to engage in reindeer herding.

According to the Treaty of Shimoda (1855) between Russia and Japan, Sakhalin was recognized as their joint undivided possession. According to the Treaty of St. Petersburg of 1875, Russia received ownership of the island of Sakhalin, in return transferring to Japan all the northern Kuril Islands. After the defeat of the Russian Empire in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05 and the signing of the Treaty of Portsmouth, Japan received South Sakhalin (the part of Sakhalin Island south of the 50th parallel). As a result of the victory over Japan during World War II, the entire territory of Sakhalin Island and all the Kuril Islands were included in the Soviet Union (RSFSR). To the territory or part of the territory of the island. Sakhalin currently has no claims from Japan or any other country.

Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk was founded by Russians in 1882 under the name Vladimirovka. After the victory of the USSR and its allies in World War II, along with the entire island, it passed to the USSR.

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

2.

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:

3.

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:

4.

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

5.

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

6.

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:

7.

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.

8.

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.

9.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about the local nature is the vegetation, the abundance and lushness of which Sakhalin resembles 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 should be looked for not in the forest, but in the 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.!
The marine departments of the South Sakhalin shopping centers “Success” and “Tekhnik” 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 from the 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 monuments of the Stone Age here are “shell hills”, extending 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 a huge amount of 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. The latest technologies of genetic analysis have shown 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, which began 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.

On Southern Sakhalin- 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 the Crimean War and the English fleet in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk forced the evacuation of the Ilyinsky and Muravyovsky posts established on Southern Sakhalin the following 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 the 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 to descend into hard labor hell - to 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, a sharp turn occurred in the history of Sakhalin - the 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 in 1947, the exodus of the Japanese began, and the 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. It seems that only the regional center and Okha stand away from the sea.

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 marafet. 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 devastated the village of Preobrazhenie to the ground, then 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.

Geographical characteristics of Sakhalin

It is washed by the waters of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk and the Sea of ​​Japan. It is separated from the mainland by the Tatar Strait, the width of which at its narrowest point (Nevelskoy Strait) is 7.3 km, in the south of the island. Hokkaido (Japan) is separated by the La Perouse Strait. It extends meridionally from Cape Crillon in the south to Cape Elizabeth in the north. The length is 948 km, with an average width of about 100 km, on the isthmuses Sakhalin narrows: on Okha to 6 km, on Poyask to 27 km. Area 76.4 thousand km2.

Photo of Sakhalin Island from space. Enlarged image

Geologically, Sakhalin is part of the Cenozoic folded region as part of the Pacific folded geosynclinal belt. In the structure of Sakhalig, two meridional anticlinoria are distinguished - East Sakhalin and West Sakhalin, separated by Central Sakhalin. In the core of the East Sakhalin anticlinorium, Paleozoic rocks are exposed, in the core of the West Sakhalin anticlinorium - Upper Cretaceous; The Central Sakhalin region is composed of Neogene deposits. Strong seismicity indicates ongoing mountain-building processes.

Climate of Sakhalin

Sakhalin, separated from the mainland by the Tatar Strait, stretches from north to south for almost 1000 km. Its central and, especially, southern parts are predominantly mountainous in nature. There are wide low-lying strips along the coast.

The main watershed of Sakhalin is the Western Sakhalin Ridge, dividing the river network into two groups, one of which belongs to the Okhotsk basin, the other to the basin of the Sea of ​​Japan. To the east of it, separated by a deep fault depression, is the short but higher Eastern Sakhalin Ridge, highest point(peak, Nevelskogo, 2013 m) which is the highest for the entire island. The climate of Sakhalin is harsh. Winter here is long and cold, frosts reach -48°. The average monthly air temperature of the coldest month - January - in the north is -23°, in the south -8°. Summer is short and cool: The average monthly air temperature in the warmest month - July - does not exceed 15-17°.

Water resources of Sakhalin

The main rivers of Sakhalin are the Tym and Poronoy. They laid out their valleys in the central tectonic depression between the Western and Eastern ranges. The lengths of the rivers are about; 250 km, the catchment area is approximately 8000 km 2. Both rivers are distinguished by significant water content: their average annual flow exceeds 100 m 3 /sec, and modules reach 12-19 l/sec km 2. Other rivers of Sakhalin are short, mountainous watercourses, also characterized by high water content.

The regime of Sakhalin rivers is complex. The flood passes through them in three waves. In spring there is high water; from the melting of snow within the flat parts of the basins, at the beginning of summer there is a flood formed due to melting snow in the mountains, and, finally, in the middle of summer (July-August) there are floods caused by monsoon showers.

The coast of the island is replete with lakes, such as lagoons; they are shallow and separated from the sea by narrow spits; separate groups of lakes stretch along the coast for tens of kilometers. Most of them have communication and water exchange with the sea through narrow straits. Some lakes were separated from the sea and turned into fresh water bodies.