In 1869, Sakhalin Island was officially declared a place of royal exile, and until the beginning of the twentieth century, the majority of the island's inhabitants were convicts.
In 1890, the famous Russian writer Anton Pavlovich Chekhov traveled to Sakhalin Island to “study the life of convicts and exiles.” In preparation for the trip, Chekhov studied more than a hundred works and notes of travelers, monographs of scientists, ethnographic materials, and records of officials of the 17th-19th centuries.
The creative result of this trip was the artistic and journalistic book “Sakhalin Island” (From Travel Notes), which was based not only on personal impressions from numerous meetings, but also on statistical data collected by the writer on the island.
Thanks to the fact that the writer worked for three months on Sakhalin as a census taker, he was able to get to know in great detail the life and everyday life of settlers and convicts. From the Sakhalin trip, according to the writer, he brought “a chest of all kinds of convict stuff”: ten thousand statistical cards, samples of article lists of convicts, petitions, complaints from doctor Perlin, etc.
Chekhov returned to Moscow on December 8, 1890, and at the beginning of 1891 he began work on a book about Sakhalin: he read the necessary literature, put the collected materials in order, and sketched out the first chapters.
The fact that Chekhov came to Sakhalin and his contribution to the history of the region is a source of pride for Sakhalin residents. In September 1995, thanks to the enthusiasm of the Sakhalin public, a city literary and art museum of A.P. Chekhov’s book “Sakhalin Island” appeared in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. Talking about this book, which is the most complete “encyclopedia” about Sakhalin of the 19th century, the museum reveals the beginning of the history of the region from the founding of the hard labor camps of Tsarist Russia, shown by one of the great classical writers.
The museum, along with other exhibits, displays a collection of Chekhov's books "Sakhalin Island", translated and published in different countries world: Japan, USA, Netherlands, Poland, Italy, France, Finland, China, Spain. This is the only museum in the world that houses a large collection of books "Sakhalin Island", published in many languages of the world.
The book “Sakhalin Island” was written by Chekhov in 1891-1893 during his trip to the island in mid-1890. In addition to the author's personal observations, the content travel notes Other information was also included in the form of eyewitness accounts and factual data. Also, according to experts, the creation of the book was strongly influenced by the work of F.M. Dostoevsky "Notes from the House of the Dead".
The main goal that the writer pursued on his journey was to study the lifestyle of “convicts and exiles.” On Sakhalin, Chekhov was engaged in the census of the population, thanks to which he was able to become closely acquainted with local life and the living conditions of prisoners. At the end of the trip, the writer collected a whole “chest” of different stories and facts. When the book was written, Chekhov each time refused to publish individual chapters; he wanted the world to see the entire book. However, in 1892, the author nevertheless agreed to the publication of one chapter in a scientific and literary collection. The book was published in its entirety in 1895.
The story is based on the fate of a convict, whose life has turned into a real hell. Throughout all the chapters there is a description of the life and customs of the settlers, their hard physical labor. The author focuses on the living conditions of people - the state of prisons, hospitals, educational institutions.
The main plot load falls on the chapter “Egor’s Story”. It tells about the fate of a man who, like most other convicts, found himself in a difficult life situation, the only way out of which was to commit a criminal act.
The book had a great influence on the fate of the island, and in particular on the lives of its settlers. Thanks to truthful descriptions of the difficult life of the exiles, government authorities drew attention to their situation and sent their representatives there to clarify the situation and subsequently resolve it.
Read the retelling
The work entitled "Sakhalin Island" was written by such a famous writer as Anton Pavlovich Chekhov. He wrote this work after he visited Sakhalin Island. Before going there in 1890, the writer was dissuaded by absolutely all the people with whom he came into contact, from acquaintances and colleagues to close friends and relatives. The book was written in the form of simple essays that described the ordinary life and life of those people who lived there. Without any authorial embellishment, he described the deplorable state of the hospitals, schools and prisons there. With this work he was able to raise public awareness and draw people's attention to a truly serious problem.
During his visit, Anton Pavlovich was busy writing down stories for himself ordinary people, which I heard among them, who, by terrible will, found themselves in those truly unbearable and terrible conditions. Some people were so unlucky that they ended up there not for some bad deeds and harm to people, but simply because the authorities of that time could not simply do otherwise. This can best be seen, understood and felt only in the chapter entitled “Egorka’s Stories”. In this chapter, the author describes the difficult life story of one of the convicts, which he hears literally first-hand.
Anton Pavlovich is trying to convey to the whole world how life flows on this small piece of the world, isolated from the normal rest of the world, how people not only live here, but actually survive, how they raise and raise their own children, try to run a household, and how it seems At first glance, they live an ordinary, but completely different life. In this place, time literally froze and there are still very ancient remnants of the past, such as those that existed under serfdom, corporal punishment for offenses, forced bald shaving.
After the book was written, the public finally paid attention to such important problems, thereby Anton Pavlovich Chekhov rendered a great service to all residents of Sakhalin. The information was able to reach the highest echelon of power, thanks to this, all those Sakhalin residents who were tortured and tired of such a life were heard and now a large number of things will be changed in their way of life. The people of Sakhalin were very grateful to the author and therefore they consider this book one of the main assets of their culture.
Picture or drawing Sakhalin Island
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“Sakhalin Island” was written by Chekhov in the form of travel notes in the scientific and journalistic genre.
In the summer of 1890, the writer arrived in the half-abandoned city of Nikolaevsk with its sleepy and drunken inhabitants, living from bread to water and engaged in smuggling. It even seemed to Chekhov that he was not in one of the cities of the Russian Empire, but in the American state of Texas.
There wasn’t even a hotel in the city and Chekhov had to spend two nights on the ship, but when he set off on the return journey, the traveler with his suitcases found himself on the pier without any shelter.
On the next steamship "Baikal" we headed for Sakhalin Island, which was previously mistakenly considered a peninsula. When Chekhov left the cabin on deck early in the morning, he saw a mix of sleeping third class passengers, soldiers, guards and prisoners, frozen and covered with morning dew.
Along the way, Chekhov managed to visit the family of a naval officer living on the top of a mountain and engaged in marking the fairway. Chekhov was struck by hordes of mosquitoes that could easily eat a person alive.
When Chekhov arrived on Sakhalin, in the city of Aleksandrovsk, it seemed to him that he was in hell: the Sakhalin taiga was burning all around.
The writer settled into an apartment with a local doctor, from whom he learned many Sakhalin secrets. Soon Chekhov was introduced to the Governor-General of the Corfu region, who came to inspect prisons and settlements and found the conditions of convicts quite tolerable, although this was not true.
Having received permission to freely visit all settlers (except political ones), Chekhov began a census. He walked around many huts, which sometimes did not even have furniture (sometimes there was only one feather bed on the floor), and met many bright personalities.
The writer visited the Aleksandrovskaya, Duyskaya, Voevodskaya prisons with their horrific unsanitary conditions, cold and dampness. The convicts slept on bare bunks, ate meagerly, walked in rags, worked backbreakingly in clearing forests, building, and draining swamps.
After analyzing the climate in the Alexander District, Chekhov came to the conclusion that summer and spring here are like in Finland, autumn is like in St. Petersburg, and the winter months are even harsher than in northern Arkhangelsk. It often snowed in July and residents had to wrap themselves in fur coats and sheepskin coats. The writer called this weather bleak.
The writer was also interested in the indigenous inhabitants of the north of Sakhalin - the Gilyaks. They lived in yurts, practically did not wash, and abused alcohol. Women were treated with contempt and considered inferior beings. But in general, they behaved quite peacefully towards others.
In September, Chekhov left northern Sakhalin to get acquainted with southern part islands shaped like a fish tail. In his memory, the north remained like a gloomy little world, like a terrible ominous dream.
Chekhov was no longer so enthusiastic about exploring the southern settlements of Sakhalin Island, as he was tired of the north.
The indigenous population here were the Aino, which means “man”. They were distinguished by excellent spiritual qualities, but the appearance of the elderly women was striking in its ugliness. The effect was aggravated by blue paint on the lips. To Chekhov they sometimes seemed like real witches. They did not recognize Russian bread, but they could not live without rice. The Aino kept bears in log cages near their homes, which they ate in winter.
If previously Sakhalin was owned by two states - Russia and Japan, then since 1875 the island became part of the Russian Empire. Japan received the Kuril Islands in return.
When a convoy of female convicts arrived on the island, instead of going to prison, they were immediately assigned to be cohabitants with the male settlers. They looked at everyone: young and old, beautiful and ugly. Old women, as well as young women, who were considered infertile on the mainland, for some reason gave birth very well on Sakhalin.
In prisons, card games flourished among prisoners and they were more reminiscent of “gambling houses” than correctional institutions. Prisoners were severely punished for their offenses with rods or whips. The writer witnessed how convict Prokhorov was given 90 lashes, having previously been tied to a bench by his hands and feet.
Out of despair and unbearable conditions of detention, people attempted to escape, which rarely ended in success: impenetrable taiga, dampness, midges, wild animals served as reliable guards.
Chekhov analyzed church registers over a ten-year period and came to the conclusion that the most insidious and deadly disease on Sakhalin was consumption, followed by death from pneumonia.
The book shocked Russian society and caused such a public outcry that the government was forced to respond by reforming the legislation on the maintenance of convicts. I think this is what every writer wants deep down - not only to inform and influence minds, but also to contribute to real changes in life.
A summary of Chekhov's travel notes about Sakhalin was provided by Marina Korovina.
Nikolaevsk-on-Amur. - Steamship "Baikal". – Cape Pronge and the entrance to the Liman. – Sakhalin Peninsula. - La Perouse, Broughton, Krusenstern and Nevelskoy. – Japanese researchers. - Cape Jaore. - Tatar coast. - De-Kastri.
On July 5, 1890, I arrived by ship in the city of Nikolaevsk, one of the easternmost points of our fatherland. The Amur is very wide here, there are only 27 miles left to the sea; the place is majestic and beautiful, but the memories of the past of this region, the stories of companions about the fierce winter and no less fierce local customs, the proximity of hard labor and the very sight of an abandoned, dying city completely take away the desire to admire the landscape.
Nikolaevsk was founded not so long ago, in 1850, by the famous Gennady Nevelsky, and this is perhaps the only bright place in the history of the city. In the fifties and sixties, when culture was being planted along the Amur, not sparing soldiers, prisoners and migrants, officials who ruled the region had their stay in Nikolaevsk, many Russian and foreign adventurers came here, settlers settled, seduced by the extraordinary abundance of fish and animals, and, apparently, the city was not alien to human interests, since there was even a case that one visiting scientist found it necessary and possible to give a public lecture here at the club. Now, almost half of the houses have been abandoned by their owners, dilapidated, and dark frameless windows look at you like the eye sockets of a skull. The inhabitants lead a sleepy, drunken life and generally live from hand to mouth, which is what God sent them to do. They make a living by supplying fish to Sakhalin, gold predation, exploitation of foreigners, and selling show-offs, that is, deer antlers, from which the Chinese prepare stimulant pills. On the way from Khabarovka to Nikolaevsk I had to meet quite a few smugglers; here they do not hide their profession. One of them, showing me golden sand and a couple of show-offs, told me with pride: “And my father was a smuggler!” The exploitation of foreigners, in addition to the usual soldering, fooling, etc., is sometimes expressed in an original form. Thus, the Nikolaev merchant Ivanov, now deceased, traveled to Sakhalin every summer and took tribute there from the Gilyaks, and tortured and hanged faulty payers.
There is no hotel in the city. At a public meeting I was allowed to rest after dinner in a hall with a low ceiling - here in the winter, they say, balls are given; When I asked where I could spend the night, they just shrugged their shoulders. There was nothing to do, I had to spend two nights on the ship; when he went back to Khabarovka, I found myself broke like a crayfish: where will I go? My luggage is on the pier; I walk along the shore and don’t know what to do with myself. Just opposite the city, two or three miles from the shore, there is the steamship “Baikal”, on which I will go to the Tatar Strait, but they say that it will leave in four or five days, not earlier, although the retreat flag is already flying on its mast . Is it possible to take it and go to Baikal? But it’s awkward: they probably won’t let me in, they’ll say it’s too early. The wind blew, Cupid frowned and became agitated like the sea. It's getting sad. I go to the meeting, have lunch there for a long time and listen to how at the next table they talk about gold, about show-offs, about a magician who came to Nikolaevsk, about some Japanese who pulls his teeth not with forceps, but simply with his fingers. If you listen carefully and for a long time, then, my God, how far life here is from Russia! Starting with the chum salmon balyk, which is used to snack on vodka here, and ending with the conversations, you can feel something unique, not Russian, in everything. While I was sailing along the Amur, I had a feeling as if I was not in Russia, but somewhere in Patagonia or Texas; not to mention the original, non-Russian nature, it always seemed to me that the structure of our Russian life is completely alien to the native Amur people, that Pushkin and Gogol are incomprehensible here and therefore are not needed, our history is boring and we, visitors from Russia, seem to be foreigners. In terms of religion and politics, I noticed complete indifference here. The priests whom I saw on the Amur eat meat during Lent, and, by the way, they told me about one of them, in a white silk caftan, that he was engaged in gold predation, competing with his spiritual children. If you want to make an Amur citizen feel bored and yawn, then talk to him about politics, about the Russian government, about Russian art. And morality here is somehow special, not ours. Chivalrous treatment of a woman is elevated almost to a cult and at the same time it is not considered reprehensible to give up your wife for money to a friend; or even better: on the one hand, there is the absence of class prejudices - here even with the exile they behave as if they were an equal, and on the other hand, it is not a sin to shoot a Chinese tramp in the forest like a dog, or even to secretly hunt humpbacks.
But I will continue about myself. Not finding shelter, I decided to go to Baikal in the evening. But here is a new problem: there is a considerable swell, and the Gilyak boatmen do not agree to carry it for any money. Again I walk along the shore and don’t know what to do with myself. Meanwhile, the sun is already setting, and the waves on the Amur are darkening. On this and on the other bank, Gilyak dogs howl furiously. And why did I come here? - I ask myself, and my journey seems extremely frivolous to me. And the thought that hard labor is already close, that in a few days I will land on Sakhalin soil, without having a single letter of recommendation with me, that I might be asked to go back - this thought worries me unpleasantly. But finally two Gilyaks agree to take me for a ruble, and on a boat made of three planks, I safely reach “Baikal”.
This is a steamer marine type of medium size, a merchant who seemed to me, after the Baikal and Amur steamships, quite tolerable. It makes voyages between Nikolaevsk, Vladivostok and Japanese ports, carrying mail, soldiers, prisoners, passengers and cargo, mainly government goods; under a contract concluded with the treasury, which pays him a substantial subsidy, he is obliged to visit Sakhalin several times during the summer: at the Alexander post and at the southern Korsakov post. The tariff is very high, which is probably not found anywhere else in the world. Colonization, which first of all requires freedom and ease of movement, and high tariffs - this is completely incomprehensible. The wardroom and cabins on the Baikal are cramped, but clean and furnished in a completely European style; there is a piano. The servants here are Chinese with long braids, they are called in English - fight. The cook is also Chinese, but his cuisine is Russian, although all the dishes are bitter from the spicy keri and smell of some kind of perfume, like corylopsis.
Having read about the storms and ice of the Tartar Strait, I expected to meet whalers with hoarse voices on “Baikal”, splashing tobacco chewing gum when talking, but in reality I found quite intelligent people. The commander of the steamship, Mr. L., a native of the western region, has been sailing in the northern seas for more than 30 years and has traveled them length and breadth. In his time he has seen many miracles, knows a lot and talks interestingly. Having spent half his life circling Kamchatka and the Kuril Islands, he, perhaps with more right than Othello, could talk about “the most barren deserts, terrible abysses, inaccessible cliffs.” I owe him a lot of information that was useful to me for these notes. He has three assistants: Mr. B., the nephew of the famous astronomer B., and two Swedes - Ivan Martynych and Ivan Veniaminych, kind and friendly people.
On July 8, before lunch, the Baikal weighed anchor. With us came three hundred soldiers under the command of an officer and several prisoners. One prisoner was accompanied by a five-year-old girl, his daughter, who held his shackles as he ascended the ladder. There was, by the way, one convict woman who attracted attention by the fact that her husband voluntarily followed her to hard labor. Besides me and the officer, there were several other classy passengers of both sexes and, by the way, even one baroness. Let the reader not be surprised at such an abundance of intelligent people here in the desert. Along the Amur and in the Primorsky region, the intelligentsia, with a generally small population, makes up a considerable percentage, and there is relatively more of it here than in any Russian province. There is a city on the Amur where there are 16 generals alone, military and civilian. Now there are, perhaps, even more of them.
In 1869, Sakhalin Island was officially declared a place of royal exile, and until the beginning of the twentieth century, the majority of the island's inhabitants were convicts.
In 1890, the famous Russian writer Anton Pavlovich Chekhov traveled to Sakhalin Island to “study the life of convicts and exiles.” In preparation for the trip, Chekhov studied more than a hundred works and notes of travelers, monographs of scientists, ethnographic materials, and records of officials of the 17th-19th centuries.
The creative result of this trip was the artistic and journalistic book “Sakhalin Island” (From Travel Notes), which was based not only on personal impressions from numerous meetings, but also on statistical data collected by the writer on the island.
Thanks to the fact that the writer worked for three months on Sakhalin as a census taker, he was able to get to know in great detail the life and everyday life of settlers and convicts. From the Sakhalin trip, according to the writer, he brought “a chest of all kinds of convict stuff”: ten thousand statistical cards, samples of article lists of convicts, petitions, complaints from doctor Perlin, etc.
Chekhov returned to Moscow on December 8, 1890, and at the beginning of 1891 he began work on a book about Sakhalin: he read the necessary literature, put the collected materials in order, and sketched out the first chapters.
The fact that Chekhov came to Sakhalin and his contribution to the history of the region is a source of pride for Sakhalin residents. In September 1995, thanks to the enthusiasm of the Sakhalin public, a city literary and art museum of A.P. Chekhov’s book “Sakhalin Island” appeared in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. Talking about this book, which is the most complete “encyclopedia” about Sakhalin of the 19th century, the museum reveals the beginning of the history of the region from the founding of the hard labor camps of Tsarist Russia, shown by one of the great classical writers.
The museum, along with other exhibits, displays a collection of Chekhov's books "Sakhalin Island", translated and published in different countries of the world: Japan, USA, the Netherlands, Poland, Italy, France, Finland, China, Spain. This is the only museum in the world that houses a large collection of books "Sakhalin Island", published in many languages of the world.
