Russia's Sakhalin Penal Colony, 1849–1917

Imperialism and Exile

Andrew A. Gentes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000378597
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This book provides a comprehensive history of the genesis, existence, and demise of Imperial Russia's largest penal colony, made famous by Chekhov in a book written following his visit there in 1890. Based on extensive original research in archival documents, published reports, and memoirs, the book is also a social history of the late imperial bureaucracy and of the subaltern society of criminals and exiles; an examination of the tsarist state's failed efforts at reform; an exploration of Russian imperialism in East Asia and Russia's acquisition of Sakhalin Island in the face of competition from Japan; and an anthropological and literary study of the Sakhalin landscape and its associated values and ideologies. The Sakhalin penal colony became one of the largest penal colonies in history. The book's conclusion prompts important questions about contemporary prisons and their relationship to state and society.

1 The Busse Expedition, 1853–54

Twenty-five-year-old Major Nikolai V. Busse rendezvoused with Admiral Gennadii I. Nevel´skoi at Petrovskoe, an outpost on the northern Pacific seaboard, in late August 1853. Having first gone to Petropavlovsk, on the Kamchatka Peninsula, he was now arriving under special orders from Nikolai N. Muravˊëv, Eastern Siberia’s powerful governor-general. Busse had previously served in the renowned Semënovskii Regiment, under Lieutenant-Colonel Mikhail S. Korsakov, now Muravˊëv’s closest assistant. Patronage serving him well to this point, the young Lutheran nobleman from St. Petersburg was in Petrovskoe to discuss with Nevelˊskoi a mission for which both were poorly prepared. It involved establishing a post in southern Sakhalin to directly challenge Japan’s control there, and reconnoitering the area for future settlement.

Busse would eventually die of syphilis in 1866. Five years later, the diary he kept during this mission was serialized in the thick journal Vestnik Evropy (The European Herald) and immediately published as a book.¹ In it, Busse evinces that imperial mindset that, as Aleksandr Kamenskii writes, “extended beyond the nation’s traditional frontiers, while at the same time Russians refused to come to grips with the implications of the changes taking place within the newly expanded frontiers.”² This refusal, or perhaps inability, to grasp such implications would be shared by nearly every Russian official who ever came into contact with Sakhalin. Busse’s diary also offers a rare glimpse of what Sakhalin was like before Russians arrived en masse. Because it appeared during the relaxed censorship following Nicholas I’s death and, moreover, because it did not conform to the formalities conditioning Nevel´skoi’s and others’ published memoirs, Busse’s diary offers an immediate account of early Russian military efforts to landscape the island.

Nevelˊskoi and Busse

At the time of the Busse Expedition, the so-called Amur Fleet was quite small and thus indicative of Russia’s limited presence in what later became known as the Russian Far East (RFE). As late as 1855, the fleet consisted of just the frigate Avrora; the transports Dvina, Irtysh, and Baikal; the corvette Olivutsa; and the schooner Kheddo (constructed in Japan by the Russians).³ Similarly indicative were the primitive conditions at Petrovskoe, where some 50 sailors and soldiers occupied half-a-dozen log cabins. Forty-year-old Admiral Nevelˊskoi was the region’s commanding officer and was, according to Busse, “a small man, with a friendly, wrinkled face covered with pockmarks, a large bald spot surrounded by disheveled gray hair, and rather small gray eyes that he screwed up, giving him an elderly, senile look.”⁴ Nevel´skoi’s wife was with him, and may have been the only female in camp. When Busse arrived, the brig Shelikhova was at Nevel´skoi’s disposal, but for some reason they instead boarded the transport Baikal (which would have a long and storied history with Sakhalin) to sail the 200 miles north to unite with the expeditionary force waiting at Aian. Headquarters of the Russian-American Company, which since 1845 had held charter over Sakhalin, Aian was a port-of-call for international whalers yet probably offered living conditions similar to Petrovskoe’s. After a journey that stretched to four days due to a lack of wind, Busse and Nevel´skoi reached Aian, where the latter promptly got into a heated argument with Aleksandr F. Koshevarov, the Russian-American Company representative, over which ship Busse could use for his expedition. Nevel´skoi won the argument; and on 3 September, he, Busse, and some 70 sailors and soldiers departed Aian aboard the Nikolai.⁵

Early in his diary, Busse describes Sakhalin’s importance as being essentially military, explaining that it formed part of a geographical line of defense running from Ezo (i.e., Hokkaido) along the North Pacific coast to Aian. If necessary, the island could aid in the defense of Nikolaevsk—then just a stockade guarding the mouth of the Amur, that mighty river that led into the heart of northern Asia and upon which N. N. Muravˊëv and others placed high hopes and dreams. Yet Nevel´skoi and other investors also valued Sakhalin for its probable coal deposits: besides being a navy admiral, he was a shareholder in the Russian-American Company.⁶ With regard to Sakhalin, this intertwining of official duty with vested interest would be a recurring motif in the decades that followed.

After a brief return to Petrovskoe for supplies, the Nikolai sailed south, skirting Sakhalin’s west coast. Here, Nevel´skoi sent ashore a handful of men under Second Lieutenant D. I. Orlov to establish a post near the Ilˊinsk River. (Less than a month later, lack of provisions would force these men to abandon their position and make their way to the post that Busse would establish.)⁷ On 17 September, the Nikolai rounded Cape Crillon, Sakhalin’s southernmost point, to enter Aniva Bay. The weather at sea had been clear, but the morning’s temperature now fell to 68° F, contributing to a mysterious fog that enshrouded the rocky shoreline. For two days, the Nikolai hugged the island’s southern coast. “The mountaintops of the coast could not be seen,” Busse writes, “and the tallest hills were not entirely conical. Growing on the grassy hills, a small forest made the Sakhalin coast more cheerfully inviting.”⁸

The expedition eventually reached a cove halfway along the Aniva shoreline called Salmon Bay, where a river still called the Susuia debouches. Deciding to visit a village they saw there, Nevel´skoi, Busse, and 12 sailors lowered two rowboats and a canoe into the water at 11 o’clock on the morning of 19 September. Busse claims this was a Japanese village, but it was actually the Ainu settlement of Kushunkotan, which the Japanese called Kosun-Kotan. Concerned the Japanese might have cannon or at very least prove unwelcoming, the sailors hid a cache of firearms underfoot. Should he see Nevelˊskoi’s party wave a flag from shore, the Nikolai’s captain was to dispatch to the shore Lieutenant Nikolai V. Rudanovskii and 20 armed sailors as reinforcements. Should the landing party instead fire two signal shots, he was to weigh anchor, close in to a depth of 3 fathoms, and level a broadside into the village.

Nevelˊskoi, Busse, and the sailors waded ashore under a military flag. “In a minute, we were surrounded on all sides” by both Ainu and Japanese, writes Busse.

The savages signaled they wished to receive us as friends. Several of them produced the word “America.” We began explaining that we were Russian, not American. Several signaled that Americans wanted to come to Sakhalin and that, therefore, we should settle with them and defend them from the Americans. We began trading things. Bronze and steel things—knives, scissors, buttons, etc.—somehow very much pleased them. They did not want our rough tobacco [makhorka]. Several Japanese approached us several times. Their faces contrasted sharply with those of the Ainu.⁹

Despite Busse calling them “savages,” the Ainu were quite familiar to the Russians. This unique people also occupied parts of the mainland Siberian coast and Kamchatka, and some knew enough Russian to communicate with naval captain Vasilii M. Golovnin when he visited Sakhalin earlier in the century.¹⁰ In many ways, the Russians were actually less familiar with the Japanese, especially those on Sakhalin.

Nevelˊskoi asked where their leader—“their ‘genji’ [sic], or starshin”—was, and the villagers pointed toward a larger village nearby on a small bay framed by high hills to north and south. This was Tomari, established by Hokkaido’s Matsumae clan during the late seventeenth century, and the Japanese’s largest settlement and administrative headquarters on Sakhalin. Nevel´skoi asked that the “genji” come to meet him on the beach, but the Japanese signaled they should all go to Tomari instead. The Russians feared a trap but followed nonetheless. After a short walk, they reached “the Japanese structures” constituting Tomari. A group of Ainu ushered them into a large “barn” where half-a-dozen notables awaited them.

They sat on their bended knees, on straw mats. In three of the walls there was a quadrangular hearth where burned a small fire. The starshii-genji [senior Japanese leader], extraordinarily fat, occupied the place of president. A sabre was thrust beneath his belt, another lay beside him. Six Japanese (his councilors) sat in groups of three on either side of him. Near the fourth wall, opposite the starshin, a mat had been placed for us. We reclined on it and began explaining our intention to live with the Japanese on Sakhalin. The entire barn filled with animation. Nearest us, on a higher level, sat fifteen motionless Japanese in no particular order. It was funny to watch as Nevel´skoi tried to explain to the Japanese that Russians wanted to live peaceably with them and the Ainu, to occupy Sakhalin to defend them against the Americans. When it became apparent that the genji and his comrades understood this matter, we pulled out gifts consisting of cloth, woolen dresses, scarves, metal items, and buttons.¹¹

The Russians also passed out bottles of rum, wine, and lemonade. Nevel´skoi, careful to use “Karafuto,” the Japanese name for Sakhalin, promised his hosts they would prevent the Americans from coming to the island.

The Russians spent the rest of the day exploring the local coastline in their small craft. Nevel´skoi felt so comfortable that only Busse’s anxious protestations dissuaded him from spending the night onshore. He also argued that continued contact with the Japanese might undermine the expedition and have grave consequences. Nevel´skoi disagreed: rather than return to the mainland aboard the Nikolai as originally intended, he decided to anchor off Tomari and reconnoiter the local coastline. Busse writes that tensions were already rising between the two men. He calls Nevel´skoi an “egotist” and Lieutenant Nikolai K. Boshniak, who had led the first expedition to Sakhalin and was now here siding with Nevel´skoi, a “daydreamer” and “baby.”¹²

On the morning of the 21st, they loaded two rowboats and a bark and set off for Tomari. Upon reaching shore, the sailors defiled in two lines and were met by a group of Ainu and Japanese. Nevel´skoi once more apprised the islanders of his peaceful attentions, then turned and ordered his men to sing the hymns “Our Father” and “God Save the Tsar.” Those aboard the Nikolai responded with choruses of “Hurrah!” In such way, writes Busse, “Sakhalin became a Russian possession. The assemblage of Ainu and Japanese stared at us in astonishment.”¹³

For all his surliness and self-regard, Busse seems to have genuinely empathized with Sakhalin’s indigenous population. He moreover reveals an appreciation for the absurd, writing that Nevel´skoi wanted to occupy Tomari but that he convinced him the Russians should instead establish themselves on the northern hill overlooking the bay. Cannon placed both there and on the southern hill, he argued, could easily bombard Tomari if needed. On the 22nd, with help from Japanese vessels, the Russians transported 4,000 poods of supplies to shore. Nevel´skoi seconded 59 sailors, eight hired men, and one rowboat to Busse. Then, much to Busse’s relief, he departed aboard the Nikolai, which was anyway scheduled to winter in the recently established mainland port of Emperor’s Harbor.¹⁴ Busse paid the Japanese 60 silver rubles for a small stand of sheds already on the northern hill, and immediately ordered gun emplacements and a barracks built with timber they bought from Ainu for 180 silver rubles. Thus was founded the first in a series of three successive military posts on Sakhalin that would be named after Governor-general N. N. Muravˊëv,¹⁵ though not until his diary entry for 10 February 1854 does Busse refer to it explicitly as “Murav´ëvsk Post.”

Establishing a military position atop a hill made tactical sense. But this first Muravˊëvsk Post also marked what Rebecca Weaver-Hightower, in her study of the morphology of castaway tales, calls the “monarch-of-all-I-survey moment.” Demotic stories like Gulliver’s Travels played an important role in generating the imperial imaginary, she explains, and in them the typical castaway/colonist strives from this moment onward to superimpose upon the given island his habitus—the term Weaver-Hightower borrows from Pierre Bourdieu to describe the conglomeration of language, body movements, dress, behaviors, etc. that serves to order one’s world.¹⁶ During his time on Sakhalin, Busse tried, from his hilltop, to superimpose at least part of his habitus onto the landscape below. Results were mixed.

Busse’s Command

Following delivery of additional supplies from the transport Irtysh, Busse’s men completed building their gun emplacements on 1 October. Busse sent the Irtysh back the next day, with letters for his family and a subordinate to report to Nevel´skoi. That subordinate was Orlov, whom Nevelˊskoi had left a month earlier with ten other men on the west coast. They got lost exploring southern Sakhalin and wandered into Muravˊëvsk Post the very morning the Irtysh was to leave. Busse, now the Russians’ senior commanding officer on the island, began leading and dispatching patrols to explore the Tomari region. He sent Rudanovskii and five sailors up the Susuia River for a week. In the annals of Sakhalinophilia, Rudanovskii cuts a far more heroic figure than does Busse. Born in 1819 in Viatka, he was the fifth of 14 children in an ennobled family. In 1851, he joined the Kamchatka Fleet and served aboard the Irtysh, among other vessels. Whereas Busse spent nearly the entire expedition ensconced in his new post on the hill, Rudanovskii did most of the exploring, and he would return to head his own expedition in 1856–57. One historian estimates that during the 250 total days he spent on the island, Rudanovskii covered over 700 kilometers by foot, dogsled, or sloop. Following publication of Busse’s diary, Nevel´skoi countered by crediting Rudanovskii with all of the expedition’s accomplishments.¹⁷

Busse makes fleeting reference to Rudanovskii. However, he describes in detail his own jou...