Sakhalin Oblast.

History

The island's first inhabitants were the Nivkh, Orok (Uilta) and Ainu. The Treaty of Shimoda in 1855 let both Russians and Japanese live on Sakhalin, and the Treaty of Saint Petersburg in 1875 gave the whole island to Russia in exchange for the Kurils. A penal colony operated from 1857, and in 1882 convicts founded the village of Vladimirovka, the future Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. Anton Chekhov visited in 1890 and described what he saw in his book Sakhalin Island. After the Russo-Japanese War the south was the Japanese prefecture of Karafuto until 1945, and the present oblast was formed on 2 January 1947.

Culture & traditions

Japanese heritage is best seen in the Sakhalin Regional Museum, one of the few surviving Japanese buildings, completed in 1937 in the Imperial Crown style. Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk also has a museum devoted to Chekhov's book Sakhalin Island. The Sakhalin Koreans, descendants of migrants of the 1930s and 1940s, are a distinctive part of local life: about 16,000 were counted in 2021, many of them in the regional capital. The Nivkh, some 2,000 people, live mainly in the north of the island.

Nature

Sakhalin stretches almost 950 km and is 25 to 170 km wide; the Strait of Tartary separates it from the mainland, and its highest point is Mount Lopatin (1,609 m). Spruce, fir and larch forests cover the island, home to brown bears, lynx, sable and otters, and salmon run up its rivers in large numbers. Whales, seals and belugas appear off the coast. The Kuril chain counts 56 islands over 1,150 km with about 100 volcanoes, some 40 of them active; the highest is Alaid (2,339 m). Sea otters, Steller sea lions and fur seals live here, and seabird colonies number in the millions.

Sport

On Mount Bolshevik above Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, the Gorny Vozdukh ski resort has slopes suitable for international competitions. The city also has the football club Sakhalin, the PSK Sakhalin hockey club and volleyball teams.

Food & drink

Sakhalin's table relies on the sea and rivers: salmon crowd the island's rivers, and the kelp beds around the Kurils shelter fish and shellfish. Fishing still feeds the islands; on Iturup, for example, it employs most of the residents.

Practical information

Visitors fly into Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk Airport, and the Vanino–Kholmsk train ferry links the island with the mainland; by 2019 Sakhalin's railways had been converted from Japanese to Russian gauge. Local time is Moscow plus 8 hours (UTC+11). The climate is cold and humid, continental in the south and subarctic in the centre and north, with foggy summers and the heaviest rain in autumn. Summer and early autumn suit sightseeing, and winter is the season for skiing.

What to see

• Sakhalin Regional Museum — a Japanese building from 1937
• Chekhov's Sakhalin Island museum — the writer's journey to the penal island
• Gorny Vozdukh — a ski resort right above Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk
• Kuril Islands — a chain of volcanoes, sea otter colonies and seabird cliffs
• Mount Lopatin — Sakhalin's highest summit amid conifer forest

Cities on the map

• Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk 181,587