History of the Kuril Islands. Kuril Islands in the history of Russian-Japanese relations. Don't touch the Kuril Islands - they're ours. History of the Kuril Islands How many islands are there in the Kuril Islands

Everyone knows about Japan's claims to the Southern Kuril Islands, but not everyone knows in detail the history of the Kuril Islands and their role in Russian-Japanese relations. This is what this article will focus on.

Everyone knows about Japan's claims to the Southern Kuril Islands, but not everyone knows in detail the history of the Kuril Islands and their role in Russian-Japanese relations. This is what this article will focus on.

Before moving on to the history of the issue, it is worth telling why the Southern Kuril Islands are so important for Russia *.
1. Strategic location. It is in the ice-free deep-sea straits between the South Kuril islands that submarines can enter the Pacific Ocean underwater at any time of the year.
2. Iturup has the world's largest deposit of the rare metal rhenium, which is used in superalloys for space and aviation technology. World production of rhenium in 2006 amounted to 40 tons, while the Kudryavy volcano releases 20 tons of rhenium every year. This is the only place in the world where rhenium is found in pure form and not in the form of impurities. 1 kg of rhenium, depending on purity, costs from 1000 to 10 thousand dollars. There is no other rhenium deposit in Russia (in Soviet times, rhenium was mined in Kazakhstan).
3. Reserves of other mineral resources of the Southern Kuril Islands are: hydrocarbons - about 2 billion tons, gold and silver - 2 thousand tons, titanium - 40 million tons, iron - 270 million tons
4. The Southern Kuril Islands are one of 10 places in the world where, due to water turbulence due to the meeting of warm and cold sea currents, food for fish rises from the seabed. This attracts huge schools of fish. The value of seafood produced here exceeds $4 billion a year.

Let us briefly note the key dates of the 17th-18th centuries in Russian history associated with the Kuril Islands.

1654 or, according to other sources, 1667-1668- the voyage of a detachment led by Cossack Mikhail Stadukhin near the northern Kuril Island of Alaid. In general, the first Europeans to visit the Kuril Islands were the expedition of the Dutchman Martin Moritz de Vries in 1643, which mapped Iturup and Urup, but these islands were not assigned to Holland. Frieze became so confused during his journey that he mistook Urup for the tip of the North American continent. The strait between Urup and Iturup 1 now bears the name of de Vries.

1697 Siberian Cossack Vladimir Atlasov led an expedition to Kamchatka to conquer local tribes and impose taxes on them. The descriptions of the Kuril Islands he heard from the Kamchadals formed the basis of the earliest Russian map of the Kuril Islands, compiled by Semyon Remezov in 1700. 2

1710 The Yakut administration, guided by the instructions of Peter I “on inspecting the Japanese state and conducting trades with it,” orders the Kamchatka clerks, “to conduct the courts, which are decent, for the overflow of land and people to the sea by all sorts of measures, how to inspect; and if people appear on that land, and those people of the great sovereign under the tsar’s highly autocratic hand will again, as soon as possible, by all means, depending on the local situation, be brought and tribute collected from them with great zeal, and a special plan be made for that land.” 3

1711- A detachment led by ataman Danila Antsiferov and captain Ivan Kozyrevsky will explore the northern Kuril Islands - Shumshu and Kunashir 4. The Ainu who lived on Shumshu tried to resist the Cossacks, but were defeated.

1713 Ivan Kozyrevsky leads the second expedition to the Kuril Islands. At Paramushir, the Ainu gave the Cossacks three battles, but were defeated. For the first time in the history of the Kuril Islands, their residents paid tribute and recognized the power of Russia 5 . After this campaign, Kozyrevsky produced a “Drawing map of the Kamchadal nose and sea islands.” This map for the first time depicts the Kuril Islands from the Kamchatka Cape Lopatka to the Japanese island of Hokkaido. It also includes a description of the islands and the Ainu - the people who inhabited the Kuril Islands. Moreover, in the descriptions attached to the final “drawing”, Kozyrevsky also provided a number of information about Japan. In addition, he found out that the Japanese were forbidden to sail north of the island of Hokkaido. And that “Iturupians and Urupians live autocratically and are not subject to citizenship.” The inhabitants of another large island of the Kuril ridge - Kunashir 6 - were also independent.

1727 Catherine I approves the "Opinion of the Senate" on the Eastern Islands. It pointed out the need to “take possession of the islands lying near Kamchatka, since those lands belong to Russian ownership and are not subject to anyone. The Eastern Sea is warm, not ice-cold... and may in the future lead to commerce with Japan or Chinese Korea "7.

1738-1739- The Kamchatka expedition of Martyn Shpanberg took place, during which the entire ridge of the Kuril Islands was traversed. For the first time in Russian history, contact took place with the Japanese on their territory - at an anchorage near the island of Honshu, sailors purchased food from local residents 8. After this expedition, a map of the Kuril Islands was published, which in 1745 became part of the Atlas of the Russian Empire 9, which was published in Russian, French and Dutch. In the 18th century, when not all territories on the globe had yet been surveyed by European countries, the prevailing “international law” (which, however, concerned only European countries) gave a preferential right to own “new lands” if the country had priority in the publication maps of the relevant territories 10.

1761 The Senate decree of August 24 allows free fishing of sea animals in the Kuril Islands with the return of 10th of the catch to the treasury (PSZ-XV, 11315). During the second half of the 18th century, the Russians developed the Kuril Islands and created settlements on them. They existed on the islands of Shumshu, Paramushir, Simushir, Urup, Iturup, Kunashir 11. Yasak is regularly collected from local residents.

1786 December 22 On December 22, 1786, the Collegium of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Empire was supposed to officially declare that the lands discovered in the Pacific Ocean belonged to the Russian crown. The reason for the decree was “attacks by English commercial industrialists on the production of trade and animal trade in the Eastern Sea” 12. In pursuance of the decree, a note was drawn up in the highest name about “announcing through Russian ministers at the courts of all European maritime powers that these lands discovered by Russia cannot otherwise be recognized as belonging to your empire.” Among the territories included in the Russian Empire was the “ridge of the Kuril Islands touching Japan, discovered by Captain Shpanberg and Walton” 13 .

In 1836, jurist and historian of international law Henry Wheaton published the classic work “Fundamentals of International Law,” which also addressed issues of ownership of new lands. Viton identified the following conditions for the acquisition by the state of the right to a new territory 14:

1. Discovery
2. First development-first occupation
3. Long-term continuous possession of the territory

As we see, by 1786, Russia had fulfilled all these three conditions in relation to the Kuril Islands. Russia was the first to publish a map of the territory, including in foreign languages, it was the first to establish its own settlements there and began to collect yasak from local residents, and its possession of the Kuril Islands was not interrupted.

Only Russian actions regarding the Kuril Islands in the 17-18th century were described above. Let's see what Japan has done in this direction.
Today, the northernmost island of Japan is Hokkaido. However, it was not always Japanese. The first Japanese colonists appeared on the southern coast of Hokkaido in the 16th century, but their settlement received administrative registration only in 1604, when the administration of the Principality of Matsumae (in Russia then called Matmai) was established here. The main population of Hokkaido at that time was the Ainu, the island was considered a non-Japanese territory, and the Matsumae domain (which did not occupy all of Hokkaido, but only its southern part) was considered “independent” of the central government. The principality was very small in size - by 1788 its population was only 26.5 thousand people 15. Hokkaido became fully part of Japan only in 1869.
If Russia had more actively developed the Kuril Islands, then Russian settlements could have appeared in Hokkaido itself - it is known from documents that at least in 1778-1779 the Russians collected yasak from the inhabitants of the northern coast of Hokkaido 16 .

To assert their priority in the discovery of the Kuril Islands, Japanese historians point to the “Map of the Shoho Period” dated 1644, which shows the group of Habomai islands, the islands of Shikotan, Kunashir and Iturup. However, it is unlikely that this map was compiled by the Japanese as a result of the expedition to Iturup. Indeed, by that time, the successors of the Tokugawa shogun continued his course of isolating the country, and in 1636 a law was passed according to which the Japanese were forbidden to leave the country, as well as to build ships suitable for long voyages. As Japanese scholar Anatoly Koshkin writes, the “Map of the Shoho period” “is not so much a map in the true sense of the word, but rather a plan-scheme similar to a drawing, most likely made by one of the Japanese without personal acquaintance with the islands, according to the stories of the Ainu” 17 .

At the same time, the first attempts of the Matsumae principality to establish a Japanese trading post on the island of Kunashir, closest to Hokkaido, date back only to 1754, and in 1786, an official of the Japanese government, Tokunai Mogami, examined Iturup and Urup. Anatoly Koshkin notes that “neither the Principality of Matsumae nor the central Japanese government, having no official relations with any of the states, could legally put forward claims to “exercise sovereignty” over these territories. In addition, as evidenced by documents and confessions of Japanese scientists, the bakufu government (the shogun's headquarters) considered the Kuril Islands a "foreign land." Therefore, the above actions of Japanese officials in the southern Kuril Islands can be considered as arbitrariness, carried out in the interests of seizing new possessions. Russia, in the absence of official claims to the Kuril Islands from other states, according to the laws of that time and according to generally accepted practice, included the newly discovered lands into its state, notifying the rest of the world about this.” 18

The colonization of the Kuril Islands was complicated by two factors - the complexity of supplies and the general shortage of people in the Russian Far East. By 1786, the southernmost outpost of the Russians became a small village on the southwestern coast of the island. Iturup, where three Russians and several Ainu settled, having moved from Urup 19. The Japanese could not help but take advantage of this, and began to show increased interest in the Kuril Islands. In 1798, on the southern tip of Iturup Island, the Japanese overturned Russian signposts and erected pillars with the inscription: “Etorofu - the possession of Great Japan.” In 1801, the Japanese landed on Urup and arbitrarily erected a signpost on which they carved an inscription of nine hieroglyphs: “The island has belonged to Great Japan since ancient times.” 20
In January 1799, small Japanese military units were deployed in fortified camps at two points on Iturup: in the area of ​​​​the modern Good Beginning Bay (Naibo) and in the area of ​​​​the modern city of Kurilsk (Syana) 21. The Russian colony on Urup languished, and in May 1806, Japanese envoys did not find any Russians on the island - there were only a few Ainu there 22 .

Russia was interested in establishing trade with Japan, and on October 8, 1804, on the ship “Nadezhda” (participating in I.F. Krusenstern’s round-the-world expedition), the Russian ambassador, actual state councilor Nikolai Rezanov arrived in Nagasaki. The Japanese government was playing for time, and Rezanov managed to meet with the secret surveillance inspector K. Toyama only six months later - on March 23, 1805. In an insulting manner, the Japanese refused to trade with Russia. Most likely, this was caused by the fact that the Western Europeans who were in Japan were setting the Japanese government anti-Russian. For his part, Rezanov made a sharp statement: “I, the undersigned of the Most Serene Sovereign Emperor Alexander 1st, actual chamberlain and cavalier Nikolai Rezanov, declare to the Japanese government: ... So that the Japanese Empire does not extend its possessions beyond the northern tip of the island of Matmaya, since all lands and waters to the north belongs to my sovereign" 23

As for the anti-Russian sentiments that were fueled by Western Europeans, the story of Count Moritz-August Beniovsky, who was exiled to Kamchatka for participating in hostilities on the side of the Polish confederates, is very indicative. There, in May 1771, together with the Confederates, he captured the galliot St. Peter and sailed to Japan. There he gave the Dutch several letters, which they in turn translated into Japanese and delivered to the Japanese authorities. One of them later became widely known as the “Beniovsky warning.” Here it is:

“Honorable and noble gentlemen, officers of the glorious Republic of the Netherlands!
The cruel fate that had carried me across the seas for a long time brought me a second time to Japanese waters. I went ashore in the hope that I might perhaps be able to meet your Excellencies here and receive your help. I am truly very upset that I did not have the opportunity to talk with you personally, because I have important information that I wanted to tell you. The high regard I have for your glorious state prompts me to inform you that this year two Russian galliots and one frigate, in fulfillment of secret orders, sailed around the coast of Japan and recorded their observations on the map in preparation for the attack on Matsuma and the adjacent islands, located in latitude 41°38′ north, an attack planned for the following year. For this purpose, on one of the Kuril Islands, located closest to Kamchatka, a fortress was built and shells, artillery and food warehouses were prepared.
If I could talk to you in person, I would tell you more than what can be entrusted to paper. Let your Excellencies take such precautions as you deem necessary, but, as your fellow believer and zealous well-wisher of your glorious state, I would advise, if possible, to have a cruiser ready.
With this I will allow myself to introduce myself and remain, as follows, your humble servant.
Baron Aladar von Bengoro, army commander in captivity.
July 20, 1771, on the island of Usma.
P.S. I left a map of Kamchatka on the shore that may be of use to you.”

There is not a word of truth in this document. “It is puzzling what Beniovsky’s goal was in telling the Dutch such false information,” noted American researcher Donald Keene. - There can be no doubt about their unreliability. Far from any aggressive plans towards Japan, the Russians strained every effort to preserve their Pacific possessions... Beniovsky undoubtedly knew the real state of affairs, but love of truth was never one of his virtues. Perhaps he hoped to curry favor with the Dutch by exposing to them the fictitious Russian conspiracy." 24

However, let's return to Nikolai Rezanov. After unsuccessful negotiations in Japan, Rezanov went on an inspection to the Russian colonies on the northwestern coast of America and the Aleutian Islands.
From the Aleutian island of Unalaska, where one of the offices of the Russian-American Company was located, on July 18, 1805, he wrote letter 25 to Alexander I:

By strengthening American institutions and building courts, we can force the Japanese to open trade, which the people very much want from them. I don’t think that Your Majesty will charge me with a crime, when now having worthy employees, such as Khvostov and Davydov, and with whose help, having built ships, I set off next year to the Japanese shores to destroy their village on Matsmai, drive them out of Sakhalin and smash them along the shores fear, so that, meanwhile, taking away the fisheries and depriving 200,000 people of food, the sooner force them to open a trade with us, to which they will be obliged. Meanwhile, I heard that they had already dared to establish a trading post on Urup. Your will, Most Gracious Sovereign, is with me, punish me as a criminal for not waiting for the command, I get down to business; but my conscience will reproach me even more if I waste time in vain and do not sacrifice Your glory, and especially when I see that I can contribute to the fulfillment of Your Imperial Majesty’s great intentions.

So, Rezanov, in the interests of the state, under his own responsibility, made an important decision - to organize a military operation against Japan. He assigned its leadership to Lieutenant Nikolai Khvostov and Midshipman Gavriil Davydov, who were in the service of the Russian-American Company. For this purpose, the frigate “Juno” and the tender “Avos” were transferred under their command. The officers' task was to sail to Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands and find out whether the Japanese, having penetrated these islands, were really oppressing the Kuriles brought into Russian citizenship. If this information was confirmed, the officers were to “drive away” the Japanese. That is, it was about protecting the territories belonging to the Russian Empire from the illegal actions of the Japanese.

In Southern Sakhalin, which Khvostov and Davydov visited twice, they liquidated a Japanese settlement, burned two small ships and captured several merchants from Matsumae. In addition, Khvostov issued a letter to the local Ainu elder, accepting the inhabitants of Sakhalin as Russian citizenship and under the protection of the Russian emperor. At the same time, Khvostov hoisted two Russian flags (RAK and state) on the shore of the bay and landed several sailors who founded a settlement that existed until 1847. In 1807, a Russian expedition liquidated the Japanese military settlement on Iturup. The Japanese captured were also released there, with the exception of two who were left as translators 26 .
Through the released prisoners, Khvostov conveyed his demands to the Japanese authorities 27:

“Russia’s neighborhood with Japan made us desire friendly ties for the true well-being of this latter empire, for which purpose an embassy was sent to Nagasaki; but the refusal to do so, which was insulting to Russia, and the spread of Japanese trade across the Kuril Islands and Sakhalin, as possessions of the Russian Empire, finally forced this power to take other measures, which will show that the Russians can always harm Japanese trade until they are notified through the inhabitants of Urup or Sakhalin about the desire to trade with us. The Russians, having now caused such little harm to the Japanese empire, wanted to show them only by the fact that the northern countries of it could always be harmed by them, and that further stubbornness of the Japanese government could completely deprive it of these lands.”

It is characteristic that the Dutch, having translated Khvostov's ultimatum to the Japanese, added on their own that the Russians were threatening to conquer Japan and send priests to convert the Japanese to Christianity 28 .

Rezanov, who gave the order to Khvostov and Davydov, died in 1807, so he could not protect them from punishment for military actions that were not coordinated with the central government. In 1808, the Admiralty Board found Khvostov and Davydov guilty of unauthorized violation of government instructions on the purely peaceful development of relations with Japan and atrocities against the Japanese. As punishment, awards to officers for their bravery and courage shown in the war with Sweden were revoked. It is worth noting that the punishment is very mild. Perhaps this was due to the fact that the Russian government understood the correctness of the actions of the officers who actually expelled the invaders from Russian territory, but could not help but punish them due to violation of instructions.
In 1811, captain Vasily Golovnin, who landed on Kunashir to replenish water and food supplies, was captured by the Japanese along with a group of sailors. Golovnin was on a circumnavigation of the world, which he set off on in 1807 from Kronstadt, and the purpose of the expedition, as he wrote in his memoirs, was “the discovery and inventory of little-known lands of the eastern edge of the Russian Empire.” 29 He was accused by the Japanese of violating the principles of self-isolation of the country and together with his comrades spent more than two years in captivity.
The shogun's government also intended to use the incident with the capture of Golovnin to force the Russian authorities to make an official apology for the raids of Khvostov and Davydov on Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. Instead of an apology, the Irkutsk governor sent an explanation to the shogun's governor on Ezo Island that these officers had taken their actions without the consent of the Russian government. This turned out to be enough to free Golovnin and other prisoners.
The monopoly right to develop the Kuril Islands belonged to the Russian-American Company (RAC), created in 1799. Its main efforts were aimed at the colonization of Alaska, as a region much richer than the Kuril Islands. As a result, by the 1820s, the actual border on the Kuril Islands was established along the southern tip of the island of Urup, on which there was a settlement of RAK 30.
This fact is confirmed by the decree of Alexander I of September 1, 1821 “On the limits of navigation and the order of coastal relations along the coasts of Eastern Siberia, North-West America and the Aleutian, Kuril and other islands.” The first two paragraphs of this decree say (PSZ-XXVII, N28747):

1. Carrying out trade in whaling and fishing and all kinds of industry on the islands, in ports and bays and in general along the entire North-West Coast of America, starting from the Bering Strait to 51" North latitude, also along the Aleutian Islands and along the Eastern coast of Siberia; since along the Kuril Islands, that is, starting from the same Bering Strait to the Southern Cape of the island of Urupa, and precisely up to 45" 50" North latitude is granted for the use of the only Russian subjects.

2. Therefore, it is forbidden for any Foreign vessel not only to land on the shores and islands subject to Russia, indicated in the previous article; but also to approach them at a distance of less than a hundred Italian miles. Anyone who violates this prohibition will be subject to confiscation of all cargo.

However, as noted by A.Yu. Plotnikov, Russia could still lay claim to, at a minimum, the island of Iturup, because Japanese settlements were only in the southern and central parts of the island, and the northern part remained uninhabited 31.

Russia made the next attempt to establish trade with Japan in 1853. On July 25, 1853, Russian ambassador Evfimy Putyatin arrived in the Land of the Rising Sun. As in the case with Rezanov, negotiations began only six months later - on January 3, 1854 (the Japanese wanted to get rid of Putyatin by starving him out). The issue of trade with Japan was important for Russia, because The population of the Russian Far East was growing, and it was much cheaper to supply it from Japan than from Siberia. Naturally, during the negotiations Putyatin also had to resolve the issue of territorial demarcation. On February 24, 1853, he received “Additional instructions” from the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Here is an excerpt from it 32:

On this subject of boundaries, our desire is to be as lenient as possible (without sacrificing our interests), bearing in mind that the achievement of another goal - the benefits of trade - is of essential importance to us.

Of the Kuril Islands, the southernmost, which belongs to Russia, is the island of Urup, which we could limit ourselves to, designating it as the last point of Russian possessions to the south - so that on our side the southern tip of this island would be (as it is now in essence) the border with Japan, and so that on the Japanese side the northern tip of Iturupa Island is considered the border.

When starting negotiations to clarify the border possessions of ours and Japan, the issue of Sakhalin Island seems important.

This island is of particular importance to us because it lies opposite the very mouth of the Amur. The power that will own this island will own the key to the Amur. The Japanese Government, without a doubt, will firmly stand for its rights, if not to the entire island, which will be difficult for it to support with sufficient arguments, then at least to the southern part of the island: in Aniva Bay the Japanese have fishing grounds that provide food for many the inhabitants of their other islands, and for this circumstance alone they cannot help but value the said point.

If their Government, during negotiations with you, shows compliance with our other demands - demands regarding trade - then it will be possible to provide you with concessions on the subject of the southern tip of the island of Sakhalin, but this compliance should be limited to this, i.e. In no case can we recognize their rights to other parts of Sakhalin Island.

When explaining all this, it will be useful for you to point out to the Japanese Government that given the situation in which this island is located, given the impossibility of the Japanese to maintain their rights to it - rights that are not recognized by anyone - the said island can become in a very short time the prey of some strong maritime power, whose neighborhood is unlikely to be as beneficial and safe for the Japanese as the neighborhood of Russia, whose selflessness they have experienced for centuries.

In general, it is desirable that you arrange this issue of Sakhalin in accordance with the existing benefits of Russia. If you encounter insurmountable obstacles on the part of the Japanese Government to the recognition of our rights to Sakhalin, then it is better in this case to leave the matter in its current position ( those. undelimited - statehistory).

In general, while giving you these additional instructions, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs does not at all prescribe them for indispensable execution, knowing full well that at such a far distance nothing unconditional and indispensable can be prescribed.

Your Excellency therefore remains with complete freedom of action.

So, we see that this document recognizes that the actual border between Russia and Japan runs along the southern tip of Urup. Putyatin’s main task becomes, at a minimum, to reject Japan’s claims to all of Sakhalin, and, at a maximum, to force the Japanese to recognize it as completely Russian, because This island is of strategic importance.
Putyatin, however, decided to go further and in his message to the Supreme Council of Japan dated November 18, 1853, he proposed drawing a border between Iturup and Kunashir. As A. Koshkin notes, the Japanese government, at that moment experiencing pressure from the United States and Western European countries that wanted to open Japan to trade, was afraid that Russia might join them, and therefore did not exclude the possibility of demarcation, according to which all the islands, including the most southern - Kunashir, were recognized as Russian. In 1854, Japan compiled a “Map of the Most Important Maritime Borders of Great Japan,” on which its northern border was drawn along the northern coast of Hokkaido. Those. under favorable circumstances, Putyatin could return Iturup and Kunashir to Russia 33.

However, the negotiations reached a dead end, and in January 1854 Putyatin decided to interrupt them and return to Russia to find out about the progress of the Crimean War. This was important because... The Anglo-French squadron also operated off the Pacific coast of Russia.
On March 31, 1854, Japan signed a trade treaty with the United States. Putyatin again went to Japan to achieve for Russia the establishment of relations with Japan at a level no lower than with the United States.
Negotiations again dragged on, and on December 11, 1854 they were complicated by the fact that as a result of the tsunami, the frigate “Diana”, on which Putyatin arrived (during his second arrival in Japan, he specially sailed on only one ship, so that the Japanese would not get the impression that Russia wants to demonstrate strength), crashed, the team found itself ashore and the Russian ambassador found himself completely dependent on the Japanese. The negotiations took place in the city of Shimoda.

As a result of the intransigence of the Japanese on the issue of Sakhalin, Putyatin made the maximum compromise in order to sign an agreement with Japan. On February 7, 1855, the Shimoda Treaty was signed, according to which Sakhalin was recognized as undivided, and Russia recognized Japan's rights to Habomai, Shikotan, Kunashir and Iturup. Thus, the situation with the Southern Kuril Islands, which had existed de facto for many years, was officially recognized. However, because legally, these 4 islands were part of the Russian Empire, which was officially announced back in 1786; many historians now reproach the Russian ambassador for the fact that the Southern Kuril Islands were given to Japan without any compensation and that he should have defended at least to the end the largest of them is the island of Iturup 34. According to the agreement, three Japanese ports were opened for trade with Russia - Nagasaki, Shimoda and Hakodate. In strict accordance with the Japanese-American treaty, the Russians in these ports received the right of extraterritoriality, i.e. they could not be tried in Japan.
To justify Putyatin, it is worth noting that the negotiations were conducted at a time when there was no telegraph connection between Japan and St. Petersburg, and he could not promptly consult with the government. And the journey, either by sea or by land from Japan to St. Petersburg in one direction only, took a little less than a year. In such conditions, Putyatin had to take full responsibility upon himself. From the moment of his arrival in Japan until the signing of the Shimoda Treaty, negotiations lasted 1.5 years, so it is clear that Putyatin really did not want to leave with nothing. And since the instructions he received gave him the opportunity to make concessions on the Southern Kuril Islands, he made them, having first tried to bargain for Iturup.

The problem of using Sakhalin, caused by the absence of a Russian-Japanese border on it, required a solution. On March 18, 1867, the “Temporary Agreement on Sakhalin Island” was signed, drawn up on the basis of the “Proposals for a temporary agreement on cohabitation” of the Russian side. According to this agreement, both parties could move freely throughout the island and erect buildings on it. This was a step forward, because... Previously, although the island was considered undivided, the Russians did not use the southern part of Sakhalin, which the Japanese considered theirs. After this agreement, by order of the Governor-General of Eastern Siberia M. Korsakov, the Muravyovsky military post was founded in the vicinity of Busse Bay, which turned into the center of the Russian development of Southern Sakhalin. This was the southernmost post on Sakhalin, and it was located significantly south of the Japanese posts 35.
The Japanese at that time did not have the opportunity to actively develop Sakhalin, so this agreement was more beneficial for Russia than for Japan.

Russia sought to solve the problem of Sakhalin completely and completely obtain it into its own possession. For this, the tsarist government was ready to cede part of the Kuril Islands.

The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs authorized the military governor A.E. Krone and E.K. Byutsov, appointed Russian charge d'affaires in China, to continue negotiations on Sakhalin. Instructions were prepared for them. Byutsov was instructed to convince the Japanese Foreign Ministry to send its representatives to Nikolaevsk or Vladivostok to finally resolve the issue of Sakhalin on the basis of establishing a border along the La Perouse Strait, exchanging Sakhalin for Urup with adjacent islands and preserving Japanese fishing rights.
Negotiations began in July 1872. The Japanese government stated that the concession of Sakhalin would be perceived by the Japanese people and foreign countries as the weakness of Japan and Urup with the adjacent islands would be insufficient compensation 35 .
Negotiations that began in Japan were difficult and intermittent. They resumed in the summer of 1874 already in St. Petersburg, when one of the most educated people of then Japan, Enomoto Takeaki, arrived in the Russian capital with the rank of Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary.

On March 4, 1875, Enomoto first spoke about abandoning Sakhalin for compensation in the form of all the Kuril Islands - from Japan to Kamchatka 36. At this time, the situation in the Balkans was deteriorating, the war with Turkey (which, as during the Crimean War, could again be supported by England and France) was becoming more and more real, and Russia was interested in solving Far Eastern problems as soon as possible, incl. Sakhalin

Unfortunately, the Russian government did not show sufficient persistence and did not appreciate the strategic importance of the Kuril Islands, which closed the exit to the Pacific Ocean from the Sea of ​​​​Okhotsk, and agreed to the demands of the Japanese. On April 25 (May 7), 1875, in St. Petersburg, Alexander Mikhailovich Gorchakov from Russia and Enomoto Takeaki from Japan signed an agreement under which Japan renounced its rights to Sakhalin in exchange for Russia’s cession of all the Kuril Islands. Also, under this agreement, Russia allowed Japanese ships to visit the port of Korsakov on South Sakhalin, where the Japanese consulate was established, without paying trade and customs duties for 10 years. Japanese ships, merchants and fishing merchants were given most favored nation treatment in the ports and waters of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk and Kamchatka 36 .

This agreement is often called an exchange agreement, but in fact we are not talking about an exchange of territories, because Japan did not have a strong presence on Sakhalin and no real ability to hold it - giving up rights to Sakhalin became a mere formality. In fact, we can say that the treaty of 1875 recorded the surrender of the Kuril Islands without any real compensation.

The next point in the history of the Kuril issue is the Russian-Japanese War. Russia lost this war and, according to the Portsmouth Peace Treaty of 1905, ceded to Japan the southern part of Sakhalin along the 50th parallel.

This agreement has the important legal significance that it actually terminated the agreement of 1875. After all, the meaning of the “exchange” agreement was that Japan renounced its rights to Sakhalin in exchange for the Kuril Islands. At the same time, on the initiative of the Japanese side, a condition was included in the protocols of the Portsmouth Treaty that all previous Russian-Japanese agreements would be annulled. Thus, Japan deprived itself of the legal right to own the Kuril Islands.

The 1875 treaty, which is regularly referred to by the Japanese side in disputes about the ownership of the Kuril Islands, after 1905 became simply a historical monument, and not a document with legal force. It would not be amiss to recall that by attacking Russia, Japan also violated paragraph 1 of the Shimoda Treaty of 1855 - “From now on, let there be permanent peace and sincere friendship between Russia and Japan.”

The next key point is World War II. On April 13, 1941, the USSR signed a neutrality pact with Japan. It was concluded for 5 years from the date of ratification: from April 25, 1941 to April 25, 1946. According to this pact, it could be denounced a year before expiration.
The United States was interested in the USSR entering the war with Japan in order to speed up its defeat. Stalin, as a condition, put forward the demand that after the victory over Japan, the Kuril Islands and Southern Sakhalin would pass to the Soviet Union. Not everyone in the American leadership agreed with these demands, but Roosevelt agreed. The reason, apparently, was his sincere concern that after the end of World War II, the USSR and the USA would maintain good relations achieved during military cooperation.
The transfer of the Kuril Islands and Southern Sakhalin was recorded in the Yalta Agreement of the three great powers on issues of the Far East on February 11, 1945. 37 It is worth noting that paragraph 3 of the agreement reads as follows:

The leaders of the three great powers - the Soviet Union, the United States of America and Great Britain - agreed that two to three months after the surrender of Germany and the end of the war in Europe, the Soviet Union would enter the war against Japan on the side of the Allies, subject to:
…
3. Transfer of the Kuril Islands to the Soviet Union.

Those. We are talking about the transfer of all the Kuril Islands without exception, incl. Kunashir and Iturup, which were ceded to Japan under the Treaty of Shimoda in 1855.

On April 5, 1945, the USSR denounced the Soviet-Japanese neutrality pact, and on August 8 declared war on Japan.

On September 2, the act of surrender of Japan was signed. Southern Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands were transferred to the USSR. However, after the act of surrender, a peace treaty had yet to be concluded in which new borders would be fixed.
Franklin Roosevelt, who was friendly towards the USSR, died on April 12, 1945, and was succeeded by the anti-Soviet Truman. On October 26, 1950, American ideas on concluding a peace treaty with Japan were conveyed to the Soviet representative at the UN as a means of familiarization. In addition to such unpleasant details for the USSR as the retention of American troops on Japanese territory for an indefinite period, they revised the Yalta agreement, according to which Southern Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands were transferred to the USSR 38 .
In fact, the United States decided to remove the USSR from the process of agreeing on a peace treaty with Japan. In September 1951, a conference was to be held in San Francisco, at which a peace treaty between Japan and the allies was to be signed, but the United States did everything to make the USSR find it impossible for itself to participate in the conference (in particular, they did not receive an invitation to the conference China, North Korea, Mongolia and Vietnam, which the USSR insisted on and what was fundamental for it) - then a separate peace treaty would have been concluded with Japan in its American formulation without taking into account the interests of the Soviet Union.

However, these American calculations did not come true. The USSR decided to use the San Francisco conference to expose the separate nature of the treaty.
Among the amendments to the draft peace treaty proposed by the Soviet delegation were the following 39:

Paragraph “c” should be stated as follows:
“Japan recognizes the full sovereignty of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics over the southern part of Sakhalin Island with all the adjacent islands and the Kuril Islands and renounces all rights, title and claims to these territories.”
According to Article 3.
Revise the article as follows:
“The sovereignty of Japan will extend to the territory consisting of the islands of Honshu, Kyushu, Shikoku, Hokkaido, as well as Ryukyu, Bonin, Rosario, Volcano, Pares Vela, Marcus, Tsushima and other islands that were part of Japan before December 7, 1941, with the exception of those territories and islands specified in Art. 2".

These amendments were rejected, but the United States could not ignore the Yalta agreements at all. The text of the treaty included a provision that “Japan renounces all rights, title and claims to the Kuril Islands and to that part of Sakhalin Island and the adjacent islands over which Japan acquired sovereignty under the Treaty of Portsmouth of September 5, 1905.” 40. From a layman's point of view, it may seem that this is the same as the Soviet amendments. From a legal point of view, the situation is different - Japan renounces its claims to the Kuril Islands and South Sakhalin, but at the same time does not recognize the sovereignty of the USSR over these territories. With this wording, the agreement was signed on September 8, 1951 between the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition and Japan. Representatives of the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Poland who participated in the conference refused to sign it.

Modern Japanese historians and politicians differ in their assessments of Japan's renunciation of South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands contained in the text of the peace treaty. Some demand the abolition of this clause of the agreement and the return of all the Kuril Islands up to Kamchatka. Others are trying to prove that the South Kuril Islands (Kunashir, Iturup, Habomai and Shikotan) are not included in the concept of the “Kuril Islands”, which Japan abandoned in the San Francisco Treaty. The latter circumstance is refuted both by established cartographic practice, when the entire group of islands - from Kunashir to Shumshu on maps is called the Kuril Islands, and by the texts of Russian-Japanese negotiations on this issue. Here, for example, is an excerpt from Putyatin’s negotiations with Japanese commissioners in January 1854. 41

« Putyatin: The Kuril Islands have belonged to us since ancient times and Russian leaders are now on them. The Russian-American company annually sends ships to Urup to buy furs, etc., and on Iturup the Russians had their settlement even before, but since it is now occupied by the Japanese, we have to talk about this.

Japanese side: We thought all Kuril Islands have long belonged to Japan, but since most of of them passed one after another to you, then there is nothing to say about these islands. Iturup but it was always considered ours and we considered it a settled matter, as well as the island of Sakhalin or Crafto, although we do not know how far the latter extends to the north...”

From this dialogue it is clear that in 1854 the Japanese did not divide the Kuril Islands into “Northern” and “Southern” - and recognized Russia’s right to most of the islands of the archipelago, with the exception of some of them, in particular, Iturup. Fun fact - the Japanese claimed that all of Sakhalin belonged to them, but did not have a geographical map of it. By the way, using a similar argument, Russia could lay claim to Hokkaido on the grounds that in 1811 V.M. Golovnin in his “Notes on the Kuril Islands” ranked Fr. Matsmai, i.e. Hokkaido, to the Kuril Islands. Moreover, as noted above, at least in 1778-1779, the Russians collected yasak from the residents of the northern coast of Hokkaido.

Unsettled relations with Japan prevented the establishment of trade, resolving issues in the field of fisheries, and also contributed to the involvement of this country in the anti-Soviet policy of the United States. At the beginning of 1955, the USSR representative in Japan approached Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu with a proposal to begin negotiations on the normalization of Soviet-Japanese relations. On June 3, 1955, Soviet-Japanese negotiations began in the building of the Soviet embassy in London. The Japanese delegation, as a condition for concluding a peace treaty, put forward obviously unacceptable demands - for “the islands of Habomai, Shikotan, the Chishima archipelago (Kuril Islands) and the southern part of Karafuto Island (Sakhalin).”

In fact, the Japanese understood the impossibility of these conditions. The secret instruction of the Japanese Foreign Ministry provided for three stages in putting forward territorial demands: “First, demand the transfer of all the Kuril Islands to Japan with the expectation of further discussion; then, retreating somewhat, seek the cession of the southern Kuril Islands to Japan for “historical reasons,” and, finally, insist on at least the transfer of the islands of Habomai and Shikotan to Japan, making this demand an indispensable condition for the successful completion of negotiations.”
The Japanese Prime Minister himself has repeatedly said that the ultimate goal of diplomatic bargaining was Habomai and Shikotan. Thus, during a conversation with a Soviet representative in January 1955, Hatoyama stated that “Japan will insist during negotiations on the transfer of the islands of Habomai and Shikotan to it.” There was no talk about any other territories 42.

This “soft” position of Japan did not suit the United States. Thus, it was for this reason that in March 1955 the American government refused to receive the Japanese Foreign Minister in Washington.

Khrushchev was ready to make concessions. On August 9 in London, during an informal conversation, the head of the Soviet delegation A.Ya. Malik (during the war he was the USSR Ambassador to Japan, and then, with the rank of Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, the representative of the Soviet Union at the UN) suggested that a Japanese diplomat in the rank after Shun'ichi Matsumoto transfer the islands of Habomai and Shikotan to Japan, but only after signing a peace treaty.
This is the assessment of this initiative given by one of the members of the Soviet delegation at the London negotiations, later Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences S. L. Tikhvinsky 43:

"I. A. Malik, acutely experiencing Khrushchev’s dissatisfaction with the slow progress of the negotiations and without consulting with the other members of the delegation, prematurely expressed in this conversation with Matsumoto the reserve that the delegation had from the very beginning of the negotiations, approved by the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee (i.e., N.S. Khrushchev himself) position without fully exhausting the defense of the main position in the negotiations. His statement first caused bewilderment, and then joy and further exorbitant demands on the part of the Japanese delegation... N. S. Khrushchev’s decision to renounce sovereignty over part of the Kuril Islands in favor of Japan was a rash, voluntaristic act... The cession to Japan of a part of Soviet territory, which was claimed without permission Khrushchev went to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and the Soviet people, destroyed the international legal basis of the Yalta and Potsdam agreements and contradicted the San Francisco Peace Treaty, which recorded Japan’s renunciation of South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands...”

As this quote makes clear, the Japanese perceived Malik's initiative as weakness and put forward other territorial demands. Negotiations stopped. This suited the USA too. In October 1955, J. Dulles warned in a note to the Japanese government that expanding economic ties and normalizing relations with the USSR “could become an obstacle to the implementation of the Japanese assistance program being developed by the US government.”

Inside Japan, fishermen who needed to obtain licenses to fish in the Kuril Islands were primarily interested in concluding a peace treaty. This process was greatly hampered by the lack of diplomatic relations between the two countries, which, in turn, was due to the absence of a peace treaty. Negotiations resumed. The United States exerted serious pressure on the Japanese government. Thus, on September 7, 1956, the State Department sent a memorandum to the Japanese government in which it stated that the United States would not recognize any decision confirming the sovereignty of the USSR over the territories that Japan had renounced under the peace treaty.

As a result of difficult negotiations, the Joint Declaration of the USSR and Japan was signed on October 19. It proclaimed the end of the state of war between the USSR and Japan and the restoration of diplomatic relations. Paragraph 9 of the declaration read 44:

9. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and Japan agreed to continue negotiations on a peace treaty after the restoration of normal diplomatic relations between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and Japan.
At the same time, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, meeting the wishes of Japan and taking into account the interests of the Japanese state, agrees to the transfer to Japan of the islands of Habomai and the island of Shikotan with the fact that the actual transfer of these islands to Japan will be made after the conclusion of a peace treaty between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and Japan .

However, as we know, the signing of a peace treaty never took place. Japanese Prime Minister Hatoyama Ichiro, who signed the Declaration, resigned, and the new cabinet was headed by Kishi Nobusuke, an openly pro-American politician. The Americans, back in August 1956, through the mouth of Secretary of State Allen Dulles, openly proclaimed that if the Japanese government recognizes the Kuril Islands as Soviet, then the United States will forever retain the island of Okinawa and the entire Ryukyu Archipelago, which were then under American control 45 .

On January 19, 1960, Japan signed the Treaty on Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan with the United States, according to which the Japanese authorities allowed the Americans to use military bases on their territory for the next 10 years and maintain ground, air and naval forces there. . On January 27, 1960, the USSR government announced that since this agreement was directed against the USSR and the PRC, the Soviet government refused to consider the issue of transferring the islands to Japan, since this would lead to an expansion of the territory used by American troops.

Now Japan claims not only Shikotan and Habomai, but also Iturup and Kunashir, citing the bilateral Treaty on Trade and Boundaries of 1855 - therefore, signing a peace treaty based on the 1956 declaration is impossible. However, if Japan renounced its claim to Iturup and Kunashir and signed a peace treaty, would Russia have to comply with the terms of the Declaration and give up Shikotan and Habomai? Let's consider this issue in more detail.

On April 13, 1976, the United States unilaterally adopted the Fish Conservation and Fisheries Management Act, according to which, from March 1, 1977, it moved the border of its fishing zone from 12 to 200 nautical miles from the coast, establishing strict rules for foreign access to it. fishermen Following the United States in 1976, by adopting the relevant laws, Great Britain, France, Norway, Canada, Australia and a number of other countries, including developing ones, unilaterally established 200-mile fishing or economic zones.
In the same year, by Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of December 10 “On temporary measures for the conservation of living resources and regulation of fisheries in marine areas adjacent to the coast of the USSR,” the Soviet Union also established sovereign rights over fish and other biological resources in its 200-mile coastal zone 46 .
New realities were recorded in the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. The concept of an “exclusive economic zone” was introduced, the width of which should not exceed 200 nautical miles. Article 55 of the convention provides that a coastal state in an exclusive economic zone has “sovereign rights for the purpose of exploration, development and conservation of natural resources, both living and non-living, in the waters covering the seabed, on the seabed and in its subsoil, and in for the management of these resources, and in relation to other activities for economic exploration and development of the said zone, such as the production of energy through the use of water, currents and wind." Moreover, in this zone it exercises jurisdiction over “the creation and use of artificial islands, installations and structures; marine scientific research; protection and conservation of the marine environment" 47.

Earlier, in 1969, the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties was adopted.
Article 62 “Fundamental Change of Circumstances” of this convention states (emphasis added in bold) 48:

1. A fundamental change that occurred in relation to the circumstances that existed at the conclusion of the contract, and which was not foreseen by the parties, cannot be invoked as a basis for termination of the contract or withdrawal from it, except when:
a) the presence of such circumstances constituted an essential basis for the consent of the participants to be bound by the contract; And
b) the consequence of a change in circumstances fundamentally changes the scope of obligations, still subject to performance under the contract.
2. A fundamental change in circumstances cannot be cited as a basis for termination or withdrawal from a contract:
A) if the treaty establishes a boundary; or
b) if such a fundamental change referred to by a party to the treaty is the result of a violation by that party either of an obligation under the treaty or of another international obligation undertaken by it in relation to any other party to the treaty.
3. If, in accordance with the previous paragraphs, the participants have the right to refer to a fundamental change in circumstances as a basis for terminating the contract or withdrawing from it, then he has the right to also refer to this change as a basis for suspending the validity of the contract.

The introduction of a 200-mile economic zone is a circumstance that radically changes the scope of the obligations. It is one thing to transfer islands when there was no talk of any 200-mile exclusive zone, and it is a completely different matter when this zone appeared. However, can it be considered that the 1956 declaration falls under paragraph 2a, i.e. to establish a border? The declaration deals with sovereignty over land territories, while between maritime states the border runs along the sea. After the transfer of the islands to Japan, an additional agreement would be required to determine the maritime boundary.
Thus, it can be argued that the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which was signed by both the USSR and Japan, is a fundamental change falling under paragraph 1b of Article 62 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. Those. Russia is not obliged to fulfill the condition of the 1956 Declaration on the transfer of Habomai and Shikotan if Japan suddenly agreed to sign a peace treaty.

On November 14, 2004, the then Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made a statement on the NTV channel that Russia recognizes the 1956 Declaration “as existing.”
The next day, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Russia is always ready to fulfill its obligations, especially with regard to ratified documents. But these obligations will be fulfilled “only to the extent that our partners are ready to fulfill the same agreements.”
On May 24, 2005, deputies of the Sakhalin Regional Duma published an open appeal to Sergei Lavrov before his trip to Japan, where they indicated that the 1956 Declaration was no longer binding:

“However, in 1956 there were no internationally recognized 200-mile economic zones, the starting point of which in this case is the coast of the Kuril Islands. Thus, now, in the case of the transfer of territories, the object of transfer is not only and not so much the islands, but the adjacent economic zones inseparable from them, which provide up to 1 billion US dollars per year in smuggled seafood alone. Isn’t the emergence of maritime economic zones in the world after 1956 a significant change in the situation?”

To summarize, let us briefly note the main points.

1. The Treaty of Portsmouth 1905 repeals the Treaty of 1875, so references to it as a legal document are not valid. The reference to the Shimoda Treaty of 1855 is irrelevant, because Japan violated this treaty by attacking Russia in 1904.
2. The transfer of Southern Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands to the Soviet Union was recorded in the Yalta Agreement of February 11, 1945. The return of these territories can be considered both as a restoration of historical justice and as a legitimate war trophy. This is a completely normal practice, with a huge number of examples in history.
3. Japan may not recognize Russia’s sovereignty over these territories, but it also does not have legal rights to them - its renunciation of claims to South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands is recorded in the peace treaty signed in San Francisco in 1951.
4. The Japanese indications that Habomai, Shikotan, Kunashir and Iturup are not part of the Kuril Islands (and, therefore, are not subject to the 1951 treaty) do not correspond to either geographical science or the history of previous Russian-Japanese negotiations.
5. After the signing of the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and the legalization of a 200-mile exclusive zone in international law, adherence to the 1956 Declaration becomes optional for Russia. Its possible implementation today, as stated by Putin and Lavrov, is not an obligation, but a gesture of goodwill.
6. The Southern Kuril Islands are of great strategic and economic importance, so there can be no question that these are just pieces of land that are not to be pitied.
7. The Kuril Islands - from Alaid to Kunashir and Habomai - Russian land.

* Anatoly Koshkin. Russia and Japan. Knots of contradictions. M.: Veche, 2010. P. 405-406.

Why are the Kuril Islands interesting and is it possible to organize a trip on your own? Who owns the Kuril Islands now: the essence of the Russia-Japan conflict.

The islands of the Sakhalin ridge, bordering Japan, are considered an eastern wonder of nature. We are, of course, talking about the Kuril Islands, whose history is as rich as its nature. To begin with, it is worth saying that the struggle for 56 islands located between Kamchatka and Hokkaido began from the moment of discovery.

Kuril Islands on the map of Russia

Kuril Islands - pages of history

Thus, at the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th century, when Russian navigators mapped hitherto unexplored lands that turned out to be inhabited, the process of appropriating uninhabited territories began. At that time, the Kuril Islands were inhabited by a people called Ayans. The Russian authorities tried to attract these people into their citizenship by any means, not excluding force. As a result, the Ayans, together with their lands, nevertheless went over to the side of the Russian Empire in exchange for the abolition of taxes.

The situation did not suit the Japanese at all, who had their own plans for these territories. It was not possible to resolve the conflict through diplomatic methods. Eventually, according to a document dated 1855, the territory of the islands is considered undivided. The situation became clear only after the end of World War II, when the amazing territory with a harsh climate was transferred to official ownership.

According to the new world order, the Kuril Islands came into the possession of the Soviet Union, the victorious state. The Japanese, who fought on the side of the Nazis, had no chance.

Who really owns the Kuril Islands?

Despite the results of World War II, which secured the USSR's ownership of the Kuril Islands at the global level, Japan still claims the territory. Until now, a peace treaty has not been signed between the two countries.

What is happening currently - in 2019?

Having changed tactics, Japan is making a compromise and is currently challenging Russia's ownership of only PART of the Kuril Islands. These are Iturup, Kunashir, Shikotan and the Habomai group. At first glance, this is a small part of the Kuril Islands, because there are only 56 units in the archipelago! One thing is confusing: Iturup, Kunashir, Shikotan are the only Kuril Islands where there is a permanent population (about 18 thousand people). They are located closest to the Japanese “border”.

The Japanese and world media, in turn, are throwing fuel into the furnace of the conflict, exaggerating the topic and convincing ordinary Japanese citizens that the Kuril Islands are vital to them and have been unfairly captured. When, by whom, at what moment - it doesn’t matter. The main thing is to create as many potential sources of conflict around one vast, but slightly unlucky country. What if you get lucky and the case works out somewhere?

Representatives of the Russian Federation, represented by the President and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, remain calm. But they never tire of reminding us once again that we are talking about the territory of Russia, which rightfully belongs to it. Well, in the end, it doesn’t make a claim to Poland for Gdansk and Alsace and Lorraine 😉

Nature of the Kuril Islands

Not only the history of the development of the islands is interesting, but also their nature. In fact, each of the Kuril Islands is a volcano, and a good part of these volcanoes are currently active. It is thanks to their volcanic origin that the nature of the islands is so diverse, and the surrounding landscapes are a paradise for photographers and geologists.

Eruption of the Crimean volcano (Kuril Islands, Russia)

Local residents. Bears of the Kuril Islands.

The Kuril Islands have many geothermal springs, which form entire lakes with hot water saturated with micro- and macroelements beneficial to health. The Kuril Islands are home to a huge number of animals and birds, many of which are found only in these parts. The flora is also rich, mostly represented by endemic species.

Travel to the Kuril Islands 2019

According to its parameters, the territory of the Kuril Islands is ideal for travel. And even though the climate is harsh, there are almost no sunny days, high humidity and plenty of precipitation - weather deficiencies are covered a hundredfold by the beauty of nature and amazingly clean air. So if you are worried about the weather on the Kuril Islands, then you can survive it.

A chain of islands located between the Kamchatka Peninsula and the island of Hokkaido and separating the Sea of ​​Okhotsk from the Pacific Ocean. Includes a total of 56 islands. All of them are part of the Sakhalin region of Russia.

In 1786, the Kuril Islands were declared Russian territory. In 1855, under the terms of the Treaty of Shimoda, the Southern Kuril Islands - Iturup, Kunashir, Shikotan and the Habomai group of islands - were ceded to Japan, and in 1875 - under the terms of the St. Petersburg Treaty - Japan received the entire Kuril ridge in exchange for Southern Sakhalin. In 1945, all the islands finally became part of the USSR. The ownership of the Southern Kuril Islands is still disputed by the Japanese side.

First steps in exploring the Kuril Islands

Before the arrival of the Russians and Japanese, the Ainu lived on the islands. The etymology of the name of the archipelago goes back to the word “kuru”, which translated from the Ainu language meant “a person who came from nowhere.”

The Japanese received the first information about the islands during an expedition to Hokkaido in 1635. In 1644, a map was drawn up on which the Kuril Islands were designated as “a thousand islands.” In 1643, the Dutch expedition of Moritz de Vries visited the archipelago. The Dutch compiled more accurate and detailed maps of the islands and their descriptions, put Urup and Iturup on the map, but did not assign them to themselves. Today the strait between these two islands bears the name Frieza.

In 1697, members of Vladimir Atlasov's expedition to Kamchatka compiled, from the words of local residents, a description of the Kuril Islands, which later formed the basis of the first Russian map of the archipelago, compiled in 1700 by Semyon Remezov.

In 1711, a detachment of Ataman Danila Antsiferov and Captain Ivan Kozyrevsky visited the islands of Shumshu and Kunashir. On Shumshu, the Ainu tried to resist the Cossacks, but were defeated. In 1713, Kozyrevsky led a second expedition to the islands. At Paramushir, he again encountered armed opposition from the local population, but this time he repelled the attacks. For the first time in the history of the archipelago, its inhabitants recognized the power of Russia over themselves and paid tribute. From the local Ainu and Japanese, Kozyrevsky learned about the existence of a number of other islands, and also established that the Japanese are prohibited from sailing north of the island of Hokkaido, and the inhabitants of the islands of Urup and Iturup “live autocratically and are not subject to citizenship.” The result of Kozyrevsky’s second campaign was the creation of the “Drawing map of the Kamchadal nose and sea islands,” which for the first time depicted the Kuril Islands from Cape Lopatka in Kamchatka to the shores of Hokkaido. In 1719, the expedition of Ivan Evreinov and Fyodor Luzhin visited the Kuril Islands and reached the island of Simushir. In 1727, Catherine I approved the “Opinion of the Senate” on the need to “take possession of the islands lying near Kamchatka.”

In 1738-1739, the expedition of Martyn Shpanberg followed along the entire Kuril ridge. After this expedition, a new map of the Kuril Islands was compiled, which in 1745 was included in the Atlas of the Russian Empire. In 1761, a Senate decree allowed free fishing of sea animals on the islands with a tenth of the catch being given to the treasury. During the second half of the 18th century, Russians actively explored the Kuril Islands. Sailing to the southern islands was dangerous, so the Russians concentrated on developing the northern islands, regularly collecting yasak from the local population. Those who did not want to pay yasak and went south were taken hostages from among their close relatives - amanats. In 1749, the first school for educating Ainu children appeared on the island of Shumshu, and in 1756, the first church of St. Nicholas on the islands of the ridge.

In 1766, centurion Ivan Cherny went to the southern islands, who was tasked with bringing the Ainu into citizenship without the use of violence or threats. The centurion ignored the decree and abused his powers, as a result of which in 1771 the indigenous population rebelled against the Russians. Unlike Ivan Cherny, the Siberian nobleman Antipov and the translator Shabalin managed to win over the inhabitants of the Kuril Islands. In 1778-1779, they brought into citizenship more than one and a half thousand people from the islands of Iturup and Kunashir, as well as from the island of Hokkaido. In 1779, Catherine II issued a decree exempting those who accepted Russian citizenship from all taxes.

In 1786, Japan equipped the first expedition to explore the southern islands of the Kuril chain. The Japanese, led by Mogami Tokunai, established that the Russians had founded their own settlements on the islands.

Kuril Islands at the endXVIII- middleXIX century

On December 22, 1786, Catherine II ordered the College of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Empire to officially declare that the lands discovered on the Pacific Ocean, including the Kuril Archipelago, belonged to the Russian crown. By this time, Russia fulfilled all three conditions necessary, in accordance with the then accepted international norms, to position the territory as its own: first discovery, first development and long-term continuous possession. In the “Extensive Land Description of the Russian State...” of 1787, a list of islands that belonged to Russia was given. It included 21 islands up to Matsumae (Hokkaido). In 1787, the Kuril Islands were supposed to be visited by a large-scale expedition by G.I. Mulovsky, but due to the outbreak of wars with Turkey and Sweden, it had to be canceled.

In 1795, the campaign of G.I. Shelikhov founded the first permanent Russian settlement in the Kuril Islands in the southeast of the island of Urup. Vasily Zvezdochetov became its manager.

In 1792, the southern islands of the ridge were visited by a new Japanese expedition, Mogami Tokunai, and in 1798, another expedition led by Mogami Tokunai and Kondo Juzo. In 1799, the Japanese government ordered outposts with permanent security to be located on Kunashir and Iturup. In the same year, the Japanese authorities officially incorporated the northern part of the island of Hokkaido into the state. In 1800, the first permanent Japanese settlement appeared on Iturup - Syana (now Kurilsk). In 1801, the Japanese attempted to establish control over the island of Urup, but were met with resistance from local Russian settlers. In 1802, an office for the colonization of the Kuril Islands was established in the city of Hakodate in the south of Hokkaido.

In 1805, N.P. Rezanov, a representative of the Russian-American campaign, arrived in Nagasaki as an envoy. He tried to resume negotiations with Japanese diplomats regarding the establishment of the Russian-Japanese border, but failed: Rezanov insisted that Japan should not lay claim to any of the islands north of Hokkaido, while the Japanese demanded territorial concessions.

In May 1807, the Russian ship “Juno” arrived at the island of Iturup, accompanied by the tender “Avos” (commanders N.A. Khvostov and G.I. Davydov, respectively). The landing force that landed on the island destroyed Japanese settlements, including the large settlement of Xiang, and defeated the local Japanese garrison. Following Iturup, the Russians expelled the Japanese from Kunashir. The government sharply condemned the violent actions taken by Khvostov and Davydov: for “willfulness against the Japanese,” they lost the awards they had received for their participation in the war against Sweden. In 1808, the Japanese restored the destroyed settlements and significantly increased their military presence in the southern islands. In 1811, the Kunashir garrison captured the crew of the sloop “Diana”, led by the ship’s commander V.M. Golovnin. A year and a half later, after Russia officially recognized the “arbitrariness” of the actions of Khvostov and Davydov, the sailors were released, and Japanese troops left Iturup and Kunashir.

In 1830, the Russian-American Company established a permanent Kuril detachment with rule on the island of Simushir. In 1845, Japan unilaterally declared sovereignty over the Kuril Islands and Sakhalin.

Treaty of Shimoda and Treaty of St. Petersburg

In 1853, a Russian diplomatic mission headed by Admiral E.V. Putyatin arrived in Japan with the goal of establishing diplomatic and trade relations with Japan. The Russian government believed that the border between the countries should run along the La Perouse Strait and the southern tip of the Kuril Ridge, and the Kuril Islands themselves, accordingly, should belong to Russia. Japan considered the possibility of agreeing to these conditions, but after the entry of the Russian Empire into the Crimean War and the complications of its international position, it put forward a demand to include the Southern Kuril Islands and Southern Sakhalin in Japan. Putyatin, to whom “additional instructions” allowed him, as a last resort, to agree to recognize the southern islands as Japan, was forced to do this. On January 26 (February 7), 1855, the first Russian-Japanese trade agreement, the Shimoda Treaty, was signed in Shimodo. According to this agreement, the border between the countries was drawn between the islands of Iturup and Urup.

On September 2, 1855, the British and French frigates Pic and Sybil took possession of the island of Urup. The settlement of the Russian-American campaign on the island was devastated, and the island itself was declared a joint Anglo-French possession.

The terms of the Shimoda Treaty were confirmed by the Ieda Treaty on Trade and Navigation signed by Russia and Japan in 1858. In 1868, when the Russian-American campaign was terminated, the Kuril Islands were virtually abandoned. On April 25 (May 7), 1875, after the Shogunate had fallen in Japan and Emperor Mutsuhito (Meiji) had come to power, Russia and Japan signed the Treaty of St. Petersburg. Under its terms, Russia ceded to Japan the rights to the central and northern parts of the Kuril ridge in exchange for renouncing claims to the southern part of Sakhalin.

Kuril Islands as part of Japan, the USSR and the Russian Federation

When they were the territory of the Japanese Empire, the Kuril Islands were under the control of the governorate of Hokkaido. The Japanese administration laid roads and telegraph lines on the islands of Iturup (Etorofu) and Kunashir (Kunasiri), established postal communications, and opened post offices. Fishing was actively developing: in every locality there was a fishery inspection and a salmon breeding enterprise. By 1930, the population of Kunashir was approximately 8,300 people, Iturup - 6,300 people.

In February 1945, as part of the Yalta Conference, the Soviet government promised the United States and Great Britain to start a war with Japan on the condition that the USSR would receive the southern part of Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. On August 9, 1945, the USSR declared war on Japan. On August 14, Emperor Hirohito issued a decree of surrender, but Japanese troops on Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands continued to resist. On August 18, Soviet forces began the Kuril landing operation. By September 1, the islands of the Kuril archipelago were completely occupied by Soviet units. On September 2, Japan signed the instrument of surrender.

On February 2, 1946, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR issued a decree on the inclusion of South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands into the RSFSR. For a short time, these territories formed the South Sakhalin Region as part of the Khabarovsk Territory, and then, in 1947, they were merged with the Sakhalin Region and transferred to the direct subordination of the RSFSR. In the same year, the deportation of the Japanese and the few Ainu remaining on the islands was carried out.

On November 5, 1952, the coast of the Kuril Islands was severely damaged by a powerful tsunami. The most serious damage was caused to Paramushir: the city of Severo-Kurilsk was washed away by a giant wave. The tragedy was not advertised in the media.

The Kuril Islands in Japan's relations with the USSR and the Russian Federation

On September 8, 1951, Japan signed the San Francisco Peace Treaty, according to which it renounced all possessions outside the Japanese Islands, including South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. The USSR did not sign the treaty, refusing to participate in the conference before its completion. Because of this, Japan's abandonment of the Kuril Islands was not officially recorded. In 1955, when Soviet-Japanese peace negotiations began in London, Japan - largely under pressure from the United States - put forward claims to the islands of Kunashir, Iturup, Shikotan and the Habomai islands. On October 19, 1956, in Moscow, the USSR and Japan signed a joint declaration, which stated the end of the state of war between states, the restoration of peace and good neighborly relations, as well as the resumption of diplomatic relations. The terms of the agreement stipulated the return of Shikotan Island and the Lesser Kuril Ridge (Habomai Islands) to Japan, but after the conclusion of a peace treaty. Already in 1960, the USSR government abandoned its previous intention and from then until 1991 considered the territorial issue with Japan to be finally resolved. Only on April 19, 1991, during a visit to Japan, M. S. Gorbachev admitted that there were territorial differences between the USSR and Japan.

In 1992, the Russian Foreign Ministry was preparing for President B.N. Yeltsin’s visit to Japan with the aim of holding negotiations on the future fate of the Southern Kuril Islands. The trip, however, did not take place, largely due to the opposition of the Supreme Council deputies to the idea of ​​​​transferring part of the islands. On October 13, 1993, the President of Russia and the Prime Minister of Japan signed the Tokyo Declaration, and on November 13, 1998, the Moscow Declaration. Both documents stated that the parties should continue negotiations with the goal of speedily concluding a peace treaty and normalizing bilateral relations. The Moscow Declaration scheduled a peace treaty for 2000, but this never happened.

On July 3, 2009, the Japanese Parliament adopted an amendment to the Law “On Special Measures to Promote the Resolution of the Problem of the Northern Territories”, which declared Kunashir, Iturup, Shikotan and the Habomai Islands to be the “original territories” of Japan. The Federation Council protested about this. In November of the same year, the Japanese government called the southern islands of the chain “illegally occupied” by Russia, which also led to a protest, this time from the Russian Foreign Ministry. In subsequent years, the Japanese side repeatedly protested against visits to the southern islands of the Kuril chain by high-ranking Russian officials and top officials of the state.

The name of the Kuril Islands does not come from the “smoking” volcanoes. It is based on the Ainu word “kur”, “kuru”, meaning “man”. This is how the Ainu, the indigenous inhabitants of the islands, called themselves, this is how they presented themselves to the Kamchatka Cossacks, and they called them “Kuril Islands”, “Kuril men”. This is where the name of the islands came from.

The Ainu gave a suitable name to each island: Paramushir means “wide island”, Kunashir - “black island”, Urup “salmon”, Iturup - “big salmon”, Onekotan - “old settlement”, Paranay - “big river”, Shikotan - “ the best place". Most of the Ainu names have been preserved, although there were attempts on both the Russian and Japanese sides to rename the islands in their own way. True, neither side sparkled with imagination - both tried to assign serial numbers to the islands as names: First Island, Second, etc., but the Russians counted from the north, and the Japanese, naturally, from the south.
The Russians, like the Japanese, learned about the islands in the middle of the 17th century. The first detailed information about them was provided by Vladimir Atlasov in 1697. At the beginning of the 18th century. Peter I became aware of their existence, and expeditions began to be sent to the “Kuril Land” one after another. In 1711, the Cossack Ivan Kozyrevsky visited the two northern islands of Shumshu and Paramushir; in 1719, Ivan Evreinov and Fyodor Luzhin reached the island of Simushir. In 1738-1739 Martyn Shpanberg, having walked along the entire ridge, put the islands he saw on the map. The study of new places was followed by their development - the collection of yasak from the local population, the attraction of the Ainu to Russian citizenship, which was accompanied, as usual, by violence. As a result, in 1771 the Ainu rebelled and killed many Russians. By 1779, they managed to establish relations with the Kurils and bring more than 1,500 people from Kunashir, Iturup and Matsumaya (present-day Hokkaido) into Russian citizenship. Catherine II exempted all of them from taxes by decree. The Japanese were not happy with this situation, and they forbade the Russians to appear on these three islands.
By and large, the status of the islands south of Urup was not clearly defined at that time, and the Japanese also considered them theirs. In 1799 they founded two outposts in Kunashir and Iturup.
At the beginning of the 19th century, after an unsuccessful attempt by Nikolai Rezanov (the first Russian envoy to Japan) to resolve this issue, Russian-Japanese relations only worsened.
In 1855, according to the Treaty of Shimoda, the island of Sakhalin was recognized as “undivided between Russia and Japan”, the Kuril Islands north of Iturup were the possessions of Russia, and the southern Kuril Islands (Kunashir, Iturup, Shikotan and a number of small ones) were the possessions of Japan. Under the treaty of 1875, Russia transferred all the Kuril Islands to Japan in exchange for an official renunciation of claims to Sakhalin Island.
In February 1945, at the Yalta Conference of the Heads of Power of the Anti-Hitler Coalition, an agreement was reached on the unconditional transfer of the Kuril Islands to the Soviet Union after the victory over Japan. By September 1945, Soviet troops occupied the Southern Kuril Islands. However, the Instrument of Surrender, signed by Japan on September 2, did not directly say anything about the transfer of these islands to the USSR.
In 1947, 17,000 Japanese and an unknown number of Ainu were deported to Japan from the islands that became part of the RSFSR. In 1951, Japan began to make claims to Iturup, Kunashir and the Lesser Kuril Ridge (Shikotan and Habomai), which were given to it under the Shimoda Treaty in 1855.
In 1956, diplomatic relations between the USSR and Japan were established and a Joint Agreement on the transfer of the islands of Shikotan and Habomai to Japan was adopted. However, the actual transfer of these islands must be made after the conclusion of a peace treaty, which has not yet been signed due to the remaining Japanese claims to Kunashir and Iturup.

The Kuril Islands chain is a special world. Each of the islands is a volcano, a fragment of a volcano, or a chain of volcanoes fused together at their bases. The Kuril Islands are located on the Pacific Ring of Fire; in total there are about a hundred volcanoes, 39 of which are active. In addition, there are many hot springs. The ongoing movements of the earth's crust are evidenced by frequent earthquakes and seaquakes, causing tidal waves of enormous destructive power - tsunamis. The last powerful tsunami was generated during the earthquake on November 15, 2006 and reached the coast of California.
The highest and most active of the Alaid volcanoes on Atlasov Island (2339 m). Actually, the entire island is the surface part of a large volcanic cone. The last eruption occurred in 1986. The volcano island has an almost regular shape and looks incredibly picturesque in the middle of the ocean. Many find that its shape is even more correct than that of the famous one.
Near the eastern underwater slopes of the Kuril Islands there is a narrow deep-sea depression - the Kuril-Kamchatka Trench with a depth of up to 9717 m and an average width of 59 km.
The relief and nature of the islands are very diverse: bizarre shapes of coastal rocks, multi-colored pebbles, large and small boiling lakes, waterfalls. A special attraction is Cape Stolbchaty on Kunashir Island, a sheer wall rising above the water and entirely consisting of columnar units - giant basalt five- and hexagonal pillars formed as a result of the solidification of lava, poured into the water column, and then raised to the surface.
Volcanic activity, warm and cold sea currents determine the unique diversity of flora and fauna of the islands, strongly elongated from north to south. If in the north, under harsh climate conditions, tree vegetation is represented by shrub forms, then on the southern islands coniferous and broad-leaved forests with a large number of vines grow; Kuril bamboo forms impenetrable thickets and wild magnolia blooms. There are about 40 endemic plant species on the islands. There are many bird colonies in the Southern Kuriles region; one of the main bird migration routes passes here. Salmon fish spawn in rivers. Coastal zone - rookeries for marine mammals. The underwater world is particularly diverse: crabs, squids and other mollusks, crustaceans, sea cucumbers, sea cucumbers, whales, killer whales. This is one of the most productive areas of the World Ocean.
Iturup is the largest of the Kuril Islands. On an area of ​​about 3200 km 2 there are 9 active volcanoes, as well as the city and unofficial “capital” of the islands due to its central location, Kurilsk, founded in 1946 at the mouth of the river with the “speaking name” Kurilka.

Three administrative districts with centers in Yuzhno-Kurilsk (Kunashir).

Kurilsk (Iturup) and Severo-Kurilsk (Paramushir).
Largest island: Iturup (3200 km 2).

Numbers

Area: about 15,600 km2.

Population: about 19,000 people. (2007).

Highest point: Alaid volcano (2339 m) on Atlasov Island.

Length of the Great Kuril Ridge: about 1200 km.
Length of the Lesser Kuril Ridge: about 100 km.

Economy

Mineral resources: non-ferrous metals, mercury, natural gas, oil, rhenium (one of the rarest elements in the earth's crust), gold, silver, titanium, iron.

Fishing for fish (chum salmon, etc.) and sea animals (seal, sea lion).

Climate and weather

Moderate monsoon, severe, with long, cold, stormy winters and short, foggy summers.

Average annual precipitation: about 1000 mm, mostly in the form of snow.

A small number of sunny days occur in autumn.
Average temperature:-7°C in February, +10°C in July.

Attractions

■ Volcanoes, hot springs, boiling lakes, waterfalls.
■ Atlasov Island: Alaid volcano;
■ Kunashir: Kurilsky Nature Reserve with Tyatya Volcano (1819 m), Cape Stolbchaty;
■ Rookeries of fur seals and seals.

Curious facts

■ In 1737, a monstrous wave about fifty meters high rose in the sea and hit the shore with such force that some rocks collapsed. At the same time, in one of the Kuril Straits, new rocky cliffs rose from under the water.
■ In 1780, the ship “Natalia” was thrown by a tsunami deep into the island of Urup, 300 meters from the coast. The ship remained on dry land.
■ As a result of the earthquake on the island of Simushir in 1849, the water in the springs and wells suddenly disappeared. This forced the inhabitants to leave the island.
■ During the eruption of the Sarycheva volcano on the island of Matua in 1946, lava flows reached the sea. The glow could be seen 150 km away, and ash fell even in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. The thickness of the ash layer on the island reached four meters.
■ In November 1952, a powerful tsunami hit the entire coast of the Kuril Islands. Paramushir suffered more than other islands. The wave practically washed away the city of Severo-Kurilsk. It was forbidden to mention this disaster in the press.
■ On Kunashir Island and the islands of the Lesser Kuril Ridge, the Kurilsky Nature Reserve was created in 1984. 84 species of its inhabitants are listed in the Red Book.
■ In the north of the island of Kunashir there grows a patriarch tree; it even has a proper name - “Sage”. This is a yew, its trunk diameter is 130 cm, it is believed that it is more than 1000 years old.
■ The notorious tsunami of November 2006 was “marked” on the island of Shikotan, according to instruments, with a wave 153 cm high. The World Politics Review newspaper believes that Putin's main mistake now is his "disdainful attitude towards Japan." A bold Russian initiative to resolve the Kuril Islands dispute would give Japan greater grounds for cooperation with Moscow. - this is what IA REGNUM reports today. This “disdainful attitude” is expressed in a clear way - give the Kuril Islands to Japan. It would seem - what do the Americans and their European satellites care about the Kuril Islands, which are in another part of the world?

It's simple. Underneath Japanophilia lies the desire to transform the Sea of ​​Okhotsk from an internal Russian one into a sea open to the “world community.” With great consequences for us, both military and economic.

Well, who was the first to develop these lands? Why on earth does Japan consider these islands to be its ancestral territories?
To do this, let's look at the history of the development of the Kuril ridge.

The islands were originally inhabited by the Ainu. In their language, “kuru” meant “a person who came from nowhere,” which is where their second name “Kurilians” came from, and then the name of the archipelago.

In Russia, the Kuril Islands were first mentioned in the reporting document of N. I. Kolobov to Tsar Alexei in 1646 about the peculiarities of the wanderings of I. Yu. Moskvitin. Also, data from chronicles and maps of medieval Holland, Scandinavia and Germany indicate indigenous Russian villages. N.I. Kolobov spoke about the bearded Ainu inhabiting the islands. The Ainu were engaged in gathering, fishing and hunting, living in small settlements throughout the Kuril Islands and on Sakhalin.

Founded after the campaign of Semyon Dezhnev in 1649, the cities of Anadyr and Okhotsk became bases for exploring the Kuril Islands, Alaska and California.

The development of new lands by Russia took place in a civilized manner and was not accompanied by the extermination or displacement of the local population from the territory of their historical homeland, as happened, for example, with the North American Indians. The arrival of the Russians led to the spread of more effective means of hunting and metal products among the local population, and most importantly, it contributed to the cessation of bloody inter-tribal strife. Under the influence of the Russians, these peoples began to engage in agriculture and move to a sedentary lifestyle. Trade revived, Russian merchants flooded Siberia and the Far East with goods, the existence of which the local population did not even know.

In 1654, the Yakut Cossack foreman M. Stadukhin visited there. In the 60s, part of the northern Kuril Islands was put on the map by the Russians, and in 1700 the Kuril Islands were put on the map of S. Remizov. In 1711, the Cossack ataman D. Antsiferov and captain I. Kozyrevsky visited the Paramushir Shumshu islands. The following year, Kozyrevsky visited the islands of Iturup and Urup and reported that the inhabitants of these islands lived “autocratically.”

I. Evreinov and F. Luzhin, who graduated from the St. Petersburg Academy of Geodesy and Cartography, made a trip to the Kuril Islands in 1721, after which the Evreinovs personally presented a report on this voyage and a map to Peter I.

Russian navigators Captain Shpanberg and Lieutenant Walton in 1739 were the first Europeans to discover the route to the eastern shores of Japan, visited the Japanese islands of Hondo (Honshu) and Matsmae (Hokkaido), described the Kuril ridge and mapped all the Kuril Islands and the eastern coast of Sakhalin.

The expedition established that only one island of Hokkaido was under the rule of the “Japanese Khan”, the rest of the islands were not subject to him. Since the 60s, interest in the Kuril Islands has noticeably increased, Russian fishing vessels are increasingly landing on their shores, and soon the local population - the Ainu - on the islands of Urup and Iturup were brought under Russian citizenship.

The merchant D. Shebalin was ordered by the office of the port of Okhotsk to “convert the inhabitants of the southern islands into Russian citizenship and start trading with them.” Having brought the Ainu under Russian citizenship, the Russians founded winter quarters and camps on the islands, taught the Ainu to use firearms, raise livestock and grow some vegetables.

Many of the Ainu converted to Orthodoxy and learned to read and write.
Russian missionaries did everything to spread Orthodoxy among the Kuril Ainu and taught them the Russian language. Deservedly first in this line of missionaries is the name of Ivan Petrovich Kozyrevsky (1686-1734), in the monasticism of Ignatius. A.S. Pushkin wrote that “Kozyrevsky in 1713 conquered the two Kuril Islands and brought Kolesov news of the trade of these islands with the merchants of the city of Matmaya.” In the texts of Kozyrevsky’s “Drawing for the Sea Islands” it was written: “On the first and other islands in Kamchatka Nos, from the autocratic ones shown on that campaign, he smoked with affection and greetings, and others, in military order, brought them back into tribute payment.” Back in 1732, the famous historian G.F. Miller noted in the academic calendar: “Before this, the local residents did not have any faith. But in twenty years, by order of His Imperial Majesty, churches and schools were built there, which give us hope, and from time to time this people will be brought out of their delusion.” Monk Ignatius Kozyrevsky in the south of the Kamchatka Peninsula, at his own expense, founded a church with a limit and a monastery, in which he himself later took monastic vows. Kozyrevsky managed to convert “the local people of other faiths” - the Itelmen of Kamchatka and the Kuril Ainu.

The Ainu fished, beat sea animals, baptized their children in Orthodox churches, wore Russian clothes, had Russian names, spoke Russian and proudly called themselves Orthodox. In 1747, the “newly baptized” Kurilians from the islands of Shumshu and Paramushir, numbering more than two hundred people, through their toen (leader) Storozhev, turned to the Orthodox mission in Kamchatka with a request to send a priest “to confirm them in the new faith.”

By order of Catherine II in 1779, all taxes not established by decrees from St. Petersburg were cancelled. Thus, the fact of the discovery and development of the Kuril Islands by Russians is undeniable.

Over time, the fisheries in the Kuril Islands were depleted, becoming less and less profitable than off the coast of America, and therefore, by the end of the 18th century, the interest of Russian merchants in the Kuril Islands weakened. In Japan, by the end of the same century, interest in the Kuril Islands and Sakhalin was just awakening, because before that the Kuril Islands were practically unknown to the Japanese. The island of Hokkaido - according to the testimony of Japanese scientists themselves - was considered a foreign territory and only a small part of it was populated and developed. At the end of the 70s, Russian merchants reached Hokkaido and tried to establish trade with the local residents. Russia was interested in purchasing food in Japan for Russian fishing expeditions and settlements in Alaska and the Pacific Islands, but it was never possible to establish trade, since it was prohibited by the law on the isolation of Japan in 1639, which read: “For the future, while the sun shines peace, no one has the right to land on the shores of Japan, even if he were an envoy, and this law can never be repealed by anyone under pain of death."

And in 1788, Catherine II sent a strict order to Russian industrialists in the Kuril Islands so that they “do not touch the islands under the jurisdiction of other powers,” and a year before she issued a decree on equipping a round-the-world expedition to accurately describe and map the islands from Masmaya to Kamchatka Lopatka, so that “all of them are formally considered to be the possession of the Russian state.” It was ordered not to allow foreign industrialists to “trade and trade in places belonging to Russia and to deal peacefully with local residents.” But the expedition did not take place due to the outbreak of the Russian-Turkish War of 1787-1791.

Taking advantage of the weakening of Russian positions in the southern part of the Kuril Islands, Japanese fish farmers first appeared in Kunashir in 1799, and the next year in Iturup, where they destroyed Russian crosses and illegally erected a pillar with a designation indicating that the islands belonged to Japan. Japanese fishermen often began to arrive on the shores of Southern Sakhalin, fished, and robbed the Ainu, which caused frequent clashes between them. In 1805, Russian sailors from the frigate "Juno" and the tender "Avos" placed a pole with the Russian flag on the shore of Aniva Bay, and the Japanese anchorage on Iturup was devastated. The Russians were warmly received by the Ainu.

In 1854, in order to establish trade and diplomatic relations with Japan, the government of Nicholas I sent Vice Admiral E. Putyatin. His mission also included the delimitation of Russian and Japanese possessions. Russia demanded recognition of its rights to the island of Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, which had long belonged to it. Knowing full well what a difficult situation Russia found itself in, while simultaneously waging war with three powers in the Crimea, Japan put forward unfounded claims to the southern part of Sakhalin.

At the beginning of 1855, in Shimoda, Putyatin signed the first Russian-Japanese Treaty of Peace and Friendship, in accordance with which Sakhalin was declared undivided between Russia and Japan, the border was established between the islands of Iturup and Urup, and the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate were opened for Russian ships and Nagasaki.

The Shimoda Treaty of 1855 in Article 2 defines:
“From now on, the border between the Japanese state and Russia will be established between the island of Iturup and the island of Urup. The entire island of Iturup belongs to Japan, the entire island of Urup and the Kuril Islands to the north of it belong to Russia. As for the island of Karafuto (Sakhalin), it is still not divided by the border between Japan and Russia.”

The government of Alexander II made the Middle East and Central Asia the main direction of its policy and, fearing to leave its relations with Japan uncertain in case of a new aggravation of relations with England, signed the so-called St. Petersburg Treaty of 1875, according to which all the Kuril Islands in exchange for recognition of Sakhalin Russian territory was transferred to Japan.

Alexander II, who had previously sold Alaska in 1867 for a symbolic sum at that time - 11 million rubles, and this time made a big mistake by underestimating the strategic importance of the Kuril Islands, which were later used by Japan for aggression against Russia. The Tsar naively believed that Japan would become a peace-loving and calm neighbor of Russia, and when the Japanese, justifying their claims, refer to the 1875 treaty, for some reason they forget (as G. Kunadze “forgot” today) about its first article: “.. "Eternal peace and friendship will continue to be established between the Russian and Japanese Empires."

Russia has effectively lost access to the Pacific Ocean. Japan, whose imperial ambitions continued to increase, actually had the opportunity to begin a naval blockade of Sakhalin and the entire Far Eastern Russia at any moment.

The population of the Kuril Islands immediately after the establishment of Japanese power was described by the English captain Snow in his notes about the Kuril Islands:
“In 1878, when I first visited the northern islands...all northern residents spoke Russian more or less tolerably. All of them were Christians and professed the religion of the Greek Church. They were visited (and are still visited to this day) by Russian priests, and in the village of Mairuppo in Shumshir a church was built, the boards for which were brought from America. ...The largest settlements in the Northern Kuril Islands were in the port of Tavano (Urup), Uratman, on the shore of Broughtona Bay (Simushir) and the above-described Mairuppo (Shumshir). Each of these villages, in addition to huts and dugouts, had its own church...”

Our famous compatriot, Captain V.M. Golovnin, in the famous “Notes of the Fleet of Captain Golovnin...” mentions the Ainu, “who called himself Alexei Maksimovich.” ...

Then there was 1904, when Japan treacherously attacked Russia.
At the conclusion of the peace treaty in Portsmouth in 1905, the Japanese side demanded Sakhalin Island from Russia as an indemnity. The Russian side stated then that this was contrary to the 1875 treaty. What did the Japanese respond to this?

War crosses out all treaties, you have suffered defeat and let’s proceed from the current situation.
Only thanks to skillful diplomatic maneuvers did Russia manage to retain the northern part of Sakhalin for itself, and southern Sakhalin went to Japan.

At the Yalta Conference of the Heads of Power, countries participating in the anti-Hitler coalition, held in February 1945, it was decided after the end of the Second World War that South Sakhalin and all the Kuril Islands should be transferred to the Soviet Union, and this was a condition for the USSR to enter the war with Japan - three months after end of the war in Europe.

On September 8, 1951, in San Francisco, 49 countries signed a peace treaty with Japan. The draft treaty was prepared during the Cold War without the participation of the USSR and in violation of the principles of the Potsdam Declaration. The Soviet side proposed to carry out demilitarization and ensure democratization of the country. Representatives of the USA and Great Britain told our delegation that they came here not to discuss, but to sign an agreement and therefore would not change a single line. The USSR, and along with it Poland and Czechoslovakia, refused to sign the treaty. And what’s interesting is that Article 2 of this treaty states that Japan renounces all rights and title to the island of Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. Thus, Japan itself renounced its territorial claims to our country, confirming this with its signature.

1956, Soviet-Japanese negotiations to normalize relations between the two countries. The Soviet side agrees to cede the two islands of Shikotan and Habomai to Japan and offers to sign a peace treaty. The Japanese side is inclined to accept the Soviet proposal, but in September 1956 the United States sent a note to Japan, which states that if Japan renounces its claims to Kunashir and Iturup and is satisfied with only two islands, then in this case the United States will not give up the Ryukyu Islands , where the main island is Okinawa. The Americans presented Japan with an unexpected and difficult choice - in order to get the islands from the Americans, they had to take ALL the Kuril Islands from Russia. ...Either neither Kuril nor Ryukyu and Okinawa.
Of course, the Japanese refused to sign a peace treaty on our terms. The subsequent security treaty (1960) between the United States and Japan made the transfer of Shikotan and Habomai to Japan impossible. Our country, of course, could not give up the islands for American bases, nor could it bind itself to any obligations to Japan on the issue of the Kuril Islands.

A.N. Kosygin once gave a worthy answer regarding Japan’s territorial claims to us:
- The borders between the USSR and Japan should be considered as the result of the Second World War.

We could put an end to this, but we would like to remind you that just 6 years ago, M.S. Gorbachev, at a meeting with the SPJ delegation, also resolutely opposed the revision of borders, emphasizing that the borders between the USSR and Japan are “legal and legally justified” .