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Good day, dear viewers! Today, after a short pause to collect information again, I want to take you on a mini-trip to the Kuril Islands)
I chose the musical composition according to my own taste, if you don’t like it, as usual, stop in the player)

I wish everyone a pleasant experience!
Let's go)

Another episode " Unknown Russia"is dedicated to the Kuril Islands, or the Kuril Islands - a stumbling block in Russian-Japanese relations.

The Kuril Islands are a chain of islands between the Kamchatka Peninsula and the island of Hokkaido, separating the Sea of ​​Okhotsk from Pacific Ocean. The length of the arc is about 1200 km. The archipelago includes 30 large and many small islands. The Kuril Islands are part of Sakhalin region.

The four southern islands - Iturup, Kunashir, Shikotan and Habomai - are disputed by Japan, which on its maps includes them as part of Hokkaido Prefecture and considers them "temporarily occupied."

There are 68 volcanoes on the Kuril Islands, 36 of which are active.

There are permanent populations only in Paramushir, Iturup, Kunashir and Shikotan.

Before the arrival of the Russians and Japanese, the islands were inhabited by the Ainu. In their language, "kuru" meant "a person who came from nowhere." The word “kuru” turned out to be consonant with our “smoking” - after all, there is always smoke above the volcanoes

In Russia, the first mention of the Kuril Islands dates back to 1646, when traveler N.I. Kolobov spoke about the bearded Ainu inhabiting the islands. The first Russian settlements of that time are evidenced by Dutch, German and Scandinavian medieval chronicles and maps.

The Japanese received the first information about the islands during an expedition to Hokkaido in 1635. It is not known whether she actually got to the Kuril Islands or learned about them indirectly from local residents, but in 1644 the Japanese compiled a map on which the Kuril Islands were designated under the collective name “thousand islands.”

Throughout the 18th century, Russians intensively explored the Kuril Islands. In 1779, Catherine II, by her decree, freed all islanders who had accepted Russian citizenship from all taxes.

In 1875, Russia and Japan agreed that the Kuril Islands belonged to Japan and Sakhalin to Russia, but after defeat in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, Russia transferred the southern part of Sakhalin to Japan.

In February 1945 Soviet Union promised the United States and Great Britain to start a war with Japan, subject to the return of the southern part of Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands to him. Japan, as you know, was defeated, the islands were returned to the USSR.

On September 8, 1951, Japan signed the San Francisco Peace Treaty, according to which it renounced “all rights, title and claims to the Kuril Islands and to that part of Sakhalin Island and adjacent islands, sovereignty over which Japan acquired under the Treaty of Portsmouth of September 5, 1905 of the year". However, due to many other serious shortcomings of the San Francisco Treaty, representatives of the USSR, Poland, Czechoslovakia and a number of other countries refused to sign it. This now gives Japan the formal right to make its belated claim to ownership of the islands.

As you can see, there is no way to understand the question of who should own the Kuril Islands. For now they belong to us. In international law, they belong to the so-called “disputed territories”.

Iturup

Most large island archipelago. Located in its southern part. The population is about 6 thousand people. Iturup is located main city archipelago - Kurilsk. There are 9 active volcanoes on Iturup.

Kunashir Island

The southernmost island of the Kuril ridge. The population is about 8 thousand people. Administrative center- Yuzhno-Kurilsk village. In Yuzhno-Kurilsk there is an obelisk monument in honor of the liberation of the island, on which it is written: “In this area in September 1945, Soviet troops landed. Historical justice was restored: the original Russian lands - the Kuril Islands - were liberated from Japanese militarists and forever reunited with their motherland - Russia."

On the island – 4 active volcano and many thermal springs, which are places of rest. It is separated from Japan by only a 25-kilometer strait. The main attraction is Cape Stolbchaty, a fifty-meter rock made of almost regular hexagons, tightly adjacent to each other in the form of rods.

(pink salmon spawning)

Shumshu Island

The northernmost of the Kuril Islands, during World War II it was a powerful military fortress of the Japanese. A 20,000-strong garrison with tanks, pillboxes and airfields was based on it. The capture of Shumshu by Soviet troops was a decisive event in the entire Kuril operation. Now there are remnants of Japanese equipment lying everywhere here. Very picturesque.

That's all for today!)
Thank you all for another portion of attention and interest in your country)
World!

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 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 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 European countries, the established “international law” (which, however, concerned only European countries) gave a preferential right to own “new lands” if the country had priority in publishing a map of the relevant territories 10.

1761 Senate decree of August 24 allows free fishing sea ​​beast in the Kuril Islands with the return of 10th part of the production 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 state to acquire the right to 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 south coast Hokkaido in the 16th century, but their settlement received administrative registration only in 1604, when the administration of the Principality of Matsumae was established here (in Russia it was then called Matmai). 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 towards 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 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, again included open lands into its state, notifying the rest of the world about it.” 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 had become a small village on southwest coast O. 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 ​​​​modern Good Beginning Bay (Naibo) and in the area modern city 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 round the world expedition I.F. Kruzenshtern) 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:

“The proximity of Russia to Japan made us desire friendly ties for the true well-being of this last empire, for which 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 in circumnavigation, to which he set off in 1807 from Kronstadt, and the purpose of the expedition, as he wrote in his memoirs, was “the discovery and inventory of the 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 state (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 anyone To a foreign vessel not only stick to 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.

Nevertheless, as noted by A.Yu. Plotnikov, Russia could also 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 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, delivering food to many inhabitants of their other islands, and for this circumstance alone they cannot but value this item.

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 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 boundaries Great Japan", in 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 near Pacific coast 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 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. Crown 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 due persistence and did not appreciate the strategic importance of the Kuril Islands, which blocked access to the Pacific Ocean from 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 without paying trade and customs duties for 10 years, visit the port of Korsakov on South Sakhalin, where the Japanese consulate was established. 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 Treaty of 1875, which the Japanese side regularly refers to in disputes over the ownership of the Kuril Islands, after 1905 became simply 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.”

Next Key Point – Second World War. 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 went 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 Kurile Islands(Kunashir, Iturup, Habomai and Shikotan) are not included in the concept of the “Kuril Islands”, which Japan abandoned in the Treaty of San Francisco. 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 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 at the same time did not have it geographical map. 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 to the UN) suggested that a Japanese diplomat of 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 others territorial requirements. 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 seabed and in its subsoil, as well as for the purpose of managing 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 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 annuls 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, do not fall under 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.

The Kuril Islands, part of the Sakhalin region, consist of 56 large and small islands of volcanic origin. Stretching from north to south, from Kamchatka to the Japanese island of Hokkaido, these islands are of much more geostrategic importance for Russia than might seem at first glance.

Non-freezing straits

Between the islands of the Kuril ridge there are only two straits that do not freeze in the cold season. This is the Catherine Strait, located between the islands of Iturup and Kunashir, as well as the Frieza Strait between the islands of Iturup and Urup. If these southern islands belonged to another country, it is difficult to even imagine how the transport connection between, for example, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and Vladivostok in winter. In addition, we should not forget about the Russian navy in the Far East. Ships from Vladivostok will not be able to sail into the Pacific Ocean in winter without agreement with third countries.

Mineral deposits

Despite their small size, the islands of the Kuril ridge contain significant amounts of explored minerals. Ores of non-ferrous metals and mercury were found here, and hydrocarbon deposits were found in the coastal zone. In addition, the richest rhenium mineral deposit in the world was found on Iturup Island. Rhenium is contained here in the form of the mineral rhenium, the extraction of the metal from which is more promising than mining by traditional methods. In addition, rhenium is very rare metal, which has a number of unique properties, and therefore is highly valued on the world market.

Status of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk

In 2014, one of the major events recent times in the field of settlement legal status shelf territories of Russia. The UN Commission on the Continental Shelf recognized the Sea of ​​Okhotsk inland sea Russian Federation, and, accordingly, the rights to everything Natural resources that this territory contains. These are not only the richest hydrocarbon deposits, but also biological resources - fish, crabs and other seafood. It is not difficult to guess that if at least part of the Kuril Islands belonged to another country, Russia would have to share these wealth with its neighbor.

Fishing for biological resources

The coastal waters of the Kuril Islands are the richest reserves of Kamchatka crabs, salmon and many other valuable biological resources. The increased interest in this territory on the part of other countries is eloquently evidenced by regular cases of poaching of foreign ships in the coastal waters of the archipelago.

Population of the Kuril Islands

Non-freezing straits and natural resources- this is certainly very important. But the main wealth of the Kuril Islands is the people who live here. According to 2017 data, more than 19 thousand people live on the territory of two cities and several villages. This is quite a lot, given the island specificity of the region and certain difficulties caused transport accessibility. The islands are a special world, and the people who inhabit the Kuril Islands love their small homeland very much.

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 it says today IA REGNUM.
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 from 1646 year 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 their territory 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 Far East 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, traveled to the Kuril Islands in 1721, after which the Evreinovs personally presented Peter I with a report on this voyage and a map.

Russian navigators Captain Shpanberg and Lieutenant Walton in 1739 were the first Europeans to open the way to the eastern shores of Japan and visit Japanese islands Hondo (Honshu) and Matsmae (Hokkaido), described the Kuril ridge and mapped all the Kuril Islands and east coast 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 into 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 the “Drawing sea ​​islands" Kozyrevsky was written: "On the first and other islands in Kamchatka Nos, the autocratic ones shown smoked on that campaign with affection and greetings, and brought others in military order, again in 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 canceled. 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 start trading with local residents. Russia was interested in purchasing food from Japan for Russian fishing expeditions and settlements in Alaska and the Pacific Islands, but it was never possible to establish trade, as it was prohibited by the Japanese Isolation Law of 1639, which read: “For the future, as long as the sun shines on the world, 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 sends a strict order to Russian industrialists in the Kuril Islands so that they "did not touch islands under the jurisdiction of other powers", and a year before she issued a decree on equipping a round-the-world expedition for accurate description and mapping the islands from Masmaya to Kamchatka Lopatka, so that their " formally classify everything as possession Russian state ". It was ordered not to allow foreign industrialists to " trade and crafts in places belonging to Russia and with local residents to deal peacefully"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.
.. .

The authorities of Russia and Japan have been unable to sign a peace treaty since 1945 due to a dispute over the ownership of the southern part of the Kuril Islands.

The Northern Territories Problem (北方領土問題 Hoppo ryo do mondai) is a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia that Japan considers unresolved since the end of World War II. After the war, all the Kuril Islands came under the administrative control of the USSR, but a number of the southern islands - Iturup, Kunashir and the Lesser Kuril Ridge - are disputed by Japan.

In Russia disputed territories are part of the Kuril and South Kuril urban districts of the Sakhalin region. Japan claims four islands in the southern part of the Kuril ridge - Iturup, Kunashir, Shikotan and Habomai, citing the bilateral Treaty on Trade and Borders of 1855. Moscow's position is that the southern Kuril Islands became part of the USSR (which Russia became the successor of) results of the Second World War, and Russian sovereignty over them, which has the appropriate international legal registration, is beyond doubt.

The problem of ownership of the southern Kuril Islands is the main obstacle to the complete settlement of Russian-Japanese relations.

Iturup(Japanese: 択捉島 Etorofu) is an island in the southern group of the Great Kuril Islands, the largest island of the archipelago.

Kunashir(Ainu Black Island, Japanese 国後島 Kunashiri-to:) is the southernmost island of the Great Kuril Islands.

Shikotan(Japanese 色丹島 Sikotan-to:?, in early sources Sikotan; name from the Ainu language: “shi” - large, significant; “kotan” - village, city) is the largest island of the Lesser Ridge of the Kuril Islands.

Habomai(Japanese 歯舞群島 Habomai-gunto?, Suisho, “Flat Islands”) is the Japanese name for a group of islands in the northwest Pacific Ocean, together with the island of Shikotan in Soviet and Russian cartography, considered as the Lesser Kuril Ridge. The Habomai group includes the islands of Polonsky, Oskolki, Zeleny, Tanfilyeva, Yuri, Demina, Anuchina and a number of small ones. Separated by the Soviet Strait from the island of Hokkaido.

History of the Kuril Islands

17th century
Before the arrival of the Russians and Japanese, the islands were 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 first mention of the Kuril Islands dates back to 1646, when N. I. Kolobov spoke about the bearded people inhabiting the islands ainah.

The Japanese received the first information about the islands during an expedition [source not specified 238 days] to Hokkaido in 1635. It is not known whether she actually got to the Kuril Islands or learned about them indirectly, but in 1644 a map was drawn up on which they were designated under the collective name “thousand islands.” Candidate of Geographical Sciences T. Adashova notes that the map of 1635 “is considered by many scientists to be very approximate and even incorrect.” Then, in 1643, the islands were explored by the Dutch led by Martin Friese. This expedition amounted to more than detailed maps and described the lands.

XVIII century
In 1711, Ivan Kozyrevsky went to the Kuril Islands. He visited only 2 northern islands: Shumshu and Paramushire, - but he questioned in detail the Ainu who inhabited them and the Japanese who were brought there by the storm. In 1719, Peter I sent an expedition to Kamchatka under the leadership of Ivan Evreinov and Fyodor Luzhin, which reached the island of Simushir in the south.

In 1738-1739, Martyn Shpanberg walked along the entire ridge, plotting the islands he encountered on the map. Subsequently, the Russians, avoiding dangerous voyages to the southern islands, developed the northern ones and imposed tribute on the local population. Those who did not want to pay it and went to distant islands, took amanats - hostages from among close relatives. But soon, in 1766, centurion Ivan Cherny from Kamchatka was sent to the southern islands. He was ordered to attract the Ainu into citizenship without the use of violence or threats. However, he did not follow this decree, mocked them, and poached. All this led to a revolt of the indigenous population in 1771, during which many Russians were killed.

The Siberian nobleman Antipov achieved great success with the Irkutsk translator Shabalin. They managed to win the favor of the Kurils, and in 1778-1779 they managed to bring into citizenship more than 1,500 people from Iturup, Kunashir and even Matsumaya (now Japanese Hokkaido). In the same 1779, Catherine II, by decree, freed those who had accepted Russian citizenship from all taxes. But relations with the Japanese were not built: they forbade the Russians from going to these three islands.

In the “Extensive Land Description of the Russian State...” of 1787, a list of 21 islands was given, owned by Russia. It included islands as far as Matsumaya (Hokkaido), the status of which was not clearly defined, since Japan had a city in its southern part. At the same time, the Russians had no real control even over the islands south of Urup. There, the Japanese considered the Kurilians their subjects and actively used violence against them, which caused discontent. In May 1788, a Japanese merchant ship arriving at Matsumai was attacked. In 1799, by order of the central government of Japan, two outposts were founded in Kunashir and Iturup, and security began to be maintained constantly.

19th century
Representative of the Russian-American Company Nikolai Rezanov, who arrived in Nagasaki as the first Russian envoy, tried to resume negotiations on trade with Japan in 1805. But he too failed. However, Japanese officials, who were not satisfied with the despotic policy of the supreme power, hinted to him that it would be nice to carry out a forceful action in these lands, which could push the situation into dead center. This was carried out on behalf of Rezanov in 1806-1807 by an expedition of two ships led by Lieutenant Khvostov and Midshipman Davydov. Ships were looted, a number of trading posts were destroyed, and a Japanese village on Iturup was burned. They were later tried, but the attack led to a serious deterioration in Russian-Japanese relations for some time. In particular, this was the reason for the arrest of Vasily Golovnin’s expedition.

In exchange for ownership of southern Sakhalin, Russia transferred all of the Kuril Islands to Japan in 1875.

XX century
After defeat in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, Russia transferred the southern part of Sakhalin to Japan.
In February 1945, the Soviet Union promised the United States and Great Britain to start a war with Japan, subject to the return of Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands.
February 2, 1946. Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on the inclusion of South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands into the RSFSR.
1947. Deportation of Japanese and Ainu from the islands to Japan. 17,000 Japanese and an unknown number of Ainu were evicted.
November 5, 1952. A powerful tsunami hit the entire coast of the Kuril Islands, Paramushir was hit the hardest. A giant wave washed away the city of Severo-Kurilsk (formerly Kashiwabara). It was forbidden to mention this disaster in the press.
In 1956, the Soviet Union and Japan adopted the Joint Treaty, officially ending the war between the two countries and handing over Habomai and Shikotan to Japan. However, it was not possible to sign the agreement: the United States threatened not to give Japan the island of Okinawa if Tokyo renounced its claims to Iturup and Kunashir.

Maps of the Kuril Islands

Kuril Islands on the English map of 1893. Plans of the Kuril Islands, from sketches chiefly mand by Mr. H. J. Snow, 1893. (London, Royal Geographical Society, 1897, 54×74 cm)

Fragment of the map Japan and Korea - Location of Japan in the Western Pacific (1:30 000 000), 1945

Photo map of the Kuril Islands based on a NASA satellite image, April 2010.

List of all islands

View of Habomai from Hokkaido
Green Island (Japanese: 志発島 Shibotsu-to)
Polonsky Island (Japanese: 多楽島 Taraku-to)
Tanfilyeva Island (Japanese: 水晶島 Suisho-jima)
Yuri Island (Japanese: 勇留島 Yuri-to)
Anuchina Island (秋勇留島 Akiyuri-to)
Demina Islands (Japanese: 春苅島 Harukari-to)
Shard Islands
Rock Kira
Cave Rock (Kanakuso) - sea lion rookery on the rock.
Sail Rock (Hokoki)
Rock Candle (Rosoku)
Fox Islands (Todo)
Cone Islands (Kabuto)
Jar Dangerous
Watchman Island (Khomosiri or Muika)

Drying Rock (Odoke)
Reef Island (Amagi-sho)
Signal Island (Japanese: 貝殻島 Kaigara-jima)
Amazing Rock (Hanare)
Rock Seagull