In 1869, Sakhalin Island was officially declared a place of royal exile, and until the beginning of the twentieth century, the majority of the island's inhabitants were convicts.

In 1890, the famous Russian writer Anton Pavlovich Chekhov traveled to Sakhalin Island to “study the life of convicts and exiles.” In preparation for the trip, Chekhov studied more than a hundred works and notes of travelers, monographs of scientists, ethnographic materials, and records of officials of the 17th-19th centuries.

The creative result of this trip was the artistic and journalistic book “Sakhalin Island” (From Travel Notes), which was based not only on personal impressions from numerous meetings, but also on statistical data collected by the writer on the island.

Thanks to the fact that the writer worked for three months on Sakhalin as a census taker, he was able to get to know in great detail the life and everyday life of settlers and convicts. From the Sakhalin trip, according to the writer, he brought “a chest of all kinds of convict stuff”: ten thousand statistical cards, samples of article lists of convicts, petitions, complaints from doctor Perlin, etc.
Chekhov returned to Moscow on December 8, 1890, and at the beginning of 1891 he began work on a book about Sakhalin: he read the necessary literature, put the collected materials in order, and sketched out the first chapters.

The fact that Chekhov came to Sakhalin and his contribution to the history of the region is a source of pride for Sakhalin residents. In September 1995, thanks to the enthusiasm of the Sakhalin public, a city literary and art museum of A.P. Chekhov’s book “Sakhalin Island” appeared in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. Talking about this book, which is the most complete “encyclopedia” about Sakhalin of the 19th century, the museum reveals the beginning of the history of the region from the founding of penal colonies Tsarist Russia, shown by one of the great classical writers.

The museum, along with other exhibits, displays a collection of Chekhov's books "Sakhalin Island", translated and published in different countries world: Japan, USA, Netherlands, Poland, Italy, France, Finland, China, Spain. This is the only museum in the world that houses a large collection of books "Sakhalin Island", published in many languages ​​of the world.

Chekhov Anton Pavlovich

Sakhalin island

Anton Chekhov

Sakhalin island

I. G. Nikolaevsk-on-Amur. - Steamship "Baikal". - Cape Pronge and the entrance to the Estuary. - Sakhalin Peninsula. - La Perouse, Broughton, Krusenstern and Nevelskoy. Japanese researchers. - Cape Jaore. - Tatar coast. - De-Kastri.

II. Brief geography. - Arrival in Northern Sakhalin. - Fire. - Pier. - In Slobodka. - Lunch at Mr. L. - Dating. - Gen. Kononovich. - Arrival of the Governor General. - Lunch and illumination.

III. Census. - Contents of statistical cards. - What did I ask about, and how did they answer me? - The hut and its inhabitants. - Opinions of exiles about the census.

IV. Duika River. - Alexander Valley. - Slobodka Alexandrovka. Tramp Handsome. - Alexander's post. - His past. - Yurts. Sakhalin Paris.

V. Alexandrovskaya exile prison. - Shared cameras. Shackled. - Golden Handle. - Latrine places. - Maidan. - Hard labor in Aleksandrovsk. - Servant. - Workshops.

VI Egor's Story

VII. Lighthouse. - Korsakovskoe. - Collection of Dr. P.I. Suprunenko. Meteorological station. - Climate of the Aleksandrovsky district. Novo-Mikhailovka. - Potemkin. - Ex-executioner Tersky. - Krasny Yar. - Butakovo.

VIII. Arkan River. - Arkovsky cordon. - First, Second and Third Arkovo. Arkovskaya Valley. - Villages along the west coast: Mgachi, Tangi, Khoe, Trambaus, Viakhty and Vangi. - Tunnel. - Cable house. - Due. - Barracks for families. - Duya prison. - Coal mines. - Voivodeship prison. Chained to cars.

IX. Tym, or Tymi. - Lieutenant. Boshniak. - Polyakov. - Upper Armudan. - Lower Armudan. - Derbinskoe. - Walk along Tymi. - Uskovo. - Gypsies. - A walk through the taiga. - Voskresenskoe.

X. Rykovskoe. - The local prison. - Meteorological station M.N. Galkin-Vraskoy. - Palevo. - Mikryukov. - Walzy and Longari. - Mado-Tymovo. - Andree-Ivanovskoe.

XI. Designed district. - Stone Age. - Was there free colonization? Gilyaki. - Their numerical composition, appearance, build, food, clothing, housing, hygienic conditions. - Their character. - Attempts to Russify them. Orochi.

XII. My departure to the south. - Cheerful lady. - West Bank. - Currents. Mauka. - Crillon. - Aniva. - Korsakov post. - New acquaintances. Nord-Ost. - Climate of Southern Sakhalin. - Korsakov prison. - Fire convoy.

XIII. Poro an Tomari. - Muravyovsky post. - First, Second and Third Pad. Solovyovka. - Lutoga. - Naked Cape. - Mitsulka. - Larch. Khomutovka. - Big Yelan. - Vladimirovka. - Farm or company. - Lugovoe. Popovsky Yurts. - Birch forests. - Crosses. - Big and Small Takoe. Galkino-Vraskoe. - Oak trees. - Naibuchi. - Sea.

XIV. Taraika. - Free settlers. - Their failures. - Aino, the boundaries of their distribution, numerical composition, appearance, food, clothing, housing, their customs. - Japanese. - Kusun-Kotan. - Japanese Consulate.

XV. The owners are convicts. - Transfer to settlers. - Selection of sites for new settlements. - Housekeeping. - Half people. - Transfer to peasants. Resettlement of exiled peasants to the mainland. - Life in villages. Proximity to prison. - Composition of the population by place of birth and by class. Village authorities.

XVI. Composition of the exiled population by gender. - Women's question. - Convict women and villages. - Roommates and cohabitants. - Women of free status.

XVII. Composition of the population by age. - Marital status of the exiles. - Marriages. Fertility. - Sakhalin children.

XVIII. Classes for exiles. - Agriculture. - Hunting. - Fishing. Occasional fish: chum salmon and herring. - Prison catches. - Skills.

XIX. Food for exiles. - What and how do prisoners eat? - Cloth. - Church. School. - Literacy.

XX. Free population. - Lower ranks of local military commands. Wardens. - Intelligentsia.

XXI. Morality of the exiled population. - Crime. - Investigation and trial. - Punishment. - Rods and whips. - The death penalty.

XXII. Fugitives on Sakhalin. - Reasons for running away. - Composition of fugitives by origin, rank, etc.

XXIII. Morbidity and mortality of the exiled population. - Medical organization. - Infirmary in Aleksandrovsk.

Sakhalin island. For the first time - journal. "Russian Thought", 1893, Nos. 10-12; 1894, No. 2, 3, 5-7. The journal published chapters I-XIX; with the addition of chapters XX-XXIII, "Sakhalin Island" was published in a separate edition: Anton Chekhov, "Sakhalin Island". From travel notes. M., 1895.

Even while preparing for his trip to Sakhalin, Chekhov began compiling a bibliography and even wrote individual pieces future book, which did not require personal Sakhalin observations.

Chekhov returned to Moscow from Sakhalin on December 8, 1890. From his Sakhalin trip A.P. Chekhov brought, in his words, “a chest of all kinds of convict stuff”: 10,000 statistical cards, samples of article lists of convicts, petitions, complaints from the doctor B. Perlin, etc.

Chekhov began work on a book about Sakhalin at the beginning of 1891. In a letter to A.S. To Suvorin on May 27, 1891, Chekhov notes: “...The Sakhalin book will be published in the fall, because, honestly, I am already writing and writing it.” At first, he was definitely going to print the entire book and refused to publish individual chapters or just notes about Sakhalin, but in 1892, in connection with the social upsurge among the Russian intelligentsia caused by the organization of famine relief, Chekhov decided to publish a chapter of his book “Fugitives on Sakhalin” "in the collection "Help to the Starving", M., 1892.

In 1893, when the book was completed, Chekhov began to worry about its volume and style of presentation, which was not suitable for publication in a thick magazine. The editor of Russian Thought, V. M. Lavrov, recalled in his essay “At the Timeless Grave”: “Sakhalin was promised to us, and with great difficulty we defended it in the form in which it appeared in the last books of 1893 and in the first books of 1894." (Russian Gazette, 1904, No. 202).

Despite Chekhov's concerns about the attitude of government authorities towards his work, Sakhalin Island went off with little difficulty. On November 25, 1893, Chekhov wrote to Suvorin: “Galkin-Vraskoy” is the head of the Main Prison Directorate. - P.E. complained to Feoktistov, the head of the Main Directorate for Press Affairs. - P.E."; the November book of "Russian Thought" was delayed for three days. But everything turned out well." Summarizing the history of the publication of “Sakhalin Island” in the journal “Russian Thought”, Chekhov wrote to S.A. Petrov (May 23, 1897): “My travel notes were published in Russian Thought, all except for two chapters, delayed by censorship, which did not make it into the magazine, but did end up in the book.”

Even during the period of preparation for the trip to Sakhalin, Chekhov determined the genre of the future book, its scientific and journalistic character. The author’s reflections, excursions of a scientific nature, and artistic sketches of nature, everyday life and the life of people on Sakhalin should have found their place in it; Undoubtedly, the genre of the book was greatly influenced by “Notes from the House of the Dead” by F.M. Dostoevsky and "Siberia and hard labor" by S.V. Maksimov, to which the author repeatedly refers in the text of the narrative.

According to researchers, even in the process of working on the draft of “Sakhalin Islands,” the structure of the entire book was determined: chapters I-XIII are constructed as travel essays, dedicated first to Northern and then to Southern Sakhalin; chapters XIV-XXIII - as problematic essays, devoted to certain aspects of the Sakhalin way of life, agricultural colonization, children, women, fugitives, the work of Sakhalin residents, their morality, etc. In each chapter, the author tried to convey to readers the main idea: Sakhalin is “hell.”

At the beginning of the work, Chekhov did not like the tone of the story; in a letter to Suvorin dated July 28, 1893, he describes the process of crystallization of the book’s style as follows; “I wrote for a long time and felt for a long time that I was going down the wrong road, until I finally caught the falsehood. The falsehood was precisely that it was as if I wanted to teach someone with my “Sakhalin” and at the same time I was hiding something and I restrain myself. But as soon as I began to portray what an eccentric I felt on Sakhalin and what pigs there were, then it became easy for me and my work began to boil..."

In the description of Sakhalin life, a parallel is persistently drawn with the recent serf past of Russia: the same rods, the same domestic and noble slavery, as, for example, in the description of the warden of the Derbinsk prison - “the landowner of the good old days.”

One of the central chapters of the book is Chapter VI - “Egor’s Story”. In Yegor’s personality and his fate, one of the characteristic features convict population of Sakhalin: the accident of crimes caused in most cases not by the vicious inclinations of the criminal, but by the character life situation, which could not but be resolved by crime.

The publication of "Sakhalin Islands" on the pages of the magazine "Russian Thought" immediately attracted the attention of metropolitan and provincial newspapers. "The whole book bears the stamp of the author's talent and his beautiful soul. "Sakhalin Island" is a very serious contribution to the study of Russia, while at the same time being interesting literary work. Many heart-tugging details are collected in this book, and one only needs to wish that they would attract the attention of those on whom the fate of the “unfortunate” depends.” (“Week”, 1895, No. 38).

In 1869, Sakhalin Island was officially declared a place of royal exile, and until the beginning of the twentieth century, the majority of the island's inhabitants were convicts.

In 1890, the famous Russian writer Anton Pavlovich Chekhov traveled to Sakhalin Island to “study the life of convicts and exiles.” In preparation for the trip, Chekhov studied more than a hundred works and notes of travelers, monographs of scientists, ethnographic materials, and records of officials of the 17th-19th centuries.

The creative result of this trip was the artistic and journalistic book “Sakhalin Island” (From Travel Notes), which was based not only on personal impressions from numerous meetings, but also on statistical data collected by the writer on the island.

Thanks to the fact that the writer worked for three months on Sakhalin as a census taker, he was able to get to know in great detail the life and everyday life of settlers and convicts. From the Sakhalin trip, according to the writer, he brought “a chest of all kinds of convict stuff”: ten thousand statistical cards, samples of article lists of convicts, petitions, complaints from doctor Perlin, etc.
Chekhov returned to Moscow on December 8, 1890, and at the beginning of 1891 he began work on a book about Sakhalin: he read the necessary literature, put the collected materials in order, and sketched out the first chapters.

The fact that Chekhov came to Sakhalin and his contribution to the history of the region is a source of pride for Sakhalin residents. In September 1995, thanks to the enthusiasm of the Sakhalin public, a city literary and art museum of A.P. Chekhov’s book “Sakhalin Island” appeared in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. Talking about this book, which is the most complete “encyclopedia” about Sakhalin of the 19th century, the museum reveals the beginning of the history of the region from the founding of the hard labor camps of Tsarist Russia, shown by one of the great classical writers.

The museum, along with other exhibits, displays a collection of Chekhov's books "Sakhalin Island", translated and published in different countries of the world: Japan, USA, the Netherlands, Poland, Italy, France, Finland, China, Spain. This is the only museum in the world that houses a large collection of books "Sakhalin Island", published in many languages ​​of the world.

Nikolaevsk-on-Amur. - Steamship "Baikal". – Cape Pronge and the entrance to the Liman. – Sakhalin Peninsula. - La Perouse, Broughton, Krusenstern and Nevelskoy. – Japanese researchers. - Cape Jaore. - Tatar coast. - De-Kastri.

On July 5, 1890, I arrived by ship in Nikolaevsk, one of the most eastern points our fatherland. The Amur is very wide here, there are only 27 miles left to the sea; the place is majestic and beautiful, but the memories of the past of this region, the stories of companions about the fierce winter and no less fierce local customs, the proximity of hard labor and the very sight of an abandoned, dying city completely take away the desire to admire the landscape.

Nikolaevsk was founded not so long ago, in 1850, by the famous Gennady Nevelsky, and this is perhaps the only bright place in the history of the city. In the fifties and sixties, when culture was being planted along the Amur, not sparing soldiers, prisoners and migrants, officials who ruled the region had their stay in Nikolaevsk, many Russian and foreign adventurers came here, settlers settled, seduced by the extraordinary abundance of fish and animals, and, apparently, the city was not alien to human interests, since there was even a case that one visiting scientist found it necessary and possible to give a public lecture here at the club. Now, almost half of the houses have been abandoned by their owners, dilapidated, and dark frameless windows look at you like the eye sockets of a skull. The inhabitants lead a sleepy, drunken life and generally live from hand to mouth, which is what God sent them to do. They make a living by supplying fish to Sakhalin, gold predation, exploitation of foreigners, and selling show-offs, that is, deer antlers, from which the Chinese prepare stimulant pills. On the way from Khabarovka to Nikolaevsk I had to meet quite a few smugglers; here they do not hide their profession. One of them, showing me golden sand and a couple of show-offs, told me with pride: “And my father was a smuggler!” The exploitation of foreigners, in addition to the usual soldering, fooling, etc., is sometimes expressed in an original form. Thus, the Nikolaev merchant Ivanov, now deceased, traveled to Sakhalin every summer and took tribute there from the Gilyaks, and tortured and hanged faulty payers.

There is no hotel in the city. At a public meeting I was allowed to rest after dinner in a hall with a low ceiling - here in the winter, they say, balls are given; When I asked where I could spend the night, they just shrugged their shoulders. There was nothing to do, I had to spend two nights on the ship; when he went back to Khabarovka, I found myself broke like a crayfish: where will I go? My luggage is on the pier; I walk along the shore and don’t know what to do with myself. Just opposite the city, two or three versts from the shore, there is the steamer “Baikal”, on which I will go to the Tatar Strait, but they say that it will leave in four or five days, not earlier, although the retreat flag is already flying on its mast . Is it possible to take it and go to Baikal? But it’s awkward: they probably won’t let me in, they’ll say it’s too early. The wind blew, Cupid frowned and became agitated like the sea. It's getting sad. I go to the meeting, have lunch there for a long time and listen to how at the next table they talk about gold, about show-offs, about a magician who came to Nikolaevsk, about some Japanese who pulls his teeth not with forceps, but simply with his fingers. If you listen carefully and for a long time, then, my God, how far life here is from Russia! Starting with the chum salmon balyk, which is used to snack on vodka here, and ending with the conversations, you can feel something unique, not Russian, in everything. While I was sailing along the Amur, I had a feeling as if I was not in Russia, but somewhere in Patagonia or Texas; not to mention the original, non-Russian nature, it always seemed to me that the structure of our Russian life is completely alien to the native Amur people, that Pushkin and Gogol are incomprehensible here and therefore are not needed, our history is boring and we, visitors from Russia, seem to be foreigners. In terms of religion and politics, I noticed complete indifference here. The priests whom I saw on the Amur eat meat during Lent, and, by the way, they told me about one of them, in a white silk caftan, that he was engaged in gold predation, competing with his spiritual children. If you want to make an Amur citizen feel bored and yawn, then talk to him about politics, about the Russian government, about Russian art. And morality here is somehow special, not ours. Chivalrous treatment of a woman is elevated almost to a cult and at the same time it is not considered reprehensible to give up your wife for money to a friend; or even better: on the one hand, there is the absence of class prejudices - here even with the exile they behave as if they were an equal, and on the other hand, it is not a sin to shoot a Chinese tramp in the forest like a dog, or even to secretly hunt humpbacks.

But I will continue about myself. Not finding shelter, I decided to go to Baikal in the evening. But here is a new problem: there is a considerable swell, and the Gilyak boatmen do not agree to carry it for any money. Again I walk along the shore and don’t know what to do with myself. Meanwhile, the sun is already setting, and the waves on the Amur are darkening. On this and on the other bank, Gilyak dogs howl furiously. And why did I come here? - I ask myself, and my journey seems extremely frivolous to me. And the thought that hard labor is already close, that in a few days I will land on Sakhalin soil, without having a single letter of recommendation that I might be asked to go back - this thought worries me unpleasantly. But finally two Gilyaks agree to take me for a ruble, and on a boat made of three planks, I safely reach “Baikal”.

This is a marine type steamer average size, a merchant who seemed to me quite tolerable after the Baikal and Amur steamships. It makes voyages between Nikolaevsk, Vladivostok and Japanese ports, carrying mail, soldiers, prisoners, passengers and cargo, mainly government goods; under a contract concluded with the treasury, which pays him a substantial subsidy, he is obliged to visit Sakhalin several times during the summer: at the Alexander post and at the southern Korsakov post. The tariff is very high, which is probably not found anywhere else in the world. Colonization, which first of all requires freedom and ease of movement, and high tariffs - this is completely incomprehensible. The wardroom and cabins on the Baikal are cramped, but clean and furnished in a completely European style; there is a piano. The servants here are Chinese with long braids, they are called in English - fight. The cook is also Chinese, but his cuisine is Russian, although all the dishes are bitter from the spicy keri and smell of some kind of perfume, like corylopsis.

Having read about the storms and ice of the Tartar Strait, I expected to meet whalers with hoarse voices on “Baikal”, splashing tobacco chewing gum when talking, but in reality I found quite intelligent people. The commander of the steamship, Mr. L., a native of the western region, has been sailing in the northern seas for more than 30 years and has traveled them length and breadth. In his time he has seen many miracles, knows a lot and talks interestingly. Having circled around Kamchatka for half my life and Kuril Islands, he, perhaps with more right than Othello, could talk about “the most barren deserts, terrible abysses, inaccessible cliffs.” I owe him a lot of information that was useful to me for these notes. He has three assistants: Mr. B., the nephew of the famous astronomer B., and two Swedes - Ivan Martynych and Ivan Veniaminych, kind and friendly people.

On July 8, before lunch, the Baikal weighed anchor. With us came three hundred soldiers under the command of an officer and several prisoners. One prisoner was accompanied by a five-year-old girl, his daughter, who held his shackles as he ascended the ladder. There was, by the way, one convict woman who attracted attention by the fact that her husband voluntarily followed her to hard labor. Besides me and the officer, there were several other classy passengers of both sexes and, by the way, even one baroness. Let the reader not be surprised at such an abundance of intelligent people here in the desert. Along the Amur and in the Primorsky region, the intelligentsia, with a generally small population, makes up a considerable percentage, and there is relatively more of it here than in any Russian province. There is a city on the Amur where there are 16 generals alone, military and civilian. Now there are, perhaps, even more of them.