Chekhov Anton Pavlovich "Antosha Chekhonte". Anton Chekhov - Sakhalin Island Sakhalin Island summary of chapters
Chekhov Anton Pavlovich
Sakhalin island
Anton Chekhov
Sakhalin island
I. G. Nikolaevsk-on-Amur. - Steamboat "Baikal". - Cape Pronge and the entrance to Liman. - Sakhalin Peninsula. - La Perouse, Brauton, Krusenstern and Nevelskoy. Japanese explorers. - Cape Jaore. - Tatar coast. - De-Kastri.
II. Brief geography. - Arrival in Northern Sakhalin. - Fire. - Pier. - In Slobodka. - Dinner at Mr. L. - Acquaintances. - Gen. Kononovich. - Arrival of the Governor-General. - Dinner and illumination.
III. Census. - The content of statistical cards. - What I asked, and how they answered me. - The hut and its inhabitants. - Opinions of exiles about the census.
IV. Duika river. - Alexander Valley. - Slobidka Aleksandrovka. Tramp Handsome. - Alexander post. - His past. - Yurts. Sakhalin Paris.
V. Aleksandrovsk exile prison. - Shared cameras. Shackled. - Golden Pen. - Outhouses. - Maidan. - Hard labor in Aleksandrovsk. - Servants. - Workshops.
VI Yegor's story
VII. Lighthouse. - Korsakov. - Collection of Dr. P.I. Suprunenko. Meteorological station. - The climate of the Aleksandrovsky district. Novo-Mikhailovka. - Potemkin. - Ex-executioner Tersky. - Krasny Yar. - Butakovo.
VIII. River Arkan. - Arkovsky cordon. - First, Second and Third Arkovo. Arkovskaya valley. - Settlements along the western coast: Mgachi, Tangi, Hoe, Trambaus, Viakhty and Vangi. - Tunnel. - Cable house. - Due. - Barracks for families. - Duja prison. - Coal mines. - Provincial prison. Chained to wheelbarrows.
IX. Tym, or Tym. - Leith. Boschniak. - Polyakov. - Upper Armudan. - Lower Armudan. - Derbinsk. - Walk along Tymi. - Uskovo. - Gypsies. - Walk in the taiga. - Resurrection.
X. Rykovskoe. - The local prison. - Meteorological station M.N. Galkin-Vrasky. - Fawn. - Mikryukov. - Valses and Longari. - Mado-Tymovo. - Andrey-Ivanovskoye.
XI. Designed district. - Stone Age. - Was there a free colonization? Gilyaki. - Their numerical composition, appearance, constitution, food, clothing, dwellings, hygienic conditions. - Their character. - Attempts to Russify them. Orochi.
XII. My departure to the south. - Cheerful lady. - West Coast. - Currents. Mauka. - Crillon. - Aniva. - Korsakov post. - New acquaintances. Nord-ost. - The climate of South Sakhalin. - Korsakov prison. - Fire brigade.
XIII. Poro en Tomari. - Muravyovskiy post. - First, Second and Third Pad. Solovyovka. - Lutoga. - Naked cape. - Mitsulka. - Larch. Khomutovka. - Big Elan. - Vladimirovka. - Farm or firm. - Meadow. Popov Yurts. - Birch forests. - Crosses. - Large and Small Takoe. Galkino-Vraskoe. - Oaks. - Naibuchi. - Sea.
XIV. Taraika. - Free settlers. - Their failures. - Aino, the boundaries of their distribution, numerical composition, appearance, food, clothing, dwellings, their customs. - The Japanese. - Kusun-Kotan. - Japanese Consulate.
XV. The hosts are convicts. - Transfer to the settlers. - Selection of places for new villages. - Home improvement. - Halfers. - Transfer to the peasants. Resettlement of peasants from exiles to the mainland. - Life in the villages. Proximity to prison. - The composition of the population by place of birth and by class. rural authorities.
XVI. Composition of the exiled population by sex. - Women's issue. - Hard labor women and settlements. - Cohabitants and cohabitants. - Women of the free state.
XVII. Composition of the population by age. - Marital status of the exiles. - Marriages. Fertility. - Sakhalin children.
XVIII. The occupations of the exiles. - Agriculture. - Hunting. - Fishing. Periodic fish: chum salmon and herring. - Prison catches. - Mastery.
XIX. The food of the exiles. - What and how prisoners eat. - Cloth. - Church. School. - Literacy.
XX. Free population. - Lower ranks of local military teams. Overseers. - Intelligentsia.
XXI. Morality of the exiled population. - Crime. - Investigation and trial. - Punishment. - Rods and whips. - The death penalty.
XXII. Runaways on Sakhalin. - Reasons for running away. - The composition of the fugitives by origin, ranks, 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, Nos. 2, 3, 5-7. The journal published chapters I-XIX; with the addition of chapters XX-XXIII "Sakhalin Island" was published as a separate publication: Anton Chekhov, "Sakhalin Island". From travel notes. M., 1895.
Even during the preparation of the trip to Sakhalin, Chekhov began compiling a bibliography and even wrote separate pieces of a future book that did not require personal observations from Sakhalin.
Chekhov returned to Moscow from Sakhalin on December 8, 1890. A.P. Chekhov brought, in his words, "a chest of all sorts of convict things": 10,000 statistical cards, samples of article lists of convicts, petitions, complaints from doctor B. Perlin, etc.
Chekhov began work on a book about Sakhalin in early 1891. In a letter to A.S. Suvorin dated May 27, 1891, Chekhov remarks: "... The Sakhalin book will be published in the fall, because, honestly, I am already writing and writing it." At first, he was going to print the entire book without fail and refused to publish individual chapters or just notes about Sakhalin, but in 1892, in connection with the public upsurge among the Russian intelligentsia, caused by the organization of assistance to the starving, Chekhov decided to publish a chapter of his book "The Runaways on Sakhalin " in the collection "Help for the Starving", M., 1892.
In 1893, when the book was finished, 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 Untimely Grave”: “Sakhalin was promised to us, and we defended it with great difficulty in the form in which it appeared in the last books of 1893 and in the first books of 1894." ("Russian Vedomosti", 1904, No. 202).
Despite Chekhov's fears about the attitude of government authorities to his work, "Sakhalin Island" passed with little difficulty. November 25, 1893 Chekhov wrote to Suvorin: "Galkin-Vraskoy" head of the Main Prison Department. - P.E." complained to Feoktistov "to 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." Summing up 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 that were detained by censorship, which did not get into the magazine, but did get into the book."
Even in the period of preparation for the trip to Sakhalin, Chekhov determined the genre of the future book, its scientific and journalistic nature. It should have found its place and author's reflections, and excursions of a scientific nature, and artistic sketches of nature, life and life of people on Sakhalin; undoubtedly, the genre of the book was greatly influenced by "Notes from the Dead House" by F.M. Dostoevsky and "Siberia and penal servitude" by S.V. Maksimov, to which the author repeatedly refers in the text of the narrative.
According to the researchers, even in the process of working on the draft of Sakhalin Island, the structure of the entire book was determined: chapters I-XIII are built as travel essays, devoted first to Northern and then 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 the Sakhalin people, their morality, etc. In each chapter, the author tried to convey to the 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 style of the book as follows; “I wrote for a long time and felt for a long time that I was going the wrong way, until I finally caught the falsehood. The falsehood was precisely that I seemed to want to teach someone with my Sakhalin and at the same time I was hiding something and restrain myself. But as soon as I began to portray what an eccentric I felt on Sakhalin and what pigs there, 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 fine slavery, as, for example, in the description of the caretaker 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". One of the characteristic features of the convict population of Sakhalin is emphasized in the personality of Yegor and in his fate: the randomness of crimes caused in most cases not by the vicious inclinations of the criminal, but by the nature of the life situation, which could not be resolved by the crime.
The publication of "Sakhalin Island" on the pages of the journal "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, being at the same time an interesting literary work. Many heart-grabbing details are collected in this book, and you only need to wish that they attracted the attention of those on whom the fate of the "unfortunate" depends. ("Week", 1895, No. 38).
I
G. Nikolaevsk-on-Amur. - Steamboat "Baikal". - Cape Pronge and the entrance to Liman. - Sakhalin Peninsula. - La Perouse, Brauton, Kruzenshtern and Nevelskoy. - Japanese explorers. - Cape Jaore. - Tatar coast. - De-Kastri.
On July 5, 1890, I arrived by steamer in the city of Nikolaevsk, one of the easternmost points of our fatherland. The Amur here is very wide, only 27 versts are left to the sea; the place is majestic and beautiful, but the memories of the past of this region, the stories of companions about a fierce winter and no less fierce local customs, the proximity of penal servitude 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 1950s and 1960s, when culture was being planted along the Amur River without sparing soldiers, prisoners, and migrants, officials who ruled the region had their stay in Nikolaevsk, many Russian and foreign adventurers came here, settlers settled, tempted 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 a visiting scientist found it necessary and possible to give a public lecture here in the club. Now, almost half of the houses are abandoned by their owners, dilapidated, and dark, frameless windows look at you like the eye sockets of a skull. The townsfolk lead a sleepy, drunken life and generally live from hand to mouth, than God sent. They make their living by supplying fish to Sakhalin, gold predation, exploitation of foreigners, selling show-offs, that is, deer antlers, from which the Chinese prepare stimulating 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 the golden sand and a couple of show-offs, said to me with pride: “And my father was a smuggler!” The exploitation of foreigners, apart from the usual soldering, fooling, etc., is sometimes expressed in an original form. So, the Nikolaev merchant Ivanov, now deceased, went to Sakhalin every summer and took tribute from the Gilyaks there, and tortured and hung the faulty payers.
There are no hotels in the city. In the public meeting they allowed me to rest after dinner in a hall with a low ceiling - here in the winter, they say, balls are given; to my question, where can I spend the night, they just shrugged their shoulders. Nothing to do, I had to spend two nights on the ship; when he went back to Khabarovka, I found myself like a crab on the rocks: can 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 Baikal steamer, 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 departure flag is already fluttering on its mast . Is it possible to take and go to Baikal? But it’s embarrassing: perhaps they won’t let me in, they’ll say it’s too early. The wind blew, Cupid frowned and became agitated like the sea. It becomes sad. I go to the meeting, have a long lunch there 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 tongs, 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 salmon salmon, which is used as a snack here for vodka, and ending with conversations, everything feels something of its own, not Russian. While I was sailing down the Amur, I had the feeling that 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 not needed, our history is boring and we, visitors from Russia, seem to be foreigners. In regard to the religious and political, I noticed here a complete indifference. The priests whom I saw on the Amur eat fast food, and, by the way, about one of them, in a white silk caftan, they told me that he was engaged in gold predation, competing with his spiritual children. If you want to make an Amur citizen bored and yawn, then talk to him about politics, about the Russian government, about Russian art. And morality here is somehow special, not ours. The 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 to a friend for money; or even better: on the one hand, the absence of class prejudice - here and with the exile they behave like an equal, and on the other hand, it’s not a sin to shoot a Chinese tramp in the forest like a dog, or even secretly hunt humpbacks.
But I will continue about myself. Finding no shelter, in the evening I decided to go to Baikal. But here is a new misfortune: a decent swell has spread, and the Gilyak boatmen do not agree to take it for any money. Again I walk along the shore and do not 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, the 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 a single letter of recommendation with me, that they may ask me to go back - this thought unpleasantly excites me. But finally, two Gilyaks agree to take me for a ruble, and on a boat made of three boards, I safely reach Baikal.
This is a medium-sized sea-type steamer, a merchant who seemed to me rather tolerable after the Baikal and Amur steamers. He makes flights between Nikolaevsk, Vladivostok and Japanese ports, carries mail, soldiers, prisoners, passengers and cargo, mainly state-owned; under a contract concluded with the treasury, which pays him a substantial subsidy, he is obliged to visit Sakhalin several times during the summer: to the Alexander post and to the southern Korsakov. The tariff is very high, which is probably not found anywhere else in the world. Colonization, which above 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 quite in a European way; 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 dishes are bitter from spicy keri and smell of some kind of perfume, like corylopsis.
Having read about the storms and ice of the Tatar Strait, I expected to meet on the Baikal whalers with hoarse voices, splashing tobacco gum when talking, but in reality I found quite intelligent people. The commander of the ship, Mr. L., a native of the western region, has been sailing in the northern seas for more than 30 years and has passed them far and wide. In his lifetime he has seen many miracles, knows a lot and tells interesting stories. Having circled half his life around Kamchatka and the Kuril Islands, he, perhaps with more right than Othello, could speak of "the most barren deserts, terrible abysses, impregnable cliffs." I am indebted to him for much of the 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.
July 8, before lunch, "Baikal" weighed anchor. With us were 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, when he climbed the ladder, held on to his shackles. There was, by the way, one convict who drew attention to herself by the fact that her husband voluntarily followed her to hard labor. In addition to 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 are relatively more of them here than in any Russian province. There is a city on the Amur where there are only 16 generals, military and civilians. Now there may be even more of them.
Day was quiet and clear. It's hot on deck, stuffy in the cabins; in water +18°. Such weather is just right for the Black Sea. On the right bank the forest burned; a solid green mass threw out a crimson flame; clouds of smoke merged into a long, black, motionless strip that hangs over the forest ... The fire is huge, but there is silence and calmness around, no one cares that the forests are dying. Obviously, the green wealth here belongs to God alone.
After dinner, at six o'clock, we were already at Cape Pronge. Here Asia ends, and one could say that in this place the Amur flows into the Great Ocean, if Fr. Sakhalin. Liman spreads wide before your eyes, a foggy strip is slightly visible in front - this is a convict island; to the left, lost in its own meanders, the shore disappears into the mist, stretching into the unknown north. It seems that the end of the world is here and that there is nowhere to go further. The soul is seized by a feeling that Odysseus probably experienced when he sailed on an unfamiliar sea and vaguely foresaw meetings with unusual creatures. And in fact, on the right, at the very turn into Liman, where a Gilyak village nestled on the shallows, some strange creatures are rushing towards us in two boats, screaming in an incomprehensible language and waving something. It's hard to tell what's in their hands, but as they swim closer, I can make out gray birds.
“They want to sell us dead geese,” someone explains.
We turn right. All along our path there are signs showing the fairway. The commander does not leave the bridge, and the mechanic does not get out of the car; "Baikal" starts to go quieter and quieter and goes like groping. Great care is needed, as it is not difficult to run aground here. The steamboat sits in 12 1/2 places, but it has to go 14 feet, and there was even a moment when we heard it crawl along the sand with a keel. It is this shallow fairway and the special picture that the Tatar and Sakhalin coasts give together that served as the main reason that Sakhalin was considered a peninsula in Europe for a long time. In 1787, in June, the famous French navigator, Count La Perouse, landed on the western coast of Sakhalin, above 48 °, and spoke here with the natives. Judging by the description he left, on the shore he found not only the Ainos who lived here, but also the Gilyaks who came to them to trade, experienced people who were well acquainted with both Sakhalin and the Tatar coast. Drawing on the sand, they explained to him that the land on which they live is an island and that this island is separated from the mainland and Iesso (Japan) by straits. Then, sailing further north along the western coast, he hoped that he would find a way out of the North Japan Sea to the Sea of Okhotsk and thereby significantly shorten his route to Kamchatka; but the higher he moved, the strait became smaller and smaller. The depth decreased every mile by one sazhen. He sailed to the north as long as the size of his ship allowed him, and, having reached a depth of 9 fathoms, he stopped. The gradual, uniform rise of the bottom and the fact that the current was almost imperceptible in the strait led him to the conviction that it was not in the strait, but in the bay, and that, therefore, Sakhalin was connected to the mainland by an isthmus. In de-Kastri, he once again had a meeting with the Gilyaks. When he drew an island for them on paper, separated from the mainland, one of them took a pencil from him and, drawing a line across the strait, explained that the Gilyaks sometimes had to drag their boats across this isthmus and that grass even grew on it - so I understood La Perouse. This convinced him even more strongly that Sakhalin was a peninsula. Nine years later, the Englishman W. Broughton was in the Tatar Strait. His boat was small, sitting in water no deeper than 9 feet, so that he managed to pass a little higher than La Pérouse. Stopping at a depth of two fathoms, he sent his assistant to the north to measure; this one met depths among the shallows on his way, but they gradually decreased and led him now to the Sakhalin coast, now to the low sandy shores of the other side, and at the same time such a picture was obtained, as if both banks merged; it seemed that the bay ended here and there was no passage. Thus Broughton must have concluded the same as La Pérouse.
Our famous Krusenstern, who explored the shores of the island in 1805, fell into the same mistake. He sailed to Sakhalin already with a preconceived idea, since he used the La Perouse map. He passed along the eastern coast and, rounding the northern capes of Sakhalin, entered the strait itself, keeping in the direction from north to south, and it seemed that he was already quite close to solving the riddle, but the gradual decrease in depth to 3 1/2 fathoms, the specific gravity of water , and most importantly, a preconceived thought forced him to admit the existence of an isthmus, which he did not see. But he was still gnawed by the worm of doubt. “It is very likely,” he writes, “that Sakhalin was once, and perhaps even in recent times, an island.” He returned back, apparently, with a restless soul: when in China for the first time Brauton's notes caught his eye, he "rejoiced a lot." The error was corrected in 1849 by Nevelsky. The authority of his predecessors, however, was still so great that when he reported his discoveries to St. it would not be for the intercession of the sovereign himself, who found his act valiant, noble and patriotic. He was an energetic, hot-tempered man, educated, selfless, humane, imbued with the idea to the marrow of his bones and fanatically devoted to it, morally pure. One of those who knew him writes: "I have never met a more honest person." On the east coast and on Sakhalin, he made a brilliant career for himself in just five years, but lost his daughter, who died of starvation, grew old, grew old and lost his health, his wife, "a young, pretty and friendly woman", who endured all hardships heroically. In order to put an end to the question of the isthmus and the peninsula, I consider it not superfluous to give a few more details. In 1710, Peking missionaries, on behalf of the Chinese emperor, drew a map of Tataria; when compiling it, the missionaries used Japanese maps, and this is obvious, since at that time only the Japanese could know about the passability of the La Perouse and the Tatar Straits. It was sent to France and became famous because it was included in the atlas of the geographer d "Anville. This map gave rise to a slight misunderstanding to which Sakhalin owes its name. On the western coast of Sakhalin, just opposite the mouth of the Amur, there is an inscription on the map made missionaries: "Saghalien-angahata", which in Mongolian means "rocks of the black river". This name probably referred to some cliff or cape at the mouth of the Amur, but in France they understood it differently and attributed it to the island itself. Hence the name Sakhalin, retained by Kruzenshtern for Russian maps. The Japanese called Sakhalin Karafto or Karaftu, which means the Chinese island.
The works of the Japanese came to Europe either too late, when they were no longer needed, or they were subjected to unsuccessful amendments. On the map of the missionaries, Sakhalin looked like an island, but d'Anville was distrustful of it and put an isthmus between the island and the mainland. and the Japanese decided the question of who owns Sakhalin, then only the Russians spoke and wrote about the right of the first exploration. A new, possibly thorough exploration of the coasts of Tataria and Sakhalin has long been in line. The current maps are unsatisfactory, which is evident at least from the fact that ships , military and commercial, often run aground and on stones, much more often than they write about it in the newspapers. Due mainly to bad maps, ship commanders here are very cautious, suspicious and nervous. The Baikal commander does not trust the official map and looks into his own, which he draws and corrects during the voyage.
In order not to run aground, Mr. L. did not dare to sail at night, and after sunset we anchored at Cape Jaore. On the cape itself, on the mountain, there is a lonely hut in which the naval officer Mr. B. lives, putting signs on the fairway and having supervision over them, and behind the hut there is an impenetrable dense taiga. The commander sent Mr. B. fresh meat; I took advantage of this opportunity and swam on a boat to the shore. Instead of a pier, there are a bunch of large slippery stones that had to be jumped over, and a series of steps made of logs dug into the ground almost vertically lead up the mountain to the hut, so that when climbing, you need to hold on tightly with your hands. But what a horror! While I was climbing the mountain and approaching the hut, I was surrounded by clouds of mosquitoes, literally clouds, it was dark from them, my face and hands burned, and there was no way to defend myself. I think that if you stay here to spend the night in the open air, without surrounding yourself with fires, then you can die or, at least, go crazy.
The hut is divided by a passage into two halves: the sailors live to the left, the officer and his family live to the right. The owner was not at home. I found an elegantly dressed, intelligent lady, his wife, and two daughters, little girls, bitten by mosquitoes. In the rooms, all the walls are covered with spruce greenery, the windows are covered with gauze, it smells of smoke, but mosquitoes, in spite of everything, still exist and sting the poor girls. The atmosphere in the room is not rich, camp, but something sweet, tasty is felt in the decoration. Sketches hang on the wall and, among other things, a female head sketched in pencil. It turns out that Mr. B. is an artist.
- Do you feel good living here? I ask the lady.
- Well, yes, only mosquitoes.
She was not happy about fresh meat; according to her, she and the children have long been accustomed to corned beef and do not like fresh meat.
I was escorted to the boat by a gloomy sailor, who, as if guessing what I wanted to ask him, sighed and said:
“You won’t come here of your own free will!”
The next day, early in the morning, we went further in completely calm and warm weather. The Tatar coast is mountainous and abounds in peaks, that is, sharp, conical peaks. It is slightly covered with a bluish haze: this is the smoke from distant forest fires, which here, as they say, is sometimes so thick that it becomes as dangerous for sailors as fog. If a bird had flown straight from the sea over the mountains, it would probably not have met a single habitation, not a single living soul at a distance of five hundred miles or more ... The shore turns green merrily in the sun and, apparently, does very well without a person. At six o'clock we were at the narrowest point of the strait, between Capes Pogobi and Lazarev, and we saw both banks very close, at eight we passed Nevelskoy's Hat - that is the name of the mountain with a hillock on top, similar to a cap. The morning was bright, brilliant, and the pleasure that I felt was intensified by the proud consciousness that I was seeing these shores.
In the second hour we entered the bay of de-Kastri. This is the only place where ships sailing along the strait can take shelter during a storm, and if it were not for it, navigation along the Sakhalin shores, which are completely inhospitable, would be unthinkable. There is even such an expression: "run away to de-Kastri." The bay is beautiful and arranged by nature exactly to order. This is a round pond, three versts in diameter, with high banks that protect from the winds, with a narrow outlet to the sea. Judging by the appearance, the bay is ideal, but, alas! - it just seems so; seven months of the year it is covered with ice, little protected from the east wind, and so shallow that steamboats anchor two versts from the shore. Three islands, or rather reefs, guard the exit to the sea, giving the bay a peculiar beauty; one of them is called Oyster: very large and fatty oysters are found on its underwater part.
On the shore there are several houses and a church. This is Alexander's post. The head of the post, his clerk and telegraph operators live here. One local official who came to our ship for dinner, a boring and bored gentleman, talked a lot at dinner, drank a lot and told us an old anecdote about geese, which, having eaten berries from a liqueur and drunk, were mistaken for dead, plucked and thrown away. out and then, having overslept, they returned home naked; while the official swore that the story of the geese took place in de-Kastri in his own yard. There is no priest at the church, and he, when necessary, comes from Mariinsk. Good weather is very rare here, just like in Nikolaevsk. They say that in the spring of this year a survey expedition worked here and during the whole of May there were only three sunny days. Please work without the sun!
In the roadstead we found the warships "Bobr" and "Tungus" and two destroyers. I also remember one more detail: as soon as we dropped anchor, the sky darkened, a thunderstorm gathered and the water took on an unusual, bright green color. "Baikal" had to unload four thousand pounds of state cargo, and therefore stayed in de-Kastri to spend the night. To pass the time, the mechanic and I fished from the deck, and we came across very large, fat-headed gobies, which I had never caught either in the Black or in the Sea of Azov. There was also a flounder.
Steamboats always unload here for a painfully long time, with irritation and blood damage. However, this is the bitter fate of all our eastern ports. In de Kastri they unload on small scow barges, which can only land on the shore at high tide, and therefore loaded ones often run aground; it happens that because of this, the steamer is idle due to a hundred sacks of flour for the entire period of time between low tide and high tide. There are even more riots in Nikolaevsk. There, standing on the deck of the Baikal, I saw how the towing steamer, dragging a large barge with two hundred soldiers, lost its towing rope; the barge was carried by the current along the roadstead, and she went straight to the anchor chain of a sailing ship that was not far from us. We waited with bated breath that one more moment and the barge would be cut with a chain, but, fortunately, kind people intercepted the rope in time, and the soldiers escaped with only a fright.
On the Amur steamships and Baikal, prisoners are placed on deck along with third-class passengers. One day, when I went out for a walk on the tank at dawn, I saw how soldiers, women, children, two Chinese and convicts in shackles were fast asleep, huddled together; they were covered with dew, and it was cool. The escort stood among this heap of bodies, holding his gun with both hands, and also slept.
La Perouse writes that they called their island Choco, but the Gilyaks probably attributed this name to something else, and he did not understand them. On the map of our Krasheninnikov (1752), the Chukha River is shown on the western coast of Sakhalin. Does this Chuha have anything to do with Choco? By the way, La Perouse writes that, while drawing an island and calling it Choko, the Gilyak also drew a river. Choco translates as "we".
The fact that three serious researchers, as if by agreement, repeated the same mistake, speaks for itself. If they did not open the entrance to the Amur, it was because they had at their disposal the meager means for research, and most importantly, like people of genius, they suspected and almost guessed another truth and had to reckon with it. That the isthmus and the Sakhalin Peninsula are not myths, but once actually existed, has now been proven. A detailed history of the study of Sakhalin is available in the book by A. M. Nikolsky "Sakhalin Island and its vertebrate fauna." In the same book, one can also find a fairly detailed index of literature related to Sakhalin.
Details in his book: “The exploits of Russian naval officers in the Far East of Russia. 1849-1855"
Nevelsky's wife, Ekaterina Ivanovna, when she was traveling from Russia to her husband, rode 1,100 miles in 23 days, being sick, through marshy swamps and wild mountainous taiga and glaciers of the Okhotsk tract. Nevelskoy's most gifted associate, N.K. they all moved together to Ayan and there they transferred to the weak barque Shelekhov. When the bark began to sink, no one could persuade Mrs. Nevelskaya to go ashore first. “The commander and officers are the last to leave,” she said, “and I will leave the bark when not a single woman and child is left on the ship.” And so she did. Meanwhile, the bark was already lying on its side ... ”Boshnyak writes further that, often being in the company of Mrs. Nevelskaya, he and his comrades did not hear a single complaint or reproach - on the contrary, a calm and proud consciousness of that bitter, but the high position that Providence intended for her. She usually spent the winter alone, as the men were on business trips, in rooms with 5 degrees Celsius. When in 1852 ships with provisions did not arrive from Kamchatka, everyone was in a more than desperate situation. There was no milk for infants, no fresh food for the sick, and several died of scurvy. Nevelskaya gave her only cow to the public; whatever was fresh went to the common good. She treated the natives simply and with such attention that it was noticed even by uncouth savages. And she was then only 19 years old (Leit. Boshnyak. Expedition in the Amur Territory. - "Sea Collection", 1859, II). Her husband also mentions her touching treatment of the Gilyaks in his notes. “Ekaterina Ivanovna,” he writes, “seated them (the Gilyaks) in a circle on the floor, near a large cup of porridge or tea, in the only room in our wing that served as a hall, a living room, and a dining room. They, enjoying such a treat, very often patted the hostess on the shoulder, sending her now for tamchi (tobacco), then for tea.
The Japanese surveyor Mamiya Rinzo, in 1808, traveling in a boat along the western coast, visited the Tatar coast at the very mouth of the Amur and sailed from the island to the mainland and back more than once. He was the first to prove that Sakhalin is an island. Our naturalist F. Schmidt speaks with great praise of his map, finding it "particularly remarkable, as it is obviously based on self-imaging."
For the purpose of this bay in the present and future, see K. Skalkovsky "Russian Trade in the Pacific", p. 75.
Sakhalin island
Anton Chekhov
Sakhalin island
I. G. Nikolaevsk-on-Amur. - Steamboat "Baikal". - Cape Pronge and the entrance to Liman. - Sakhalin Peninsula. - La Perouse, Brauton, Krusenstern and Nevelskoy. Japanese explorers. - Cape Jaore. - Tatar coast. - De-Kastri.
II. Brief geography. - Arrival in Northern Sakhalin. - Fire. - Pier. - In Slobodka. - Dinner at Mr. L. - Acquaintances. - Gen. Kononovich. - Arrival of the Governor-General. - Dinner and illumination.
III. Census. - The content of statistical cards. - What I asked, and how they answered me. - The hut and its inhabitants. - Opinions of exiles about the census.
IV. Duika river. - Alexander Valley. - Slobidka Aleksandrovka. Tramp Handsome. - Alexander post. - His past. - Yurts. Sakhalin Paris.
V. Aleksandrovsk exile prison. - Shared cameras. Shackled. - Golden Pen. - Outhouses. - Maidan. - Hard labor in Aleksandrovsk. - Servants. - Workshops.
VI Yegor's story
VII. Lighthouse. - Korsakov. - Collection of Dr. P.I. Suprunenko. Meteorological station. - The climate of the Aleksandrovsky district. Novo-Mikhailovka. - Potemkin. - Ex-executioner Tersky. - Krasny Yar. - Butakovo.
VIII. River Arkan. - Arkovsky cordon. - First, Second and Third Arkovo. Arkovskaya valley. - Settlements along the western coast: Mgachi, Tangi, Hoe, Trambaus, Viakhty and Vangi. - Tunnel. - Cable house. - Due. - Barracks for families. - Duja prison. - Coal mines. - Provincial prison. Chained to wheelbarrows.
IX. Tym, or Tym. - Leith. Boschniak. - Polyakov. - Upper Armudan. - Lower Armudan. - Derbinsk. - Walk along Tymi. - Uskovo. - Gypsies. - Walk in the taiga. - Resurrection.
X. Rykovskoe. - The local prison. - Meteorological station M.N. Galkin-Vrasky. - Fawn. - Mikryukov. - Valses and Longari. - Mado-Tymovo. - Andrey-Ivanovskoye.
XI. Designed district. - Stone Age. - Was there a free colonization? Gilyaki. - Their numerical composition, appearance, constitution, food, clothing, dwellings, hygienic conditions. - Their character. - Attempts to Russify them. Orochi.
XII. My departure to the south. - Cheerful lady. - West Coast. - Currents. Mauka. - Crillon. - Aniva. - Korsakov post. - New acquaintances. Nord-ost. - The climate of South Sakhalin. - Korsakov prison. - Fire brigade.
XIII. Poro en Tomari. - Muravyovskiy post. - First, Second and Third Pad. Solovyovka. - Lutoga. - Naked cape. - Mitsulka. - Larch. Khomutovka. - Big Elan. - Vladimirovka. - Farm or firm. - Meadow. Popov Yurts. - Birch forests. - Crosses. - Large and Small Takoe. Galkino-Vraskoe. - Oaks. - Naibuchi. - Sea.
XIV. Taraika. - Free settlers. - Their failures. - Aino, the boundaries of their distribution, numerical composition, appearance, food, clothing, dwellings, their customs. - The Japanese. - Kusun-Kotan. - Japanese Consulate.
XV. The hosts are convicts. - Transfer to the settlers. - Selection of places for new villages. - Home improvement. - Halfers. - Transfer to the peasants. Resettlement of peasants from exiles to the mainland. - Life in the villages. Proximity to prison. - The composition of the population by place of birth and by class. rural authorities.
XVI. Composition of the exiled population by sex. - Women's issue. - Hard labor women and settlements. - Cohabitants and cohabitants. - Women of the free state.
XVII. Composition of the population by age. - Marital status of the exiles. - Marriages. Fertility. - Sakhalin children.
XVIII. The occupations of the exiles. - Agriculture. - Hunting. - Fishing. Periodic fish: chum salmon and herring. - Prison catches. - Mastery.
XIX. The food of the exiles. - What and how prisoners eat. - Cloth. - Church. School. - Literacy.
XX. Free population. - Lower ranks of local military teams. Overseers. - Intelligentsia.
XXI. Morality of the exiled population. - Crime. - Investigation and trial. - Punishment. - Rods and whips. - The death penalty.
XXII. Runaways on Sakhalin. - Reasons for running away. - The composition of the fugitives by origin, ranks, 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, Nos. 2, 3, 5-7. The journal published chapters I-XIX; with the addition of chapters XX-XXIII "Sakhalin Island" was published as a separate publication: Anton Chekhov, "Sakhalin Island". From travel notes. M., 1895.
Even during the preparation of the trip to Sakhalin, Chekhov began compiling a bibliography and even wrote separate pieces of a future book that did not require personal observations from Sakhalin.
Chekhov returned to Moscow from Sakhalin on December 8, 1890. A.P. Chekhov brought, in his words, "a chest of all sorts of convict things": 10,000 statistical cards, samples of article lists of convicts, petitions, complaints from doctor B. Perlin, etc.
Chekhov began work on a book about Sakhalin in early 1891. In a letter to A.S. Suvorin dated May 27, 1891, Chekhov remarks: "... The Sakhalin book will be published in the fall, because, honestly, I am already writing and writing it." At first, he was going to print the entire book without fail and refused to publish individual chapters or just notes about Sakhalin, but in 1892, in connection with the public upsurge among the Russian intelligentsia, caused by the organization of assistance to the starving, Chekhov decided to publish a chapter of his book "The Runaways on Sakhalin " in the collection "Help for the Starving", M., 1892.
In 1893, when the book was finished, 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 Untimely Grave”: “Sakhalin was promised to us, and we defended it with great difficulty in the form in which it appeared in the last books of 1893 and in the first books of 1894." ("Russian Vedomosti", 1904, No. 202).
Despite Chekhov's fears about the attitude of government authorities to his work, "Sakhalin Island" passed with little difficulty. November 25, 1893 Chekhov wrote to Suvorin: "Galkin-Vraskoy" head of the Main Prison Department. - P.E." complained to Feoktistov "to 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." Summing up 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 that were detained by censorship, which did not get into the magazine, but did get into the book."
Even in the period of preparation for the trip to Sakhalin, Chekhov determined the genre of the future book, its scientific and journalistic nature. It should have found its place and author's reflections, and excursions of a scientific nature, and artistic sketches of nature, life and life of people on Sakhalin; undoubtedly, the genre of the book was greatly influenced by "Notes from the Dead House" by F.M. Dostoevsky and "Siberia and penal servitude" by S.V. Maksimov, to which the author repeatedly refers in the text of the narrative.
According to the researchers, even in the process of working on the draft of Sakhalin Island, the structure of the entire book was determined: chapters I-XIII are built as travel essays, devoted first to Northern and then 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 the Sakhalin people, their morality, etc. In each chapter, the author tried to convey to the 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 style of the book as follows; “I wrote for a long time and felt for a long time that I was going the wrong way, until I finally caught the falsehood. The falsehood was precisely that I seemed to want to teach someone with my Sakhalin and at the same time I was hiding something and restrain myself. But as soon as I began to portray what an eccentric I felt on Sakhalin and what pigs there, 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 fine slavery, as, for example, in the description of the caretaker 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". One of the characteristic features of the convict population of Sakhalin is emphasized in the personality of Yegor and in his fate: the randomness of crimes caused in most cases not by the vicious inclinations of the criminal, but by the nature of the life situation, which could not be resolved by the crime.
The publication of "Sakhalin Island" on the pages of the journal "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, being at the same time an interesting literary work. Many heart-grabbing details are collected in this book, and you only need to wish that they attracted the attention of those on whom the fate of the "unfortunate" depends. ("Week", 1895, No. 38).
The book of A.P. Chekhov caused a very significant response; so, A.F. Koni wrote: “To study this colonization on the spot, he undertook a difficult journey, involving a mass of trials, anxieties and dangers that had a disastrous effect on his health. The result of this journey, his book about Sakhalin, bears the stamp of extraordinary preparation and a merciless waste of time and forces. In it, behind the strict form and businesslike tone, behind the multitude of factual and digital data, one feels the saddened and indignant heart of the writer "(sb. "A.P. Chekhov", L., "Ateney", 1925). Sister of Mercy E.K. Meyer, having read "Sakhalin Island", in 1896 went to the island, where she founded a "workhouse", which provided work and food for the settlers, and a society for the care of the families of convicts. Published in St. Petersburg Vedomosti (1902, No. 321), her report on her work on Sakhalin began with the words: “Six years ago ... I fell into the hands of A.P. Chekhov’s book Sakhalin Island, and my desire to live and work among the convicts, thanks to her, took a certain form and direction.
Chekhov's essays served as an incentive for trips to Sakhalin and writing books about the island, among which were the books of the famous journalist Vlas Doroshevich: "How I got to Sakhalin" (M., 1903) and "Sakhalin" (M., 1903).
The book "Sakhalin Island" drew the attention of officials to the egregious situation of convicts and exiles. The Ministry of Justice and the Main Prison Department sent their representatives to the island: in 1893 - Prince. N.S. Golitsyn, in 1894 - M.N. Galkin-Vrasky, in 1896 - legal adviser D.A. Dril, in 1898 - the new head of the Main Prison Department A.P. Salomon. The reports of high-ranking officials confirmed the evidence of A.P. Chekhov. In 1902, sending his reports on the trip to Sakhalin, A.P. Salomon wrote to Chekhov: "Let me humbly ask you to accept these two works as a tribute to my deep respect for your work on the study of Sakhalin, works that equally belong to Russian science and Russian literature."
As a concession to public opinion, agitated by Chekhov's book, the reforms carried out by the Russian government were perceived: in 1893 - the abolition of corporal punishment for women and a change in the law on the marriages of exiles; in 1895 - the appointment of state funds for the maintenance of orphanages; in 1899 - the abolition of eternal exile and life hard labor; in 1903 - the abolition of corporal punishment and shaving of the head.
I
G. Nikolaevsk-on-Amur. - Steamboat "Baikal". - Cape Pronge and the entrance to Liman. Sakhalin Peninsula. - La Perouse, Brauton, Krusenstern and Nevelskoy. - Japanese explorers. - Cape Jaore. - Tatar coast. - De-Kastri.
On July 5, 1890, I arrived by steamer in the city of Nikolaevsk, one of the easternmost points of our fatherland. The Amur here is very wide, only 27 versts are left to the sea; the place is majestic and beautiful, but the memories of the past of this region, the stories of companions about a fierce winter and no less fierce local customs, the proximity of penal servitude 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 Nevelsky1, and this is perhaps the only bright place in the history of the city. In the 1950s and 1960s, when culture was being planted along the Amur River without sparing soldiers, prisoners, and migrants, officials who ruled the region had their stay in Nikolaevsk, many Russian and foreign adventurers came here, settlers settled, tempted 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 a visiting scientist found it necessary and possible to give a public lecture here in the club. Now, almost half of the houses are abandoned by their owners, dilapidated, and dark, frameless windows look at you like the eye sockets of a skull. The townsfolk lead a sleepy, drunken life and generally live from hand to mouth, than God sent. They make their living by supplying fish to Sakhalin, gold predation, exploitation of foreigners, selling show-offs, that is, deer antlers, from which the Chinese prepare stimulating pills. On the way from Khabarovka3 to Nikolaevsk I had to meet quite a few smugglers; here they do not hide their profession. One of them, showing me the golden sand and a couple of show-offs, said to me with pride: "And my father was a smuggler!" The exploitation of foreigners, apart from the usual soldering, fooling, etc., is sometimes expressed in an original form. So, the Nikolaev merchant Ivanov, now deceased, went to Sakhalin every summer and took tribute from the Gilyaks there, and tortured and hung the faulty payers.
There are no hotels in the city. In the public meeting they allowed me to rest after dinner in a hall with a low ceiling - here in the winter, they say, balls are given; to my question, where can I spend the night, they just shrugged their shoulders. Nothing to do, I had to spend two nights on the ship; when he went back to Khabarovka, I found myself like a crab on the rocks: can 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 Baikal steamer, 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 departure flag is already fluttering on its mast . Is it possible to take and go to "Baikal"? But it’s embarrassing: perhaps they won’t let me in - they’ll say it’s too early. The wind blew, Cupid frowned and became agitated like the sea. It becomes sad. I go to the meeting, have a long lunch there 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 tongs, 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 salmon salmon, which is used as a snack here for vodka, and ending with conversations, everything feels something of its own, not Russian. While I was sailing down the Amur, I had the feeling that 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 indigenous Amur people, that Pushkin and Gogol are incomprehensible here and therefore not needed, our history is boring And we, visitors from Russia, seem to be foreigners. In regard to the religious and political, I noticed here a complete indifference. The priests whom I saw on the Amur eat fast food, and, by the way, about one of them, in a white silk caftan, they told me that he was engaged in gold predation, competing with his spiritual children. If you want to make an Amur citizen bored and yawn, then talk to him about politics, about the Russian government, about Russian art. And morality here is somehow special, not ours. The 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 to a friend for money; or even better: on the one hand, the absence of class prejudices - here and with the exile they behave like an equal, and on the other hand, it’s not a sin to shoot a Chinese vagrant in the forest like a dog, or even secretly hunt humpbacks.
But I will continue about myself. Finding no shelter, in the evening I decided to go to the "Baikal". But here is a new misfortune: a decent swell has spread, and the Gilyak boatmen do not agree to take it for any money. Again I walk along the shore and do not 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, the 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 a single letter of recommendation with me, that I may be asked to go back - this thought unpleasantly excites me. 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 medium-sized sea-type steamer, a merchant who seemed to me rather tolerable after the Baikal and Amur steamers. He makes flights between Nikolaevsk, Vladivostok and Japanese ports, carries mail, soldiers, prisoners, passengers and cargo, mainly state-owned; under a contract concluded with the treasury, which pays him a substantial subsidy, he is obliged to visit Sakhalin several times during the summer: to the Alexander post and to the southern Korsakov. The tariff is very high, which is probably not found anywhere else in the world. Colonization, which above all requires freedom and ease of movement, and high tariffs is completely incomprehensible. The wardroom and cabins on the "Baikal" are cramped, but clean and furnished quite in a European way; 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 dishes are bitter from spicy keri and smell of some kind of perfume, like corylopsis.
Having read about the storms and ice of the Tatar Strait, I expected to meet on the "Baikal" whalers with hoarse voices, splashing tobacco gum when talking, but in reality I found quite intelligent people. The commander of the ship, Mr. L.4, a native of the western region, has been sailing in the northern seas for more than 30 years and has passed them up and down. In his lifetime he has seen many miracles, knows a lot and tells interesting stories. Having circled half his life around Kamchatka and the Kuril Islands, he, perhaps with more right than Othello, could speak of "the most barren deserts, terrible abysses, impregnable cliffs"5. I am indebted to him for much of the 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 Veniaminych6, kind and friendly people.
July 8, before lunch, "Baikal" weighed anchor. With us were 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, when he climbed the ladder, held on to his shackles. By the way, there was one convict who drew attention to herself by the fact that her husband voluntarily followed her to hard labor7. In addition to 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 are relatively more of them here than in any Russian province. There is a city on the Amur where there are only 16 generals, military and civilians. Now there may be even more of them.
Day was quiet and clear. It's hot on deck, stuffy in the cabins; in water +18°. Such weather is just right for the Black Sea. On the right bank the forest burned; a solid green mass threw out a crimson flame; clouds of smoke merged into a long, black, motionless strip that hangs over the forest ... The fire is huge, but there is silence and calm all around, no one cares that the forests are dying. Obviously, the green wealth here belongs to God alone.
After dinner, at six o'clock, we were already at Cape Pronge. Here Asia ends, and one could say that in this place the Amur flows into the Great Ocean, if Fr. Sakhalin. Liman spreads wide before your eyes, a foggy strip is slightly visible in front - this is a convict island; to the left, lost in its own meanders, the shore disappears into the mist, stretching into the unknown north. It seems that the end of the world is here and that there is nowhere to go further. The soul is seized by a feeling that Odysseus probably experienced when he sailed on an unfamiliar sea and vaguely foresaw meetings with unusual creatures. And in fact, on the right, at the very turn into Liman, where a Gilyak village nestled on the shallows, some strange creatures are rushing towards us in two boats, screaming in an incomprehensible language and waving something. It's hard to tell what's in their hands, but as they swim closer, I can make out gray birds.
“They want to sell us dead geese,” someone explains.
We turn right. All along our path there are signs showing the fairway. The commander does not leave the bridge, and the mechanic does not get out of the car; "Baikal" starts to go quieter and quieter and goes like groping. Great care is needed, as it is not difficult to run aground here. The steamboat sits 12, but in some places it has to go 14 feet, and there was even a moment when we heard it crawl across the sand like a keel. It is this shallow fairway and the special picture that the Tatar and Sakhalin coasts give together that served as the main reason that Sakhalin was considered a peninsula in Europe for a long time. In 1787, in June, the famous French navigator, Count La Perouse8, landed on the western coast of Sakhalin, above 48°, and spoke with the natives there. Judging by the description he left, on the shore he found not only the Ainos who lived here, but also the Gilyaks who came to them to trade, experienced people who were well acquainted with both Sakhalin and the Tatar coast. Drawing on the sand, they explained to him that the land on which they live is an island and that this island is separated from the mainland and Iesso (Japan) by straits9. Then, sailing further north along the western coast, he hoped that he would find a way out of the North Japan Sea to the Sea of Okhotsk and thereby significantly shorten his route to Kamchatka; but the higher he moved, the strait became smaller and smaller. The depth decreased every mile by one sazhen. He sailed to the north as long as the size of his ship allowed him, and, having reached a depth of 9 fathoms, he stopped. Gradually, a uniform rise in the bottom and the fact that the current was almost imperceptible in the strait led him to the conviction that it was not in the strait, but in the bay, and that, therefore, Sakhalin was connected to the mainland by an isthmus. In de-Kastri, he once again had a meeting with the Gilyaks. When he drew an island for them on paper, separated from the mainland, one of them took a pencil from him and, drawing a line across the strait, explained that the Gilyaks sometimes had to drag their boats across this isthmus and that grass even grows on it, - so I understood La Perouse. This convinced him even more strongly that Sakhalin was a peninsula10.
Nine years later, the Englishman W. Broughton was in the Tatar Strait. His boat was small, sitting in water no deeper than 9 feet, so that he managed to pass a little higher than La Pérouse. Stopping at a depth of two fathoms, he sent his assistant to the north to measure; this one met depths among the shallows on his way, but they gradually decreased and led him now to the Sakhalin coast, now to the low sandy shores of the other side, and at the same time such a picture was obtained, as if both banks merged; it seemed that the bay ended here and there was no passage. Thus Broughton must have concluded the same as La Pérouse.
Our famous Kruzenshtern11, who explored the shores of the island in 1805, fell into the same mistake. He sailed to Sakhalin already with a preconceived idea, since he used the La Perouse map. He passed along the eastern coast, and, having rounded the northern capes of Sakhalin, entered the very strait, keeping the direction from north to south, and it seemed that he was already quite close to solving the riddle, but the gradual decrease in depth to 3 sazhens, the specific gravity of the water, and most importantly, a preconceived thought forced him to admit the existence of an isthmus, which he did not see. But he was still gnawed by the worm of doubt. "It is highly probable," he writes, "that Sakhalin was once, and perhaps even in recent times, an island." He returned back, apparently, with a restless soul: when in China for the first time Brauton's notes caught his eye, he "rejoiced a lot"12.
The error was corrected in 1849 by Nevelsky. The authority of his predecessors, however, was still so great that when he reported his discoveries to St. it would not be for the intercession of the sovereign himself13, who found his act valiant, noble and patriotic14. He was an energetic, hot-tempered man, educated, selfless, humane, imbued with the idea to the marrow of his bones and fanatically devoted to it, morally pure. One of those who knew him writes: "I have never met a more honest person." On the east coast and on Sakhalin, he made a brilliant career for himself in just five years, but lost his daughter, who died of starvation, grew old, grew old and lost his health, his wife, "a young, pretty and friendly woman", who endured all hardships heroically.
In order to put an end to the question of the isthmus and the peninsula, I consider it not superfluous to give a few more details. In 1710, Peking missionaries, on behalf of the Chinese emperor, drew a map of Tataria; when compiling it, the missionaries used Japanese maps, and this is obvious, since at that time only the Japanese could know about the passability of the La Perouse and the Tatar Straits. It was sent to France and became famous because it was included in the atlas of the geographer d "Anville16. This map gave rise to a slight misunderstanding to which Sakhalin owes its name. On the western coast of Sakhalin, just opposite the mouth of the Amur, there is an inscription on the map made missionaries: "Saghalien-angahala", which in Mongolian means "rocks of the black river". This name probably referred to some cliff or cape at the mouth of the Amur, in France they understood it differently and attributed it to the island itself. Hence the name Sakhalin, retained by Kruzenshtern and for Russian maps.The Japanese called Sakhalin Karafto or Karafta, which means the Chinese island.
In 1890, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, already a well-known writer, traveled across the country to the island of Sakhalin - to the place where convicts and exiles were kept. Chekhov planned a trip to Sakhalin and a return by steamboat around Asia to Odessa as a single trip to the East. But the main goal was Sakhalin. Having learned about his plans, relatives, friends and acquaintances dissuaded him, but Chekhov was adamant.
Chekhov (in a light jacket) with family and friends on the eve of a trip to Sakhalin
Chekhov was traveling with a "correspondent ticket" from Novoye Vremya, but at his own expense. The publisher Aleksey Sergeevich Suvorin, who was a close friend of Chekhov, provided a solid loan, and the writer promised to send travel essays on account of the debt. The expenses were huge. Only one ticket for the steamship of the Volunteer Fleet cost about 500 rubles. From a letter to Suvorin: “So, then, my dear, I am leaving on Wednesday or, at the most, on Thursday. Goodbye until December. Happy to stay. I feel as if I am going to war, although I see no danger ahead, except for a toothache, which I will certainly have on the road. Since, if we talk about documents, I am armed with only one passport and nothing else, then unpleasant clashes with the powers that be are possible, but this is a transient trouble. If they don’t show me something, then I’ll just write in my book that they didn’t show me - and that’s it, but I won’t worry. In case of drowning or anything like that, keep in mind that everything I have and can have in the future belongs to my sister; she will pay my debts.”
Chekhov on the eve of his departure to Sakhalin
The writer prepared thoroughly for his journey. In the list of literature, which he studied before the trip, there were 65 titles. Shortly before his departure, Chekhov wrote to Suvorin: “I am going completely sure that my trip will not make a valuable contribution to either literature or science: neither knowledge, nor time, nor claims will be enough for this. I have no Humboldt or even Kennan plans. I want to write at least 100-200 pages and pay a little bit for my medicine, in front of which, as you know, I am a pig.”
On April 21, 1890, Chekhov set off from Moscow from the Yaroslavsky railway station on a journey that took almost three months.
In 1869, Sakhalin Island was officially declared a place of royal exile, and until the beginning of the 20th century, most of the inhabitants of the island were convicts.
In 1890, the famous Russian writer Anton Pavlovich Chekhov traveled to Sakhalin Island to "study the life of convicts and exiles". Preparing for the trip, Chekhov studied more than a hundred works and notes of travelers, monographs of scientists, ethnographic materials, records of officials of the 17th-19th centuries.
The artistic and publicistic book "Sakhalin Island" (From travel notes) was the creative result of this trip, which was based not only on personal impressions from numerous meetings, but also on the statistical data collected by the writer on the island.
Due to the fact that the writer worked for three months on Sakhalin as a census taker, he managed to get acquainted in great detail with the life and life of settlers and convicts. From the Sakhalin trip, according to the writer, he brought "a chest of all sorts of convict things": 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 of Chekhov's arrival to Sakhalin, his contribution to the history of the region is a matter of pride for the people of Sakhalin. 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 foundation of hard labor in Tsarist Russia, shown by one of the great classic writers.
The museum, along with other exhibits, presents 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 has a large collection of Sakhalin Island books published in many languages of the world.
