The Kuril Islands are a chain of volcanic islands between the Kamchatka Peninsula (Russia) and the island of Hokkaido (Japan). The area is about 15.6 thousand km2.

The Kuril Islands consist of two ridges - the Greater Kuril and the Lesser Kuril (Khabomai). A large ridge separates the Sea of ​​Okhotsk from Pacific Ocean.

The Great Kuril Ridge has a length of 1200 km and extends from the Kamchatka Peninsula (in the north) to the Japanese island of Hokkaido (in the south). It includes more than 30 islands, of which the largest are: Paramushir, Simushir, Urup, Iturup and Kunashir. The southern islands are forested, while the northern ones are covered with tundra vegetation.

The Lesser Kuril Ridge is only 120 km long and extends from the island of Hokkaido (in the south) to the northeast. Consists of six big islands.

The Kuril Islands are part of Sakhalin region(Russian Federation). They are divided into three districts: North Kuril, Kuril and South Kuril. The centers of these regions have the corresponding names: Severo-Kurilsk, Kurilsk and Yuzhno-Kurilsk. There is also the village of Malo-Kurilsk (the center of the Lesser Kuril Ridge).

The relief of the islands is predominantly mountainous volcanic (there are 160 volcanoes, of which about 39 are active). The prevailing heights are 500-1000m. The exception is the island of Shikotan, which is characterized by a low-mountain relief, formed as a result of the destruction of ancient volcanoes. The highest peak of the Kuril Islands is the Alaid volcano -2339 meters, and the depth of the Kuril-Kamchatka depression reaches 10339 meters. High seismicity is the reason for the constant threat of earthquakes and tsunamis.

The population is 76.6% Russians, 12.8% Ukrainians, 2.6% Belarusians, 8% other nationalities. The permanent population of the islands lives mainly on the southern islands - Iturup, Kunashir, Shikotan and the northern ones - Paramushir, Shumshu. The basis of the economy is the fishing industry, because. the main natural wealth is the biological resources of the sea. Agriculture due to unfavorable natural conditions has not developed significantly.

Deposits of titanium-magnetites, sands, ore occurrences of copper, lead, zinc and the rare elements of indium, helium, thallium contained in them are discovered on the Kuril Islands, there are signs of platinum, mercury and other metals. Large reserves of sulfur ores with a rather high sulfur content have been discovered.

Transport communications are carried out by sea and air. In winter, regular navigation stops. Due to difficult meteorological conditions, flights are not regular (especially in winter).

Discovery of the Kuril Islands

In the Middle Ages, Japan had little contact with other countries of the world. As V. Shishchenko notes: “In 1639, the “policy of self-isolation” was announced. Under pain of death, the Japanese were forbidden to leave the islands. The construction of large ships was prohibited. Almost no foreign ships were allowed into the ports.” Therefore, the organized development of Sakhalin and the Kuriles by the Japanese began only at the end of the 18th century.

V. Shishchenko further writes: “For Russia, Ivan Yuryevich Moskvitin is deservedly considered the discoverer of the Far East. In 1638-1639, led by Moskvitin, a detachment of twenty Tomsk and eleven Irkutsk Cossacks left Yakutsk and made the most difficult transition along the Aldan, Maya and Yudoma rivers, through the Dzhugdzhur ridge and further along the Ulya river, to the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bOkhotsk. The first Russian settlements (including Okhotsk) were founded here.”

The next significant step in the development of the Far East was made by the even more famous Russian pioneer Vasily Danilovich Poyarkov, who, at the head of a detachment of 132 Cossacks, was the first to go along the Amur - to its very mouth. Poyarkov, left Yakutsk in June 1643, at the end of the summer of 1644, Poyarkov's detachment reached the Lower Amur and ended up in the lands of the Amur Nivkhs. In early September, the Cossacks saw the Amur Estuary for the first time. From here the Russian people could also see the northwestern coast of Sakhalin, which they big island. Therefore, many historians consider Poyarkov the "discoverer of Sakhalin", despite the fact that the expedition members did not even visit its shores.

Since then, the Amur has gained great importance, not only as a "bread river", but also as a natural communication. Indeed, until the 20th century, the Amur was the main road from Siberia to Sakhalin. In the autumn of 1655, a detachment of 600 Cossacks arrived on the Lower Amur, which at that time was considered a large military force.

The development of events steadily led to the fact that the Russian people already in the second half of the 17th century could fully gain a foothold on Sakhalin. This was prevented by a new turn of history. In 1652, a Manchu-Chinese army arrived at the mouth of the Amur.

Being at war with Poland, the Russian state could not allocate the necessary number of people and means to successfully counteract Qing China. Attempts to extract any benefits for Russia through diplomacy have not been successful. In 1689, the Nerchinsk peace was concluded between the two powers. For more than a century and a half, the Cossacks had to leave the Amur, which practically made Sakhalin inaccessible to them.

For China, the fact of the "first discovery" of Sakhalin does not exist, most likely for the simple reason that the Chinese knew about the island for a very long time, so long ago that they do not remember when they first learned about it.

Here, of course, the question arises: why did the Chinese not take advantage of such a favorable situation, did not colonize Primorye, the Amur Region, Sakhalin and other territories? V. Shishchenkov answers this question: “The fact is that until 1878, Chinese women were forbidden to cross the Great Wall of China! And in the absence of "their beautiful half", the Chinese could not firmly settle on these lands. They appeared in the Amur region only to collect yasak from the local peoples.

With the conclusion of the Nerchinsk peace, for the Russian people, the sea route remained the most convenient way to Sakhalin. After Semyon Ivanovich Dezhnev made his famous voyage from the Arctic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean in 1648, the appearance of Russian ships in the Pacific Ocean becomes regular.

In 1711-1713 D.N. Antsiferov and I.P. Kozyrevsky make expeditions to the islands of Shumshu and Paramushir, during which they receive detailed information about most of the Kuriles and about the island of Hokkaido. In 1721, surveyors I.M. Evreinov and F.F. Luzhin, by order of Peter I, surveyed the northern part of the Great Kuril ridge to the island of Simushir and compiled a detailed map of Kamchatka and the Kuril Islands.

In the XVIII century, there was a rapid development of the Kuril Islands by Russian people.

“Thus,” notes V. Shishchenko, “by the middle of the 18th century, an amazing situation had developed. Mariners different countries literally plowed the ocean far and wide. And the Great Wall, the Japanese "policy of self-isolation" and the inhospitable Sea of ​​Okhotsk formed a truly fantastic circle around Sakhalin, which left the island beyond the reach of both European and Asian explorers.

At this time, the first clashes between the Japanese and Russian spheres of influence in the Kuriles take place. In the first half of the 18th century, the Kuril Islands were actively developed by Russian people. Back in 1738-1739, during the Spanberg expedition, the Middle and Southern Kuriles were discovered and described, and even a landing was made on Hokkaido. At that time, the Russian state could not yet take control of the islands, which were so far from the capital, which contributed to the abuses of the Cossacks against the natives, which sometimes amounted to robbery and cruelty.

In 1779, by her royal command, Catherine II freed the "hairy smokers" from any fees and forbade encroachment on their territories. The Cossacks could not maintain their power in a non-coercive way, and the islands south of Urup were abandoned by them. In 1792, by order of Catherine II, the first official mission took place in order to establish trade relations with Japan. This concession was used by the Japanese to delay time and strengthen their position in the Kuriles and Sakhalin.

In 1798, a major Japanese expedition to Iturup Island took place, led by Mogami Tokunai and Kondo Juzo. The expedition had not only research goals, but also political ones - Russian crosses were demolished and pillars with the inscription: "Dainihon Erotofu" (Iturup - the possession of Japan) were installed. The following year, Takadaya Kahee opens a sea route to Iturup, and Kondo Juzo visits Kunashir.

In 1801, the Japanese reached Urup, where they set up their posts and ordered the Russians to leave their settlements.

Thus, by the end of the 18th century, the ideas of Europeans about Sakhalin remained very unclear, and the situation around the island created the most favorable conditions in favor of Japan.

Kuriles in the 19th century

In the 18th and early 19th centuries, the Kuril Islands were studied by Russian explorers D. Ya. Antsiferov, I. P. Kozyrevsky, and I. F. Kruzenshtern.

Japan's attempts to seize the Kuriles by force provoked protests from the Russian government. N.P., who arrived in Japan in 1805 to establish trade relations. Rezanov, told the Japanese that "... to the north of Matsmai (Hokkaido) all lands and waters belong to the Russian emperor and that the Japanese should not extend their possessions further."

However, the aggressive actions of the Japanese continued. At the same time, in addition to the Kuriles, they began to lay claim to Sakhalin, making attempts to destroy signs on the southern part of the island indicating that this territory belongs to Russia.

In 1853, the representative of the Russian government, Adjutant General E.V. Putyatin negotiated a trade agreement.

Along with the task of establishing diplomatic and trade relations, Putyatin's mission was to formalize the border between Russia and Japan by treaty.

Professor S.G. Pushkarev writes: “During the reign of Alexander II, Russia acquired significant areas of land in the Far East. In exchange for the Kuril Islands, the southern part of Sakhalin Island was acquired from Japan.

After the Crimean War in 1855, Putyatin signed the Treaty of Shimoda, which established that "the borders between Russia and Japan will pass between the islands of Iturup and Urup", and Sakhalin was declared "undivided" between Russia and Japan. As a result, the islands of Habomai, Shikotan, Kunashir and Iturup retreated to Japan. This concession was stipulated by Japan's consent to trade with Russia, which, however, developed sluggishly even after that.

N.I. Tsimbaev characterizes the state of affairs in the Far East at the end of the 19th century as follows: “Bilateral agreements signed with China and Japan during the reign of Alexander II determined Russia’s policy in the Far East for a long time, which was cautious and balanced.”

In 1875, the tsarist government of Alexander II made another concession to Japan - the so-called Petersburg Treaty was signed, according to which all the Kuril Islands up to Kamchatka, in exchange for the recognition of Sakhalin as Russian territory, passed to Japan. (See Appendix 1)

The fact of Japan's attack on Russia in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. was a gross violation of the Treaty of Shimoda, which proclaimed "permanent peace and sincere friendship between Russia and Japan."

Results of the Russo-Japanese War

As already mentioned, Russia had extensive possessions in the Far East. These territories were extremely remote from the center of the country and were poorly involved in the national economic turnover. “A change in the situation, as noted by A.N. Bokhanov, - was associated with the construction of the Siberian railway, the laying of which began in 1891. It was planned to be carried out through the southern regions of Siberia with access to the Pacific Ocean in Vladivostok. Its total length from Chelyabinsk in the Urals to the final destination was about 8 thousand kilometers. It was the longest railway line in the world."

By the beginning of the XX century. the main node of international contradictions for Russia has become Far East and the most important direction is relations with Japan. The Russian government was aware of the possibility of a military clash, but did not seek it. In 1902 and 1903 there were intensive negotiations between St. Petersburg, Tokyo, London, Berlin and Paris, which did not lead to anything.

On the night of January 27, 1904, 10 Japanese destroyers suddenly attacked the Russian squadron on the outer roadstead of Port Arthur and disabled 2 battleships and 1 cruiser. The next day, 6 Japanese cruisers and 8 destroyers attacked the Varyag cruiser and the Korean gunboat in the Korean port of Chemulpo. Only on January 28 Japan declared war on Russia. The treachery of Japan caused a storm of indignation in Russia.

Russia was forced into a war that she did not want. The war lasted a year and a half and turned out to be inglorious for the country. The causes of general failures and specific military defeats were caused by various factors, but the main ones were:

• the incompleteness of the military-strategic training of the armed forces;
• significant remoteness of the theater of operations from the main centers of the army and control;
• extremely limited network of communication links.

The hopelessness of the war was clearly manifested by the end of 1904, and after the fall of the fortress of Port Arthur in Russia on December 20, 1904, few believed in a favorable outcome of the campaign. The initial patriotic upsurge was replaced by despondency and irritation.

A.N. Bokhanov writes: “The authorities were in a state of stupor; no one could have imagined that the war, which according to all preliminary assumptions should have been short, dragged on for so long and turned out to be so unsuccessful. Emperor Nicholas II for a long time did not agree to admit the failure in the Far East, believing that these were only temporary setbacks and that Russia should mobilize its efforts to strike at Japan and restore the prestige of the army and the country. He certainly wanted peace, but an honorable peace, one that only a strong geopolitical position could provide, and it was seriously shaken by military failures.

By the end of the spring of 1905, it became obvious that a change in the military situation was possible only in the distant future, and in the short term it was necessary to immediately begin to peacefully resolve the conflict that had arisen. This was forced not only by considerations of a military-strategic nature, but, to an even greater extent, by the complications of the internal situation in Russia.

N.I. Tsimbaev states: "Japan's military victories turned it into the leading Far Eastern power, which was supported by the governments of England and the United States."

The situation for the Russian side was complicated not only by military-strategic defeats in the Far East, but also by the absence of previously worked out terms for a possible agreement with Japan.

Having received the appropriate instructions from the sovereign, S.Yu. On July 6, 1905, Witte, together with a group of experts on Far Eastern affairs, left for the United States, to the city of Portsmouth, where negotiations were planned. The head of the delegation was only instructed not to agree to any form of payment of indemnity, which Russia had never paid in its history, and not to cede “not an inch of Russian land”, although by that time Japan had already occupied the southern part of Sakhalin Island.

Japan initially took a tough stance in Portsmouth, demanding in an ultimatum from Russia a complete withdrawal from Korea and Manchuria, the transfer of the Russian Far Eastern fleet, the payment of indemnities and consent to the annexation of Sakhalin.

The negotiations were on the verge of collapse several times, and only thanks to the efforts of the head of the Russian delegation, a positive result was achieved: August 23, 1905. the parties entered into an agreement.

In accordance with it, Russia ceded lease rights to Japan in the territories in South Manchuria, part of Sakhalin south of the 50th parallel, and recognized Korea as a sphere of Japanese interests. A.N. Bokhanov speaks of the negotiations as follows: “The Portsmouth agreements have become an undoubted success for Russia and its diplomacy. In many ways, they looked like an agreement of equal partners, and not like an agreement concluded after an unsuccessful war.

Thus, after the defeat of Russia, in 1905 the Treaty of Portsmouth was concluded. The Japanese side demanded from Russia as an indemnity the island of Sakhalin. The Treaty of Portsmouth terminated the exchange agreement of 1875, and also stated that all trade agreements between Japan and Russia would be canceled as a result of the war.

This treaty annulled the Shimoda Treaty of 1855.

However, treaties between Japan and the newly created USSR existed as early as the 1920s. Yu.Ya. Tereshchenko writes: “In April 1920, the Far Eastern Republic (FER) was created - a temporary revolutionary-democratic state, a “buffer” between the RSFSR and Japan. The People's Revolutionary Army (NRA) of the FER under the command of V.K. Blucher, then I.P. Uborevich in October 1922 liberated the region from Japanese and White Guard troops. On October 25, units of the NRA entered Vladivostok. In November 1922, the "buffer" republic was abolished, its territory (with the exception of Northern Sakhalin, from which the Japanese left in May 1925) became part of the RSFSR.

By the time the convention on the basic principles of relations between Russia and Japan was concluded on January 20, 1925, there was in fact no existing bilateral agreement on the ownership of the Kuril Islands.

In January 1925, the USSR established diplomatic and consular relations with Japan (Peking Convention). The Japanese government evacuated its troops from Northern Sakhalin, captured during the Russo-Japanese War. The Soviet government granted Japan concessions in the north of the island, in particular, for the exploitation of 50% of the area of ​​oil fields.

War with Japan in 1945 and the Yalta Conference

Yu.Ya. Tereshchenko writes: “... a special period of the Great Patriotic War was the war between the USSR and militaristic Japan (August 9 - September 2, 1945). On April 5, 1945, the Soviet government denounced the Soviet-Japanese neutrality pact, signed in Moscow on April 13, 1941. On August 9, fulfilling its allied obligations taken at the Yalta Conference, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan ... During the 24-day military campaign, the millionth Kwantung Army, which was in Manchuria, was defeated. The defeat of this army became the determining factor in the defeat of Japan.

It led to the defeat of the Japanese armed forces and to the most severe losses for them. They amounted to 677 thousand soldiers and officers, incl. 84 thousand killed and wounded, more than 590 thousand captured. Japan lost the largest military-industrial base on the Asian mainland and the most strong army. Soviet troops expelled the Japanese from Manchuria and Korea, with South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. Japan lost all the military bases and bridgeheads that it was preparing against the USSR. She was not in a position to wage an armed struggle.”

At the Yalta Conference, the “Declaration on a Liberated Europe” was adopted, which, among other points, indicated the transfer to the Soviet Union of southern Kuril Islands, which were part of the Japanese "northern territories" (the islands of Kunashir, Iturup, Shikotan, Habomai).

In the first years after the end of World War II, Japan made no territorial claims to the Soviet Union. The advancement of such demands was ruled out then, if only because the Soviet Union, along with the United States and other Allied Powers, took part in the occupation of Japan, and Japan, as a country that agreed to unconditional surrender, was obliged to comply with all decisions taken by the Allied Powers, including decisions regarding its borders. It was during that period that the new borders of Japan with the USSR were formed.

The transformation of South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands into an integral part of the Soviet Union was secured by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of February 2, 1946. In 1947, according to the changes made to the Constitution of the USSR, the Kuriles were included in the Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk region of the RSFSR. The most important international legal document that fixed Japan's renunciation of the rights to South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands was the peace treaty signed by it in September 1951 at an international conference in San Francisco with the victorious powers.

In the text of this document, summing up the results of the Second World War, in paragraph "C" in Article 2 it was clearly written: "Japan renounces all rights, titles and claims to the Kuril Islands and to that part of Sakhalin Island and the islands adjacent to it, sovereignty over which Japan acquired under the Portsmouth Treaty of September 5, 1905.

However, already in the course of the San Francisco Conference, the desire of Japanese government circles to question the legitimacy of the borders established between Japan and the Soviet Union as a result of the defeat of Japanese militarism was revealed. At the conference itself, this aspiration did not find open support on the part of its other participants, and above all on the part of the Soviet delegation, which is clear from the above text of the treaty.

Nevertheless, in the future, Japanese politicians and diplomats did not abandon their intention to revise the Soviet-Japanese borders and, in particular, to return four southern islands of the Kuril archipelago under Japanese control: Kunashir, Iturup, Shikotan and Khabomai (I.A. Latyshev explains that in Habomai actually consists of five small islands adjacent to each other). The confidence of Japanese diplomats in their ability to carry out such a revision of the borders was associated with the behind-the-scenes, and then open support for the aforementioned territorial claims to our country, which the US government circles began to provide Japan with - support that clearly contradicted the spirit and letter of the Yalta agreements signed by the US President F. Roosevelt in February 1945.

Such an obvious refusal of the US government circles from their obligations enshrined in the Yalta agreements, according to I.A. Latyshev, explained simply: “... in the face of the further strengthening of the Cold War, in the face of the victory of the communist revolution in China and the armed confrontation with the North Korean army on the Korean Peninsula, Washington began to consider Japan as its main military base in the Far East and, moreover, as its main ally in the struggle to maintain US dominance in the Asia-Pacific region. And in order to bind this new ally more firmly to their political course, American politicians began to promise him political support in getting the southern Kuril Islands, although such support represented a US departure from the international agreements mentioned above, designed to secure the borders that had developed as a result of World War II.

The refusal of the Soviet delegation at the San Francisco Conference to sign the text of the peace treaty, along with other allied countries participating in the conference, gave the Japanese initiators of territorial claims to the Soviet Union many advantages. This refusal was motivated by Moscow's disagreement with the US intention to use the treaty to maintain American military bases on Japanese territory. This decision of the Soviet delegation turned out to be short-sighted: it was used by Japanese diplomats to create the impression among the Japanese public that the absence of the Soviet Union's signature on the peace treaty freed Japan from complying with it.

In subsequent years, the leaders of the Japanese Foreign Ministry resorted to reasoning in their statements, the essence of which was that since the representatives of the Soviet Union did not sign the text of the peace treaty, therefore the Soviet Union has no right to refer to this document, and the world community should not give consent to the possession The Soviet Union the Kuril Islands and South Sakhalin, although Japan abandoned these territories in accordance with the San Francisco Treaty.

At the same time, Japanese politicians also referred to the absence in the agreement of a mention of who would henceforth own these islands.

Another direction of Japanese diplomacy boiled down to the fact that "...Japan's renunciation of the Kuril Islands, fixed in the treaty, does not mean its renunciation of four southern islands the Kuril Archipelago on the grounds that Japan ... does not consider these islands to be Kuril Islands. And that, when signing the treaty, the Japanese government considered the allegedly named four islands not as the Kuriles, but as lands adjacent to the coast of the Japanese island of Hokkaido.

However, at the first glance at the Japanese pre-war maps and sailing directions, all the Kuril Islands, including the southernmost ones, were one administrative unit, called "Tishima".

I.A. Latyshev writes that the refusal of the Soviet delegation at the conference in San Francisco to sign, along with representatives of other allied countries, the text of a peace treaty with Japan was, as the subsequent course of events showed, a very unfortunate political miscalculation for the Soviet Union. The absence of a peace treaty between the Soviet Union and Japan began to contradict the national interests of both sides. That is why, four years after the San Francisco Conference, the governments of both countries expressed their readiness to enter into contact with each other in order to find ways to formally resolve their relations and conclude a bilateral peace treaty. This goal was pursued, as it seemed at first, by both sides at the Soviet-Japanese talks that began in London in June 1955 at the level of ambassadors of both countries.

However, as it turned out during the negotiations that had begun, the main task of the then Japanese government was to use the interest of the Soviet Union in normalizing relations with Japan in order to obtain territorial concessions from Moscow. In essence, it was an open refusal of the Japanese government from the San Francisco Peace Treaty in that part of it, where the northern borders of Japan were defined.

From that moment, as I.A. Latyshev, the most ill-fated territorial dispute between the two countries, detrimental to the Soviet-Japanese good neighborliness, began, which continues to this day. It was in May-June 1955 that Japanese government circles embarked on the path of illegal territorial claims to the Soviet Union, aimed at revising the borders that had developed between both countries as a result of the Second World War.

What prompted the Japanese side to take this path? There were several reasons for this.

One of them is the long-standing interest of Japanese fishing companies in gaining control of the sea waters surrounding the southern Kuril Islands. It is well known that the coastal waters of the Kuril Islands are the richest in fish resources, as well as in other seafood, in the Pacific Ocean. Fishing for salmon, crabs, seaweed and other expensive seafood could provide fabulous profits for Japanese fishing and other companies, which prompted these circles to put pressure on the government in order to get these richest sea fishing areas for themselves.

Another motivating reason for the attempts of Japanese diplomacy to return the southern Kuriles under their control was the Japanese understanding of the exceptional strategic importance of the Kuril Islands: whoever owns the islands actually holds in his hands the keys to the gate leading from the Pacific Ocean to the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bOkhotsk.

Thirdly, by putting forward territorial demands on the Soviet Union, the Japanese government circles hoped to revive nationalist sentiments in broad sections. Japanese population and use nationalist slogans to rally these sections under their ideological control.

And, finally, fourthly, another important point was the desire of the ruling circles of Japan to please the United States. After all, the territorial demands of the Japanese authorities fit perfectly into the bellicose course of the US government, which was directed at the tip against the Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China and other socialist countries. And it is no coincidence that US Secretary of State D. F. Dulles, as well as other influential US political figures, already during the London Soviet-Japanese negotiations, began to support Japanese territorial claims, despite the fact that these claims obviously contradicted the decisions of the Yalta Conference of the Allied Powers.

As for the Soviet side, the advancement of territorial demands by Japan was considered by Moscow as an encroachment on the state interests of the Soviet Union, as an illegal attempt to revise the borders established between the two countries as a result of the Second World War. Therefore, the Japanese demands could not but meet with a rebuff from the Soviet Union, although its leaders in those years sought to establish good-neighborly contacts and business cooperation with Japan.

The territorial dispute during the reign of N.S. Khrushchev

During the Soviet-Japanese negotiations of 1955-1956 (in 1956, these negotiations were transferred from London to Moscow), Japanese diplomats, having met a firm rebuff to their claims to South Sakhalin and all the Kuriles, began to quickly moderate these claims. In the summer of 1956, the territorial harassment of the Japanese was reduced to the demand for the transfer of Japan only the southern Kuriles, namely the islands of Kunashir, Iturup, Shikotan and Habomai, representing the most favorable part of the Kuril archipelago for life and economic development.

On the other hand, at the very first stages of the negotiations, the short-sightedness in the approach to Japanese claims of the then Soviet leadership, which sought at any cost to accelerate the normalization of relations with Japan, was also revealed. Having no clear idea about the southern Kuriles, and even more so about their economic and strategic value, N.S. Khrushchev, apparently, treated them like small change. This alone can explain the Soviet leader's naive judgment that negotiations with Japan could be successfully completed as soon as the Soviet side made a "small concession" to Japanese demands. In those days, N.S. It seemed to Khrushchev that, imbued with gratitude for the “gentlemanly” gesture of the Soviet leadership, the Japanese side would respond with the same “gentlemanly” compliance, namely: it would withdraw its excessive territorial claims, and the dispute would end with an “amicable agreement” to the mutual satisfaction of both sides.

Guided by this erroneous calculation of the Kremlin leader, the Soviet delegation at the negotiations, unexpectedly for the Japanese, expressed its readiness to cede to Japan two southern islands of the Kuril chain: Shikotan and Habomai, after the Japanese side signs a peace treaty with the Soviet Union. Willingly acknowledging this concession, the Japanese side did not calm down, and for a long time continued to stubbornly seek the transfer of all four South Kuril Islands to it. But then she failed to bargain for big concessions.

Khrushchev's irresponsible "gesture of friendship" was recorded in the text of the "Joint Soviet-Japanese Declaration on the Normalization of Relations", signed by the heads of government of both countries in Moscow on October 19, 1956. In particular, in Article 9 of this document it was written that the Soviet Union and Japan “... agreed to continue negotiations on the conclusion of a peace treaty after the restoration of normal diplomatic relations between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and Japan. At the same time, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, meeting the wishes of Japan and taking into account the interests of the Japanese state, agrees to the transfer of the islands of Habomai and Shikotan to Japan, however, that the actual transfer of these islands to Japan will be made after the conclusion of a peace treaty between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and Japan " .

The future transfer of the islands of Habomai and Shikotan to Japan was interpreted by the Soviet leadership as a demonstration of the readiness of the Soviet Union to give up part of its territory in the name of good relations with Japan. It was no coincidence, as it was emphasized more than once later, that the article dealt with the "transfer" of these islands to Japan, and not their "return", as the Japanese side was then inclined to interpret the essence of the matter.

The word "transfer" was intended to mean the intention of the Soviet Union to cede to Japan part of its own, and not Japanese, territory.

However, the inclusion in the declaration of Khrushchev’s reckless promise to give Japan an advance payment of a “gift” in the form of part of the Soviet territory was an example of the political thoughtlessness of the then Kremlin leadership, which had neither legal nor moral right to turn the country’s territory into a subject of diplomatic bargaining. The short-sightedness of this promise became obvious within the next two or three years, when the Japanese government in its foreign policy took a course towards strengthening military cooperation with the United States and increasing Japan's independent role in the Japanese-American "security treaty", the edge of which was quite definitely directed towards Soviet Union.

The hopes of the Soviet leadership that its readiness to "transfer" two islands to Japan would induce Japanese government circles to renounce further territorial claims to our country were not justified either.

The very first months that passed after the signing of the joint declaration showed that the Japanese side did not intend to calm down in its demands.

Soon, Japan had a new "argument" in the territorial dispute with the Soviet Union, based on a distorted interpretation of the content of the named declaration and the text of its ninth article. The essence of this "argument" boiled down to the fact that the normalization of Japanese-Soviet relations did not end, but, on the contrary, implies further negotiations on the "territorial issue" and that the fixation in the ninth article of the declaration of the Soviet Union's readiness to transfer the islands of Habomai and Shikotan to Japan after the conclusion of the peace treaty still does not draw a line to the territorial dispute between the two countries, but, on the contrary, suggests the continuation of this dispute over the other two islands of the southern Kuriles: Kunashir and Iturup.

Moreover, at the end of the 1950s, the Japanese government became more active than before in using the so-called "territorial question" to inflate unkind sentiments towards Russia among the Japanese population.

All this prompted the Soviet leadership, headed by N.S. Khrushchev, to correct their assessments of Japanese foreign policy, which did not correspond to the original spirit of the 1956 Joint Declaration. Shortly after the Japanese Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke signed the anti-Soviet "security treaty" on January 19, 1960 in Washington, namely on January 27, 1960, the Soviet government sent a memorandum to the Japanese government.

The note stated that as a result of the conclusion by Japan of a military treaty weakening the foundations of peace in the Far East, “... a new situation is emerging in which it is impossible to fulfill the promises of the Soviet government to transfer the islands of Habomai and Sikotan to Japan”; “Agreeing to the transfer of these islands to Japan after the conclusion of a peace treaty,” the note continued, “the Soviet government met the wishes of Japan, took into account the national interests of the Japanese state and the peaceful intentions expressed at that time by the Japanese government during the Soviet-Japanese negotiations.”

As was later pointed out in the cited note, in the changed situation, when the new treaty is directed against the USSR, the Soviet government cannot contribute to the transfer of the Habomai and Shikotan islands belonging to the USSR to Japan to expand the territory used by foreign troops. By foreign troops, the note referred to the US armed forces, whose indefinite presence in the Japanese islands was secured by a new "security treaty" signed by Japan in January 1960.

In the following months of 1960, other notes and statements by the USSR Foreign Ministry and the Soviet government were published in the Soviet press, testifying to the unwillingness of the USSR leadership to continue fruitless negotiations over Japanese territorial claims. Since that time, for a long time, or rather, for more than 25 years, the position of the Soviet government regarding the territorial claims of Japan has become extremely simple and clear: “there is no territorial issue in relations between the two countries” because this issue has “already been resolved” by previous international agreements.

Japanese claims in 1960-1980

The firm and clear position of the Soviet side with regard to Japanese territorial claims led to the fact that during the 60-80s, none of the Japanese statesmen and diplomats managed to draw the Soviet Foreign Ministry and its leaders into any kind of extended discussion about Japanese territorial harassment. .

But this did not mean at all that the Japanese side resigned itself to the Soviet Union's refusal to continue discussions on Japanese claims. In those years, the efforts of Japanese government circles were aimed at launching the so-called "movement for the return of the northern territories" in the country through various administrative measures.

It is noteworthy that the words "northern territories" acquired a very loose content during the deployment of this "movement".

Some political groups, in particular government circles, meant by "northern territories" the four southern islands of the Kuril chain; others, including the socialist and communist parties of Japan, all the Kuril Islands, and still others, especially from among the adherents of ultra-right organizations, not only the Kuril Islands, but also South Sakhalin.

Beginning in 1969, the Government Cartographic Department and the Ministry of Education began to publicly "correct" maps and textbooks, in which the southern Kuril Islands began to be painted under the color of Japanese territory, as a result of which the territory of Japan "grew" on these new maps, as the press reported. , for 5 thousand square kilometers.

At the same time, more and more efforts were used to process the public opinion of the country and draw as many Japanese as possible into the "movement for the return of the northern territories". So, for example, trips to the island of Hokkaido to the area of ​​the city of Nemuro, from where the southern Kuril Islands are clearly visible, by specialized groups of tourists from other regions of the country, have become widely practiced. The programs of the stay of these groups in the city of Nemuro necessarily included "walks" on ships along the borders of the southern islands of the Kuril chain with the aim of "sad contemplation" of the lands that once belonged to Japan. By the beginning of the 80s, a significant proportion of the participants in these “nostalgic walks” were schoolchildren, for whom such trips were counted as “study trips” provided for by school programs. On Cape Nosapu, closest to the borders of the Kuril Islands, a whole complex of buildings intended for "pilgrims" was built at the expense of the government and a number of public organizations, including a 90-meter observation tower and the "Archival Museum" with a tendentiously selected exposition, designed to convince uninformed visitors of the imaginary historical "justification" of Japanese claims to the Kuril Islands.

A new moment in the 70s was the appeal of the Japanese organizers of the anti-Soviet campaign to the foreign public. The first example of this was the speech of Japanese Prime Minister Eisaku Sato at the anniversary session of the UN General Assembly in October 1970, in which the head of the Japanese government tried to draw the world community into a territorial dispute with the Soviet Union. Subsequently, in the 1970s and 1980s, attempts by Japanese diplomats to use the UN rostrum for the same purpose were made repeatedly.

Since 1980, at the initiative of the Japanese government, the so-called "days of the northern territories" have been celebrated annually in the country. That day was February 7th. It was on this day in 1855 in the Japanese city of Shimoda that the Russian-Japanese treaty was signed, according to which the southern part of the Kuril Islands was in the hands of Japan, and the northern part remained with Russia.

The choice of this date as the "day of the northern territories" was to emphasize that the Shimoda Treaty (annulled by Japan itself in 1905 as a result of the Russo-Japanese War, as well as in 1918-1925 during the Japanese intervention in the Far East and Siberia) ostensibly still retains its significance.

Unfortunately, the position of the government and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union regarding Japanese territorial claims began to lose its former firmness during M.S.'s tenure. Gorbachev. In public statements, there were calls for a revision of the Yalta system of international relations that developed as a result of World War II and for an immediate end to the territorial dispute with Japan through a "fair compromise", which meant concessions to Japanese territorial claims. The first frank statements of this kind were made in October 1989 from the lips of the people's deputy, the rector of the Moscow Historical and Archival Institute Yu. Afanasyev, who during his stay in Tokyo announced the need to break the Yalta system and transfer the four southern islands of the Kuril chain to Japan as soon as possible.

Following Y. Afanasiev, others began to speak out in favor of territorial concessions during trips to Japan: A. Sakharov, G. Popov, B. Yeltsin. Nothing more than a course towards gradual, protracted concessions to Japanese territorial demands was, in particular, the “Program for the Five-Stage Solution of the Territorial Issue”, put forward by the then leader of the interregional group Yeltsin during his visit to Japan in January 1990.

As I.A. Latyshev writes: “The result of long and intense negotiations between Gorbachev and Japanese Prime Minister Kaifu Toshiki in April 1991 was a “Joint Statement” signed by the leaders of the two countries. This statement reflected Gorbachev's characteristic inconsistency in his views and in protecting the national interests of the state.

On the one hand, despite the persistent harassment of the Japanese, the Soviet leader did not allow the inclusion in the text of the "Joint Statement" of any wording openly confirming the readiness of the Soviet side to transfer the islands of Habomai and Shikotan to Japan. Nor did he agree to refuse the notes of the Soviet government sent to Japan in 1960.

However, on the other hand, rather ambiguous formulations were nevertheless included in the text of the “Joint Statement”, which allowed the Japanese to interpret them in their favor.

Evidence of Gorbachev's inconsistency and unsteadiness in protecting the national interests of the USSR was his statement about the intention of the Soviet leadership to start reducing the ten thousandth military contingent located on the disputed islands, despite the fact that these islands are adjacent to the Japanese island of Hokkaido, where four of the thirteen Japanese divisions were stationed. "self-defense forces".

Democratic time of the 90s

The August events of 1991 in Moscow, the transfer of power into the hands of B. Yeltsin and his supporters and the subsequent withdrawal of the three Baltic countries from the Soviet Union, and later the complete collapse of the Soviet state, which followed as a result of the Belovezhskaya Accords, were perceived by Japanese political strategists as evidence of a sharp weakening the ability of our country to resist the claims of Japan.

In September 1993, when the date of Yeltsin's arrival in Japan was finally agreed - October 11, 1993, the Tokyo press also began to orient the Japanese public to give up excessive hopes for a quick resolution of the territorial dispute with Russia.

The events connected with Yeltsin's further tenure at the head of the Russian state, even more clearly than before, showed the failure of the hopes of both Japanese politicians and the Russian Foreign Ministry leaders for the possibility of quickly resolving the protracted dispute between the two countries through a "compromise" involving the concessions of our country to the Japanese territorial harassment.

Followed in 1994-1999. The discussions between Russian and Japanese diplomats did not, in fact, add anything new to the situation that has developed at the Russian-Japanese negotiations on the territorial dispute.

In other words, the territorial dispute between the two countries reached a deep impasse in 1994-1999, and neither side saw a way out of this impasse. The Japanese side, apparently, did not intend to give up its unfounded territorial claims, because none of the Japanese statesmen was able to decide on such a step, fraught with inevitable political death for any Japanese politician. And any concessions to the Japanese claims of the Russian leadership became, in the conditions of the balance of political forces that had developed in the Kremlin and beyond its walls, even less likely than in previous years.

The increasing conflicts in sea ​​waters, washing the southern Kuriles - conflicts during which, during 1994-1955, the repeated unceremonious incursions of Japanese poachers into the territorial waters of Russia met with a stiff rebuff from Russian border guards who opened fire on violators of the borders.

About the possibilities of settling these relations says I.A. Latyshev: “Firstly, the Russian leadership should have already immediately abandoned the illusion that as soon as Russia cedes the southern Kuriles to Japan, the Japanese side will immediately benefit our country with large investments, soft loans, and scientific and technical information. It was this misconception that prevailed in Yeltsin's entourage.

“Secondly,” writes I.A. Latyshev, our diplomats and politicians, both in Gorbachev's and Yeltsin's times, should have abandoned the false judgment that the Japanese leaders could moderate their claims to the southern Kuriles in the short term and make some kind of "reasonable compromise" in the territorial dispute with our country.

For many years, as was discussed above, the Japanese side has never shown, and was unable to show in the future, the desire to abandon its claims to all four southern Kuril Islands. The maximum that the Japanese could agree to is to receive the four islands they demand not at the same time, but in installments: first two (Khabomai and Shikotan), and then, after some time, two more (Kunashir and Iturup).

“Thirdly, for the same reason, the hopes of our politicians and diplomats that the Japanese could be persuaded to conclude a peace treaty with Russia on the basis of the “Joint Soviet-Japanese Declaration on the Normalization of Relations” signed in 1956 were self-deception. It was a good deception and nothing more. The Japanese side sought from Russia an open and intelligible confirmation of the obligation recorded in Article 9 of the said declaration to transfer to it, upon the conclusion of a peace treaty, the islands of Shikotan and Habomai. But this did not at all mean that the Japanese side was ready to put an end to its territorial harassment of our country after such confirmation. Japanese diplomats considered the establishment of control over Shikotan and Habomai only as an intermediate stage on the way to mastering all four South Kuril Islands.

In the second half of the 1990s, the national interests of Russia demanded that Russian diplomats abandon the course of illusory hopes for the possibility of our concessions to Japanese territorial claims, and vice versa, would inspire the Japanese side with the idea of ​​the inviolability of Russia's post-war borders.

In the fall of 1996, the Russian Foreign Ministry put forward a proposal for "joint economic development" by Russia and Japan of the very four islands of the Kuril archipelago that Japan so insistently claimed was nothing more than another concession to pressure from the Japanese side.

The allocation by the leadership of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the southern Kuril Islands to a certain special zone accessible for business activities of Japanese citizens was interpreted in Japan as an indirect recognition by the Russian side of the “justification” of Japanese claims to these islands.

I.A. Latyshev writes: “Another thing is also annoying: in the Russian proposals, which implied wide access for Japanese entrepreneurs to the southern Kuriles, there was not even an attempt to condition this access by Japan's consent to appropriate benefits and free access of Russian entrepreneurs to the territory close to the southern Kuriles areas of the Japanese island of Hokkaido. And this manifested the lack of readiness of Russian diplomacy to achieve in negotiations with the Japanese side the equality of the two countries in their business activity in each other's territories. In other words, the idea of ​​"joint economic development" of the southern Kuriles turned out to be nothing more than a unilateral step by the Russian Foreign Ministry towards the Japanese desire to master these islands.

The Japanese were allowed to surreptitiously fish in the immediate vicinity of the shores of precisely those islands that Japan claimed and claims. At the same time, the Japanese side not only did not grant similar rights to Russian fishing vessels to fish in Japanese territorial waters, but also did not undertake any obligations for its citizens and vessels to comply with the laws and regulations of fishing in Russian waters.

Thus, decades of attempts by Yeltsin and his entourage to resolve the Russian-Japanese territorial dispute on a "mutually acceptable basis" and sign a bilateral peace treaty between the two countries did not lead to any tangible results. B. Yeltsin's resignation and V.V. Putin alerted the Japanese public.

President of the country V.V. Putin is in fact the only government official authorized by the Constitution to determine the course of Russian-Japanese negotiations on the territorial dispute between the two countries. His powers were limited by some articles of the Constitution, and in particular those that obligated the president to "ensure the integrity and inviolability of the territory" Russian Federation(Article 4), “to protect the sovereignty and independence, security and integrity of the state” (Article 82).

In the late summer of 2002, during his short stay in the Far East, where Putin flew to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, the Russian president had only a few words to say about his country's territorial dispute with Japan. At a meeting with journalists held in Vladivostok on August 24, he said that "Japan considers the southern Kuriles its territory, while we consider them our territory."

At the same time, he expressed his disagreement with the disturbing reports of some Russian media that Moscow is ready to "return" the named islands to Japan. “These are just rumors,” he said, “spread by those who would like to get some benefit from it.”

Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi's visit to Moscow took place on January 9, 2003, in accordance with previously reached agreements. However, Putin's talks with Koizumi did not make any progress in the development of the territorial dispute between the two countries. I.A. Latyshev calls the policy of V.V. Putin is indecisive and evasive, and this policy gives the Japanese public a reason to expect a dispute to be resolved in favor of their country.

The main factors to be taken into account when solving the problem of the Kuril Islands:

• the presence of the richest reserves of marine biological resources in the waters adjacent to the islands;
• underdevelopment of infrastructure on the territory of the Kuril Islands, the virtual absence of its own energy base with significant reserves of renewable geothermal resources, the absence of its own Vehicle to provide freight and passenger traffic;
• proximity and virtually unlimited capacity of seafood markets in neighboring countries of the Asia-Pacific region;
• the need to preserve the unique natural complex of the Kuril Islands, maintain local energy balance while maintaining the purity of the air and water basins, and protect the unique flora and fauna. When developing a mechanism for the transfer of islands, the opinion of the local civilian population should be taken into account. Those who stay should be guaranteed all rights (including property), and those who leave should be fully compensated. It is necessary to take into account the readiness of the local population to accept the change in the status of these territories.

The Kuril Islands are of great geopolitical and military-strategic importance for Russia and affect the national security of Russia. The loss of the Kuril Islands will damage the defense system of the Russian Primorye and weaken the defense capability of our country as a whole. With the loss of the islands of Kunashir and Iturup, the Sea of ​​Okhotsk ceases to be our inland sea. In addition, the South Kuriles have a powerful air defense system and radar systems, fuel depots for refueling aircraft. The Kuril Islands and the water area adjacent to them is the only ecosystem of its kind that has the richest natural resources, primarily biological ones.

The coastal waters of the South Kuril Islands and the Lesser Kuril Ridge are the main habitats for valuable commercial fish and seafood species, the extraction and processing of which is the basis of the economy of the Kuril Islands.

It should be noted that at the moment Russia and Japan have signed a program for the joint economic development of the South Kuril Islands. The program was signed in Tokyo in 2000 during an official visit to Japan by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"Socio-economic development of the Kuril Islands of the Sakhalin region (1994-2005)" in order to ensure the integrated socio-economic development of this region as a special economic zone.

Japan believes that the conclusion of a peace treaty with Russia is impossible without determining the ownership of four South Kuril Islands. This was stated by Foreign Minister of this country Yoriko Kawaguchi, speaking to the public of Sapporo with a speech on Russian-Japanese relations. The Japanese threat hanging over the Kuril Islands and their population still worries the Russian people today.

Since 1945, the authorities of Russia and Japan have not been able to sign a peace treaty because of a dispute over the ownership of the southern part of the Kuril Islands.

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

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

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

Iturup(jap. 択捉島 Etorofu) - the island of the southern group of the Great Ridge of the Kuril Islands, the most large island archipelago.

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

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

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

History of the Kuril Islands

17th century
Before the arrival of the Russians and the Japanese, the islands were inhabited by the Ainu. In their language, “kuru” meant “a person who came from nowhere,” from which their second name “smokers” came from, and then the name of the archipelago.

In Russia, the first mention of the Kuril Islands dates back to 1646, when N. I. Kolobov spoke about the bearded people inhabiting the islands Ainakh.

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

18th century
In 1711, Ivan Kozyrevsky went to the Kuriles. He only visited 2 northern islands: Shumshu and Paramushir, - but he asked in detail the Ainu and Japanese who inhabited them, brought there by a storm. In 1719, Peter I sent an expedition to Kamchatka led by Ivan Evreinov and Fyodor Luzhin, which reached Simushir Island in the south.

In 1738-1739, Martyn Spanberg walked along the entire ridge, putting the islands he met on the map. In the future, the Russians, avoiding dangerous voyages to the southern islands, mastered the northern ones, taxed the local population with yasak. From those who did not want to pay it and went to distant islands, they took amanats - hostages from among close relatives. But soon, in 1766, the centurion Ivan Cherny from Kamchatka was sent to the southern islands. He was ordered to attract the Ainu into citizenship without the use of violence and threats. However, he did not follow this decree, mocked them, poached. All this led to a rebellion of the indigenous population in 1771, during which many Russians were killed.

Great success was achieved by the Siberian nobleman Antipov with the Irkutsk translator Shabalin. They managed to win the favor of the Kuril people, and in 1778-1779 they managed to bring into citizenship more than 1500 people from Iturup, Kunashir and even Matsumaya (now Japanese Hokkaido). In the same 1779, Catherine II by decree freed those who accepted Russian citizenship from all taxes. But relations were not built with the Japanese: they forbade the Russians to go to these three islands.

In the "Extensive land description of the Russian state ..." of 1787, a list was given from the 21st island belonging to Russia. It included islands up to Matsumaya (Hokkaido), whose status was not clearly defined, since Japan had a city in its southern part. At the same time, the Russians had no real control even over the islands south of Urup. There, the Japanese considered the Kurilians their subjects, actively used violence against them, which caused discontent. In May 1788, a Japanese merchant ship that had come to Matsumai was attacked. In 1799, by order of the central government of Japan, two outposts were founded on Kunashir and Iturup, and guards began to be constantly guarded.

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

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

20th century
After the defeat in 1905 in the Russo-Japanese War, Russia transferred the southern part of Sakhalin to Japan.
In February 1945, the Soviet Union promised the United States and Great Britain to start a war with Japan on the condition that Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands be returned to it.
February 2, 1946. Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on the inclusion of South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands in the RSFSR.
1947. Deportation of Japanese and Ainu from the islands to Japan. Displaced 17,000 Japanese and an unknown number of Ainu.
November 5, 1952. A powerful tsunami hit the entire coast of the Kuriles, Paramushir suffered the most. A giant wave washed away the city of Severo-Kurilsk (formerly Kasivabara). The press was forbidden to mention this catastrophe.
In 1956, the Soviet Union and Japan agreed to a Joint Treaty formally ending the war between the two states and ceding Habomai and Shikotan to Japan. Signing the treaty, however, failed: the United States threatened not to give Japan the island of Okinawa if Tokyo renounces its claims to Iturup and Kunashir.

Maps of the Kuril Islands

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

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

Photomap of the Kuril Islands based on a NASA space image, April 2010.

List of all islands

View of Habomai from Hokkaido
Green Island (志発島 Shibotsu-to)
Polonsky Island (Jap. 多楽島 Taraku-to)
Tanfiliev Island (Jap. 水晶島 Suisho-jima)
Yuri Island (勇留島 Yuri-to)
Anuchina Island
Demina Islands (Japanese: 春苅島 Harukari-to)
Shard Islands
Kira Rock
Rock Cave (Kanakuso) - a rookery of sea lions on a rock.
Sail Rock (Hokoki)
Candle Rock (Rosoku)
Fox Islands (Todo)
Bump Islands (Kabuto)
Can Dangerous
Watchtower Island (Homosiri or Muika)

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

Image copyright RIA Image caption Before Putin and Abe, the issue of signing a peace treaty between Russia and Japan was discussed by all their predecessors - to no avail

During a two-day visit to Nagato and Tokyo, the Russian president will agree with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on investments. The main question - about the ownership of the Kuril Islands - as usual, will be postponed indefinitely, experts say.

Abe became the second G7 leader to host Putin after the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014.

The visit was supposed to take place two years ago, but was canceled due to sanctions against Russia, supported by Japan.

What is the essence of the dispute between Japan and Russia?

Abe is making progress in a long-standing territorial dispute in which Japan claims the islands of Iturup, Kunashir, Shikotan, as well as the Habomai archipelago (in Russia, this name does not exist, the archipelago, together with Shikotan, are united under the name of the Lesser Kuril Ridge).

The Japanese elite is well aware that Russia will never return two large islands, so they are ready to take a maximum of two small ones. But how to explain to society that they forever abandon the big islands? Alexander Gabuev, expert at the Carnegie Moscow Center

At the end of World War II, in which Japan fought on the side of Nazi Germany, the USSR expelled 17,000 Japanese from the islands; no peace treaty was signed between Moscow and Tokyo.

The San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1951 between the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition and Japan established the sovereignty of the USSR over South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, but Tokyo and Moscow did not agree on what to understand by the Kuriles.

Tokyo considers Iturup, Kunashir and Habomai to be its illegally occupied "northern territories". Moscow considers these islands part of the Kuril Islands and has repeatedly stated that their current status is not subject to revision.

In 2016, Shinzo Abe flew to Russia twice (to Sochi and Vladivostok), he and Putin also met at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Lima.

In early December, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Moscow and Tokyo had similar positions on the peace treaty. In an interview with Japanese journalists, Vladimir Putin called the absence of a peace treaty with Japan an anachronism that "should be eliminated."

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption In Japan, immigrants from the "northern territories" still live, as well as their descendants, who do not mind returning to their historical homeland.

He also said that the foreign ministries of the two countries need to resolve "purely technical issues" among themselves so that the Japanese can visit the southern Kuriles without visas.

However, Moscow is embarrassed that in the event of the return of the southern Kuriles, US military bases may appear there. The head of the National Security Council of Japan, Shotaro Yachi, did not rule out such a possibility in a conversation with Secretary of the Russian Security Council Nikolai Patrushev, the Japanese newspaper Asahi wrote on Wednesday.

Should we wait for the return of the Kuriles?

The short answer is no. "We should not expect any breakthrough agreements, and ordinary ones too, on the issue of ownership of the southern Kuriles," said former Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Georgy Kunadze.

"The expectations of the Japanese side, as usual, are at odds with the intentions of Russia," Kunadze said in an interview with the BBC. "President Putin has repeatedly said in the last days before leaving for Japan that the problem of belonging to the Kuriles does not exist for Russia, that the Kuriles are , in fact, a war trophy following the results of the Second World War, and even the fact that Russia's rights to the Kuriles are secured by international treaties."

The latter, according to Kunadze, is a moot point and depends on the interpretation of these treaties.

“Putin is referring to the agreements reached in Yalta in February 1945. These agreements were political in nature and assumed the appropriate contractual and legal formalization. It took place in San Francisco in 1951. The Soviet Union did not sign a peace treaty with Japan then. , there is no other consolidation of Russia's rights in the territories that Japan renounced under the San Francisco Treaty," the diplomat sums up.

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption The Russians, like the Japanese, do not expect concessions from their authorities on the Kuriles

"The parties are trying as much as possible to blow off the ball of mutual expectations of the public and show that there will be no breakthrough," comments Alexander Gabuev, an expert at the Carnegie Moscow Center.

"The red line of Russia: Japan recognizes the results of World War II, renounces claims to the southern Kuriles. As a gesture of goodwill, we give Japan two small islands, and on Kunashir and Iturup we can make visa-free entry, a free zone for joint economic development - everything that anything," he believes. "Russia cannot give up two large islands, because it will be a loss, these islands are of economic importance, a lot of money has been invested there, there is a large population, the straits between these islands are used by Russian submarines when they go out to patrol the Pacific Ocean" .

Japan, according to Gabuev's observations, has softened its position on disputed territories in recent years.

“The Japanese elite is well aware that Russia will never return two large islands, so they are ready to take a maximum of two small ones. But how to explain to society that they are forever abandoning large islands? large. For Russia, this is unacceptable, we want to resolve the issue once and for all. These two red lines are not yet close enough to expect a breakthrough," the expert believes.

What else will be discussed?

The Kuriles are not the only topic discussed by Putin and Abe. Russia needs foreign investment in the Far East.

According to the Japanese edition of Yomiuri, due to sanctions, trade between the two countries has decreased. Thus, imports from Russia to Japan decreased by 27.3% - from 2.61 trillion yen ($23 billion) in 2014 to 1.9 trillion yen ($17 billion) in 2015. And exports to Russia by 36.4% - from 972 billion yen (8.8 billion dollars) in 2014 to 618 billion yen (5.6 billion dollars) in 2015.

Image copyright RIA Image caption As head of the Russian state, Putin last visited Japan 11 years ago.

The Japanese government intends to acquire a part of the gas fields of the Russian company Novatek, as well as a part of the shares of Rosneft through the state oil, gas and metals corporation JOGMEC.

It is expected that dozens of commercial agreements will be signed during the visit, and at the working breakfast Russian President and the Prime Minister of Japan will be attended, in particular, by the head of Rosatom Alexei Likhachev, the head of Gazprom Alexei Miller, the head of Rosneft Igor Sechin, the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund Kirill Dmitriev, entrepreneurs Oleg Deripaska and Leonid Mikhelson.

So far, Russia and Japan are only exchanging pleasantries. Whether at least part of the economic memorandums will come true, it will become clear whether they can also agree on something.

History of the Kuril Islands

The narrow strait that separates Kunashir from Hokkaido is called the Strait of Treason in Russian. The Japanese have their own opinion on this matter.

The Kuril Islands got their name from the people who inhabited them. “Kuru” in the language of these people meant “man”, “smokers” or “smokers” were called by the Cossacks, and they called themselves “Ainu”, which in meaning did not differ much from “kuru”. The culture of the Kurilians, or Ainu, has been traced by archaeologists for at least 7,000 years. They lived not only in the Kuril Islands, which they called "Kuru-misi", that is, "the land of people", but also on the island of Hokkaido ("Ainu-moshiri"), and in the southern part of Sakhalin. In their appearance, language and customs, they differed significantly both from the Japanese in the south and from the Kamchadals in the north.

A non-Mongoloid type of face, thick hair, a broad beard, pronounced vegetation on the whole body - ethnographers were looking for the ancestral home of the Ainu both in the Caucasus and in Australia. In accordance with one of the latest hypotheses, the Ainu, who have lived on their islands for centuries, are a "splinter" of a special, ancient race.

The Cossacks called them "hairy", and this nickname was used even in official Russian papers. One of the first researchers of Kamchatka, Stepan Krasheninnikov, wrote about the Kurils: “They are incomparably more courteous than other peoples: and at the same time they are constant, upright, ambitious and meek. They speak quietly without interrupting each other's speeches... Old people are held in great respect...”

In the XVII - XIX centuries The island of Hokkaido had a different name for the Japanese - Ezo. The term "ezo" in the old days denoted the "northern savages" who did not obey anyone. Gradually, under Ezo in Japan, they began to mean in general all the lands north of about. Hondo (Honshu), including Sakhalin and the Kuriles. The Russians called Hokkaido Matsmai, since in its southwestern part there was a city of the same name built by the Matsumae samurai clan.

One of the first expeditions to the land of Ezo was undertaken by the Japanese in 1635. Presumably, a certain Kinfiro, a translator from the Ainu, who served with the Matsumae feudal lords, took part in it. Whether Kinfiro managed to get to Sakhalin and the Kuriles or received information about them from the Ainu is not known for certain, however, based on the results of his trip in 1644, a map was drawn up, on which, although conditionally, Karafuto (Sakhalin) and Tsisimi were indicated - “a thousand islands "- so the Japanese called the Kuril Islands. Almost at the same time, in 1643, the area of ​​the South Kuriles was explored by the Dutch expedition of Maarten Fries, who were looking for mythical countries rich in gold and silver. The Dutch not only compiled good maps, but also described the lands they discovered (the journal of the senior navigator Cornelius Kuhn has been preserved and published), among which it is easy to recognize Iturup, Kunashir, and other islands of the South Kuriles.

In Russia, the first information about the Kuril Islands appeared in the reports of Vladimir Atlasov, who in 1697 made the famous campaign against Kamchatka. But the first descriptions of the islands were not compiled by him, but by the Cossack Ivan Kozyrevsky, who, by a sad irony of fate, participated in the murder of Atlasov. In order to beg for forgiveness, Kozyrevsky went to the Kuriles in 1711, but visited only the first two islands - Shumshu and Paramushir, where he asked in detail the "hairy" who lived there. He supplemented his report with information received from the Japanese brought to Kamchatka during a storm in 1710.

In 1719, Peter I sent two surveyors to Kamchatka - Ivan Evreinov and Fyodor Luzhin. Officially - to find out "whether America has converged with Asia." However, the content of the secret instruction they had was obviously different, since the surveyors, against expectations, sent their ship not to the north, but to the south - to the Kuriles and Japan. They managed to pass only half of the ridge: near the island of Simushir, the ship lost its anchor and was thrown back by the winds to Kamchatka. In 1722, Evreinov personally submitted to Peter a report on the expedition and a map of the islands examined.

In 1738-1739, Martyn Shpanberg, a member of the Bering expedition, went south along the entire Kuril ridge and mapped the islands he encountered. Spanberg's ship rounded Matsmai and anchored off the coast of Hondo - here the first ever meeting of Russians with the Japanese took place. She was quite friendly, though not without mutual wariness. Avoiding risky voyages to the South Kuriles, the Russians mastered the islands closest to Kamchatka, subjugating the "shaggy" and demanding yasak (fur tax) from them with the skins of sea otters. Many did not want to pay yasak and went to distant islands. To keep the Kurilians, the Cossacks took amanats (hostages) from among their children and relatives.

In 1766, at the direction of the Siberian governor, a toyon (leader) from the island of Paramushir Nikita Chikin and a centurion from Kamchatka Ivan Cherny were sent to the southern Kuril Islands. They had to "persuade the Kurils into citizenship, without showing, not only by deed, but also by a sign of rude deeds and anger, but greetings and affection." Chikin himself was one of the "hairy" and easily found a common language with his fellow tribesmen, but, unfortunately, he died suddenly on Simushir and Cherny stood at the head of the party. The centurion went to the 19th island (Iturup), along the way, by force, bringing the "shaggy" into citizenship. From them he learned that the Japanese had a fortress on the 20th (Kunashir). During the winter on the 18th island (Urup) Cherny drank, poached and mocked both his companions - the Cossacks, and the "hairy ones". On the way back, the centurion took with him the "descended" (runaway) smokers, and kept them bound on the ship, which caused many deaths. Cherny's "exploits" did not go unnoticed, he fell under investigation, but died in Irkutsk from smallpox. Embittered by the actions of Chernoy and other merchants, the "hairy" rebelled in 1771 and killed many Russians on the islands of Chirpoi and Urup.

In 1778, the Siberian nobleman Antipin, who was familiar with the Japanese language, was sent to the South Kuriles. On Urup he was joined by the Irkutsk townsman, translator Shabalin. The instructions given by the head of Kamchatka, Matvey Bem, ordered "to establish peaceful relations with the Japanese and the furry ones", and "under the death penalty not to offend the wild, as happened in the Aleutian Islands ...". Antipin and Shabalin managed to win the sympathy and disposition of the "hairy", and in 1778-1779 more than 1,500 smokers from Iturup, Kunashir and Matsmay were brought into Russian citizenship. Contacts with the Japanese were unsuccessful. Strictly adhering to the state policy of self-isolation, Japanese officials gave Antipin a ban not only to trade on Matsmai, but also to go to Iturup and Kunashir. The expedition of Antipin and Shabalin did not continue: in 1780, their ship, anchored off the island of Urup, was thrown onto land by a strong tsunami at a distance of 400 meters from the coast! With great difficulty, sailors managed to return to Kamchatka on canoes ...

In 1779, by her decree, Catherine II freed the Kurilians, who had accepted Russian citizenship, from all taxes. Published in 1787 by the Highest Order of the Empress, “A vast land description of the Russian state ...” contains a list of the Kuril Islands, “of which 21 are now considered under Russian possession ...”. The 21st island was Shikotan, and about the 22nd, Matsmai, it was said that the Japanese have a city on its southern side, and how far their possession extends on the northern side of Matsmai is unknown.

Meanwhile, the Russians had no real control over the islands located south of the 18th (Urup). In the report of the navigator Lovtsov, who visited Matsmai in 1794, it was reported: “The Kuriles, both on the 22nd, and on the 19th, 20th and 21st islands, are revered by the Japanese as their subjects and are used by them in serious work... And from that it is noticeable that all the smokers are extremely dissatisfied with the Japanese... In 1788, in May, one Japanese merchant ship came to Matsmai. The Kurilians made an attack on the ship. All 75 Japanese were killed, and the goods, having taken, were divided. An official was sent from Matsmai - 35 people were executed ... "

In 1799, by order of the central government of Japan, two principalities founded outposts on Kunashir and Iturup, and since 1804, these islands have been constantly guarded.

An attempt to resume negotiations with the Japanese on trade was made in 1805, when in Nagasaki, the only port in Japan where foreign ships were allowed to enter, the founder of the Russian-American Company (RAC), acting State Councilor Nikolai Rezanov, arrived as an ambassador extraordinary. However, his audience with the governor failed. The acts handed over by the Japanese side finally formulated the rejection of trade relations with Russia. As for the Russian ships, they were asked not to stop at anchor and to set off from the Japanese coast as soon as possible. Offended by the refusal, Rezanov made it clear to Japanese officials that the Russian emperor had ways to teach him to respect him. In his report to the tsar, he also reported that the Japanese nobles, suffering from the despotism of the spiritual ruler "dairi", hinted to him, Rezanov, that the Japanese should be "moved" from the north and remove some industry - this would allegedly give the Japanese government an excuse to establish trade relations with Russia... Rezanov instructed Lieutenant Khvostov and Midshipman Davydov to fulfill this "hint", making up an expedition of two vessels.

In 1806, Khvostov expelled the Japanese from Sakhalin, destroying all trading posts in Aniva Bay. In 1807, he burned a Japanese village on Iturup, and distributed goods from shops to smokers. On Matsmay, Khvostov captured and plundered 4 Japanese ships, after which he left the following paper to the Matsmay governor: “The Russians, having now caused so little harm to the Japanese empire, wanted to show them only through ... that further stubbornness of the Japanese government could completely deprive them of these lands ".

Believing that Khvostov's pirate raids were sanctioned by the Russian government, the Japanese prepared to retaliate. That is why the completely peaceful appearance on Kunashir in 1811 of Captain Vasily Golovnin ended with his capture and imprisonment for more than 2 years. Only after official government papers were delivered from Okhotsk to the Matsmai governor from Okhotsk, stating that "Khvostov and Davydov were tried, found guilty, punished and are no longer alive", Golovnin and his friends were released.

After the release of Golovnin, the governor of Irkutsk forbade Russian ships and canoes to go further than the 18th island (Urup), on which a colony of the Russian-American Company had existed since 1795. In fact, by the middle of the 19th century, the strait between Urup and Iturup began to serve as a border between states, which was fixed by the treaty of 1855, signed by Admiral Putyatin in the Japanese city of Shimoda. In a secret instruction to Putyatin, endorsed by Nicholas I, it was written unambiguously: "Of the Kuril Islands, the southernmost, belonging to Russia, is the island of Urup, to which we could limit ourselves ...".

The 1855 treaty left the status of Sakhalin uncertain, and in 1875 a new treaty was signed in St. Petersburg, according to which Japan renounced the rights to Sakhalin, receiving in return all the Kuriles up to Kamchatka itself. The Ainu from Sakhalin did not take Russian citizenship and moved to Hokkaido. The Ainu of the northern Kuriles decided to stay on their islands, especially since the RAK, in which they were in virtual slavery, ceased its activities in 1867. Having accepted Japanese citizenship, they retained Russian surnames and the Orthodox faith. In 1884, the Japanese government resettled all the North Kuril Ainu (there were no more than 100 of them) to Shikotan, forcibly turning them from fishermen and hunters into farmers and cattle breeders. At that time, the population of the South Kuriles, concentrated mainly on Iturup and Kunashir, was about 3,000 people, of which 3/4 were Japanese.

After the defeat of Russia in the Russo-Japanese War in Portsmouth in 1905, an agreement was signed under which the southern part of Sakhalin (below the 50th parallel) also went to Japan. In 1920, Japan also occupied the northern part of Sakhalin, where it began intensive oil development. Historian Dmitry Volkogonov found evidence that in 1923 Lenin was ready to sell northern Sakhalin to the Japanese, and the Politburo was going to ask for $1 billion for it. However, the deal did not go through, and in 1925, the terms of the Treaty of Portsmouth were confirmed in a joint declaration in Beijing.

At the Yalta Conference in 1945, Stalin said that he would like to discuss the political terms under which the USSR would enter the war against Japan. Roosevelt remarked that he believed there would be no difficulty in handing over the southern half of Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands to Russia at the end of the war.

On August 8, 1945, the USSR fulfilled its obligations and attacked Japan. In early September, Soviet troops occupied the Kuriles, including the occupied Shikotan Island and the Habomai ridge, which, both geographically and according to the Japanese territorial division, did not then belong to the Kuril Islands. In 1946-1947, all the Japanese from Sakhalin and the Kuriles, numbering about 400 thousand, were repatriated. All the Ainu were sent to Hokkaido. At the same time, more than 300,000 Soviet settlers arrived on Sakhalin and the islands. The memory of the almost 150-year stay of the Japanese in the South Kuriles was intensively erased and sometimes by barbaric methods. In Kunashir, Buddhist monuments along the entire coast were blown up, and many Japanese cemeteries were desecrated.

At the 1951 peace conference in San Francisco, the USSR delegation proposed to include in the text of the peace treaty with Japan a clause recognizing the sovereignty of the USSR over southern Sakhalin and the Kuriles, but in the circumstances of the Cold War, the position of the United States and Great Britain was already different than in 1945 , and the proposals of the USSR were not accepted. The final text of the treaty included a provision on Japan's renunciation of all rights and claims to the Kuril Islands and southern Sakhalin, but it was not said, firstly, in whose favor Japan was waiving these territories, and secondly, the concept of "Kuril Islands" was not deciphered. islands”, which each of the parties, of course, understood in its own way. As a result, the USSR did not sign the treaty, but Japan did, which gave it the formal right to immediately raise the issue of the return of the South Kuriles.

The refusal of the Soviet delegation in San Francisco to sign the peace treaty legally left Russia and Japan at war. In 1956, a joint declaration was signed in Moscow between the USSR and Japan, which contained the consent of the Soviet Union to return the island of Shikotan and the Habomai ridge to Japan immediately after the conclusion of the peace treaty. But in 1960, the government of the USSR unilaterally refused to fulfill the clause of the declaration on the return of the islands, motivating "

"his rejection of the content of the new Japanese-American security treaty.

Since 1990, Japanese citizens have been able to visit the burial places of their relatives in the South Kuril Islands (the first such visits began in 1964, but were subsequently discontinued). Many abandoned Japanese cemeteries have been restored by Russians - residents of the islands.

In 1993, a declaration on Russian-Japanese relations was signed in Tokyo, which fixes the need for an early conclusion of a peace treaty on the basis of resolving the issue of ownership of the South Kuriles. In 1998, the Moscow Declaration on the Establishment of a Creative Partnership between Russia and Japan was signed...

The strait separating Kunashir from Hokkaido is narrow. On Russian maps, it is called the Strait of Treason - in memory of the capture of Captain Golovnin. Many today believe that this name is unfortunate. But the time for renaming, apparently, has not yet come.

The World Politics Review newspaper believes that Putin's main mistake now is "a dismissive attitude towards Japan."
A bold Russian initiative to settle the dispute over the Kuril Islands would give Japan great grounds for cooperating with Moscow.- so today transmits IA REGNUM.
This "disdainful attitude" is expressed in an understandable way - give the Kuriles to Japan. It would seem - what about the Americans and their European satellites to the Kuriles, what is in another part of the world?
Everything is simple. Hidden under Japanophilia is a desire to turn the Sea of ​​Okhotsk from inland Russian into a sea open to the "world community." With great consequences for us, both military and economic.

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

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

In Russia, the Kuril Islands are first mentioned in the reporting document of N. I. Kolobov to Tsar Alexei from 1646 years about the peculiarities of the wanderings of I. Yu. Moskvitin. Also, data from the chronicles and maps of medieval Holland, Scandinavia and Germany testify to the indigenous Russian villages. N. I. Kolobov spoke about the bearded Ainu inhabiting the islands. The Ainu were engaged in gathering, fishing and hunting, lived in small settlements throughout the Kuril Islands and Sakhalin.
Founded after the campaign of Semyon Dezhnev in 1649, the cities of Anadyr and Okhotsk became bases for exploring the Kuril Islands, Alaska and California.

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

In 1654, the Yakut Cossack foreman M. Stadukhin visited there. In the 60s, part of the northern Kuriles was mapped by the Russians, and in 1700 the Kurils were mapped by S. Remizov. In 1711, the Cossack ataman D. Antsiferov and the captain I. Kozyrevsky visited the Paramushir Shumshu Islands. The following year, Kozyrevsky visited the islands of Iturup and Urup and reported that the inhabitants of these islands live "autocratically."

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

Russian navigators Captain Spanberg and Lieutenant Walton in 1739 were the first Europeans to open the way to the eastern shores of Japan, visited the Japanese islands of Hondo (Honshu) and Matsmae (Hokkaido), described the Kuril ridge and mapped all the Kuril Islands and east coast Sakhalin.
The expedition found that under the rule of the "Japanese Khan" is only one island of Hokkaido, the rest of the islands are not subject to him. Since the 60s, interest in the Kuriles has noticeably increased, Russian fishing vessels are increasingly mooring to their shores, and soon the local population - the Ainu - on the islands of Urup and Iturup was brought into Russian citizenship.
Merchant D. Shebalin was ordered by the office of the port of Okhotsk to "convert the inhabitants of the southern islands to Russian citizenship and start bargaining with them." Having brought the Ainu into Russian citizenship, the Russians founded winter huts and camps on the islands, taught the Ainu how to use firearms, breed livestock and grow some vegetables.

Many of the Ainu converted to Orthodoxy and learned to read and write.
Russian missionaries did everything to spread Orthodoxy among the Kuril Ainu and taught them the Russian language. Deservedly the first in this line of missionaries is the name of Ivan Petrovich Kozyrevsky (1686-1734), Ignatius in monasticism. A.S. Pushkin wrote that "Kozyrevsky in 1713 conquered two Kuril Islands and brought Kolesov news about the trade of these islands with the merchants of the city of Matmaia." In the texts of Kozyrevsky’s “Drawing of the Sea Islands”, it was written: “On the first and other islands in Kamchatsky Nos, from the autocratic ones shown, he smoked in that campaign with caress and greetings, and others, in military order, again brought him to yasak payment.” Back in 1732, the well-known historian G.F. Miller noted in the academic calendar: “Before this, the inhabitants there had no faith. But in twenty years, by order of his imperial majesty, churches and schools have been built there, which give us hope, and this people will be led out of their error from time to time. Monk Ignatius Kozyrevsky in the south of the Kamchatka Peninsula, at his own expense, laid a church with a limit and a monastery, in which he later took the vows. Kozyrevsky succeeded in converting "the local people of other faiths" - the Itelmens of Kamchatka and the Kuril Ainu.

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

At the behest of Catherine II in 1779, all fees not established by decrees from St. Petersburg were canceled. Thus, the fact of the discovery and development of the Kuril Islands by the Russians is undeniable.

Over time, the crafts in the Kuriles were depleted, becoming less and less profitable than off the coast of America, and therefore, by the end of the 18th century, the interest of Russian merchants in the Kuriles had weakened.In Japan, by the end of the same century, interest in the Kuriles and Sakhalin was just awakening, because before that the Kurils were practically unknown to the Japanese. The island of Hokkaido - according to the Japanese scientists themselves - was considered a foreign territory and only a small part of it was inhabited and developed. In the late 70s, Russian merchants reached Hokkaido and tried to trade with local residents. Russia was interested in acquiring food in Japan for Russian fishing expeditions and settlements in Alaska and the Pacific Islands, but it was not possible to start trade, as it prohibited the 1639 Japan isolation law, which read: "For the future, as long as the sun illuminates the world, no one has the right to land on the shores of Japan, even if he was an envoy, and this law can never be repealed by anyone on pain of death".
And in 1788 Catherine II sends a strict order to the Russian industrialists in the Kuriles, so that they "did not touch the islands under the jurisdiction of other powers", and a year before that, she issued a decree on equipping a round-the-world expedition to accurately describe and map the islands from Masmaya to Kamchatka Lopatka, so that they " formally classify everything as the possession of the Russian state". It was ordered not to allow foreign industrialists to " trade and crafts in belonging to Russia places and with local residents to deal peacefully". But the expedition did not take place due to the outbreak of the Russian-Turkish war of 1787-1791.

Taking advantage of the weakening of Russian positions in the southern part of the Kuriles, Japanese fishermen first appear in Kunashir in 1799, and the next year on Iturup, where they destroy Russian crosses and illegally set up a pillar with a sign indicating that the islands belong to Japan. Japanese fishermen often began to arrive on the shores of South Sakhalin, fished, robbed the Ainu, which was the reason for frequent skirmishes between them. In 1805, Russian sailors from the frigate "Yunona" and the tender "Avos" on the shore of Aniva Bay set up a pillar with Russian flag, and the Japanese camp on Iturup was devastated. The Russians were warmly welcomed by the Ainu.
.. .