DOI: 10.7256/2454-0609.2022.1.37535

Abstract: The subject of this article is the life of criminal criminals in the Sakhalin penal servitude and their view of the island's penitentiary system. This issue is very important, as it will allow us to take a fresh look at the dispute about the expediency of developing Sakhalin by exiled convicts. Special attention will be paid to the desire of criminal criminals to change their lives by means of labor in a new place, which is what government officials expected from them when planning the Sakhalin colonization project. As a source base, we will use a variety of interviews with prisoners, as well as the memories of the recidivist criminal Fyodor Shirokolobov, who tells, among other things, about his life on the island. In the historiography devoted to the Sakhalin penal servitude, works considering the views of a particular social group on the local penitentiary system are increasingly published. Writers, travelers, officials and even political criminals have already become the subject of various articles and monographs, which cannot be said about criminals. The novelty of our work will consist precisely in showing the attitude of the prisoners to the Sakhalin penal servitude. In the course of the study, we will come to the conclusion that in many respects it was formed under the influence of "Ivanov" - local authorities who were alien to physical work and honest work. This, in turn, became one of the reasons for the failure of the colonization of the island, since without the interest of the bulk of the population in the results of their work, there was nothing to dream of turning the "cursed island" into the "pearl of the Far East".

DOI: 10.7256/2454-0609.2021.4.36458

Abstract: The goal of this article is to examine the images of the Sakhalin penal servitude captured in the works of foreigners who visited the island in the late XIX – early XX centuries. The perception of foreigners draw interests due to the fact that not only the Sakhalin penal servitude, but the island itself were the embodiment of the image of “Other”, which found reflection in the narrative sources left by foreign travelers and scholars. The comparative analysis indicates that foreigners had two polar opinions about the Sakhalin penitentiary facilities, a well as the future of the island: optimistic and pessimistic. In many aspects, they neither contradicted nor complemented each other; the polemic that unfolded around the development of Sakhalin Island of that time divided the Russian society into two opposing sides. Some, relying to the positive forecasts of geologists and agronomists, as well as military necessity, offered bright prospects of the Island. Others pointed at mismatch of the official data and the reality, and doubted the positive outcome. The question of detaining criminals on Sakhalin, including state prisoners, aggravated the situation and intensified disputes. The article aims to explain the reason why one or another foreign author took the side of the “optimists” or “pessimists” in the polemics.