Which of these islands does Japan claim? Defense aspect and danger of armed conflict. Dispute over the Kuril territory

In view of recent events, many inhabitants of the planet are interested in where the Kuril Islands are located, as well as to whom they belong. If there is still no concrete answer to the second question, then the first can be answered quite unambiguously. The Kuril Islands are a chain of islands approximately 1.2 kilometers long. It runs from the Kamchatka Peninsula to an island landmass called Hokkaido. A kind of convex arc, consisting of fifty-six islands, is located in two parallel lines, and also separates the Sea of ​​​​Okhotsk from the Pacific Ocean. The total territorial area is 10,500 km 2. On the south side, the state border between Japan and Russia is stretched.

The lands in question are of inestimable economic and military-strategic importance. Most of them are considered part of the Russian Federation and belong to the Sakhalin region. However, the status of such components of the archipelago, including Shikotan, Kunashir, Iturup, and the Habomai group, is disputed by the Japanese authorities, which classifies the listed islands as part of the Hokkaido prefecture. Thus, you can find the Kuril Islands on the map of Russia, but Japan plans to legalize the ownership of some of them. These territories have their own characteristics. For example, the archipelago belongs entirely to the Far North, if you look at legal documents. And this is despite the fact that Shikotan is located in the same latitude as the city of Sochi and Anapa.

Kunashir, Cape Stolbchaty

Climate of the Kuril Islands

Within the area under consideration, a temperate maritime climate prevails, which can be called cool rather than warm. The main impact on climatic conditions exert pressure systems that usually form over the North Pacific Ocean, the cold Kuril Current, as well as Sea of ​​Okhotsk. The southern part of the archipelago is covered by monsoon atmospheric flows, for example, the Asian winter anticyclone also dominates there.

Shikotan Island

It should be noted that the weather on the Kuril Islands is quite changeable. The landscapes of the local latitudes are characterized by less heat supply than the territories of the corresponding latitudes, but in the center of the mainland. The average minus temperature in winter is the same for each island included in the chain, and ranges from -5 to -7 degrees. In winter, prolonged heavy snowfalls, thaws, increased cloudiness and blizzards often occur. In summer, temperature indicators vary from +10 to +16 degrees. The further south the island is located, the higher the air temperature will be.

The main factor influencing the summer temperature index is the nature of the hydrological circulation characteristic of coastal waters.

If we consider the components of the middle and northern group of islands, it is worth noting that the temperature of coastal waters there does not rise above five to six degrees, therefore, these territories are characterized by the lowest summer rate for the Northern Hemisphere. During the year, the archipelago receives from 1000 to 1400 mm of precipitation, which is evenly distributed over the seasons. You can also talk about everywhere excess moisture. On the southern side of the chain in summer, the humidity index exceeds ninety percent, due to which fogs dense in consistency appear. If you carefully consider the latitudes where the Kuril Islands are located on the map, we can conclude that the area is particularly difficult. It is regularly affected by cyclones, which are accompanied by excessive precipitation, and can also cause typhoons.

Simushir Island

Population

Territories are populated unevenly. The population of the Kuril Islands lives year-round in Shikotan, Kunashir, Paramushir and Iturup. There is no permanent population in other parts of the archipelago. In total, there are nineteen settlements, including sixteen villages, an urban-type settlement called Yuzhno-Kurilsk, as well as two large cities, including Kurilsk and Severo-Kurilsk. In 1989, the maximum value of the population was recorded, which was equal to 30,000 people.

The high population of the territories during the Soviet Union is explained by subsidies from those regions, as well as big amount military personnel who inhabited the islands of Simushir, Shumshu and so on.

By 2010, the rate had dropped significantly. In total, 18,700 people occupied the territory, of which approximately 6,100 live within the Kuril District, and 10,300 in the South Kuril District. The rest of the people occupied the local villages. The population has decreased significantly due to the remoteness of the archipelago, but the climate of the Kuril Islands also played its role, which not every person can withstand.

Uninhabited Ushishir Islands

How to get to the Kuriles

The easiest way to get here is by air. local airport called "Iturup" is considered one of the most important aviation facilities built from scratch in post-Soviet times. It was built and equipped in accordance with modern technological requirements, so it was given the status of an international air point. The first flight, which later became regular, was accepted on September 22, 2014. They became the plane of the company "Aurora", which arrived from Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. There were fifty passengers on board. This event was negatively perceived by the Japanese authorities, who attribute this territory to their country. Therefore, disputes about who owns the Kuril Islands continue to this day.

It is worth noting that a trip to the Kuriles must be planned in advance. Route planning should take into account that the total archipelago includes fifty-six islands, among which Iturup and Kunashir are the most popular. There are two ways to get to them. It is most convenient to fly by plane, but tickets should be bought a few months before the scheduled date, since there are quite a few flights. The second way is a trip by boat from the port of Korsakov. The journey takes from 18 to 24 hours, but you can buy a ticket only at the box office of the Kuriles or Sakhalin, that is, online sales are not provided.

Urup is an uninhabited island of volcanic origin

Interesting Facts

Despite all the difficulties, life on the Kuril Islands is developing and growing. The history of the territories began in 1643, when several sections of the archipelago were surveyed by Marten Fries and his team. The first information received by Russian scientists dates back to 1697, when V. Atlasov's campaign across Kamchatka took place. All subsequent expeditions led by I. Kozyrevsky, F. Luzhin, M. Shpanberg and others were aimed at systematic development of the area. After it became clear who discovered the Kuril Islands, you can familiarize yourself with several interesting facts related to the archipelago:

1. To get to the Kuriles, a tourist will need a special permit, since the zone is a border zone. This document is issued exclusively by the border department of the FSB of Sakhalinsk. To do this, you will need to come to the institution at 9:30 - 10:30 with your passport. The permit will be ready the very next day. Therefore, the traveler will definitely stay in the city for one day, which should be taken into account when planning a trip.
2. Due to the unpredictable climate, visiting the islands, you can get stuck here for a long time, because in case of bad weather, the airport of the Kuril Islands and their ports stop working. Frequent obstacles are high clouds and nebula. At the same time, we are not talking about a couple of hour flight delays. The traveler should always be prepared to spend an extra week or two here.
3. All five hotels are open for guests of the Kuriles. The hotel called "Vostok" is designed for eleven rooms, "Iceberg" - three rooms, "Flagship" - seven rooms, "Iturup" - 38 rooms, "Island" - eleven rooms. Reservations must be made in advance.
4. Japanese lands can be seen from the windows of local residents, but the best view opens on Kunashir. To verify this fact, the weather must be clear.
5. The Japanese past is closely connected with these territories. Japanese cemeteries and factories remained here, the coast from the Pacific Ocean is densely lined with fragments of Japanese porcelain, which existed even before the war. Therefore, here you can often meet archaeologists or collectors.
6. It is also worth understanding that the disputed Kuril Islands, first of all, are volcanoes. Their territories consist of 160 volcanoes, of which about forty remain active.
7. local flora and the fauna is amazing. Bamboo grows here along the highways, magnolia or mulberry tree can grow near the Christmas tree. The lands are rich in berries, blueberries, lingonberries, cloudberries, princesses, redberries, Chinese magnolia vines, blueberries and so on grow abundantly here. Locals say that you can meet a bear here, especially near the Tyati Kunashir volcano.
8. Almost every local resident has a car at his disposal, but there are no gas stations in any of the settlements. Fuel is delivered inside special barrels from Vladivostok and Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk.
9. Due to the high seismicity of the region, its territory is built up mainly with two- and three-story buildings. Houses with a height of five floors are already considered skyscrapers and a rarity.
10. Until it is decided whose Kuril Islands, the Russians living here, the duration of the vacation will be 62 days a year. Inhabitants southern ridge can use visa-free regime with Japan. This opportunity is used by about 400 people per year.

The Great Kuril Arc is surrounded underwater volcanoes, some of which regularly make themselves felt. Any eruption causes a resumption of seismic activity, which provokes a “seaquake”. Therefore, local lands are subject to frequent tsunamis. The strongest tsunami wave about 30 meters high in 1952 completely destroyed the city on the island of Paramushir called Severo-Kurilsk.

The last century was also remembered for several natural disasters. Among them, the most famous was the 1952 tsunami that occurred in Paramushir, as well as the 1994 Shikotan tsunami. Therefore, it is believed that such a beautiful nature of the Kuril Islands is also very dangerous for human life, but this does not prevent local cities from developing and the population from growing.

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 the 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 small islands.

The Kuril Islands are part of the Sakhalin Oblast (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 has not received significant development due to unfavorable natural conditions.

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 got the idea of ​​as a large 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 Chinese wall! 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 most convenient road to Sakhalin remained sea ​​route. After Semyon Ivanovich Dezhnev in 1648 made his famous voyage from Arctic Ocean in the Pacific, 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 hub of international contradictions for Russia has become the Far East and the most important direction- 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 powerful army. Soviet troops expelled the Japanese from Manchuria and Korea, from 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 the South Kuril Islands that were part of the Japanese “northern territories” (the islands of Kunashir, Iturup, Shikotan, Khabomai).

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 conditions of further strengthening" 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 view Japan as its main military foothold in the Far East and, moreover, as its main ally in the struggle to maintain the dominant position of the United States 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 recorded in the treaty does not mean its renunciation of the four southern islands of 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 understanding by the Japanese of the exclusive strategic importance 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 ​​​​Okhotsk.

Thirdly, by putting forward territorial demands on the Soviet Union, Japanese government circles hoped to revive nationalist sentiments in broad sections. Japanese population and use nationalist slogans to rally these layers 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 that had developed between both 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 make adjustments to their assessments of the 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 an “Archival Museum” with a biased exposition designed to convince uninformed visitors in the imaginary historical "validity" 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.

Events connected with the further stay of Yeltsin at the head of 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 our country's concessions to 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.

A clear confirmation of this was the increasing conflicts in the sea waters surrounding 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 harsh 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 that didn't mean it was ready. Japanese side put an end to their 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 certain articles of the Constitution, and in particular those that obligated the president to “ensure the integrity and inviolability of the territory” of the Russian Federation (Article 4), “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 alarming reports of some Russian media. mass media as if 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 lack of own vehicles to ensure freight and passenger traffic;
• proximity and virtually unlimited capacity of seafood markets in neighboring countries Asia-Pacific;
• 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 the 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.

Everyone knows about Japan's claims to the South Kuriles, but not everyone knows in detail the history of the Kuril Islands and their role in Russian-Japanese relations. This is what this article will be devoted to.

Everyone knows about Japan's claims to the South Kuriles, but not everyone knows in detail the history of the Kuril Islands and their role in Russian-Japanese relations. This is what this article will be devoted to.

Before turning to the history of the issue, it is worth explaining why the Southern Kuriles are so important for Russia *.
1. Strategic position. It is in the non-freezing deep-water straits between the South Kuril Islands that submarines can go into Pacific Ocean underwater at any time of the year.
2. Iturup has the world's largest deposit of the rare metal rhenium, which is used in superalloys for space and aviation technology. World production of rhenium in 2006 amounted to 40 tons, while Kudryavy volcano emits 20 tons of rhenium every year. This is the only place in the world where rhenium is found in its pure form, and not in the form of impurities. 1 kg of rhenium, depending on the purity, costs from 1000 to 10 thousand dollars. There is no other rhenium deposit in Russia (in Soviet times, rhenium was mined in Kazakhstan).
3. The reserves of other mineral resources of the South Kuriles are: hydrocarbons - about 2 billion tons, gold and silver - 2 thousand tons, titanium - 40 million tons, iron - 270 million tons
4. The Southern Kuriles is one of 10 places in the world where, due to the turbulence of water due to the meeting of warm and cold sea currents, food for fish rises from the seabed. It attracts huge herds of fish. The cost of seafood produced here exceeds 4 billion dollars a year.

Let us briefly note the key dates of the 17th-18th centuries in Russian history associated with the Kuril Islands.

1654 or, according to other sources, 1667-1668- Sailing of a detachment led by Cossack Mikhail Stadukhin near the northern Kuril island of Alaid. In general, among the Europeans, the expedition of the Dutchman Martin Moritz de Vries was the first to visit the Kuriles in 1643, which mapped Iturup and Urup, but these islands were not assigned to Holland. Friz became so confused during his journey that he mistook Urup for the tip of the North American continent. The strait between Urup and Iturup now bears the name of de Vries.

1697 Siberian Cossack Vladimir Atlasov led an expedition to Kamchatka to conquer local tribes and tax them. The descriptions of the Kuril Islands he heard from the Kamchadals formed the basis of the earliest Russian map of the Kuriles, compiled by Semyon Remezov in 1700. 2

1710 the Yakut administration, guided by the instructions of Peter I “on finding the state of Japan and conducting trades with it,” instructs the Kamchatka clerks, “having done the courts, which are decent, for overflowing land and people on the sea with all sorts of measures, how it is possible to see through; and people will appear on that land, and those people of the great sovereign under the tsar’s highly autocratic hand again, as quickly as possible, by all means, according to local conditions, bring and collect yasak from them with great zeal, and make a special drawing for that land. 3

1711- A detachment led by ataman Danila Antsiferov and Yesaul Ivan Kozyrevsky examines the northern Kuril Islands - Shumshu and Kunashir 4 . The Ainu living on Shumshu tried to resist the Cossacks, but were defeated.

1713 Ivan Kozyrevsky leads the second expedition to the Kuril Islands. On Paramushir, the Ainu gave the Cossacks three battles, but were defeated. For the first time in the history of the Kuriles, their inhabitants paid yasak and recognized the power of Russia 5 . After this campaign, Kozyrevsky made a "Drawing map of the Kamchadal nose and sea islands." This map depicts the Kuril Islands for the first time from Cape Lopatka in Kamchatka to the Japanese island of Hokkaido. A description of the islands and the Ainu, the people who inhabited the Kuriles, is also attached to it. Moreover, in the descriptions attached to the final "drawing", Kozyrevsky also reported a number of information about Japan. In addition, he found out that the Japanese were forbidden to sail north of Hokkaido. And that "Iturups and Uruptsy live autocratically and not in citizenship." Also independent were the inhabitants of another large island of the Kuril chain - Kunashir 6 .

1727 Catherine I approves the "Opinion of the Senate" on Eastern Islands. It pointed out the need to "take possession of the islands lying near Kamchatka, since those lands belong to Russian possession and are not subject to anyone. The Eastern Sea is warm, not icy ... and may in the future follow commerce with Japan or China Korea " 7 .

1738-1739- The Kamchatka expedition of Martyn Shpanberg took place, during which the entire ridge of the Kuril Islands was passed. For the first time in Russian history, contact with the Japanese took place on their territory - at the anchorage near the island of Honshu, sailors purchased food from local residents 8 . After this expedition, a map of the Kuriles was published, which in 1745 became part of the Atlas Russian Empire 9, which was published in Russian, French and Dutch. In the 18th century, when not all territories on the globe had yet been explored by European countries, the prevailing "international law" (which, however, applied only to European countries), gave the priority right to own "new lands" if the country had priority in publishing maps of the respective territories 10 .

1761 The Senate Decree of August 24 allows the free fishing of sea animals in the Kuriles with the return to the treasury of the 10th part of the production (PSZ-XV, 11315). During the second half of the 18th century, the Russians explored the Kuril Islands and created settlements on them. They existed on the islands of Shumshu, Paramushir, Simushir, Urup, Iturup, Kunashir 11 . Yasak is regularly collected from local residents.

1786 December 22 On December 22, 1786, the Collegium of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Empire was to officially declare that the lands discovered in the Pacific Ocean belonged to the Russian crown. The reason for the decree was "an attempt on the part of the English merchant industrialists on the production of trade and animal trade on the East Sea" 12 . In pursuance of the decree, a note was drawn up in the highest name about "the announcement through Russian ministers at the courts of all European maritime powers that these open lands by Russia cannot otherwise be recognized as belonging to your empire." Among the territories included in the Russian Empire was also "the ridge of the Kuril Islands, touching Japan, discovered by Captain Spanberg and Walton" 13 .

In 1836, the jurist and historian of international law Henry Wheaton published the classic work Fundamentals of International Law, which, among other things, dealt with the ownership of new lands. Wheaton singled out the following conditions for the acquisition by the state of the right to new territory 14:

1. Discovery
2. First development-first occupation
3. Long-term uninterrupted possession of the territory

As you can see, by 1786 Russia had fulfilled all these three conditions in relation to the Kuriles. Russia was the first to publish a map of the territory, including in foreign languages, the first to establish its own settlements there and began to collect yasak from local residents, and its possession of the Kuriles was not interrupted.

Above, only Russian actions in relation to the Kuriles in the 17-18th century were described. Let's see what Japan has done in this direction.
Today, Hokkaido is the northernmost island in Japan. However, it was not always Japanese. The first Japanese colonists appeared on the southern coast of Hokkaido in the 16th century, but their settlement received administrative registration only in 1604, when the administration of the principality of Matsumae was established here (in Russia it was then called Matmai). The main population of Hokkaido at that time was the Ainu, the island was considered as a non-Japanese territory, and the principality of Matsumae (which did not occupy the whole of Hokkaido, but only its southern part) was considered "independent" from the central government. The principality was very small in number - by 1788 its population was only 26.5 thousand people 15 . Hokkaido became fully part of Japan only in 1869.
If Russia had more actively developed the Kuriles, then Russian settlements could have appeared on Hokkaido itself - it is known from documents that at least in 1778-1779 Russians collected yasak from the inhabitants of the northern coast of Hokkaido 16 .

Japanese historians, in order to assert their priority in the discovery of the Kuriles, point to the “Map of the Shoho period” dated 1644, on which the group of Habomai islands, the islands of Shikotan, Kunashir and Iturup are indicated. However, it is unlikely that this map was compiled by the Japanese based on the results of the expedition to Iturup. Indeed, by that time, the successors of the Tokugawa shogun continued his course of isolating the country, and in 1636 a law was issued according to which the Japanese were forbidden to leave the country, as well as to build ships suitable for long-distance voyages. As the Japanese scholar Anatoly Koshkin writes, the “Map of the Shoho period” “is not so much a map in the true sense of the word, but a plan-scheme similar to a drawing, most likely made by one of the Japanese without personal acquaintance with the islands, according to the stories of the Ainu” 17 .

At the same time, the first attempts of the principality of Matsumae to arrange a Japanese trading post on the island of Kunashir closest to Hokkaido date back only to 1754, and in 1786 an official of the Japanese government, Tokunai Mogami, examined Iturup and Urup. Anatoly Koshkin notes that “neither the principality of Matsumae nor the central Japanese government, having official relations with any of the states, could legally put forward claims to “exercise sovereignty” over these territories. In addition, as documents and confessions of Japanese scientists testify, the government of the bakufu (the headquarters of the shogun) considered the Kuriles "foreign land." Therefore, the above actions of Japanese officials in the southern Kuriles can be regarded as arbitrariness perpetrated in the interests of seizing new possessions. Russia, in the absence of official claims to the Kuril Islands from other states, according to the then laws and according to generally accepted practice, included the newly discovered lands in its state, notifying the rest of the world about this. 18

The colonization of the Kuril Islands was complicated by two factors - the difficulty of supply and the general shortage of people in the Russian Far East. By 1786, the southernmost outpost of the Russians was a small village on southwest coast O. Iturup, where three Russians and several Ainu, who had moved from Urup, settled 19 . The Japanese, who began to show an increased interest in the Kuriles, could not help but take advantage of this. In 1798, on the southern tip of Iturup Island, the Japanese knocked over Russian signposts and set up posts with the inscription: "Etorofu - the possession of Great Japan." In 1801, the Japanese landed on Urup and arbitrarily set up an index pole, on which an inscription of nine hieroglyphs was carved: "The island has belonged to Great Japan since ancient times." 20
In January 1799, small Japanese military units were posted in fortified camps at two points on Iturup: in the area of ​​the modern Good Start (Naibo) Bay and in the area of ​​the modern city of Kurilsk (Syana) 21 . The Russian colony on Urup languished, and in May 1806 Japanese envoys did not find any Russians on the island - there were only a few Ainu 22 .

Russia was interested in establishing trade with Japan, and on October 8, 1804, on the ship "Nadezhda" (participating in the round-the-world expedition of I.F. Kruzenshtern), the Russian ambassador, State Councilor Nikolai Rezanov, arrived in Nagasaki. The Japanese government was playing for time, and only six months later, on March 23, 1805, Rezanov managed to meet with the inspector of secret surveillance K. Toyama Rezanov. In an insulting form, the Japanese refused to trade with Russia. Most likely, this was due to the fact that the Western Europeans who were in Japan set up the Japanese government anti-Russian. For his part, Rezanov made a sharp statement: “I, the undersigned of the most eminent sovereign Emperor Alexander 1, the real chamberlain and cavalier Nikolai Rezanov, declare to the Japanese government: ... So that the Japanese empire does not extend its possessions beyond the northern tip of the island of Matmay, since all the lands and waters to north belong to my sovereign" 23

As for the anti-Russian sentiments that were fueled by Western Europeans, there is a very revealing story of Count Moritz-August Beniovsky, who was exiled to Kamchatka for participating in hostilities on the side of the Polish Confederates. There, in May 1771, together with the Confederates, he captured the St. Peter galliot and sailed for Japan. There he gave the Dutch several letters, which they in turn translated into Japanese and delivered to the Japanese authorities. One of them later became widely known as "Beniovsky's warning". Here it is:

“Highly respected and noble officers of the glorious Republic of the Netherlands!
The cruel fate that had carried me across the seas for a long time brought me a second time to Japanese waters. I went ashore in the hope that I might be able to meet Your Excellencies here and get your help. I am truly very sorry that I did not have the opportunity to talk with you personally, because I have important information that I wanted to tell you. The high respect that I have for your glorious state prompts me to inform you that this year two Russian galliots and one frigate, following a secret order, sailed around the coast of Japan and put their observations on the map, preparing for the attack on Matsuma and the islands adjacent to it, located at 41 ° 38' north latitude, to the offensive scheduled for the next year. For this purpose, on one of the Kuril Islands, which is closer than the others to Kamchatka, a fortress was built and shells, artillery and food depots were prepared.
If I could talk to you personally, I would tell more than what can be trusted to paper. Let Your Excellencies take such precautions as you deem necessary, but, as your fellow believer and zealous well-wisher of your glorious state, I would advise, if possible, to have a cruiser ready.
On this I will allow myself to introduce myself and remain, as follows below, your obedient servant.
Baron Aladar von Bengoro, army commander in captivity.
July 20, 1771, on the island of Usma.
P.S. I left a map of Kamchatka on the shore, which may be of use to you.”

There is not a word of truth in this document. “It is puzzling what purpose Beniovsky was pursuing by giving the Dutch such false information,” noted the American researcher Donald Keane. There can be no doubt about their unreliability. Far from having any aggressive intentions towards Japan, the Russians strained every effort to preserve their Pacific possessions... Beniovsky undoubtedly knew the real state of affairs, but the love of truth was never one of his virtues. Perhaps he hoped to curry favor with the Dutch by exposing to them the fictitious plot of the Russians.

However, let us return to Nikolai Rezanov. After unsuccessful negotiations in Japan, Rezanov went with an inspection to the Russian colonies on the northwestern coast of America and the Aleutian Islands.
From the Aleutian island of Unalashka, where one of the offices of the Russian-American Company was located, on July 18, 1805, he wrote letter 25 to Alexander I:

By strengthening the American institutions and building up the courts, we can also force the Japanese to open a market, which the people very much desire among them. I do not think that Your Majesty will be charged with a crime when I now have worthy employees, what Khvostov and Davydov are, and with the help of which, having built ships, I will set off next year to the Japanese shores to devastate their village on Matsmay, drive them out of Sakhalin and smash them along the shores fear, in order to take away fisheries, and deprive 200,000 people of food, the sooner to force them to open a bargain with us, to which they will be obliged. Meanwhile, I heard that they had already dared to establish a trading post on Urup. Your will, Most Merciful Sovereign, is with me, punish me as a criminal, that without waiting for a command, I get down to business; but my conscience will reproach me even more if I waste time and do not sacrifice Your glory, and especially when I see that I can contribute to the fulfillment of Your Imperial Majesty's great intentions.

So, Rezanov, in the interests of the state, under his own responsibility, made an important decision - to arrange a military operation against Japan. He instructed Lieutenant Nikolai Khvostov and midshipman Gavriil Davydov, who were in the service of the Russian-American Company, to lead it. For this, the Juno frigate and the Avos tender were transferred under their command. The task of the officers was to make a voyage to Sakhalin and the Kuriles and find out whether the Japanese, having penetrated these islands, were oppressing the Kurilians brought into Russian citizenship. If this information was confirmed, the officers were to "drive out" the Japanese. That is, it was about protecting the territories belonging to the Russian Empire from the illegal actions of the Japanese.

In South Sakhalin, which Khvostov and Davydov visited twice, they liquidated a Japanese settlement, burned two small ships, and captured several merchants from Matsumae. In addition, the local Ainu foreman Khvostov issued a letter of acceptance of the inhabitants of Sakhalin into Russian citizenship and under the protection of the Russian emperor. At the same time, Khvostov hoisted two Russian flags (RAC and state) on the shore of the bay and landed several sailors who founded a settlement that existed until 1847. In 1807, the Russian expedition liquidated the Japanese military settlement on Iturup. The captured Japanese were also released there, with the exception of two left as interpreters.
Through the released prisoners, Khvostov conveyed his demands to the Japanese authorities 27:

“Russia's neighborhood with Japan made us wish for friendly ties to the true well-being of this last empire, for which an embassy was sent to Nagasaki; but the rejection of it, insulting to Russia, and the spread of Japanese trade in the Kuril Islands and Sakhalin, as the possessions of the Russian Empire, forced this power to finally use other measures, which will show that the Russians can always harm Japanese trade until they are notified through the inhabitants of Urup or Sakhalin about the desire to trade with us. The Russians, having now caused so little harm to the Japanese empire, wanted to show them only through the fact that the northern countries of it can always be harmed by them, and that further stubbornness of the Japanese government can completely deprive it of these lands.

Characteristically, the Dutch, having translated Khvostov's ultimatum to the Japanese, added on their own behalf that the Russians were threatening to conquer Japan and send priests to convert the Japanese to Christianity.

Rezanov, who gave the order to Khvostov and Davydov, died in 1807, so he could not protect them from punishment for military actions that were not coordinated with the central government. In 1808, the Admiralty Board found Khvostov and Davydov guilty of unauthorized violation of government instructions on the purely peaceful development of relations with Japan and outrages against the Japanese. As a punishment, the awards to officers for the bravery and courage shown in the war with Sweden were annulled. It should be noted that the punishment is very lenient. Perhaps this was due to the fact that the Russian government understood the correctness of the actions of the officers who actually expelled the invaders from Russian territory, but could not but punish them because of the violation of instructions.
In 1811, Captain Vasily Golovnin, who landed on Kunashir to replenish water and food supplies, was captured by the Japanese along with a group of sailors. Golovnin was on a round-the-world voyage, on which he set off in 1807 from Kronstadt, and the purpose of the expedition, as he wrote in his memoirs, was “the discovery and inventory of the little-known lands of the eastern edge of the Russian Empire” 29 He was accused by the Japanese of violating the principles of self-isolation of the country and together with his comrades spent more than two years in captivity.
The government of the shogun also intended to use the incident with the capture of Golovnin to force the Russian authorities to formally apologize for Khvostov's and Davydov's raids on Sakhalin and the Kuriles. Instead of an apology, the governor of Irkutsk sent an explanation to the deputy of the shogun on Ezo Island that these officers had taken their actions without the consent of the Russian government. This was enough to free Golovnin and other prisoners.
The monopoly right to develop the Kuril Islands belonged to the Russian-American Company (RAC), established in 1799. Its main efforts were aimed at the colonization of Alaska, as a region much richer than the Kuriles. As a result, by the 1820s, the actual border in the Kuriles was established along the southern tip of Urup Island, on which there was a RAK 30 settlement.
This fact is confirmed by the decree of Alexander I of September 1, 1821 "On the limits of navigation and the order of coastal relations along the coasts of Eastern Siberia, North-West America and the Aleutian, Kuril Islands, etc." The first two paragraphs of this decree state (PSZ-XXVII, N28747):

1. Production of the trade of whale and fishing and every industry in the islands, in ports and bays, and in general throughout the entire Northwest coast of America, starting from Bering Strait up to 51 "North latitude, also along the Aleutian Islands and along the Eastern coast of Siberia; since along the Kuril Islands, that is, starting from the same Bering Strait to the South Cape of Urup Island, and precisely up to 45" 50 "North latitude, it is provided for use by the only Russian subjects.

2. Accordingly, it is forbidden for any foreign ship not only to moor to the shores and islands subject to Russia, indicated in the previous article; but also to approach them at a distance of less than a hundred Italian miles. Anyone who violates this prohibition will be subject to confiscation with the entire cargo.

Nevertheless, as A.Yu. Plotnikov, Russia could still lay claim to, at least, Iturup Island, tk. Japanese settlements were only in the southern and central parts of the island, while the northern part remained uninhabited 31 .

Russia made the next attempt to establish trade with Japan in 1853. On July 25, 1853, the Russian ambassador Evfimy Putyatin arrived in the Land of the Rising Sun. As in the case with Rezanov, negotiations began only six months later, on January 3, 1854 (the Japanese wanted to get rid of Putyatin by starving him out). The question of trade with Japan was important for Russia, because the population of the Russian Far East was growing, and it was much cheaper to supply it from Japan than from Siberia. Naturally, during the negotiations, Putyatin also had to resolve the issue of territorial delimitation. On February 24, 1853, he received an "Additional Instruction" from the Russian Foreign Ministry. Here is an excerpt from it 32:

On this subject of boundaries, it is our desire to be as lenient as possible (without, however, betraying our interests), bearing in mind that the achievement of another goal - the benefits of trade - is of essential importance to us.

Of the Kuril Islands, the southernmost, belonging to Russia, is the island of Urup, to which we could confine ourselves, appointing it the last point of Russian possessions to the south, so that from our side the southern tip of this island was (as it is now in essence) the border with Japan, and that from the Japanese side the northern tip of Iturup Island was considered the border.

At the beginning of negotiations on the clarification of the border possessions of ours and the Japanese, the question of the island of Sakhalin seems to be important.

This island is of particular importance to us because it lies opposite the very mouth of the Amur. The power that will own this island will own the key to the Amur. The Japanese Government, no doubt, will firmly stand up for its rights, if not for the entire island, which it will be difficult for it to support with sufficient arguments, then at least for the southern part of the island: in Aniva Bay, the Japanese have fisheries that provide food for many to the inhabitants of their other islands, and for this circumstance alone they cannot but cherish the aforesaid point.

If, in negotiations with you, their Government shows compliance with our other demands - the demands regarding trade - then you can be compliant on the subject of the southern tip of Sakhalin Island, but this compliant should be limited to this, i.e. we can in no way recognize their rights to other parts of Sakhalin Island.

When explaining all this, it will be useful for you to point out to the Japanese Government that in the situation in which this island is located, if the Japanese cannot maintain their rights to it - rights that are not recognized by anyone - the said island can become in the very shortest time the prey of some strong maritime power, whose neighborhood will hardly be as profitable and safe for the Japanese as the neighborhood of Russia, whose disinterestedness they have experienced for centuries.

In general, it is desirable that you arrange this question about Sakhalin in accordance with the existing interests of Russia. If, however, you encounter insurmountable obstacles on the part of the Japanese Government to the recognition of our rights to Sakhalin, then it is better in this case to leave this matter in its current state ( those. undelimited - statehistory).

In general, in giving you these additional instructions, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs by no means prescribes them for indispensable execution, knowing full well that nothing unconditional and indispensable can be prescribed at such a distant distance.

Your Excellency is therefore left with complete freedom of action.

So, we see, this document recognizes that the actual border between Russia and Japan runs along the southern tip of Urup. Putyatin's main task is to at least reject Japan's claims to the whole of Sakhalin, and as a maximum - to force the Japanese to recognize it as completely Russian, because. This island is of strategic importance.
Putyatin, however, decided to go further and in his message to the Supreme Council of Japan dated November 18, 1853, he proposed to draw a border between Iturup and Kunashir. As A. Koshkin notes, the Japanese government, which at that moment was under pressure from the United States and Western European countries that wanted to open Japan for trade, was afraid that Russia might join them, and therefore did not exclude the possibility of a demarcation, along which all the islands, including the most southern - Kunashir, were recognized as Russian. In 1854, in Japan, a "Map of the most important maritime borders of great Japan" was drawn up, on which its northern border was carried out along the northern coast of Hokkaido. Those. under favorable circumstances, Putyatin could return Iturup and Kunashir to Russia 33 .

However, the negotiations reached an impasse, and in January 1854 Putyatin decided to break them off and return to Russia to learn about the course of the Crimean War. This was important, because Anglo-French squadron also operated off the Pacific coast of Russia.
March 31, 1854 Japan signed a trade treaty with the United States. Putyatin again went to Japan in order to achieve for Russia the establishment of relations with Japan at a level no lower than with the United States.
The negotiations dragged on again, and on December 11, 1854, they were complicated by the fact that, as a result of the tsunami, the Diana frigate, on which Putyatin arrived (during his second arrival in Japan, he specially sailed on only one ship, so that the Japanese would not get the impression that Russia wants to demonstrate strength), crashed, the team ended up on the shore and the Russian ambassador was completely dependent on the Japanese. The negotiations were held in the city of Shimoda.

As a result of the intransigence of the Japanese on the issue of Sakhalin, Putyatin, for the sake of signing an agreement with Japan, went to the maximum compromise. On February 7, 1855, the Shimodsky Treaty was signed, according to which Sakhalin was recognized as undivided, and Russia recognized Japan's rights to Habomai, Shikotan, Kunashir and Iturup. Thus, the situation with the South Kuriles, which had de facto existed for many years, was officially recognized. However, since legally, these 4 islands were part of the Russian Empire, which was officially announced back in 1786, many historians of the Russian ambassador are now reproached for the fact that the South Kuriles were given to Japan without any compensation and that he should have defended to the end at least the largest of them is the island of Iturup 34 . Under the agreement, three Japanese ports were opened for trade with Russia - Nagasaki, Shimoda and Hakodate. In strict accordance with the Japanese-American treaty, the Russians in these ports received the right of extraterritoriality, i.e. they could not be judged in Japan.
To justify Putyatin, it is worth noting that the negotiations were conducted at a time when there was no telegraph connection between Japan and St. Petersburg, and he could not promptly consult with the government. And the way, both by sea and by land, from Japan to St. Petersburg, only in one direction, took a little less than a year. Under such conditions, Putyatin had to take full responsibility upon himself. From the moment he arrived in Japan until the signing of the Shimoda Treaty, the negotiations lasted 1.5 years, so it is clear that Putyatin really did not want to leave with nothing. And since the instructions he received gave him the opportunity to make concessions on the South Kuriles, he made them, after first trying to bargain for Iturup.

The problem of using Sakhalin, caused by the absence of a Russian-Japanese border on it, required a solution. On March 18, 1867, the "Temporary Agreement on Sakhalin Island" was signed, drawn up on the basis of the "Proposals for a Temporary Agreement on Cohabitation" of the Russian side. Under this agreement, both parties could move freely throughout the island and build buildings on it. This was a step forward, because earlier, although the island was considered undivided, the Russians did not use the southern part of Sakhalin, which the Japanese considered theirs. After this agreement, by order of the Governor-General of Eastern Siberia M. Korsakov, the Muravyevsky military post was founded in the vicinity of Busse Bay, which turned into a center for Russian development of South Sakhalin. It was the southernmost post on Sakhalin and was located well south of the Japanese posts 35 .
The Japanese at that time did not have the opportunity to develop Sakhalin as actively, so this agreement was more beneficial for Russia than for Japan.

Russia sought to solve the problem of Sakhalin finally and completely get it into its possession. For this, the tsarist government was ready to cede part of the Kuril Islands.

The Russian Foreign Ministry authorized the military governor A.E. Crown and E.K. Byutsov, appointed Russian chargé d'affaires in China, to continue negotiations on Sakhalin. Instructions were prepared for them. Butsov was instructed to convince the Japanese Foreign Ministry to send their representatives to Nikolaevsk or Vladivostok to finally resolve the issue of Sakhalin on the basis of establishing a border along the La Perouse Strait, exchanging Sakhalin for Urup with adjacent islands, and preserving the rights of the Japanese to fisheries.
Negotiations began in July 1872. The Japanese government declared that the cession of Sakhalin would be perceived by the Japanese people and foreign states as Japan's weakness and that Urup with the adjacent islands would be insufficient compensation 35 .
The negotiations that began in Japan were difficult and intermittent. They resumed in the summer of 1874 already in St. Petersburg, when Enomoto Takeaki, one of the most educated people of Japan at that time, arrived in the Russian capital in the rank of Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary.

On March 4, 1875, Enomoto spoke for the first time about giving up Sakhalin in exchange for compensation in the form of all the Kuril Islands, from Japan to Kamchatka 36 . At that time, the situation in the Balkans was aggravated, the war with Turkey (which, like during the Crimean War, England and France could again support) became more and more real, and Russia was interested in solving the Far Eastern problems as soon as possible, incl. Sakhalin.

Unfortunately, the Russian government did not show due perseverance and did not appreciate the strategic importance of the Kuril Islands, which closed the exit to the Pacific Ocean from the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, and agreed to the demands of the Japanese. On April 25 (May 7), 1875, in St. Petersburg, Alexander Mikhailovich Gorchakov on the part of Russia and Enomoto Takeaki on the part of Japan signed an agreement under which Japan renounced its rights to Sakhalin in exchange for the cession of all the Kuril Islands by Russia. Also, under this agreement, Russia allowed Japanese ships to visit the port of Korsakov in South Sakhalin, where the Japanese consulate was established, for 10 years without paying trade and customs duties. Japanese ships, merchants and fishermen were granted the most favored nation treatment in the ports and waters of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk and Kamchatka 36 .

This agreement is often called an exchange agreement, but in fact we are not talking about the exchange of territories, because. Japan did not have a strong presence on Sakhalin and no real opportunities to keep it - the waiver of rights to Sakhalin became a mere formality. In fact, we can say that the 1875 treaty fixed the surrender of the Kuriles without any real compensation.

The next point in the history of the Kuril issue is the Russo-Japanese war. Russia lost this war and, under the Portsmouth Peace Treaty of 1905, ceded to Japan the southern part of Sakhalin along the 50th parallel.

This treaty has such an important legal significance that it actually terminated the treaty of 1875. After all, the meaning of the "exchange" treaty was that Japan renounced the rights to Sakhalin in exchange for the Kuriles. At the same time, at the initiative of the Japanese side, a condition was included in the protocols of the Portsmouth Treaty that all previous Russian-Japanese agreements were annulled. Thus, Japan deprived itself of the legal right to own the Kuril Islands.

The 1875 treaty, which the Japanese side regularly refers to in disputes about the ownership of the Kuriles, after 1905 became simply historical monument and not a legal document. It would not be superfluous to recall that by attacking Russia, Japan also violated paragraph 1 of the Shimodsky Treaty of 1855 - "From now on, let there be permanent peace and sincere friendship between Russia and Japan."

Next key point- The Second World War. On April 13, 1941, the USSR signed a neutrality pact with Japan. It was concluded for 5 years from the date of ratification: from April 25, 1941 to April 25, 1946. According to this pact, it could be denounced a year before the expiration of the period.
The United States was interested in the entry of the USSR into the war with Japan in order to accelerate its defeat. Stalin, as a condition, put forward the demand that after the victory over Japan, the Kuriles and South Sakhalin would pass to the Soviet Union. Not everyone in the American leadership agreed with these demands, but Roosevelt agreed. The reason, apparently, was his sincere concern that after the end of World War II, the USSR and the USA would maintain good relations achieved in the course of military cooperation.
The transfer of the Kuriles and South Sakhalin was recorded in the Yalta Agreement of the Three Great Powers on the Far East on February 11, 1945. 37 It is worth noting that paragraph 3 of the agreement reads as follows:

The leaders of the three great powers - the Soviet Union, the United States of America and Great Britain - agreed that two or three months after the surrender of Germany and the end of the war in Europe, the Soviet Union would enter the war against Japan on the side of the Allies, on the condition that:
…
3. Transfer to the Soviet Union of the Kuril Islands.

Those. we are talking about the transfer of all the Kuril Islands without exception, incl. Kunashir and Iturup, who were ceded to Japan under the Shimoda Treaty of 1855.

On April 5, 1945, the USSR denounced the Soviet-Japanese neutrality pact, and on August 8 declared war on Japan.

On September 2, the act of surrender of Japan was signed. South Sakhalin with the Kuriles went to the USSR. However, after the act of surrender, it was still necessary to conclude a peace treaty, in which new borders would be fixed.
Franklin Roosevelt, who was kind to the USSR, died on April 12, 1945, and was replaced by the anti-Soviet Truman. On October 26, 1950, American considerations on concluding a peace treaty with Japan were handed over to the Soviet representative in the UN in order to get acquainted. In addition to details unpleasant for the USSR, such as the retention of American troops on Japanese territory for an indefinite period, they revised the Yalta agreement, according to which South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands passed to the USSR 38 .
In fact, the United States decided to remove the USSR from the process of negotiating a peace treaty with Japan. In September 1951, a conference was to be held in San Francisco, at which a peace treaty between Japan and the allies was to be signed, but the United States did everything so that the USSR considered it impossible for itself to participate in the conference (in particular, they did not receive invitations to the conference PRC, North Korea, Mongolia and Vietnam, which the USSR insisted on and what was fundamental for it) - then a separate peace treaty would have been concluded with Japan in its American formulation without taking into account the interests of the Soviet Union.

However, these calculations of the Americans did not materialize. The USSR decided to use the San Francisco conference to expose the separate nature of the treaty.
Among the amendments to the draft peace treaty proposed by the Soviet delegation were the following 39:

Paragraph "c" shall be stated in the following wording:
"Japan recognizes the full sovereignty of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics over the southern part of Sakhalin Island with all the islands adjacent to it and the Kuril Islands and renounces all rights, titles and claims to these territories."
According to article 3.
Rewrite the article as follows:
"Japanese sovereignty will extend to the territory consisting of the islands of Honshu, Kyushu, Shikoku, Hokkaido, as well as Ryukyu, Bonin, Rosario, Volcano, Pares Vela, Marcus, Tsushima and other islands that were part of Japan before December 7, 1941, with the exception of those territories and islands referred to in Art. 2".

These amendments were rejected, but the US could not ignore the Yalta agreements at all. The text of the treaty included a provision stating that "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 Treaty of Portsmouth of September 5, 1905." 40. From a philistine point of view, it may seem that this is the same as the Soviet amendments. From a legal point of view, the situation is different - Japan renounces claims to the Kuriles and South Sakhalin, but does not recognize the sovereignty of the USSR over these territories. With this wording, the agreement was signed on September 8, 1951 between the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition and Japan. Representatives of the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Poland, who participated in the conference, refused to sign it.

Modern Japanese historians and politicians differ in their assessments of Japan's renunciation of South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands contained in the text of the peace treaty. Some demand the cancellation of this clause of the treaty and the return of all the Kuril Islands up to Kamchatka. Others are trying to prove that the South Kuril Islands (Kunashir, Iturup, Khabomai and Shikotan) are not included in the concept of the "Kuril Islands", which Japan refused in the San Francisco Treaty. The latter circumstance is refuted both by the established cartographic practice, when the entire group of islands - from Kunashir to Shumshu on maps is called the Kuril Islands, and by the texts of Russian-Japanese negotiations on this issue. Here, for example, is an excerpt from Putyatin's talks with Japanese representatives in January 1854. 41

« Putyatin: The Kuril Islands have belonged to us for a long time, and now Russian chiefs are on them. The Russian-American Company annually sends ships to Urup to buy furs, etc., and Russians had their settlement on Iturup even before, but since it is now occupied by the Japanese, we have to talk about it.

Japanese side: We considered all Kuril Islands have long belonged to Japan, but since most of of them passed one by one to you, then there is nothing to say about these islands. Iturup but it was always considered ours and we considered it a matter settled, as well as the island of Sakhalin or Krafto, although we do not know how far the latter extends to the north ... "

From this dialogue it can be seen that the Japanese in 1854 did not divide the Kuriles into "Northern" and "South" - and recognized Russia's right to most islands of the archipelago, with the exception of some of them, in particular, Iturup. Fun fact - the Japanese claimed that all of Sakhalin belonged to them, but they did not have it geographical map. By the way, using a similar argument, Russia could lay claim to Hokkaido on the grounds that in 1811 V.M. Golovnin in his "Remarks on the Kuril Islands" ranked Fr. Matsmai, i.e. Hokkaido, to the Kuriles. Moreover, as noted above, at least in 1778-1779, Russians collected yasak from the inhabitants of the northern coast of Hokkaido.

The unsettled relations with Japan hindered the establishment of trade, the resolution of issues in the field of fisheries, and also contributed to the involvement of this country in the anti-Soviet policy of the United States. At the beginning of 1955, the USSR representative in Japan turned to Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu with a proposal to start negotiations on the normalization of Soviet-Japanese relations. On June 3, 1955, Soviet-Japanese negotiations began in the building of the Soviet embassy in London. The Japanese delegation, as a condition for concluding a peace treaty, put forward obviously unacceptable demands - for "the islands of Habomai, Shikotan, the Chisima archipelago (Kuril Islands) and the southern part of Karafuto Island (Sakhalin)".

In fact, the Japanese understood the impossibility of these conditions. The secret instruction of the Japanese Foreign Ministry provided for three stages of putting forward territorial demands: “First, demand the transfer of all the Kuril Islands to Japan, with the expectation of further discussion; then, retreating somewhat, seek the cession of the southern Kuril Islands to Japan for "historical reasons", and, finally, insist on at least the transfer of the islands of Habomai and Shikotan to Japan, making this demand an indispensable condition for the successful completion of negotiations.
The fact that Habomai and Shikotan were the ultimate goal of diplomatic bargaining was repeatedly said by the Japanese Prime Minister himself. So, during a conversation with a Soviet representative in January 1955, Hatoyama stated that "Japan will insist during negotiations on the transfer of the islands of Habomai and Shikotan to her." There was no talk of any other territories 42 .

Such a "soft" position of Japan did not suit the United States. Thus, it was precisely for this reason that in March 1955 the American government refused to receive the Japanese Foreign Minister in Washington.

Khrushchev was ready to make concessions. On August 9, in London, during an informal conversation, the head of the Soviet delegation, A.Ya. Malik (during the war years he was the USSR ambassador to Japan, and then, in the rank of deputy foreign minister, the representative of the Soviet Union to the UN) suggested that the Japanese diplomat in the rank after Shun'ichi Matsumoto transfer the islands of Habomai and Shikotan to Japan, but only after the signing of a peace treaty.
Here is the assessment of this initiative by one of the members of the Soviet delegation at the London talks, later Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences S.L. Tikhvinsky43:

"I. A. Malik, acutely experiencing Khrushchev’s dissatisfaction with the slow progress of the negotiations and without consulting with the rest of the delegation members, prematurely expressed in this conversation with Matsumoto the spare position without exhausting the defense of the main position in the negotiations. His statement caused at first bewilderment, and then joy and further exorbitant demands on the part of the Japanese delegation ... N. S. Khrushchev's decision to renounce sovereignty over part of the Kuril Islands in favor of Japan was a rash, voluntaristic act ... The cession to Japan of part of the Soviet territory, which, without permission Khrushchev went to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and the Soviet people, destroyed the international legal basis of the Yalta and Potsdam agreements and contradicted the San Francisco Peace Treaty, which recorded the refusal of Japan from South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands ... "

As this quote makes clear, the Japanese perceived Malik's initiative as a weakness and put forward other territorial demands. The negotiations have ceased. This suited the US as well. In October 1955, J. Dulles, in a note to the Japanese government, warned that the expansion of economic ties and the normalization of relations with the USSR "may become an obstacle to the implementation of the US government's assistance program to Japan."

Inside Japan, fishermen were primarily interested in concluding a peace treaty, who needed to obtain licenses to fish in the Kuriles. This process was greatly hampered by the lack of diplomatic relations between the two countries, which, in turn, was due to the absence of a peace treaty. Negotiations resumed. The United States exerted serious pressure on the Japanese government. So, on September 7, 1956, the State Department sent a memorandum to the Japanese government stating that the United States would not recognize any decision confirming the sovereignty of the USSR over the territories that Japan had renounced under the peace treaty.

As a result of difficult negotiations, on October 19, the Joint Declaration of the USSR and Japan was signed. It proclaimed the end of the state of war between the USSR and Japan, the restoration of diplomatic relations. Paragraph 9 of the declaration read 44:

9. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and Japan agreed to continue negotiations on 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 Habomai Islands and the Shikotan Islands 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 .

However, as we know, the signing of the peace treaty never took place. Japanese Prime Minister Hatoyama Ichiro, who signed the Declaration, resigned, and the new cabinet was headed by Kishi Nobusuke, an openly pro-American politician. Back in August 1956, the Americans openly proclaimed through Secretary of State Allen Dulles that if the Japanese government recognizes the Kuril Islands as Soviet, the United States will forever retain the island of Okinawa and the entire Ryukyu archipelago, which were then under American control.

On January 19, 1960, Japan signed the US-Japan Interoperability and Security Treaty with the United States, according to which the Japanese authorities allowed the Americans to use military bases on their territory for the next 10 years, to maintain ground, air and naval forces there. . On January 27, 1960, the USSR government announced that since this agreement was directed against the USSR and the PRC, the Soviet government refused to consider the transfer of the islands to Japan, since this would lead to an expansion of the territory used by American troops.

Now Japan claims not only Shikotan and Habomai, but also Iturup and Kunashir, referring to the bilateral Treatise on Trade and Borders of 1855 - therefore, signing a peace treaty based on the 1956 declaration is impossible. However, if Japan abandoned its claim to Iturup and Kunashir and signed a peace treaty, would Russia have to fulfill the terms of the Declaration and give up Shikotan and Khabomai? Let's consider this question in more detail.

On April 13, 1976, the United States unilaterally passed the Fisheries Conservation and Management Act, according to which, effective March 1, 1977, they moved the border of their fishing zone from 12 to 200 nautical miles from the coast, establishing strict rules for access to it by foreign fishermen. Following the United States in 1976, by adopting relevant laws, the United Kingdom, France, Norway, Canada, Australia and a number of other countries, including developing ones, unilaterally established 200-mile fishing or economic zones.
In the same year, by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of December 10 "On temporary measures for the conservation of living resources and the regulation of fisheries in the sea areas adjacent to the coast of the USSR", the Soviet Union also established sovereign rights over fish and other biological resources in its 200-mile coastal zone 46 .
New realities were fixed in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea in 1982. The concept of an "exclusive economic zone" was introduced, the width of which should not exceed 200 nautical miles. Article 55 of the convention provides that a coastal state in the exclusive economic zone has “sovereign rights for the purpose of exploration, exploitation and conservation of natural resources, both living and non-living, in the waters covering the seabed, on seabed and in its subsoil, as well as for the management of these resources, and in relation to other economic exploration and exploitation activities of the specified zone, such as the production of energy by using water, currents and wind. At the same time, it exercises jurisdiction in this zone in relation to “the creation and use of artificial islands, installations and structures; marine scientific research; protection and conservation of the marine environment” 47 .

Earlier, in 1969, the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties was adopted.
Article 62 "Radical change of circumstances" of this convention reads (emphasis in bold is ours) 48:

1. A fundamental change that occurred in relation to the circumstances that existed at the conclusion of the contract, and which was not foreseen by the parties, cannot be referred to as a basis for terminating the contract or withdrawing from it, except when:
a) the existence of such circumstances constituted an essential basis for the consent of the parties to be bound by the treaty; And
b) the consequence of a change in circumstances fundamentally changes the scope of obligations still to be performed under the contract.
2. A fundamental change in circumstances cannot be invoked as grounds for terminating or withdrawing from a treaty:
A) if the treaty establishes a boundary; or
b) if such a fundamental change, to which a party to the treaty refers, is the result of a violation by that party of either an obligation under the treaty or another international obligation assumed by it in relation to any other party to the treaty.
3. If, in accordance with the preceding paragraphs, the parties are entitled to invoke a fundamental change in circumstances as a ground for terminating or withdrawing from a treaty, he may also invoke that change as a ground for suspending the operation of the treaty.

The introduction of the 200-mile economic zone is a circumstance that fundamentally changes the scope of commitments. It is one thing to transfer the islands when there was no talk of any 200-mile exclusive zone, and quite another thing when this zone appeared. However, can it be considered that the 1956 declaration falls under paragraph 2a, i.e. under the boundary? The declaration refers to sovereignty over land areas, while the border between maritime states runs along the sea. After the transfer of the islands to Japan, an additional agreement would be required to determine the maritime border.
Thus, it can be argued that the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which was signed by both the USSR and Japan, is a fundamental change that falls under paragraph 1b of Article 62 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. Those. Russia is not obliged to comply with the terms of the 1956 Declaration on the transfer of Habomai and Shikotan, if suddenly Japan agreed to sign a peace treaty.

On November 14, 2004, the then Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia, Sergei Lavrov, on the air of the NTV channel, made a statement that Russia recognizes the 1956 Declaration "as existing."
The next day, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Russia is always ready to fulfill its obligations, especially with regard to ratified documents. But these obligations will be fulfilled "only to the extent that our partners are ready to fulfill the same agreements."
On May 24, 2005, deputies of the Sakhalin Regional Duma published an open appeal to Sergey Lavrov before his trip to Japan, where they pointed out that the 1956 Declaration was no longer binding:

“However, in 1956 there were no internationally recognized 200-mile economic zones, the starting point of which is, in this case, the coast of the Kuril Islands. Thus, now in the case of the transfer of territories, the object of transfer is not only and not only the islands, but also the adjacent economic zones that are inseparable from them, which only produce smuggled seafood worth up to 1 billion US dollars a year. Isn't the emergence of maritime economic zones in the world after 1956 a significant change in the situation?

Summarizing, we briefly note the main points.

1. The Portsmouth Treaty of 1905 annulls the 1875 treaty, so references to it as a legal document are not valid. The reference to the Shimodsky treatise of 1855 is irrelevant, because Japan violated this treaty by attacking Russia in 1904.
2. The transfer of South Sakhalin and the Kuriles to the Soviet Union is fixed in the Yalta Agreement of February 11, 1945. The return of these territories can be considered both as a restoration of historical justice and as a legitimate military trophy. This is a completely normal practice, which has a huge number of examples in history.
3. Japan may not recognize Russia's sovereignty over these territories, but it also has no legal rights to them - its refusal to claim South Sakhalin and the Kuriles is recorded in the peace treaty signed in San Francisco in 1951.
4. The Japanese indications that Habomai, Shikotan, Kunashir and Iturup are not part of the Kuril Islands (and, therefore, are not subject to the 1951 treaty) do not correspond to either geographical science or the history of previous Russian-Japanese negotiations.
5. After signing the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and legalizing the 200-mile exclusive zone in international law, following the 1956 Declaration becomes optional for Russia. Its possible implementation today, as Putin and Lavrov announced, is not an obligation, but a gesture of goodwill.
6. The Southern Kuriles are of great strategic and economic importance, so there can be no question that these are just pieces of land that you don’t feel sorry for.
7. The Kuril Islands - from Alaid to Kunashir and Habomai - Russian land.

* Anatoly Koshkin. Russia and Japan. Knots of contradictions. M.: Veche, 2010. S. 405-406.

The history of the end of the Second World War is interesting.

As you know, on August 6, 1945, the US Air Force dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, and then on August 9, 1945, on Nagasaki. The plans were to drop several more bombs, the third of which would be ready by August 17-18 and would have been dropped if such an order had been given by Truman. Tom did not have to solve the dilemma, since on August 14-15 the Japanese government announced its surrender.

Soviet and Russian citizens, of course, know that by dropping nuclear bombs, the Americans committed a war crime, purely to scare Stalin, and the Americans and the Japanese - that they forced Japan to capitulate in World War II, which saved at least a million human lives, mostly military and Japanese civilians, and, of course, allied soldiers, mostly Americans.

Imagine for a moment, did the Americans scare Stalin with a nuclear bomb, even if they suddenly set such a goal? The answer is obvious - no. The USSR entered the war with Japan only on August 8, 1945, i.e. 2 days after the bombing of Hiroshima. The date of May 8 is not accidental. At the Yalta Conference on February 4-11, 1945, Stalin promised that the USSR would enter the war with Japan 2-3 months after the end of the war with Germany, with which [Japan] had a neutrality pact concluded on April 13, 1941 (see. the main events of World War II according to the author of this LJ). Thus, Stalin fulfilled his promise on the last day of the promised 2-3 months after the surrender of Germany, but immediately after the bombing of Hiroshima. Whether or not he fulfilled this promise without it is an interesting question, perhaps historians have an answer to it, but I do not know.

So, Japan announced its surrender on August 14-15, but this did not lead to the end of hostilities against the USSR. The Soviet army continued to advance in Manchuria. Again, the Soviet Russian citizens it is obvious that hostilities continued because the Japanese army refused to surrender due to the fact that some did not reach the order to surrender, and some ignored it. The question is, of course, what would happen if the Soviet army stopped offensive operations after August 14-15. Would this lead to the surrender of the Japanese and save about 10 thousand lives of Soviet soldiers?

As is known, between Japan and the USSR, and after Russia, there is still no peace treaty. The problem of a peace treaty is linked to the so-called "northern territories" or the disputed islands of the Lesser Kuril Ridge.

Let's start. Under the cut, a Google earth image of the territory of Hokkaido (Japan) and now Russian territories to the north - Sakhalin, Kuriles and Kamchatka. The Kuril Islands are divided into the Big Ridge, which includes large and small islands from Shumshu in the north to Kunashir in the south, and the Small Ridge, which includes Shikotan in the north to the islands of the Habomai group in the south (limited in the diagram by white lines).

From the blog

To understand the problem of disputed territories, let's plunge into the deaf history of the development of the Far East by the Japanese and Russians. Before those and others, local Ainu and other nationalities lived there, whose opinion, according to the good old tradition, does not bother anyone because of their almost complete disappearance (Ainu) and / or Russification (Kamchadals). The Japanese were the first to enter these territories. First they came to Hokkaido, and by 1637 they had mapped Sakhalin and the Kuriles.

Later, Russians came to these places, drew up maps and dates, and in 1786 Catherine II declared the Kuriles her possessions. Sakhalin thus remained a draw.

In 1855, namely on February 7, an agreement was signed between Japan and Russia, according to which Urup and the islands of the Great Kuril ridge to the north went to Russia, and Iturup and the islands to the south, including all the islands of the Lesser Kuril ridge - to Japan. Sakhalin, in modern terms, was a disputed possession. True, due to the small number of Japanese and Russian populations, the issue was not so serious at the state level, except that merchants had problems.

In 1875, the issue of Sakhalin was settled in St. Petersburg. Sakhalin passed completely to Russia, in return Japan received all the Kuril Islands.

In 1904, the Russo-Japanese War began in the Far East, in which Russia was defeated, and as a result, in 1905, the southern part of Sakhalin passed to Japan. In 1925 the USSR recognizes this state of affairs. After there were all sorts of minor skirmishes, but the status quo lasted until the end of World War II.

Finally, at the Yalta Conference on February 4-11, 1945, Stalin discussed the issue of the Far East with the Allies. I repeat, he promised that the USSR would enter the war with Japan after the victory over Germany, which was already just around the corner, but in return the USSR would return Sakhalin, as illegally conquered by Japan during the war of 1905, and would receive the Kuriles, though in an indefinite amount.

And here the most interesting begins in the context of the Kuril Islands.

On August 16-23, with fighting, the Soviet Army defeats the Japanese grouping in the Northern Kuriles (Shumshu). On August 27-28, without a fight, since the Japanese surrendered, the Soviet Army takes Urup. On September 1, there is a landing on Kunashir and Shikotan, the Japanese do not offer any resistance.

September 2, 1945 Japan signs the surrender - Second World War officially completed. And here comes the Crimean operation to seize the islands of the Lesser Kuril Ridge, located south of Shikotan, known as the Habomai Islands.

The war is over, and the Soviet land continues to grow with native Japanese islands. Moreover, I never found when Tanfilyev Island (a completely deserted and flat piece of land off the very coast of Hokkaido) became ours. But it is certain that in 1946 a frontier post was organized there, which became a well-known massacre, which was staged by two Russian border guards in 1994.

As a result, Japan does not recognize the seizure of its "northern territories" by the USSR and does not recognize that these territories have passed to Russia as the legal successor of the USSR. February 7 (according to the date of the agreement with Russia in 1855) celebrates the day of the Northern Territories, which, according to the agreement of 1855, include all the islands south of Urup.

An attempt (unsuccessful) to solve this problem was made in 1951 in San Francisco. Japan, under this treaty, must renounce any claims to Sakhalin and the Kuriles, with the exception of Shikotan and the Habomai group. The USSR did not sign the treaty. The United States signed the treaty with the proviso: It is envisaged that the terms of the Treaty will not mean the recognition for the USSR of any rights or claims in the territories that belonged to Japan on December 7, 1941, which would prejudice the rights and legal foundations of Japan in these territories, nor will any however there were provisions in favor of the USSR with respect to Japan contained in the Yalta Agreement.»

Soviet comments on the treaty:

Gromyko's (USSR Foreign Minister) remark on the treaty: The Soviet delegation has already drawn the conference's attention to the inadmissibility of such a situation when the draft peace treaty with Japan says nothing about Japan's recognition of the sovereignty of the Soviet Union over South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. The project is in gross contradiction with the obligations in respect of these territories undertaken by the United States and Britain under the Yalta Agreement. http://www.hrono.ru/dokum/195_dok/19510908gromy.php

In 1956, the USSR promised Japan to return Shikotan and the Habomai group if Japan did not lay claim to Kunashir and Iturup. Whether the Japanese agreed with this or not, opinions differ. We say yes - Shikotan and Habomai are yours, and Kunashir and Iturup are ours. The Japanese say that everything south of Urup is theirs.

UPD Text of the declaration: 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 Habomai Islands and the Shikotan Islands to Japan, however, that the actual transfer of these islands to Japan will be made after the conclusion.

The Japanese then played back (like under pressure from the Americans), linking together all the islands south of Urup.

I do not want to predict how history will unfold further, but most likely Japan will take advantage of ancient Chinese wisdom and wait until everything disputed islands swim to them on their own. The only question is whether they will stop at the 1855 treaty or go further to the 1875 treaty.

____________________________

Shinzo Abe announced that he would annex the disputed islands of the South Kuril chain to Japan. “I will solve the problem of the northern territories and conclude a peace treaty. As a politician, as a prime minister, I want to achieve this at all costs,” he promised his compatriots.

According to Japanese tradition, Shinzo Abe will have to do hara-kiri if he does not keep his word. It is quite possible that Vladimir Putin will help the Japanese prime minister live to a ripe old age and die a natural death.

In my opinion, everything goes to the fact that the long-standing conflict will be settled. The time for establishing decent relations with Japan was chosen very well - for the empty hard-to-reach lands, which their former owners now and then look nostalgically, you can get a lot of material benefits from one of the most powerful economies in the world. And the lifting of sanctions as a condition for the transfer of the islands is far from the only and not the main concession, which, I am sure, our Foreign Ministry is now seeking.

So the quite expected surge of quasi-patriotism of our liberals, directed at the Russian president, should be prevented.

I have already had to analyze in detail the history of the islands of Tarabarov and Bolshoy Ussuriysky on the Amur, the loss of which Moscow snobs cannot come to terms with. The post also discussed the dispute with Norway over maritime territories, which was also settled.

I also touched upon the secret negotiations between the human rights activist Lev Ponomarev and the Japanese diplomat about the "northern territories", filmed on video and posted online. Generally speaking, one of this video it is enough for our caring citizens to bashfully swallow the return of the islands to Japan, if it takes place. But since concerned citizens will definitely not keep silent, we must understand the essence of the problem.

background

February 7, 1855 - Shimoda Treatise on Commerce and Frontiers. The now disputed islands of Iturup, Kunashir, Shikotan and the Habomai group of islands have been ceded to Japan (therefore, February 7 is annually celebrated in Japan as Northern Territories Day). The question of the status of Sakhalin remained unresolved.

May 7, 1875 - Petersburg Treaty. Japan transferred the rights to all 18 Kuril Islands in exchange for the entire Sakhalin.

August 23, 1905 - Treaty of Portsmouth following the results of the Russo-Japanese War. Russia ceded the southern part of Sakhalin.

February 11, 1945 - Yalta Conference. The USSR, the USA and Great Britain reached a written agreement on the entry of the Soviet Union into the war with Japan on the condition that South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands be returned to it after the end of the war.

On February 2, 1946, on the basis of the Yalta Agreements, the Yuzhno-Sakhalin Region was created in the USSR - on the territory of the southern part of Sakhalin Island and the Kuril Islands. On January 2, 1947, it was merged with the Sakhalin Region Khabarovsk Territory, which expanded to the borders of the modern Sakhalin region.

Japan enters the Cold War

On September 8, 1951, the Peace Treaty between the Allied Powers and Japan was signed in San Francisco. Regarding the now disputed territories, it says the following: "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."

The USSR sent a delegation to San Francisco headed by Deputy Foreign Minister A. Gromyko. But not in order to sign a document, but to voice their position. We formulated the mentioned clause of the treaty as follows: “Japan recognizes the full sovereignty of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics over the southern part of Sakhalin Island with all the islands adjacent to it and the Kuril Islands and renounces all rights, titles and claims to these territories.”

Of course, in our wording, the treaty is specific and more in line with the spirit and letter of the Yalta agreements. However, the Anglo-American version was adopted. The USSR did not sign it, Japan did.

Today, some historians believe that the USSR should have signed the San Francisco Peace Treaty in the form in which it was proposed by the Americans - this would strengthen our negotiating position. “We should have signed a contract. I don’t know why we didn’t do this - perhaps because of vanity or pride, but above all, because Stalin overestimated his capabilities and the degree of his influence on the United States, ”N.S. wrote in his memoirs .Khrushchev. But soon, as we shall see later, he himself made a mistake.

From today's standpoint, the lack of a signature under the notorious treaty is sometimes considered almost a diplomatic failure. However, the international situation of that time was much more complicated and was not limited to the Far East. Perhaps, what seems to someone a loss, in those conditions became a necessary measure.

Japan and sanctions

It is sometimes erroneously believed that since we do not have a peace treaty with Japan, we are in a state of war. However, this is not at all the case.

On December 12, 1956, a ceremony for the exchange of letters took place in Tokyo, marking the entry into force of the Joint Declaration. According to the document, the USSR agreed to "the transfer of the Habomai Islands and the Shikotan Islands 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 parties came to this wording after several rounds of lengthy negotiations. Japan's initial proposal was simple: a return to Potsdam - that is, the transfer of all the Kuriles and South Sakhalin to it. Of course, such a proposal by the losing side of the war looked somewhat frivolous.

The USSR was not going to cede an inch, but unexpectedly for the Japanese, Habomai and Shikotan suddenly offered. This was a reserve position, approved by the Politburo, but announced prematurely - the head of the Soviet delegation, Ya.A. On August 9, 1956, during a conversation with his counterpart in the garden of the Japanese embassy in London, the reserve position was announced. It was she who entered the text of the Joint Declaration.

It must be clarified that the influence of the United States on Japan at that time was enormous (however, as now). They closely monitored all her contacts with the USSR and, undoubtedly, were the third participant in the negotiations, although invisible.

At the end of August 1956, Washington threatened Tokyo that if, under a peace treaty with the USSR, Japan renounces its claims to Kunashir and Iturup, the United States will forever retain the occupied island of Okinawa and the entire Ryukyu archipelago. The note included a wording that clearly played on the national feelings of the Japanese: “The US government has come to the conclusion that the islands of Iturup and Kunashir (along with the islands of Habomai and Shikotan, which are part of Hokkaido) have always been part of Japan and should rightly be considered as belonging to Japan. ". That is, the Yalta agreements were publicly disavowed.

The affiliation of the "northern territories" of Hokkaido, of course, is a lie - on all military and pre-war Japanese maps, the islands have always been part of the Kuril ridge and have never been designated separately. However, the idea was well received. It was on this geographical absurdity that entire generations of politicians in the Land of the Rising Sun made their careers.

The peace treaty has not yet been signed - in our relations we are guided by the Joint Declaration of 1956.

Issue price

I think that even in the first term of his presidency, Vladimir Putin decided to settle all disputed territorial issues with his neighbors. Including with Japan. In any case, back in 2004, Sergey Lavrov formulated the position of the Russian leadership: “We have always fulfilled and will continue to fulfill our obligations, especially ratified documents, but, of course, to the extent that our partners are ready to fulfill the same agreements . So far, as we know, we have not been able to reach an understanding of these volumes as we see it and as we saw it in 1956.

"Until Japan's ownership of all four islands is clearly defined, a peace treaty will not be concluded," then Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi responded. The negotiation process has again reached an impasse.

However, this year we again remembered the peace treaty with Japan.

In May, at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, Vladimir Putin said that Russia was ready to negotiate with Japan on the disputed islands, and the solution should be a compromise. That is, none of the parties should feel like a loser. “Are you ready to negotiate? Yes, ready. But we were surprised to hear recently that Japan has joined some kind of sanctions - and here Japan, I do not really understand - and is suspending the negotiation process on this topic. So we are ready, is Japan ready, I haven’t learned for myself, ”said the President of the Russian Federation.

It seems that the pain point is found correctly. And the negotiation process (I hope, this time in offices tightly closed from American ears) has been in full swing for at least six months. Otherwise, Shinzo Abe would not have made such promises.

If we fulfill the terms of the 1956 Joint Declaration and return the two islands to Japan, 2,100 people will have to be resettled. All of them live on Shikotan, only a frontier post is located on Habomai. Most likely, the problem of the presence of our armed forces on the islands is being discussed. However, for complete control over the region, the troops deployed on Sakhalin, Kunashir and Iturup are quite enough.

Another question is what reciprocal concessions we expect from Japan. It is clear that the sanctions should be lifted - this is not even discussed. Perhaps access to credits and technologies, expansion of participation in joint projects? Not excluded.

Be that as it may, Shinzo Abe faces a difficult choice. The conclusion of the long-awaited peace treaty with Russia, spiced with "northern territories", would certainly have made him the politician of the century in his homeland. It will inevitably lead to tension in relations between Japan and the United States. I wonder what the Prime Minister would prefer.

And we will somehow survive the internal Russian tension that our liberals will inflate.

The Habomai group of islands is labeled "Other Islands" on this map. These are several white spots between Shikotan and Hokkaido.

(The post was written more than two years ago, but the situation as of the current day has not changed, but talk about the Kuriles in last days reactivated, - ed.)

TASS-DOSIER. On December 15, 2016, the visit of Russian President Vladimir Putin to Japan begins. It is assumed that one of the topics during his talks with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will be the question of ownership of the Kuril Islands.

Currently, Japan is putting forward territorial claims to the Russian islands of Iturup, Kunashir, Shikotan and a group of small islands of the Lesser Kuril Ridge (the Japanese name is Habomai).

The TASS-DOSIER editors have prepared material on the history of this problem and attempts to solve it.

background

The Kuril archipelago is a chain of islands between Kamchatka and the Japanese island of Hokkaido. It is formed by two ridges. The largest of the islands of the Great Kuril ridge are Iturup, Paramushir, Kunashir. Most big Island Small Kuril Ridge - Shikotan.

Initially, the islands were inhabited by the Ainu tribes. The first information about the Kuril Islands was received by the Japanese during the expedition of 1635-1637. In 1643 they were surveyed by the Dutch (led by Martin de Vries). The first Russian expedition (led by V.V. Atlasov) reached the northern part of the Kuriles in 1697. In 1786, by decree of Catherine II, the Kuril archipelago was included in the Russian Empire.

On February 7, 1855, Japan and Russia signed the Shimodsky Treaty, according to which Iturup, Kunashir and the islands of the Lesser Kuril Ridge were transferred to Japan, and the rest of the Kuriles were recognized as Russian. Sakhalin was declared a joint possession - an "undivided" territory. However, some unsettled questions about the status of Sakhalin led to conflicts between Russian and Japanese merchants and sailors. The contradictions of the parties were resolved in 1875 with the signing of the St. Petersburg Treaty on the exchange of territories. In accordance with it, Russia transferred all the Kuril Islands to Japan, and Japan renounced claims to Sakhalin.

On September 5, 1905, as a result of the Russo-Japanese War, the Treaty of Portsmouth was signed, according to which part of Sakhalin south of the 50th parallel passed into the possession of Japan.

return of the islands

At the final stage of the Second World War, during the Yalta Conference in February 1945, the USSR named the return of Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands among the conditions for the start of hostilities against Japan. This decision was enshrined in the Yalta Agreement between the USSR, the USA and Great Britain of February 11, 1945 ("Crimean Agreement of the Three Great Powers on the Far East"). On August 9, 1945, the USSR entered the war against Japan. From August 18 to September 1, 1945, Soviet troops carried out the Kuril landing operation, which led to the surrender of the Japanese garrisons in the archipelago.

On September 2, 1945, Japan signed the Act of Unconditional Surrender, accepting the terms of the Potsdam Declaration. According to the document, Japanese sovereignty was limited to the islands of Honshu, Kyushu, Shikoku and Hokkaido, as well as the smaller islands of the Japanese archipelago.

On January 29, 1946, the Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Forces in Japan, American General Douglas MacArthur, notified the Japanese government of the exclusion of the Kuril Islands from the territory of the country. On February 2, 1946, by decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the Kuril Islands were included in the USSR.

According to the San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1951, concluded between the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition and Japan, Tokyo renounced all rights, titles and claims to the Kuril Islands and Sakhalin. However, the Soviet delegation did not sign this document, since it did not stipulate the question of the withdrawal of the occupying troops from the territory of Japan. In addition, the treaty did not spell out which particular islands of the Kuril archipelago were discussed and in whose favor Japan refuses them.

This was the main reason for the existing territorial problem, which is still the main obstacle to the conclusion of a peace treaty between Russia and Japan.

The essence of the disagreement

The principal position of the USSR and Russia was and is that "the belonging of the southern Kuril Islands (Iturup, Kunashir, Shikotan and Khabomai) to the Russian Federation is based on the generally recognized results of the Second World War and the unshakable post-war international legal basis, including the UN Charter. Thus, Russian sovereignty over them has a corresponding international legal form and is beyond doubt" (statement of the Russian Foreign Ministry dated February 7, 2015).

Japan, referring to the Shimodsky Treaty of 1855, claims that Iturup, Kunashir, Shikotan and a number of small islands never belonged to the Russian Empire and considers their inclusion in the USSR illegal. In addition, according to the Japanese side, these islands are not part of the Kuril archipelago and therefore they do not fall under the term "Kuril Islands", which was used in the San Francisco Treaty of 1951. Currently, in Japanese political terminology, the disputed islands are called " northern territories.

Declaration of 1956

In 1956, the USSR and Japan signed a Joint Declaration that formally declared the end of the war and restored bilateral diplomatic relations. In it, the USSR agreed to transfer the island of Shikotan and the uninhabited islands to Japan (reserving Iturup and Kunashir) after the conclusion of a full-fledged peace treaty. The declaration was ratified by the parliaments of the two states.

However, in 1960, the Japanese government agreed to sign a security treaty with the United States, which provided for the maintenance of the American military presence on Japanese territory. In response, the USSR annulled the obligations assumed in 1956. At the same time, the Soviet Union stipulated the transfer of the islands by the fulfillment by Japan of two conditions - the signing of a peace treaty and the withdrawal of foreign troops from the country's territory.

Until the early 1990s. Soviet side did not mention the 1956 declaration, although Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka tried to return to its discussion during a visit to Moscow in 1973 (the first Soviet-Japanese summit).

Intensified dialogue in the 1990s

The situation began to change with the beginning of perestroika in the 1980s, the USSR recognized the existence of a territorial problem. Following the visit of Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev to Japan in April 1991, the joint communiqué included a provision on the intention of the parties to continue negotiations on the normalization of relations and on a peaceful settlement, including territorial issues.

The presence of a territorial problem was also confirmed in the Tokyo Declaration, signed following negotiations between Russian President Boris Yeltsin and Japanese Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa in October 1993. The document recorded the desire of the parties to resolve the issue of territorial ownership of the disputed islands.

In the Moscow Declaration (November 1998), President Yeltsin and Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi "confirmed their determination to make every effort to conclude a peace treaty by the year 2000." At that time, for the first time, the Russian side expressed the opinion that it was necessary to create conditions and a favorable atmosphere for "joint economic and other activities" in the South Kuriles without prejudice to the legal positions of both sides.

Modern stage

In 2008, Japanese politicians began to introduce the term "illegally occupied northern territories" in relation to the islands of Iturup, Kunashir, Shikotan and Khabomai. In June 2009, the Japanese Diet passed amendments to the Law on Special Measures to Promote the Solution of the "Northern Territories Problem", in accordance with which Japanese government agencies are required to make every effort to return the "Japanese ancestral lands" as soon as possible.

Visits to the islands by top Russian officials provoke a negative reaction in Tokyo (Dmitry Medvedev visited the islands in 2010 as president, in 2012 and 2015 as prime minister; the first two times he was in Kunashir, the last in Iturup). Japanese leaders periodically make "inspections of the northern territories" from an airplane or boat (the first such inspection was made by Prime Minister Zenko Suzuki in 1981).

The territorial issue is regularly discussed at Russian-Japanese talks. It was especially often raised by the administration of Shinzo Abe, who again took over as prime minister in 2012. However, it has not yet been possible to finally bring positions closer together.

In March 2012, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin stated that on the territorial issue it is necessary "to achieve an acceptable compromise or something like a hikiwake" ("draw", a term from judo). In May 2016, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Japanese Minister Shinzo Abe agreed on the need to develop dialogue in a "constructive manner, without emotional outbursts, public controversy" and agreed on a "new approach" to solving bilateral problems, but the details of the agreements were not reported.