SUMMARY:

This article explores Russia’s defeat in the Russo-Japanese war and the evacuation of the Sakhalin penal colony within the context of imperial policies in the Far East. It argues that the existing explanation of Russia’s loss of Sakhalin in terms of tsarist military inadequacies is correct but incomplete. Indeed, the island was poorly fortified and its garrison was understaffed. The very reason for the lack of interest in the island’s defenses, however, has escaped researchers’ attention. This article aims to fill this void. It argues that two major factors prevented the island from integrating into the empire and contributed to its alienation in the Russian public imagination.
First, the imperial government had no clear understanding of its aims and goals at the colonial periphery; there was no consensus among the ruling elites concerning whether Russia should stay on Sakhalin or go. Second, the elites’ confusion affected the general public’s view of the distant periphery. Guided by scientists, legal professionals, journalists, and other “imperial modernizers” who condemned the Sakhalin realities for not fitting into their theoretical constructs, the public tended to view Sakhalin and its population as aliens in their midst. During the infamous Sakhalin campaign and especially during the evacuation of the colony’s population in August–October 1905, multiple unresolved contradictions and submerged tensions of tsarist colonial policies came to the surface, causing chaos, misery, and death. The war and the evacuation once again underscored Sakhalin’s unique position at the frontier of two empires whose inhabitants were labeled neither “us” nor “them.”