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Where can you find a tropical island with cold temperatures? White Europeans eating kimchee with dark bread and potatoes? Women gathering bottles of fresh stream water among ruins of a Japanese shrine? Cars with steering wheels on the right, nevertheless driving on the right side of the road? Millions of dollars invested in oil, while average monthly salaries remain under $100? Let me give you one more clue. This place has alternately been called "hell" and "treasure island," "the end of the earth" and "the black pearl of the Far East." The place is Sakhalin, an island of 30,000 square miles located just off Russia's East coast, twenty-five miles directly north of Japan. Since 1945, the island has been Russian, while the nearby Kuriles remain an issue of contention even today between Russia and Japan. Since I am beginning a dissertation for the history department about Sakhalin history, I had the good fortune of visiting the island for the first time this October. Extensive reading about the island only heightened my interest. Everything I read described Sakhalin as different, remote, unique, and mysterious—from its tenure as a tsarist penal colony in the late nineteenth century to its status as a closed military zone during the Soviet period. The 1983 shooting down of Korean Air flight 007, which killed all 269 passengers aboard; the 1995 earthquake that destroyed the town of Neftogorsk; and the August death of Sakhalin's modernizing governor Igor' Farkhutdinov in a helicopter crash have only reinforced the island's reputation as a remote place where terrible things happen. So what is Sakhalin really? This was the question I asked myself as I landed at the Iuzhno-Sakhalinsk International Airport on Asiana Airlines from Seoul, Korea. Driving into the city, I must admit that my first impression was shame. Shame for having—at least in the back of my mind—expected something a bit more exotic than this typical former-Soviet city of 150,000 people. How could I, trained as a historian to see through such rhetoric of "othering," have fallen for it myself? And shame, as I noticed buildings in disrepair, feeling as if I had caught the city undressed, catching a glimpse of what was not meant for my eyes to see. But I soon came to feel at home, no longer noticing the cracked plaster or broken windows, finding myself surrounded with hospitable and friendly people, happy to welcome an American student who cares about their past. There was Nelli, the museum secretary, who brought me a home-cooked lunch—always concerned I might go hungry while concentrating on my research—and offered personal tours of the city and its parks on her days off. Tour guides at three museums offered me private tours, for free, proud to share their city's artistic, literary, and historical treasures. And there were Tania and Andrei, with their three children, who took me into their own apartment so I wouldn't have to pay for a hotel room, and kept me busy with Soviet videos, a picnic in the mountains, and a variety of delicious Russian and local delicacies: beer brewed at the factory across the street; salmon caviar, caught the night before; a ten-layer salad, proudly made by the thirteen-year-old son; and blini (pancakes), borscht (beet soup), pelmeni (dumplings), kimchee (Korean pickled cabbage), and a variety of other Korean and Russian salads. There were also those who helped with my research: Tamara Trofimovna, the library director, who made sure I was given whatever materials I needed without a library card or going through proper procedures. There was Natalia Vladimirovna, a university instructor, willing to share her detailed archival research with me, so that I don't have to look up the same material myself. Kira Iakovlena, the museum curator, who let me use a sofa in her office to look through century-old documents. And Aleksandr Ivanovich, director of the regional archives, who regularly advised me on people to meet, sources to examine, or how to obtain copies of out-of-print books. The purpose for this trip was to determine what sources were available and what research had already been done, in order to compose a dissertation proposal that was reasonable and realistic, while innovative and important. With the help of new friends made on Sakhalin Island, I believe I've done that (although, of course, the final decision will be made by my committee.) Yet perhaps more importantly, I have come to view Sakhalin as not just an interesting, perhaps exotic, object of historical research, leading ultimately to a dissertation and Ph.D., but as home to Tania, Andrei, Nelli, Aleskandr, Natalia, and others, who care about its history not because it's mysterious or controversial, but because it's what made them who they are. They love their island, with its snowy winters and rainy summers, incredible nature and economic depression. And beginning to see it through their eyes, so do I. |