3-006-144 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

An Ainu from the Settlement of Penzenskoye in Southern Sakhalin, 1880-1899. From an album created on Sakhalin Island in the 1890s. Sakhalin was used by imperial Russia as a penal colony and place of exile for criminals and political prisoners. Between 1869 and 1906, more than 30,000 inmates and exiles endured the harsh conditions of the forced-labor colony on the island. The album contains photographs that provide rare glimpses of Sakhalin's settlements and prisons and the prisoners, exiles, and guards who inhabited the island. Anton Chekhov, the Russian writer and medical doctor, spent three months on Sakhalin in 1890, where he extensively researched the plight of the prisoners and the native population. The publication of his Sakhalin Island in 1895 highlighted the depravity of the situation in this remote corner of Russia and led to public protests that helped bring about the closure of the penal colony. National Library of Russia