Lake Russkoye

Lake Russkoye (Ozero Russkoye) lies in the south of Sakhalin Island, in the Korsakovsky urban district of Sakhalin Oblast, fifteen kilometers from the village of Okhotskoye. The lake occupies part of the Muravyovskaya lowland, a stretch of low, lake-rich shoreline between Mordvinov Bay of the Sea of Okhotsk and the large Lake Tunaycha. The western shore of Russkoye partly reaches the Puzina Peninsula. The lake's surface area is 2.1 square kilometers.

History

Before 1945, the southern part of Sakhalin, including this area, belonged to Japan, and the lake was officially known as Tohoro-ko. Its current Russian name is older than that border: in 1805 the navigator Ivan Fyodorovich Krusenstern, commander of the first Russian round-the-world expedition, visited the shores of the island. According to Sakhalin local historians, it was Krusenstern who named the lake Russkoye ("Russian") in memory of his distant homeland. So the name given by a Russian traveler in the early 19th century outlived both the change of the island's state ownership and the return of southern Sakhalin to Russia after 1945.

Neighboring lakes and the abandoned village

Russkoye is one of several small lakes in the southern part of the Muravyovskaya lowland in Sakhalin Oblast. Nearby lie Lake Khvalisekoye and Lake Donetskoye, which together with Russkoye form a small cluster of waterbodies close to the shore of Mordvinov Bay. South of the lake is a tract of land where the former village of Malkovo once stood: a settlement that over the years was abandoned by its residents, and today only its name remains on the map. About fifty kilometers away, in the same part of the island, are other notable sites of Sakhalin Oblast — Mount Imperatorskaya, Cape Grina and the Novikovskiye adits, so a trip to Russkoye can be combined with exploring the surroundings of Korsakovsky district.

Nature of the lake

By Sakhalin standards, Lake Russkoye is a small and warm body of water: its shallow areas warm up noticeably in summer, setting it apart from the island's cold mountain lakes. Its position in the lowland, away from the open sea coast, also softens the climate around the water. The presence of several lakes and former villages nearby makes this part of the Muravyovskaya lowland a quiet, sparsely populated corner of southern Sakhalin.