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Saturday at 2pm repeated Wednesday at 1pm Wednesday 11/01/2006 Sakhalin part one – Penal ColonyIn 1890 Anton Chekhov took off for a tour of the penal colony that was then all that existed on Sakhalin Island. His report was published as a book in which he detailed the futile horror of the Tsarist penal system and soon afterwards it was stopped – at least on Sakhalin. The Japanese influence on the island which until 1945 was half theirs, is now negligible but exactly a hundred years after his death (he died in July 1904) Chekhov is well remembered everywhere on Sakhalin – by museums, statues, a theatre complex and a town named after him. Tony Barrell traces some of the great writers footsteps to discover what the legacy is and, after a long train journey north, is surprised to find in the town of Nogliki – dependent for its survival on the offshore oil and gas industry – that despite Chekhov’s pessimism in 1890, a substantial community of indigenous Nifkh people has survived despite the deprivations of institutional discrimination and rampant alchoholism and are making serious attempts to keep their old culture alive. See The Real Far East feature page which includes audio of the programs and photographs taken byTony on his visit to far eastern Russia. Sound engineer: Angus Kingston Produced by Tony Barrell and Neil McCarthy for ABC Radio National and the BBC World Service also in the program: Story: At a Country House, by Anton Chekhov, read by Brandon Burke. Further information:
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