Abstract: The subject of this article is the life of criminal criminals in the Sakhalin penal servitude and their view of the island's penitentiary system. This issue is very important, as it will allow us to take a fresh look at the dispute about the expediency of developing Sakhalin by exiled convicts. Special attention will be paid to the desire of criminal criminals to change their lives by means of labor in a new place, which is what government officials expected from them when planning the Sakhalin colonization project. As a source base, we will use a variety of interviews with prisoners, as well as the memories of the recidivist criminal Fyodor Shirokolobov, who tells, among other things, about his life on the island. In the historiography devoted to the Sakhalin penal servitude, works considering the views of a particular social group on the local penitentiary system are increasingly published. Writers, travelers, officials and even political criminals have already become the subject of various articles and monographs, which cannot be said about criminals. The novelty of our work will consist precisely in showing the attitude of the prisoners to the Sakhalin penal servitude. In the course of the study, we will come to the conclusion that in many respects it was formed under the influence of "Ivanov" - local authorities who were alien to physical work and honest work. This, in turn, became one of the reasons for the failure of the colonization of the island, since without the interest of the bulk of the population in the results of their work, there was nothing to dream of turning the "cursed island" into the "pearl of the Far East".

Abstract: This article examines the everyday life and mentality of the Sakhalin exiles based on their songs and poems, using the historical-comparative and historical-genetic methods. This gives a different perspective on these problems, since the sources created by the exiles were not widely used. One of the few examples is the memoirs of I. P. Yuvachev and articles of L. Y. Sternberg and B. O. Pilsudsky. However, they could not be referred to as ordinary prisoner, unlike the creators of many hard labor songs and poems. In the course of research, the author determines that although there was virtually no original song culture on Sakhalin, however, it was replaced by the rich culture of versification, which alongside the common motifs of home, love and the hard fate of the exiles, touched upon the characteristic local problems. The author assumes that such state of affairs was caused by the overall atmosphere of distrust and reticence prevalent on the island. This explains the high popularity of poems, since they could be written for a narrow circle of friends or stored inside the desk, unlike songs, which were supposed to be performed for a wide audience.