Sakhalin Oblast

Table of Contents

• Governor Igor Farkhutdinov
• Other Local Leaders
• Brief Overview
• Basic Facts
• 1996 Presidential Election
• 1995 Parliamentary Election
• 1993 Parliamentary Election
• 1993 Constitutional Referendum
• 1991 Presidential Election

Governor Igor Farkhutdinov

Appointed governor in April 1995, Igor Farkhutdinov requested permission to hold direct gubernatorial elections three times before finally winning a popular mandate on 20 October 1996. Farkhutdinov heads the local branch of Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin's bloc Our Home Is Russia, and Chernomyrdin personally campaigned for his ally in Sakhalin, promising to introduce various development programs in the oblast. Farkhutdinov defeated numerous opponents, gaining a plurality of 39.4% of the vote cast in the first round of the election.

From 1991 until he was appointed governor, Farkhutdinov had served as mayor of the oblast's capital city, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. His predecessor Yevgenii Krasnoyarov, the oblast's governor since 1993, resigned under a cloud of allegations that he misused federal aid intended for the victims of an earthquake in the southern Kuril Islands in 1994. Farkhutdinov himself drew praise for his handling of the disastrous May 1995 earthquake in the city of Neftegorsk, in northern Sakhalin.

The top priority in Sakhalin at present is the joint development of the large off-shore oil and gas deposits by foreign and Russian companies with an expected high influx of capital. To help local industry, which has suffered much in recent years from increased transport costs, Farkhutdinov is seeking federal subsidies and establishing economic ties with nearby prosperous countries, especially Japan and South Korea.

Other Local Leaders

Chairman of the oblast Duma - Nikolai Svetkin (elected in January 1996)

Brief Overview

Sakhalin Oblast includes Sakhalin Island and the chain of the Kuril Islands. Sakhalin lies off the shore of Khabarovsk Krai in southeastern Siberia to the north of the northernmost Japanese island Hokkaido. The Kurils, forming the southern border of the Sea of Okhotsk, stretch from Kamchatka Peninsula to Hokkaido. Possession of these territories has been a subject of dispute between Japan and Russia for more than a century. Japan held the southern Kuril islands from 1855 until the end of World War II. Sakhalin was chiefly used as a prison colony by tsarist Russia: Japan won control over the southern half of the island in 1905, and lost it to the Soviet Union in 1945.

The dominant features of Sakhalin's economy are fishing, lumber, and coal mining in the south, along with the exploitation of oil fields in the north and in the Sea of Okhotsk. Natural vegetation ranges from tundra in the north to deciduous forests in the south with its cold and damp oceanic monsoon climate. The area is repeatedly afflicted with earthquakes.

Basic Facts

1995 Population: 673,100 (0.45% of Russian total)

Industrial production as percentage of all Russian production (Jan.-Aug. 1995): 0.50%

Agricultural production as percentage of all Russian production (1994): 0.81%

Average personal income index in July 1995: 128 (Russia as a whole = 100)

Price basket index in July 1995: 169 (Russia = 100)

Average back wages owed per person (September 1995): 178,500 rubles (Russian average = 37,100)

Urban population: 85.1% (Russia overall: 73.0%)

Student population (1993): 43 per 10,000 (Russia overall: 171/10,000)

Pensioner population (1994): 21.0%

Percent of population with higher education (1989 census): 11.2% (Russia overall: 11.3%)

Percent of population working in (1993):

• Industry: 28.7% (Russian average: 29.9%)
• Agriculture: 7.4% (12.8%)
• Trade: 12.8% (9.1%)
• Culture: 10.0% (13.6%)
• Management: 2.2% (2.3%)

Number of telephones per 100 families (1993):

• in cities: 37.3 (Russian average: 41.5)
• in villages: 38.7 (17.2)

According to a survey by Bank Austria, the oblast was ranked 76th among Russia's 89 regions on investment climate.