Russia (Россия, Rossiya in Russian) is by far the world's largest country, spanning a little over 150° in longitude. It is organized as the Russian Federation (Rossiyskaya Federatsiya) with 85 members known as federal subjects (sub'yekty federatsii). Russia is primarily a continental nation but it has important coastlines on the Baltic, Black, and Caspian Seas and very long coastlines on the Arctic Ocean and North Pacific Ocean. To guard these coasts it operates hundreds of lighthouses, many of them historic. Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands together form an oblast (province), one of the members of the Russian Federation. Sakhalin, located just off Russia's east coast, is the country's largest island, stretching 950 km (almost 600 mi) from north to south and separating the Sea of Japan to the southwest from the Sea of Okhotsk to the northeast. Both Japan and Russia became interested in annexing these territories during the mid 1800s. In 1875 the Treaty of St. Petersburg assigned Sakhalin to Russia and the Kurils to Japan, and within a few years Russia began building lighthouses in Sakhalin. In 1905, at the end of the Russo-Japanese War, Russia was obliged to cede the southern half of Sakhalin to Japan, the border being fixed at 50° north latitude. Russia took control of all of the island in 1945, near the end of World War II. Japan renounced its former claims to Sakhalin in the 1951 Treaty of San Francisco. This page describes lighthouses in the southern half of the island, the region administered by Japan from 1905 to 1945. Curly braces {} enclose the former Japanese names of some of the lighthouses. The island itself is known as Karafuto in Japanese. Sakhalin Island is divided into 14 districts and one independent city (Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk). The Russian word for a lighthouse is mayak (маяк); ostrov is an island, poluostrov is a peninsula, kosa is a sandy spit, rif is a reef, mys is a cape, bukhta is a bay, zaliv is a larger bay or gulf, proliv is a strait, reka is a river, and gavan' is a harbor. Russian lighthouses are owned by the Russian Navy and maintained by the Office of Navigation and Oceanography (Управление навигации и океанографии). ARLHS numbers are from the ARLHS World List of Lights. Admiralty numbers are from volume M of the Admiralty List of Lights & Fog Signals. U.S. NGA List numbers are from Publication 112.
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East Coast (Sea of Okhotsk) Lighthouses
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Poronaysk Light, Poronaysk, June 2012 ex-Panoramio Creative Commons photo by vniz-i-nalevo |
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South Coast (Aniva Gulf and La Pérouse Strait) Lighthouses
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Southwest Coast (Sea of Japan) Lighthouses
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Ostrov Moneron Light, Tartar Gulf photo copyright Alexey Bambizo; used by permission |
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Central West Coast (Tartar Gulf) Lighthouses
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Mys Lamanon Light, Uglegorsk public domain photo by Sakhalin Tourizm |
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Information available on lost lighthouses:
Notable faux lighthouses:
Adjoining pages: North: Northern Sakhalin | South: Northern Hokkaidō | Southwest: Southern Khabarovsk | Northwest: Northern Khabarovsk
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Posted May 8, 2006. Checked and revised March 12, 2023. Lighthouses: 38. Site copyright 2023 Russ Rowlett and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.